Racial representation in the Albert Heijn

By: Renee de Keijzer

Resit - 28/01/2021

My idea for a fitting intervention is to create a way to portray the different cultures in the Albert Heijn to customers

My proposal for an intervention is to let customers get to know our employees through food, which I think is very fitting for a supermarket.

I want to create a food stand where food is prepared and customers can try it out to get inspired. What my idea is to adjust this and make it more specific regarding the employees that this Albert Heijn has.

By having an employee making a dish once a week or once a month, the customers can either get inspired by a different culture; get to know the employees that work in their grocery store and cultural minorities will feel more attracted to shopping at Albert Heijn.

Because my research is focussed mainly on how cultures are portrayed in media and what needs to change, I decided that it's hard for me as a white female to start throwing oppinions and it would be better to let people experience and talk about it.

On the left you can see a little sketch I made on how I visualise it.

By creating the ability to converse with customers about food, the very reason they came to the shop and by showing a piece of your culture I think people will start interacting differently with each other.

First of all, the people who are not familiar with the culture can ask an employee for information which allows for the following to happen.

The main point I am trying to achieve with this intervention is that the store and Albert Heijn is represented by real customers, which makes it a lot more diverse than mainly white people that we see in the commercials.

Customers are able to experience the culture through food whilst also getting to know the specific store more.

Besides the conversation, the customers are also able to take a recipe with them and make this dish at home.

I figured since Albert Heijn already uses these little cards for recipes it would be a nice way to let people recognise cultures and also employees that work in the store, making it more personal.

I would have tried this out in public but sadly I got sick so I didn't have the chance to perform the intervention but this is a proposal of what I would have done.

I would have placed these cards and also open a food stand, inviting people to come by and try the food me or a colleague have made. And also connecting and conversing with the customers, explaining them why I am doing this and why I believe it is important for them to know who works in the supermarket and what their cultural background is.

Which by the way links back to how I think minorities are underrepresented in the commercials of the Albert Heijn. And if the Albert Heijn commercials won't represent these minorities, I want to do this by showing customers what the food of this culture is and how you can, by conversing, learn more about this.

Also I hope that by doing this these minorities feel represented and feel welcome at the Albert Heijn.

(Due to me being sick and having to take medication, I was not able to try this publicly)