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Perhaps the most relevant point: A closer look at its selection of items underscores the brilliance of Coulombe's limited-selection, high-turnover model. Take

by pwim 16y ago

Perhaps the most relevant point: A closer look at its selection of items underscores the brilliance of Coulombe's limited-selection, high-turnover model. Take peanut butter. Trader Joe's sells 10 varieties. That might sound like a lot, but most supermarkets sell about 40 SKUs. For simplicity's sake, say both a typical supermarket and a Trader Joe's sell 40 jars a week. Trader Joe's would sell an average of four of each type, while the supermarket might sell only one. With the greater turnover on a smaller number of items, Trader Joe's can buy large quantities and secure deep discounts. And it makes the whole business -- from stocking shelves to checking out customers -- much simpler.

barrkel 16y ago
I see the opposite side of that here in London. All the main supermarkets - Tescos, Asda, Morrisons, etc. - have very little in the way of product choice. Living in east London, I have to go well out of my way to find a different branch of Sainsburys or Waitrose to get certain products. For example, "McCains Simply Gorgeous Chunky Chips", a variety of oven chips in beef dripping, is vanishingly rare; there's a Sainsburys in Bethnal Green which sells them, but that's going well into the city. Similarly, for The Berry Company juices - things like açaí, blueberry, goji berry - I have to go to Waitrose in Canary Wharf. Other Waitrose outlets are hit and miss, with patchy coverage of the line; and there's virtually no chance of finding the products elsewhere. I was amused to find once I went to a Tescos Extra that they largely just had twice the space on the shelf for the same number of SKUs.
- parallax7d 16y ago
  From what I've read, Brits don't have the insane supermarkets we do here in the states.
  - bsil 16y ago
    I actually managed to get lost in a new one, which serves the vast sprawl of nearly prefab housing stretching beyond Canary Wharf down to the Dagenham bend and beyond. Last i looked, there's no update of the views on Google Maps to shock and awe you that housing so many miles from any kind of center could be so close to central prices. But, yeah, big supermarkets are rare. The trend has been to "corner shop" style stores, which is basically the supermarkets gaming the planning system ("local amenities, social infrastructure", erk) so they can game the prices (20% markup on same SKUs compared with their own bigger stores not unusual, but this is just another incentive for them to not keep SKUs in every store, as the Frozen Chips Lament supports)
  - adw 16y ago
    Tesco's one of the world's most profitable retailers (I think it's #4 globally) and ASDA is a subsidiary of Wal-Mart. London's just a special case - where do you put an out-of-town superstore in zones 1 or 2 of the Tube map?
    - barrkel 16y ago
      I wouldn't mind if they were in zones 4 or 5, but it still doesn't add much choice. Tesco Extra stores aren't exactly small, but they still don't have much choice in the grocery side. If a different store had the range, I'd go there instead. But each store targeting a slice of the demographic pie has very much the same limited range with a tiny bit of diversity outside of store brands.
  - jedc 16y ago
    Having grown up in the States and lived in London for nearly seven years, I have to agree. It's not that UK supermarkets don't have choice, it's that US supermarkets are spoiled for choice. I mean, I went back home and saw a WALL of bread, and a long aisle where half was just cans of soup! For me, it's not just the difference between 10 different SKUs of peanut butter and 50+, but US stores seem to have much more stock of each SKU, too. That said, YMMV.
- bsil 16y ago
  "I have to go well out of my way to find a different branch of Sainsburys or Waitrose to get certain products" Gah, too bloody right. The supermarkets aggressively target SKU's to demographics, and in the E2 . . E14 area, demos are all over the board. One time this borough qualified as one of the lowest per capitas in the EU, yeah, riiight, it's a cash economy, which isn't obviously getting measured, off the back of which Tower Hamlets gained vast supplementary funding which they used to create a hegemenous political enclave. Oops, off topic there, sorry. For readers not familiar with this territory, you've got a social housing ghetto sandwiched between Canary Wharf and Liverpool Street, our primary banking districts. I use the word ghetto accurately i believe, because the census puts young immigrant families of a single origin at beyond 60% of population, this over a vast area and this group are in one bit of it, a group i assure you is not equally represented in banking or professional services. Yup, doing the shopping here involves Waitrose at Canary, Tesco Liverpool St, Sainsbury at Stepney Green. Maybe i should make something out of it by doing guided tours at the same time, since that triangle covers half of the biggest district in the country . . I'm on HN, and we're discussing local frozen chip shortages, and we can't solve them. Ouch! trivia: local slang for neigborhood in the East End of London has always been "Manor". As in "i'm going to be on yer Manor later, mate". I wonder if this has anything to do with the fact stretches of Victoria Park and elsewhere were, before urbanisation, in fact private Manors, some created by Canal barons, who got land deals like Rail Barons did in the USA. See, that guided shopping tour idea might have something in it . .

