Retail "Nuclear War"

But do you get better prices on brown bananas? It’s been my experience that the freshest stuff is actually also usually the cheapest. Whatever is in season locally will be cheaper, fresher, and better tasting that they stuff that is falling out of season.

I mean, I might consider buying brown bananas if I could get a discount, but the reality is that they are no cheaper than prime bananas.

That sounds so inhuman that I don’t doubt it will happen. If there’s one thing people try to avoid at all costs, it’s the experience of being human. One other observation on retail food- I went into what I thought was a “High End” (expensive) grocery store just to see if they had anything different or interesting. Then I noticed that all of their prices were actually right in line with other places.

As I’m looking around it becomes clear- They eliminated almost the entire refrigeration system. A couple of small cases of frozen, a couple of cases of cold foods, a butchers counter and a deli counter was the entirety of their refrigerated goods. Talk about taking a giant chunk out of the typical cost of running a grocery store! Thats several million $$ right off the top, and a massive reduction of operating cost. And it was quiet too.

Anyways, I thought that was downright ingenious.

Yes. They’re cheaper. The stores I go to mark them down to get them out the door. They also separate and put the loose ones in bags and sell them super cheap.

That is an excellent observation - and it’s spot on.

Anyway, I have on my desk a blueprint of a mall in a country in the Far East - it’s much, much smaller and cheaper than the behemoths built just a decade ago. I’m told this is the new big thing.

Very small retail spaces, focusing on the aforementioned “experience” - when it comes to foodstuffs it’s just top-of-the-line brands selling chocolates, jams and similar packaged goods, and almost no refrigeration.

It’s actually quite unnerving, it’s feels like someone built a small scale fake Disney version of an exclusive main shopping street, for rich, bored Asian housewives to play make-believe shopping.

Even a fucking physical bookstore is considered “vintage” because it stores physical books.

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Marie Antoinette pretended to be a milk maid to escape the court.

Now we have shows about fishermen, ice road truckers and mechanics because so many people don’t know what real interesting work is like.

Strange times.

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Similar to Walmart brick and mortar game plan originally.
Build in rural and small town, dominate and basically close 100% of the competition, then with the revs and profits soaring and warehouse infrastructure in place - move into the city. I worked for a food broker when Walmart bought their first grocery chain as a test component to create traffic. Ruthless & genius.

Now they have infrastructure, buying department second to no one in the US - go after ultimate convenience (Walmart) or now that you have siphoned Barnes and Noble sales to insolvency, add in B&M to reach ‘comfort of fingering books’ client. Also ruthless and genius.

It’s ultimate free enterprise and deserving of respect in that regard, but as a defeated former competitor (to Lowe’s) - it’s a bit saddening. C’est la vie.

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Grocery retailing coming full circle I would say - formerly all those same shops, one after the other.
Now just in the same ‘master building’.

A smart company would also own each shop and gain more profit than the supermarket concept by being ‘artisan’.

Good convo here