As someone who lived in London for nearly a decade, getting groceries was 100x easier than when I lived somewhere you had to drive for 15-30 minutes (traffic) to get to a large hypermarket.

A rucksack will easily carry around 5-6 days of food. Other than that, I would simply pop by the shop on my commute home from work. It would be a 5-10 minute detour max.

Remember that the shops in such cities are directly accessible (no need to walk through a massive shopping centre), there's no time wasted on finding a parking space, there's so many shops that it's extremely likely that there's at least one between your home and the bus/tube stop and they're mostly exclusively filled with food so you're not walking past dozens of aisles filled with non-groceries.

The big bonus of course is that if you wake up in the morning and realise you're out of milk, it's a usually a <5min walk to the closest shop to pick some up and no one will bat an eyelid if you're still wearing your bathing gown. :)

There's also generally less food waste (as you shop for fewer days and can plan better) and you can opt into buying your fruit, veg, meat and fish fresh every day instead of having to hope that your 'big shop' at the megastore will still be fresh at the end of the week.

"but how do you get groceries???" is such a common bad objection it's become something of a meme to make fun of it. don't want to pick on you but getting food is really not that hard to do. you just do smaller shopping trips more often.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kYHTzqHIngk

what self-proclaimed "15 minute city" are you living in where this is hard? genuinely curious. wondering if the phrase is getting diluted for marketing reasons. I've lived in totally ordinary neighbourhoods of English cities where all this was possible and easy, I never heard them flaunting their "15 minute city"ness, even though they met and exceeded the technical definition.

like I'm just confused that people are calling "utopian" the rather unremarkable reality I've lived for 25+ years. it makes me suspect ppl are using the same words to mean very different things.

I live in what would be called a 15 minute city, but we don't really call it that.

I just bring a bag or two and ride my bike to the store. Or if I'm downtown, which is a 10 minute train ride away, I'll stop by the grocery store next to the station before hopping on the train and just carry my groceries in a bag or put em in my backpack.

The only times I choose to drive are when I want to get a large quantity of something lightweight, like toilet paper or paper towels.

I typically don't buy a lot at once, I'll plan my meals for the next few days and only buy what I know will definitely get eaten to reduce waste.

I get my shopping delivered. Costs me $2 on average, they drive it in a refrigerated small truck and often drop off several deliveries to the same building/street in one trip. And then for stuff I want right now, I just walk to the supermarket with one bag. Since I go out for a walk every day after work, I just head to the supermarket along the way which is about 700m away.

Typically you carry your groceries in a bag. Some people have wheeled bags for bigger trips.

In neighborhoods with a traditional urban form (or "15 minute cities"), you wouldn't usually take mass transit to the grocery store, it's within a short walking distance. With groceries close by, it's natural to make frequent, smaller trips.