by pwim 16y ago

barrkel 16y ago

I see the opposite side of that here in London. All the main supermarkets - Tescos, Asda, Morrisons, etc. - have very little in the way of product choice. Living in east London, I have to go well out of my way to find a different branch of Sainsburys or Waitrose to get certain products. For example, "McCains Simply Gorgeous Chunky Chips", a variety of oven chips in beef dripping, is vanishingly rare; there's a Sainsburys in Bethnal Green which sells them, but that's going well into the city. Similarly, for The Berry Company juices - things like açaí, blueberry, goji berry - I have to go to Waitrose in Canary Wharf. Other Waitrose outlets are hit and miss, with patchy coverage of the line; and there's virtually no chance of finding the products elsewhere. I was amused to find once I went to a Tescos Extra that they largely just had twice the space on the shelf for the same number of SKUs.

parallax7d 16y ago
From what I've read, Brits don't have the insane supermarkets we do here in the states.
- bsil 16y ago
  I actually managed to get lost in a new one, which serves the vast sprawl of nearly prefab housing stretching beyond Canary Wharf down to the Dagenham bend and beyond. Last i looked, there's no update of the views on Google Maps to shock and awe you that housing so many miles from any kind of center could be so close to central prices. But, yeah, big supermarkets are rare. The trend has been to "corner shop" style stores, which is basically the supermarkets gaming the planning system ("local amenities, social infrastructure", erk) so they can game the prices (20% markup on same SKUs compared with their own bigger stores not unusual, but this is just another incentive for them to not keep SKUs in every store, as the Frozen Chips Lament supports)
- adw 16y ago
  Tesco's one of the world's most profitable retailers (I think it's #4 globally) and ASDA is a subsidiary of Wal-Mart. London's just a special case - where do you put an out-of-town superstore in zones 1 or 2 of the Tube map?
  - barrkel 16y ago
    I wouldn't mind if they were in zones 4 or 5, but it still doesn't add much choice. Tesco Extra stores aren't exactly small, but they still don't have much choice in the grocery side. If a different store had the range, I'd go there instead. But each store targeting a slice of the demographic pie has very much the same limited range with a tiny bit of diversity outside of store brands.
- jedc 16y ago
  Having grown up in the States and lived in London for nearly seven years, I have to agree. It's not that UK supermarkets don't have choice, it's that US supermarkets are spoiled for choice. I mean, I went back home and saw a WALL of bread, and a long aisle where half was just cans of soup! For me, it's not just the difference between 10 different SKUs of peanut butter and 50+, but US stores seem to have much more stock of each SKU, too. That said, YMMV.
bsil 16y ago
"I have to go well out of my way to find a different branch of Sainsburys or Waitrose to get certain products" Gah, too bloody right. The supermarkets aggressively target SKU's to demographics, and in the E2 . . E14 area, demos are all over the board. One time this borough qualified as one of the lowest per capitas in the EU, yeah, riiight, it's a cash economy, which isn't obviously getting measured, off the back of which Tower Hamlets gained vast supplementary funding which they used to create a hegemenous political enclave. Oops, off topic there, sorry. For readers not familiar with this territory, you've got a social housing ghetto sandwiched between Canary Wharf and Liverpool Street, our primary banking districts. I use the word ghetto accurately i believe, because the census puts young immigrant families of a single origin at beyond 60% of population, this over a vast area and this group are in one bit of it, a group i assure you is not equally represented in banking or professional services. Yup, doing the shopping here involves Waitrose at Canary, Tesco Liverpool St, Sainsbury at Stepney Green. Maybe i should make something out of it by doing guided tours at the same time, since that triangle covers half of the biggest district in the country . . I'm on HN, and we're discussing local frozen chip shortages, and we can't solve them. Ouch! trivia: local slang for neigborhood in the East End of London has always been "Manor". As in "i'm going to be on yer Manor later, mate". I wonder if this has anything to do with the fact stretches of Victoria Park and elsewhere were, before urbanisation, in fact private Manors, some created by Canal barons, who got land deals like Rail Barons did in the USA. See, that guided shopping tour idea might have something in it . .