Mildred Sjostrand may be the future of the American food retail business. On a warm evening last week, Venezuela-born Mrs Sjostrand and her husband were loading shopping into the back of their car in the palm-tree shaded car park of the Publix Sabor supermarket in Kissimmee, Florida.

The supermarket, which opened last year, targets the region’s Hispanic community with a broad range of fresh and packaged Latino foods. It stocks Colombiana brand soda, Publix’s own brand malt drink, maize flour mix for tortillas and several varieties of taro, the root used in Cuban and Central American cooking.