It's far closer to my hometown experience than what you describe.

I know of 2 grocery stores there (the other half of that town is a mystery to me, probably a couple more there but it was 10 minutes just to get over the bridge, 40+ minutes in the summer, so I never went there), and they got their first supermarket in a decade about 5 years ago now, after the previous one closed 10 years before. For a town of 30,000.

Granted, it's a summer vacation town, so it's like 60% rich people's summer homes, but everybody I've talked to who's lived in a summer town has described more or less the same experiences that I had growing up.

When I lived there, it was a 5-7 minute drive to the closest grocery, where you could pay tourist prices, or 20 minutes to that new supermarket. Your other option was to drive to the next town over or 30 minutes by highway in the other direction.

Caught the Upstate NY-er

I visited the US once for a week. Visited Walmart exactly once, and Wegmans every other time. Wegmans blows even my European expectations for a grocery store out of the water.