Supermarket Simulation for CMS Markets

The vast majority of market products are the same as elsewhere and sold at the same prices. Whatever “market look” they have is due to form or presentation; the difference is an effect of staging or wording. Producing this appearance is part of the stallholder's art, practiced not so much to deceive the customer as to satisfy her wishes and expectations, and this game works all the better in that, as suggested, everyone wants to be taken in. The market is an enchanted world where stallholder talent combines with customer desire to make products appear different from what they are. As I heard someone say around Venturi's stall, “Pumpkins are rounder at the market.”

The archetypal “market product” is a heavy melon bursting with sweetness because the Provençal sun has been so generous, or a head of lettuce so visibly harvested at dawn that day that you can almost see dewdrops on it, or firm, fragrant strawberries that still bear the trace of the pebbly soil they were grown in just south of Carpentras. In the minds of most customers, shopping at the market means first and foremost laying in a supply of fruits and vegetables, natural rather than industrial products. As Nicole Grossage explained to me, “The market sensitizes people to food level. The market's brand image is the food; it's where you find fresh, higher-quality produce.” In fact, as I was able to confirm in interviews, most of the fruits and vegetables available on the market, either at stallholders' or in sedentary shops, were purchased from the MIN in Avignon, a major wholesale market featuring an extremely broad range of produce from a great variety of sources. In the appropriate season, melons and strawberries are always available at the marché-gare, whose function of course is to ship out local produce. But you can't get Spanish oranges or Israeli avocados there.

“In winter,” explains Boyac, “we go mostly to MINs. There are actually very fine suppliers at the local Carpentras market, but I'm more in the habit of buying from Avignon suppliers. You have to admit that the Carpentras market is smaller. Sometimes I go to Marseille; they have a bigger selection than in Avignon. Starting in May we do Carpentras, where we can get at least 20 percent of our potential salad needs, and little things. We're in an area where there are so many supply markets that it's easy to buy. We buy about 20 percent from rural markets and all the rest from the middlemen, the wholesalers, who get the merchandise externally.” Contrary to what one may readily imagine, then, he only occasionally buys directly from growers, and when he does it's through wholesale produce markets.

Set up the empty queue.

Set current time equal to zero.

Schedule the arrival for the first customer for some

arbitrary value. Maybe time = 0 or time = 1; maybe something else. That

is, you set t_arrival to whatever value you want it to be.

Perform the following loop as long as current ...