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The Feeder's Digest: Welfare check for the TK Maxx food aisle customer, please
From chaotic pasta shapes and balsamic vinegar in every flavour to coffee syrups that look radioactive, the TK Maxx food aisle is a strange and fascinating place.
LAST UPDATE | 26 Aug
I’M VERY CONCERNED as to who in head office is responsible for curating TK Maxx’s food aisle. More pressing: who are the customers keeping it in business by buying those big bags of tricolour pasta in shapes you’ve never heard of? Are we actually eating this stuff?
As is often the case, a random TikTok video, which my own chaotic algorithm served me, captured it best. A video of said food shelves with the on-screen caption “what I think the food aisle in TK Maxx sounds like” soundtracked by what could only be described as funky, farty, bwomp bwomp, like music expressed through a lava lamp rather than a speaker. It couldn’t be more accurate: who is gleefully skipping down this funky (not a compliment) aisle and flinging cursed condiments and entire cakes with ‘best before 2029’ labels into their basket?
The comment section, as expected, slapped: “there’s something sinister about that aisle”; “why does all the food feel second hand?”; “it all looks like it came from a different time and place”. We’re not alone in this, people. We all share grave concerns.
For a brand that markets itself on “less”, TK takes a “more is more” approach to retail. However, in reality, the shopping experience makes the most compelling case for asceticism and renouncing all material things. This giant, overstimulating jumble sale is a clash of colours, textures and contrasting curios, but there’s a particular unease lingering around that food aisle, of which chaotic pasta is the anchor.
Sure, you might find plain ‘ol bronze cut, durum wheat farfalle, fusilli or rigatoni on a good day, but mostly you tend to be accosted by pasta shaped like little snails (chiocciole), ones inspired by Mount Vesuvius (Vesuvio) or the tiny pumpkin ones (zucchette) that look like Pac Man ghosts when cooked. SO many of them are dyed in soft pastel shades without their consent. On my most recent expedition? Disney shapes: Cars, Lilo & Stitch, Mickey Mouse, whatever you’re having yourself.
American cuisine
Are people genuinely purchasing and consuming these, or are they the preserve of office Christmas party secret Santa gift-giving, ungratefully received and now haunting your cupboard indefinitely? The thing is: dried pasta lives pretty much forever, as immortal as Dracula himself. In case you’re ever in a pickle, you can reach into the crevices of the kitchen press and face your demons.
It’s not just pasta in this food equivalent of Area 51, though. It’s entire shelves full of balsamic vinegar, all different brands of glass bottles and squeezy glazes; why settle for one when you can catch ‘em all: fig, lemon, rosemary, chilli, raspberry, truffle… who is using this much balsamic in their lives?
It’s also jute sacks of fleur de sel and Himalayan pink salt. It’s catering-sized quantities of coffee beans with zero indication of how many years ago they may have been roasted on the label. Do Italians flock to TK Maxx to access the spoils of their homeland? Is this where they source their olive oil, tortes and panettone? It’s a sea of amaretti, pasticcini and biscotti, so dry and indestructible they will outlive us all.
Wouldn’t you know pumpkin spice SZN is on the horizon? Right this second, the poor plexiglass shelves are buckling under the weight of the flavoured sugary syrups the PSL girlies pump into their coffee. Hey, why not mask the dank flavour of the aged coffee beans you just procured with five pumps of tiramisu, chocolate chip cookie, bonfire toffee or Irish cream flavour? It’s an orgy of preservatives, additives and colouring. Further up the shelf sit a number of electric-coloured margarita and mojito mixes that look like they will definitely result in glow-in-the-dark wee.
The gift that keeps on giving
Look, I’ve been a long-time Maxxinista. I’ve paid my dues over the years, rifling through the rails at record speed like my life depends on it, militant and focused, but also exasperated. It’s muscle memory, the retail equivalent of the bleep test. Only the fittest survive.
I’ve struck gold in my time. Three-piece suits for weddings, some of my favourite wine glasses and the heavy wooden chopping board I use every day in the kitchen. TK is also an if-you-know-you-know secret weapon for chef’s knives at bonkers prices, from European heavyweights like Zwilling, Sabatier and Wüsthof to Japanese santoku, deba and nakiri knives.
So often TK Maxx delivers on that niche little product you’re looking for that no other retailer will have. But as a foodie with a snobby streak who cares deeply about provenance and quality, that food aisle will forever fascinate and frighten me. I would quite like to force the buying team into a tribunal and interrogate them.
As Autumn arrives, the nights draw in, leaves begin to fall, and TK Maxx ascends to its most powerful: blankets? Fluffy. Pyjamas? Flannel. Coffee syrups? Plentiful. Candles?
Vanilla, cinnamon cookie and gingerbread. Every type of Halloween tat imaginable is now front and centre. Cosy nights in, cradling colourful bowls of… monezzaglia, anyone?
On my most recent visit to the Dundrum store, I’m browsing the food aisle next to a pair of teenage girls who look like the prime candidates for a cosy, PSL, TK Maxx-ified Autumn.
I overhear one say to the other in horror, “Imagine actually buying food from here,” to which her response is: “I get the vibe everything has been on these shelves for a hundred years”.
We need a welfare check for the TK Maxx food aisle shopper.
Patrick Hanlon is a writer, food critic and columnist with TheJournal.ie.
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