Hey y'all, it's your emissary from the Irish supermarket world. More-or-less a month in to my internship, I have just seen my name in print, and my workload is about to take off. Er... hurray?

So, I'm getting on OK at work. One of the two staff writers has just gone on a long holiday so my editor is thinking about giving me some of her work. Yay! This means interviewing independent grocers and off-licence owners in Ireland and reporting on all kinds of drink industry news. Get me. In the mean time, I have had a couple of short, plain 'market profiles' published in the Feb issue, started a feature on why Ireland doesn't have a mySupermaket.com, and started compiling the top 100 trends of 2009 with the other retailer.

What I have learned about groceries in Ireland so far:
- the Irish make a lot of fuss about prices and value but are generally quite content to be repeatedly ripped off. For instance, non-food shopping like electricals, clothes, furnishings, can expect as much as a 100% mark-up in the Republic compared with Belfast prices
- alcohol sales, in bars and in off-licences, will sink this year
- the governments (Irish and UK) should be doing a LOT more to reduce food waste, although the recession should make people more leftover-happy. The UK spends £10.2bn a year buying and binning good food: £420 a year per household, or £610 if that household includes kids. [WRAP]
- frozen food is a bargainous must
- sushi's out, daifuku's in

I won't beat about the bush: the grocery business is boring. Business, as a whole, is routinely dull. But getting to grips with the lingo ('brand equity', 'market share', 'sales by volume') feels good. And glossy glossy magazines are still enchanting, whatever they're about. But please God, may I never have to work in grocery journalism again.

Tell me something you learned at work this week.