Rage From the Edge

Grocery Store II

The Deli

We left off at the bakery department. Usually running along the same side of the power alley as the bakery is the deli department. They often present themselves together, running as a continuous service counter behind all sorts of goodies. The deli specializes in cut luncheon meats, cheeses, prepared salads, pastas, and cold prepared foods that are quick and easy to heat up and enjoy. The deli, or if you prefer, the “prepared foods section,” doesn’t stop there. The department, when in a larger store, has whole hot cases serving fried and baked chicken, ribs, soups, taco bars, Asian specialties, and appetizers. Often, these hot cases are self-serve or buffet style offerings that are paid for at a cash register at the end of the case. Other times you will find a friendly service clerk behind the case, manning a spoon and large containers for you to keep your purchases in.

The Deli department is much like the bakery in that it is a service department where most of the items you see are either thawed out or cooked right on the premises rather than sold as a contained item. Also, like the bakery the counter is maintained by a staff of workers who should be properly trained and have a full knowledge of the items they are serving.

But the deli doesn’t stop there. In some of the more upscale grocery stores that I have seen, the deli keeps a chef on hand and he cooks a menu each day that will be chilled and sold out of a “prepared meals” case. These guys cook all day and if the store is busy, the prepared meals case is a very popular section of the deli. In the last store I worked in, there was not only a chef, there was also what was called a “food-marketing specialist.”

The food-marketing specialist was a highly trained chef or dietician who was on the premises to showcase ingredients and items that were rare or misunderstood. They were trained by the store to have knowledge in wines, desserts, and many other aspects of a “fine meal.” They were also in charge of educating the whole store’s staff about seasonal or special products. In my particular store, the food-marketing manager held several meetings where we were encouraged to try new things and to learn about those things uses. A knowledgeable staff is very important when it comes to serving the customer.

And all of that is wrapped up in the deli. I still find it hard to believe that when I started working in grocery stores in 1984 the deli was a small hole in the wall. A person would walk up to the hole, place an order, and then go about shopping. Sometime during the shopper’s trip at the store, a call would go out over the loudspeakers telling them that their order was ready. Today, the amount of real estate, time, and energy devoted to that hole in the wall rivals the rest of the store. With that much invested, you have to realize that the prices are insane. Seven dollars for a pint of salsa?

The Butcher’s Shop

Most meat departments have a service counter that handles both cut meats and seafood. They have a long cold case that features pork, chicken, beef, lunch meats, sausages, and some prepared food items like shredded taco flavored chicken.

The service counter is where you find your higher grades of beef cuts. Angus, Choice, and Prime go in there and the prices reflect that. The seafood is separate but nearby. Cuts of fresh water, salt water and shellfishes are all located here, pre-thawed and ready to take home.

Behind that counter is a large bank of windows. Unlike the bakery or the deli, almost all of the fresh meat in a butcher’s shop is prepared on site back behind those windows. Starting at about six o’clock in the morning, you will see butchers arrive and begin to cut beef, grind tubes of ground beef, package pork and run the band saw on the larger hunks of meat they get in almost every day on refrigerated trucks. Those butchers are back there cutting all day. Also, they do what is called “cutting forward” to make sure that the department has fresh sale items and popular cuts for the rest of the sales day.

After you move past the butcher shop and the service counter, there is usually a long bank of coolers that hold the ground beef, steaks, chicken, and pork. This straightaway is where most of the sale items and “lesser” grades of meat can be found. This set of cases is also the reason why those butchers are cutting meat like mad. This case is where 80% of the meat in the store is purchased. Not as pricey as the actual service counter, but many great cuts of meat are still to be had here.

After that set of coolers, there is a section of pre-made dinner solutions. This is a rapidly expanding part of the industry that is comparable to the produce department’s bagged salad section. The whole point of this type of food is that it is convenient and quick for the customer. All that ease is nice, but as I said before, you are going to get socked in the wallet for all that hassle free cooking you are going to be doing. The meal solutions products you will find here are noodles and chicken, beef tips in gravy, taco meat, chicken strips ready to eat, spaghetti variations and some types of casseroles. All very nice and neatly packaged up ready for your microwave.

I really don’t think that people are that much busier these days, they are just that much lazier.

After the meal solutions, you find a huge section of lunchmeats, sausages, hot dogs, and smoked meats. This section has almost no service involved. None of these products are made on the store premises and they come packaged in cardboard as if they just left the plant where they were made. It is just like a regular shelf in the grocery department with processed foods that need to be kept cold.

Most stores have a small frozen meat section. If there is one, it will be located near the lunchmeats or it will be in the actual frozen food section of the store. In this section, you will find frozen poultry, seafood, processed chicken patties and frozen ribs. You may also find some more meal solutions items over here that come frozen and in bags.

The Dairy Department

The dairy department (along with the frozen food department) used to be under the umbrella of the grocery department. What this means is that the dairy gets most of its stuff delivered by the same guys who deliver the dry goods that you find in the middle of the store. All that stuff comes from the same warehouse or warehouse complex.

Most of the dairy department doesn’t really need an explanation. It is what it is. If you have seen one, chances are you are not going to be surprised by anything if you walk into a new store. There is one exception…the milk section.

Milk is sometimes kept separate and shipped to the store on different trucks or is shipped directly to the store by a milk company truck driver. They do this to maintain the freshness of the product, but in reality, a central hub warehouse can put the product in the store with just as much speed.

The milk section has grown like a weed over the last ten years. There used to be four main types of dairy milk and a few creams and coffee creamers. During the 1990’s this section exploded with the advent or mainstreaming of several items that were only considered special order items before. Rice milks, soymilks, flavored coffee creamers, non-dairy creamers, lactose free milks…this whole section literally exploded with new items that are usually high ticket and aimed at the younger crowd of shoppers.

With the success of that section, the rest of the dairy department seems to be undergoing a change of a similar way. Where once a large section of individually wrapped cheese slices was is now a shelf of upscale cheeses. The introduction of specialty juices and yogurts has revolutionized the way the modern shopper looks at the dairy department.

Still, above it all, the dairy is usually in the back corner of the store. You have to pass everything else just to get milk for your corn flakes. Why is this? Well, first off, I explained the concept of a loss leader earlier. I should probably explain the concept of putting the milk in the back with scientific terms, but it’s just plain and simple: they want you to see everything…the impulse purchases…before you are allowed to get to what you really need.

There have been very little changes done to the dairy outside of the things I have mentioned. The eggs, butter, and biscuit sections are all pretty much the same. There are small exceptions, most notably in the egg section. Now you can buy free-range eggs, cholesterol free eggs, homogenized eggs, and vitamin fortified eggs. Again, the industry is attempting to gratify the younger shoppers…who for the most part have some expendable income.


Next tour installment: center store grocery, health and beauty aids, beer and wine…