For ten years, Dan Kelly made a living doing something most people consider a tiresome weekly task: wandering around supermarkets. From Guam to Siberia, his job for ECA International — a data and software company — saw him traveling the world, collecting prices of grocery products in supermarkets. Every six months, a new itinerary would arrive: around 20 cities, each with its own tightly scheduled window.
The dad-of-two landed this unusual job after spotting an advert in a travel magazine. 'The opening line of the job advert was "Could you find the price of an apple in Liberia?"' Dan, 38 from London, says. It sounded slightly absurd, but just intriguing enough to apply.
Dan's Top Supermarkets in the World
- Caribbean Supermarket – Port-au-Prince, Haiti: All in the detail…flags next to fresh produce indicating the country of origin, butcher's section with diagrams showing the exact cut, and aggressive levels of air conditioning. These guys know what they're doing.
- Lucky Supermarket, Phnom Penh, Cambodia: Open till 10pm Friday night, big tick. All sorts of colorful produce (good fish skin section for example), alongside international brands I was looking for. Also, had free samples at the end of each aisle for energy top-ups as I went.
- King Soopers, Colorado, USA: Any US hypermarket really, just for the scale of everything. Thirty-seven types of almond butter, and the crisp/nuts aisle took twenty minutes for me to walk through.
- Andy's Foods, Sofia, Bulgaria: Alas Google has it permanently closed now, but…takes British nostalgia to new heights. Birds Custard Powder, and Paxo gravy granules. That sort of vibe.
- Massy Stores, St Vincent: Mainly due to the soundtrack: Ear-splitting ragga for the full hour I was in there. No holds-barred, had to have a sit down afterwards.
- Express Food Centre, London, UK: An honorary mention…. The shop at the end of my road, I'd be lost without them.
There were no formal qualifications required, no obvious career ladder to climb. At 23, Dan applied and, to his surprise, he was accepted and handed an extensive list of destinations that would map out the next six months of his life. Before he knew it, he was traveling from country to country, with a checklist of 160 items to record in supermarkets, armed with a Dictaphone, a spreadsheet, and a stack of plane tickets. Though, friends and family were baffled by the job description. 'One of the first things people would say was, "Are you a spy?"' Dan says. 'And that's because of the list of places… In my first six months of doing it, I went to India, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, Congo, and then Lebanon.'
While it might have been tempting to lean into the mystery, Dan insisted there was nothing glamorous about it; he was simply recording the price of eggs around the world. The job, which he describes as a 'treasure hunt', was less espionage thriller and more endurance test. 'You'd have two days per location. I'd arrive somewhere and have to go straight to supermarket number one,' he explains. 'Then I've got to do a second supermarket. Then I've got to go to the mall where the clothes shop is.'
'This was heavy, heavy travel, always on your feet, always moving around.' The job was tiring, but oddly addictive. Each destination came with its own set of challenges, from navigating unfamiliar cities to tracking down specific shops. Dan called it 'so satisfying about getting these prices and like ticking the list and being like, I've done that.' And, while the company chose which country Dan would be in, he planned and booked all his travel, with a rough budget of £60-70 per night.
Dan's Worst Supermarkets in the World
- Londis, London, UK: Staff are lovely, but the prices have reached horrific levels and most of their products seem to have Biscoff in them.
- Al Anfal, Khartoum, Sudan: Great supermarket, particularly the fresh stuff, but… fruit and veg prices were open to haggling. Good for the regulars, bad for trying to accurately measure the cost of living.
- Esajee's, Islamabad, Pakistan: Not a price label in sight. Data Collector's nightmare.
- Palladium Hypermarket, Tehran, Iran: Not Palladium's fault, but the currency was pretty weak when I went, so I remember a bottle of Olive Oil costing 475,565 Rials…and of course all numerals displayed in Farsi. It took hours. Sorry Palladium, but that was a tough day.
- Surangel's, Koror, Palau: Stock completely dependent on when the next Pacific ship came in, which, unfortunately for me, wasn't for another few days. It did give me the rest of the afternoon off though…
This afforded him some 'luxury digs' in India and China, as well as some not so desirable lodgings — such as sleeping above a nightclub in Dublin, not the best for a good night's sleep, and a 'ropey hostel' in central Manhattan. However, Dan insists that regardless of the quality of stay, he has 'precious memories [of them] all'.
Dan's travels gave him a unique insight into how people live around the world. Often taking advantage of word of mouth, checking out supermarkets that locals recommended. 'I'd get a list in January and then by May I'd have had to have done two and a half weeks in India, then I'd be going to China for three weeks, but then I might go to Sweden for four days and then I'd come back and go to Uruguay for three days,' Dan says.
Supermarket staff were always suspicious of the man wandering the aisles with a Dictaphone. Dan often found himself relying on Google Translate to explain that he was not from a rival company or conducting undercover surveillance. Some countries proved harder than others for the former data collector. 'There was one in Pakistan which doesn't have a single price label anywhere, which for a day of recording is just a nightmare,' he mentions, adding that he ended up taking over a hundred items to the till to scan and record. In Iran, every price was written in Farsi, forcing him to learn the basic numbers. In Zimbabwe, hyperinflation meant prices could change before he had even finished recording them.
Over time, Dan began noticing something unexpected. 'After 10 years, I was realising that places are getting more similar,' he says, remarking it could be due to the 'modernising world'. 'I was in Burundi, and I remember finding a bottle of Newcastle brown ale, and I was thinking, "How is this in a dusty corner of this supermarket?"'
While Dan loved his work, it became increasingly clear that the role was disappearing. 'The job also doesn't really exist anymore,' he says. 'It wasn't a very good job environmentally, and particularly with COVID, we started to think actually going to some of these places for a few days at a time to get data, which we can get from a computer, maybe doesn't make sense anymore.'
Now retired from supermarket exploring, Dan has turned to comedy and is currently working on a show about his adventures to perform at the Fringe Festival in Edinburgh this summer. 'As I was finishing the job and moving away from the travel side of things, I sort of thought this feels probably a good time to write it into a story,' he says. With some experience in stand-up comedy, Dan is gathering his most memorable moments from a decade of supermarket hopping and turning them into a comedy show.
'The comedy is coming from the absurdity of how seriously I took the job,' he explains. 'I'd put everything I could find in these prices to the point where it became a bit absurd. I'd be in the middle of El Salvador stressing out about where I was going to find some brie.'
In addition to his show, Dan is also currently working on a book to follow.
