
A Man Who’s Going to Save Your Neighborhood Grocery Store - elorant
https://longreads.com/2019/04/23/the-man-whos-going-to-save-your-grocery-store/
======
WillPostForFood
Article has a confusing title, it not about saving your small local
neighborhood store. It is about how supermarkets can compete with Amazon,
Walmart and online. His idea sounds a lot like Whole Foods, and not a
neighborhood store.

 _The store that resulted is called Harvest Market, which opened in 2016. It’s
south of downtown Champaign, Illinois, out by the car dealerships and strip
malls; 58,000 square feet of floor space mostly housed inside a huge, high-
ceilinged glass barn._

 _Harvest Market is the anti-Amazon. It’s designed to excel at what e-commerce
can’t do: convene people over the mouth-watering appeal of prize ingredients
and freshly prepared food._

Since Amazon is Whole Foods, it doesn't sound at all like the anti-Amazon.

~~~
PorterDuff
Exactly. I like the idea of "traditional American supermarket" for the irony
content.

When I was a youngin', our town didn't have any chain stores, just a dozen or
so family markets.

I miss the culture and environment, not so much the lack of selection. Since
then, it's hard to take sides in a Safeway vs Walmart vs Amazon brawl.

The first chain fast food (aside from the ubiquitous Dairy Queen) came
somewhat later. That's a thing I think we could do without.

~~~
Kalium
Having shopped at family markets, I also don't miss their prices.

~~~
losteric
I do miss their higher quality and usually locally sourced products... and the
friendly "customer experience" of local employees paid above minimum wage.

~~~
Kalium
Your family market experience was clearly very different from mine. High
quality, local sourcing, and friendly services were never hallmarks.

------
learc83
Since my Vietnamese sister-in-law introduced me to Asian farmer's markets, I
tend to only shop at them for anything fresh. Their produce selection is just
so much better than traditional American super markets, they actually have a
real butcher, and their seafood selection is much larger.

Their produce selection tends to be a lot cheaper than standard grocery stores
too because they have separate supply chains and direct relationships with
Asian owned farms.

Several local Asian chains have been moving into abandoned super market
buildings in my area over the last 5 or 10 years, and I'm starting to see more
and more non-Asian and non-Hispanic people shopping at them lately.

~~~
opportune
Yeah, I get all my seafood (except wild pacific salmon, for some reason Trader
Joe's has by far the best) from Korean/Thai grocery stores. Great selection on
fresh/frozen shellfish and fish.

I think most traditional major supermarket chains have a higher markup on the
"fresh things" like produce/meat/seafood but low prices on processed things +
eggs + milk. Meanwhile the Asian groceries tend to have a low markup on
produce/seafood but high markup on the processed things.

I just need to find a place to get meat and nice-ish cheese (currently stock
up on store-brand cheese every two weeks at Trader Joes) for cheap. I don't
miss small grocery stores at all, usually they were too expensive with poor
quality produce/meat and very poor seafood selection in my experience.

------
mrweasel
I live in a small town/village that has just had it's grocery store reopen
after it being closed for five years. Based on my experience I don't see any
need to radically rethink grocery store, people just need to experience
shopping at a small store again.

It's not for everyone, the selection is going to be more limited, but it's so
much faster and cheaper. We save around 20 - 25% buy shopping locally, there's
simply less random items that go into the cart. While the large supermarkets
have 5 minute lines and getting around results in shopping taking at least 30
minutes, the small grocery store reduces our once a week shopping trip to 10
minutes. Generally shopping at the large supermarkets have become extremely
stressful, perhaps it always was, but now I know there's a better solution...
And it's not online.

Online shopping for groceries currently doesn't work, shipping is to
expensive, unless you only shop once a week... I do, but then they don't give
me items that will last more than a few days. What am I suppose to do with 5L
of milk that only last until Wednesday?

After having tried a small local grocery store I'm not sure I want to go back
to the supermarkets.

~~~
Scoundreller
My chief complaint about the small supermarkets in urban environments is that
their produce just doesn’t turn over very fast.

Especially for the larger pack sizes, if they even have them at all.

More generally, Am I willing to save 30% on bread crumbs or soap if it means
buying a 6-12 month supply up-front? Yes, that’s a great ROI!

4 or 5L of milk may be a problem (unless you freeze it). But I can go through
a 10 lb bag of potatoes if I could only get them fresh.

~~~
max76
> More generally, Am I willing to save 30% on bread crumbs or soap if it means
> buying a 6-12 month supply up-front? Yes, that’s a great ROI!

This depends on the size of your home and the amount of storage space you
have. I am generally unwilling to buy a 6+ month supply of household goods
because real estate is significantly more expensive than toilet paper.

~~~
Scoundreller
People say that, but people have a hard time letting go of junk they’ll never
use to make space for stuff that they consume everyday.

~~~
max76
I think people fit on a wide spectrum ranging from hoarder to absolute
minimalist.

I was speaking for myself, and some of the hidden costs associated with buying
in bulk.

------
max76
I live in a dense urban area.

I'd consider my neighborhood grocery stores to be the 5,000-10,000sqfoot
places scattered around the area so no home within a three mile radius is more
than a 10 minute walk to one. They survive just fine by being cheaper than
Amazon Fresh and significantly more convenient than the Walmart/Costco that
exist on the outskirts of the city.

~~~
diminoten
Sure, right up until Walmart builds a Neighborhood Market a block away...

~~~
max76
That's a fight we have fought before and won. I'm confident we can fight it
again.

