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Supermarkets also need to stay open so they can sell you your beloved products, and you'd not believe how thin the margins of some supermarkets are: Having 8 ki

Supermarkets also need to stay open so they can sell you your beloved products, and you'd not believe how thin the margins of some supermarkets are: Having 8 kinds of lemon yogurt, each someone's favorite, while disposing of the products past the expiration date leads to either some of the highest prices in town, or closing down. Profitability in very small supermarket chains is small. Now, the models that the somewhat sophisticated supermarkets use don't fit on a spreadsheet, and really try to guess which items really are people's favorites, look at profit margins, and risks of people just going to a different supermarket altogether because the competitor down the street still has your favorite, or charges 30% less for it. They check what happens when a product isn't in stock, or when a competitor has a significant discount. It's a difficult optimization problem, given all the differences among people's shopping lists. Having a favorite product get discontinued sucks: It happens to me at least a couple of times a year, and sometimes straight from the manufacturer, so I can't even buy it online. But don't imagine that every supermarket out there is run by teams swimming in money. It's an extremely competitive business with many players, and there's not that much of a difference between the way the small chains run their operations today and having to close down because the lower prices of a larger competitor dropped sales just enough that they are losing money.

_jal 6y ago
There is always a reason. My corner grocery (run by a family that lives a couple blocks away) did the same thing - they dropped the soy milk brand I like. I asked about it, and they brought it back. I think they do cost more on average than HugeCo (if you use the HugeCo surveillance/loyalty card), which also theoretically has a larger selection, etc. But for some weird reason the store that sells me what I want gets my business.
chongli 6y ago
Supermarkets also need to stay open so they can sell you your beloved products, and you'd not believe how thin the margins of some supermarkets are Oh, no doubt. I'm not saying the spreadsheet guys aren't needed. They clearly are because competition is so stiff. So the reason store A needs spreadsheet guys is because store B has them. All of the spreadsheet guys, collectively, lock the grocery stores into a race to the bottom. I'm complaining about the existence of spreadsheet guys in the first place. Pulling back a little bit, maybe we need to question whether technology is always beneficial to society? Maybe some technology is inherently worse for society but we can't get rid of it because it's now locked into the market.
- kevin_thibedeau 6y ago
  I worked in a store in the early 90s with the registers set up that way. It is so much more efficient to pick directly from a cart so you can plan the best sequence of items for bagging. The IBM scanners of the era were much faster and more reliable than today's garbage. You could blast through, pulling items out with the right hand, tossing into the left, and blind scanning while reaching for the next item.
  - TeMPOraL 6y ago
    Seems to be a common thread in the past 20 years. The ergonomics of the product is garbage now. Partly because more compute is put into them, and with it comes bloated software that seems to be written by people who don't understand that their avoidance of "premature optimization" is just stealing people's lives by making the work go slower.
    - LargoLasskhyfv 6y ago
      Where I live we are behind that point now, as in everything is OK and working fast again. Though sometimes it happens that when a cashier opens a new line, and the POS-thing boots for the first time that day, showing some update process running under Windows and makes my day, because I can't stop giggling. Anyways, it's good for the cashier too, because time for smalltalk, maybe sipping some drink, or such. To be up to date, it's your fate...to wait!
      - TeMPOraL 6y ago
        I met my wife through smalltalk at the cash register, so I can attest that some slack in these jobs serves an important function in society!
    - fomine3 6y ago
      Lack of interest for speed is the problem, not premature optimization.
- TeMPOraL 6y ago
derekp7 6y ago
There's a chain of supermarkets around here that are the size of a Super Walmart, but all groceries. They carry for example 15 flavors or more of PopTarts, just to give one example. And they have low prices, and have seemed to figure it out (they were even apparently mostly immune from the TP shortages earlier this summer). I wonder how they manage, yet other chains don't (not that they have a lot of stores in their chain, they are spread out to no more than 1 or 2 stores in any county). They even have other customer-service oriented niceties, such as the fact that you don't have to put your groceries on a belt at checkout -- instead their carts are designed so that the cashier pulls directly from the cart, they go into bags that then get put into another cart for you to take out of the store. Little things like that make me wonder why these concepts haven't caught on. (Same with Aldi's letting their cashiers sit on a stool -- employee friendly, and doesn't interfere with the customer).
- zzleeper 6y ago
  What chain is that?? Sounds amazing..
  - derekp7 6y ago
    It's called Woodman's Market https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Woodman%27s_Markets https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Woodman%27s_Markets. Mostly in souteastern Wisconsin, and some in northeastern Illinois. My favorite part of it is the fact that you don't have to take the food out of your cart, put it on the belt, then take the bagged groceries and put it back in your cart again. The front of the cart flips down, and it gets pulled up in front of the cashier who can either bag it after ringing up the items, or typically there is a dedicated bagger. It is really fun to take someone there who has never been in one before, and watch as they get overwhelmed. Just the fact that there are 3 aisles of frozen pizzas... and the cheese coolers run at least half way down the width of the store. Oh, and the employees are friendly -- I wonder if the fact that it is employee owned helps there (or how the employee ownership works). Edit: do a video search for Woodman's, someone has posted a video of traveling the store on a scooter, you can get a good idea of the size of it.
    - 6y ago

