Standing in front of a wall of loose vegetables and a scale with no English on it, we had to work out the self-weigh system with no help, kids watching.
This is what we actually did the first time we hit a French supermarket produce section, step by step, and how it turned into something our eldest wanted to do rather than something we had to get through.
What the self-weigh station actually asks you to do
There is no staff member weighing anything for you. You do it yourself, at a machine standing next to the vegetables. Nobody explains this to you when you walk in. We didn’t know the steps existed until we watched two other shoppers do it in front of us.
Once we’d watched enough people, the eldest worked it out before we did. “Isn’t it like this?” — and from there it clicked.
INFO ・ The steps, in order
- Bag: put the vegetables in the bag provided at the stand — a softer, nicer bag than we expected
- Scale: place the bagged vegetables on the scale
- Screen: choose the item from the list on the screen — it’s in French, but close enough to English guesswork most of the time
- Label: print the label the machine gives you
- Barcode: stick the label onto the bag yourself
How to manage it with no French
We don’t speak French beyond a few words. The screen menus are in French only, no language toggle that we found. What worked was standing back for a minute and watching how other shoppers moved through the steps before trying it ourselves. Once you’ve seen someone do it once, the order makes sense — bag, scale, screen, print, stick.
The item names on screen are usually close enough to their English or Latin roots that you can guess right. Tomate, carotte, pomme de terre — not hard. Where it gets slower is when the vegetable in your hand doesn’t obviously match anything on the list, and you’re scrolling through unfamiliar words trying to match a shape.
How long to actually budget for your first shop
Longer than you think. We split up — I took the youngest for a break while my wife and the eldest did the main shop — and it still took time. Hunting for the cheaper options, getting distracted by packaging that was too cute to put back, working out where one product category ends and the next begins.
The shop started at the level of “where does the butter begin and end,” so the whole thing was slow going.
If you’re doing your first French supermarket shop on a driving day, don’t schedule it tight against a departure time. Give it the extra half hour you’d normally never think to budget for buying vegetables.
What kids actually did with it
This is where the self-weigh system stopped being an obstacle and became the best part of the shop. Once the eldest had puzzled out the sequence, it wasn’t a chore anymore — it was a small system to beat, with a machine that gives you a printed label as a reward at the end. Weighing became something to compete over, guessing the French word before the screen confirmed it, seeing whose bag came out closest to a round number.
Done with a kid alongside, the weighing turned into something they learned rather than something we endured.
Who this is for
This is for families who are going to be doing more than one French supermarket shop on the trip and want the first one to go faster than it otherwise would. It’s also for anyone travelling with a kid who likes a small puzzle to solve — the self-weigh system gives them one built in. If you’re only stopping once for a baguette and some fruit, it’s not worth overthinking. Watch the person ahead of you in the queue, copy the order, and move on.