~~~
briandear
Why? Is the goal to have good groceries nearby or is it some kind of a war
against “big” companies?

~~~
max76
Personally? I’ve lived places where Walmart was the _only_ grocery store
within 30 miles. I much prefer my neighborhood grocery stores and would rather
they not have the competition. Walmart has a history of forcing other
retailers out of business.

Yes, I understand that statement is antifreemarket and many people will
disagree. I think people should take a more active approach to shaping their
local communities.

------
JohnFen
From looking around my city and noticing which grocery stores are thriving and
which aren't, I've noticed a pattern. I readily admit that I am judging by how
busy they are and have no insight as to their actual profitability. Also, my
city seem unusual in that Whole Foods is not particularly popular here. People
who would shop there have had better places along the same lines for years
before Whole Foods came around, so there were already deeply entrenched
shopping habits.

The very high-end grocery stores are doing about the same as they always have.
The bulk/budget grocery stores are doing better than ever. It's the ones in
the middle that seem to be dying.

I'm not sure how much of this can be placed at Amazon's feet. Amazon's grocery
offerings seem to be geared toward the high-end.

------
sytelus
Article is about food produce stores, not typical grocery stores that small
town have. I think food produce stores are relatively safe still, Amazon Fresh
lacks choice, no free delivery and have higher prices. They have to deal with
fundamental problem of everything must go before it expires and that prevents
offering long tail choice.

However small town grocery stores which sell everything from toothpaste to
cereals are in big trouble, I have watched 2 of them getting closed because of
lack of customers. A big issue is also lack of smart software that can guide
inventory decisions. They usually have ton of things that doesn’t fly off the
shelves while customers getting disappointed with not finding things. You
would expect these stores to have optimization software that identifies losers
and replaces it with better options but they don’t. I would see them
consistently run out of some product every Wednesday and not getting it
replenished for rest of the week. I would think their software would detect
this and get that item more but that would never happen!

They can probably still stay alive if they had smarter software.

------
atdrummond
I grew up in the town Niemann Foods, Incorporated is headquartered in.

If anything, this strikes me as a response to Hy-Vee's continued growth. Much
of Harvest Market takes aims at design themes Hy-Vee has bee pushing for a
decade now.

I wish NFI luck but given their struggles in their home market, I'm not sure
this is the Hail Mary they need.

~~~
013a
Fun fact: Shook Kelley also did some research work for Hy-Vee.
[http://www.shookkelley.com/work-detail/45](http://www.shookkelley.com/work-
detail/45)

------
rmbryan
I love this sentence from the article: “I make my living convincing male
skeptics of the power of emotions,” he says.

------
nalfien
I live down the road from Harvest Market. It is nothing special, I'd trade it
for a whole foods in an instant. It's just a high end supermarket with a nice
seating area.

------
sjg007
Grocery is going in two directions: aldi and then Whole Foods/HyVee.

Short order meal prep is where the real money is.. the UK specifically London
is a prime example.

~~~
EADGBE
Do you mention HyVee because of the midwest location of it, or a general
employee-owned supermarket/restaurant/prep meal aspect?

------
overcast
I'm sorry for all of you that do not have a Wegmans.

~~~
EADGBE
I'm sorry for everyone that doesn't have a Price Chopper.

~~~
overcast
You poor soul. I grew up with Price Chopper in my hometown, and found the holy
grail in Wegmans when I moved out for college/employment. Wegmans is leagues
above them still today.

~~~
EADGBE
I suppose if I wanted a fancy, overpriced grocery shopping experience I could
also stroll down to HyVee...

This was honestly a dig at leaving no evidence of why Wegmans was better. I'm
sure it is.

------
shambolicfroli
Elorant, what is the one short paragraph summary of this article, please?

~~~
tropo
Heh. It's a longreads.com article, which should be a hint.

Basically it's about marketing firms trying to convince supermarket owners
that inefficient layout and cute themes will save the day. All sorts of stuff
is to be feared: millennials who prefer restaurants or Amazon (and won't age
out of it by starting families), the giant Walmart monster, etc.

So make the customers zig-zag around a store, kind of like shopping at JCPenny
or Macy's, or maybe even a casino. Take up space with weird stuff, like
corrugated steel around the milk to evoke farm nostalgia. Create a mock up of
an urban deli, complete with an awning that is hopefully useless under the
supermarket's roof.

Evidently people like me are undesirable customers, because I hate all that
stuff.

~~~
logfromblammo
Joining your camp. I go to the grocery to buy food, not cutesy-pootsy
marketing kitsch that somehow turns a chore into an "experience". And if the
store does stupid stuff to make an identical list of items take longer to buy
and transport back to my home than it took before, it is adding time cost to
the money cost, while also making the store seem more crowded. It is reducing
the value of me going there in the first place.

One thing that really irritates me is "lifestyle aisles". I do not organize my
shopping list by whether the food is "ethnic" or "health-conscious". To me,
hoisin sauce is not "Asian foods"; it is a condiment. It's the same as
Worcestershire sauce, barbecue sauce, ketchup, or mustard. Canned frijoles
negros are exactly the same as canned black beans, so why are they in
different aisles? If I want Cap'n Crunch and also a gluten-free hippy cereal
with a happy gorilla on the box, they should both be in the same aisle. Put
the lo mein next to the spaghetti, and the golden syrup next to the sugar, and
the matzoh next to the Wasa. I shouldn't have to bounce between different
random aisles to complete a shopping list organized by the type of food,
rather than by the type of person who typically eats it.

~~~
r00fus
This is exactly why I don't shop at my local grocery/supermarket except when
needed. TJs + Sprouts with occisional stops at Asian stores when I need more
than hoisin/soy.