_jal 6y ago

There is always a reason. My corner grocery (run by a family that lives a couple blocks away) did the same thing - they dropped the soy milk brand I like. I asked about it, and they brought it back. I think they do cost more on average than HugeCo (if you use the HugeCo surveillance/loyalty card), which also theoretically has a larger selection, etc. But for some weird reason the store that sells me what I want gets my business.

chongli 6y ago

Supermarkets also need to stay open so they can sell you your beloved products, and you'd not believe how thin the margins of some supermarkets are Oh, no doubt. I'm not saying the spreadsheet guys aren't needed. They clearly are because competition is so stiff. So the reason store A needs spreadsheet guys is because store B has them. All of the spreadsheet guys, collectively, lock the grocery stores into a race to the bottom. I'm complaining about the existence of spreadsheet guys in the first place. Pulling back a little bit, maybe we need to question whether technology is always beneficial to society? Maybe some technology is inherently worse for society but we can't get rid of it because it's now locked into the market.

kevin_thibedeau 6y ago
I worked in a store in the early 90s with the registers set up that way. It is so much more efficient to pick directly from a cart so you can plan the best sequence of items for bagging. The IBM scanners of the era were much faster and more reliable than today's garbage. You could blast through, pulling items out with the right hand, tossing into the left, and blind scanning while reaching for the next item.
- TeMPOraL 6y ago
  Seems to be a common thread in the past 20 years. The ergonomics of the product is garbage now. Partly because more compute is put into them, and with it comes bloated software that seems to be written by people who don't understand that their avoidance of "premature optimization" is just stealing people's lives by making the work go slower.
  - LargoLasskhyfv 6y ago
    Where I live we are behind that point now, as in everything is OK and working fast again. Though sometimes it happens that when a cashier opens a new line, and the POS-thing boots for the first time that day, showing some update process running under Windows and makes my day, because I can't stop giggling. Anyways, it's good for the cashier too, because time for smalltalk, maybe sipping some drink, or such. To be up to date, it's your fate...to wait!
    - TeMPOraL 6y ago
      I met my wife through smalltalk at the cash register, so I can attest that some slack in these jobs serves an important function in society!
  - fomine3 6y ago
    Lack of interest for speed is the problem, not premature optimization.
TeMPOraL 6y ago

derekp7 6y ago

There's a chain of supermarkets around here that are the size of a Super Walmart, but all groceries. They carry for example 15 flavors or more of PopTarts, just to give one example. And they have low prices, and have seemed to figure it out (they were even apparently mostly immune from the TP shortages earlier this summer). I wonder how they manage, yet other chains don't (not that they have a lot of stores in their chain, they are spread out to no more than 1 or 2 stores in any county). They even have other customer-service oriented niceties, such as the fact that you don't have to put your groceries on a belt at checkout -- instead their carts are designed so that the cashier pulls directly from the cart, they go into bags that then get put into another cart for you to take out of the store. Little things like that make me wonder why these concepts haven't caught on. (Same with Aldi's letting their cashiers sit on a stool -- employee friendly, and doesn't interfere with the customer).

zzleeper 6y ago
What chain is that?? Sounds amazing..
- derekp7 6y ago
  It's called Woodman's Market https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Woodman%27s_Markets https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Woodman%27s_Markets. Mostly in souteastern Wisconsin, and some in northeastern Illinois. My favorite part of it is the fact that you don't have to take the food out of your cart, put it on the belt, then take the bagged groceries and put it back in your cart again. The front of the cart flips down, and it gets pulled up in front of the cashier who can either bag it after ringing up the items, or typically there is a dedicated bagger. It is really fun to take someone there who has never been in one before, and watch as they get overwhelmed. Just the fact that there are 3 aisles of frozen pizzas... and the cheese coolers run at least half way down the width of the store. Oh, and the employees are friendly -- I wonder if the fact that it is employee owned helps there (or how the employee ownership works). Edit: do a video search for Woodman's, someone has posted a video of traveling the store on a scooter, you can get a good idea of the size of it.
  - 6y ago