There are now over 2,300 cities and towns across the US where Amazon offers free same-day grocery delivery for Prime members. This means a 2-hour delivery from an Amazon Fresh or Whole Foods Market. And apparently, 90% of what people buy this way is perishable, namely, fruit. Perishable food purchases also increased 30x this year, according to the company.

When it comes to online grocery shopping, this falls under what is typically referred to as the "delivery" bucket. There are three main shopping categories. The delivery bucket, which is now the largest category, gets fulfilled through a local grocery store. It's an Instacart worker or someone else collecting your food and delivering it to your home.

The next largest bucket is pickup, or click-and-collect. This is where a consumer buys what they want online and then picks it up in person. Lastly, there's the ship-to-home category. This is typically for non-perishable products, and the difference here is that the goods are coming from a distribution center, as opposed to a local grocery store. Think of it like a typical purchase from Amazon.

The grocery model continues to evolve rapidly. But local stores — and the real estate that houses them — seem to be remaining central to it. In Toronto, I don't normally shop at Whole Foods Market, but there is one very close to Parkview Mountain House that I like shopping at when I'm in Park City. And every time I go, it feels more like an Amazon store.

There's special pricing and deals for Prime members. The Amazon One palm scanning technology is at every register. And there's an Amazon return facility in the store to deal with that thing you erroneously ordered from China. It's all becoming seamlessly integrated with the broader Amazon ecosystem.

So from a real estate standpoint, the brick-and-mortar store is not being supplanted in the way that people once speculated. The physical store is just continuing to evolve to meet a changing omnichannel landscape, acting as a grocery store, distribution center, physical customer service center, casual restaurant, and more.

Most of us have heard of the so-called "Blue Zones." These are the parts of the world where there is an exceptionally high number of centenarians — people over the age of 100. We've talked about this topic before, covering the importance of things like diet, community, and constant moderate physical activity. But I would like to reiterate just how impactful our physical environments can be on our overall well-being.

The island of Sardinia is one of the world's Blue Zones. But it's not actually the entire island of Sardinia; it's a specific inner mountain region that is the Blue Zone. And in this region, at least two things are fascinating: First, the men have some of the longest average life expectancies in the world and second, the men live just as long as the women do. This is unique. Ordinarily, women outlive men. But not here.

The data overwhelmingly suggests that this outcome is the result of topography and employment. Because it is a mountainous region, the built environment is filled with steep inclines and staircases everywhere you go. The result is that even walking down the street to go to church or the grocery store results in organic moderate physical activity.

At the same time, the men in this region have historically worked as shepherds. This meant that work also involved walking up and down hills all day. Again, more organic moderate physical activity. Because of this, research has found very significant correlations between longevity and pastoralism, the average slope of the territory, and the average daily distance required to reach work. The steeper the better.

There's little mystery here. We know that more activity is better for us than less. The challenge is that we can't all live in bucolic mountain towns and chase sheep around all day. Modern society demands a lot of sitting and typing and vibe coding. We also have a market economy that is constantly looking for ways to make our lives more convenient so that we're able to do even more sitting around.

We try to compensate for this with gyms and other fixes (“

There are now over 2,300 cities and towns across the US where Amazon offers free same-day grocery delivery for Prime members. This means a 2-hour delivery from an Amazon Fresh or Whole Foods Market. And apparently, 90% of what people buy this way is perishable, namely, fruit. Perishable food purchases also increased 30x this year, according to the company.

When it comes to online grocery shopping, this falls under what is typically referred to as the "delivery" bucket. There are three main shopping categories. The delivery bucket, which is now the largest category, gets fulfilled through a local grocery store. It's an Instacart worker or someone else collecting your food and delivering it to your home.

The next largest bucket is pickup, or click-and-collect. This is where a consumer buys what they want online and then picks it up in person. Lastly, there's the ship-to-home category. This is typically for non-perishable products, and the difference here is that the goods are coming from a distribution center, as opposed to a local grocery store. Think of it like a typical purchase from Amazon.

The grocery model continues to evolve rapidly. But local stores — and the real estate that houses them — seem to be remaining central to it. In Toronto, I don't normally shop at Whole Foods Market, but there is one very close to Parkview Mountain House that I like shopping at when I'm in Park City. And every time I go, it feels more like an Amazon store.

There's special pricing and deals for Prime members. The Amazon One palm scanning technology is at every register. And there's an Amazon return facility in the store to deal with that thing you erroneously ordered from China. It's all becoming seamlessly integrated with the broader Amazon ecosystem.

So from a real estate standpoint, the brick-and-mortar store is not being supplanted in the way that people once speculated. The physical store is just continuing to evolve to meet a changing omnichannel landscape, acting as a grocery store, distribution center, physical customer service center, casual restaurant, and more.

Most of us have heard of the so-called "Blue Zones." These are the parts of the world where there is an exceptionally high number of centenarians — people over the age of 100. We've talked about this topic before, covering the importance of things like diet, community, and constant moderate physical activity. But I would like to reiterate just how impactful our physical environments can be on our overall well-being.

The island of Sardinia is one of the world's Blue Zones. But it's not actually the entire island of Sardinia; it's a specific inner mountain region that is the Blue Zone. And in this region, at least two things are fascinating: First, the men have some of the longest average life expectancies in the world and second, the men live just as long as the women do. This is unique. Ordinarily, women outlive men. But not here.

The data overwhelmingly suggests that this outcome is the result of topography and employment. Because it is a mountainous region, the built environment is filled with steep inclines and staircases everywhere you go. The result is that even walking down the street to go to church or the grocery store results in organic moderate physical activity.

At the same time, the men in this region have historically worked as shepherds. This meant that work also involved walking up and down hills all day. Again, more organic moderate physical activity. Because of this, research has found very significant correlations between longevity and pastoralism, the average slope of the territory, and the average daily distance required to reach work. The steeper the better.

There's little mystery here. We know that more activity is better for us than less. The challenge is that we can't all live in bucolic mountain towns and chase sheep around all day. Modern society demands a lot of sitting and typing and vibe coding. We also have a market economy that is constantly looking for ways to make our lives more convenient so that we're able to do even more sitting around.

We try to compensate for this with gyms and other fixes (“