Look at what this building spends money on. A steel and glass dome ninety feet up. A drum of clerestory windows that lights nothing anybody needs lit. Four columns the width of a car. A marble staircase wide enough for a coronation, doing the job a pair of escalators would do for a fraction of the cost. None of it sells anything. All of it is on a maintenance schedule.

The latest survey from Swiftly lands at an oddly reassuring moment for anyone who still believes local retail isn’t finished just yet. Nearly 80% of shoppers say they trust their neighborhood grocery store more than national giants like Amazon or Walmart when it comes to fair, personalized deals, a result that quietly undercuts the long-running assumption that scale automatically wins trust. It’s an old-fashioned advantage—earned over years of familiar faces, predictable pricing, and a sense that someone on the other side of the counter actually notices—but it turns out that advantage still matters, maybe more than ever, as food prices continue to test household budgets.