Rage From the Edge

Grocery Store I

I have told you countless times in my previous articles that I used to work in a grocery store. My duties were various and did work in all of the departments that a grocery store has. Think of a big box store as a common open-air market place, you can even imagine it being somewhere in old Europe if that helps. There are vegetable vendors, meat vendors, bread and wine vendors; they all come to market ready to sell you their wares and they have knowledge in their particular area of expertise.

Now imagine that this market place has mayor. This mayor is around to bind all the vendors into a common peaceful objective (profit) while also maintaining order and competition between the various little shops within his sphere of influence. He also has the task of helping customers find what they need. The only difference between one of those old style markets and today’s big box store is that they are all owned by a common company and they all have a central check-out area.

The mayor is in charge of that checkout area too. He makes sure it is peopled with knowledgeable and courteous wait staff and he is in charge of their payroll and scheduling. In fact, he is in charge of the entire market’s hiring and payroll, but it isn’t all that different from what has come before in the past. It’s just that today’s grocery stores of today don’t have dogs running around barking at the customers or chickens standing on top of the stalls…

Oh, there are a lot of modern major changes in today’s grocery stores, but that is not what I am focusing on. I could go on and on about networked register computer systems, Wi-Fi hot spots in the café, bulk coffee ground by computer driven machines, self checkout scanners, and some of the other vast improvements that have been made in (even) the last five years.

Scanners and cart collection machines are newfangled and nice, but when you boil it all down, the customer is getting the same thing while walking around an open-air market. A person who wants cheese and eggs still has to walk into the market, walk to the items he wants, put them in a cart, and then go and get checked out by a cashier. The same amount of people still throng the market and the same amount of vendors hawk their merchandise…yesterday they screamed prices, today they use the P.A. system.

Now that I have painted a picture that attempts to demystify the overall air of technology involved in a grocery store, I want to give a tour of that same place. Over the years I received a lot of questions about things that I thought (coming from an insider’s view) were rather obvious. Customers wanted to know why the store was set up the way it was, wanted to know about product placement and they wanted to know about sale items and sizes. This article and the articles that shall come later will attempt to answer those questions. Let’s start the tour.

The Lobby

The lobby of a store for many years was just a place to put the unused carts, advertisement signs, gumball machines and community bulletin boards. Today, even though all those things are probably still in the lobbies of the stores in your area, I bet there are all sorts of other things too.

A few years ago, some brilliant person figured out that the lobby is still sales floor…but it wasn’t being used! Over the next few years you began to see products and promotions in the lobby. Huge displays of sodas and colas began to grow right next to the cart coral, a sample display was handing out free bite-sized pieces of hot pizza right next to a display of firewood… This place was prime real estate, and only high return or loss leaders were put out there.

Just a thought before I go on. Firewood for sale at a grocery store? Only in America can you spend all weekend chopping up twigs and branches from your freshly pruned trees and then head over to the grocery store to buy wood.

Okay, on with the tour. What is a loss leader? A loss leader is an item that does not make a store any money. In fact, it probably loses the store money but what it gains is advertising for the store or it is a necessity that everybody needs. Whatever the item is, it usually draws a customer into a store. Two of the biggest loss leaders I can think of off the top of my head are milk and soda.

Think of the lobby as the store’s bait. It gets your attention and draws you in. There are huge signs, bright pictures and lights, games, snacks and fun all out there. Your kids can play on the quarter horseback riding machine, you can peruse the local want ads while your wife tastes a sample of the latest diet energy water. It’s all designed to get you looking and to get you inside the store. I don’t want to sound like I am sneering at the lobby, you can find a lot of great deals there; especially on lawn furniture at the end of the lawn furniture season, you can pick up a good electric Christmas tree too…

The Produce Department

Most of today’s big box grocery (only) stores are set up on a common plan that has been tested and agreed upon as “the way” to psychologically achieve the most out of the sales floor available. I am dead serious. Somebody came along and did a study on what a store should look like and how it should be set up. Customers during the study were asked what was attractive about the store, what smells they could smell and what conveyed the best values. The produce department is hands down the best way to show wholesome quality. That is why they are at the front and right where the lobby leaves off.

Once you have your cart and your ad, you walk into the produce. Here, you are confronted by walls of dark, warm colors and bright splashes of vegetable color. The tomatoes are lighted to look even redder, the broccoli is displayed to show you how bountiful their heads are. I have even seen stores which have a wet rack that actually rains on the greens…complete with taped thunder and timed flashes of lights. It’s all very Hollywood.

A few years ago, stores used to ice down a wet rack and then pile the veggies on top of that ice in an attractive manner. After a while, even with the coolers running, they rack had to be re-iced and re-trimmed. If you consider that most wet racks are at least 40 feet long, this is a ridiculous amount of work to be doing every couple of hours…but it was done that way for decades because there was no other way and it kept the product at peak freshness for the customer. This wet rack I speak of is where all the various lettuces and greens are kept. If you want arugula for your salad, you are going to be visiting the wet rack.

Today, the wet rack has vastly changed in appearance and functionality. Instead of a bed of ice for the greens to sit on, there is a set of shelves that have an almost bookcase quality to them. The produce is set into the individual places designed for the individual products. Iceberg and romaine lettuce each get a wide and deep space on the shelf, radicchio and Belgian endive are given smaller spots that are more controlled due to the frailty of the product. The more hardy items in this category like collards and cabbages go on the bottom. They aren’t affected as much by the closeness of the cold air blowing on them and they can sit in water for a long time before wilting. Over all of this, a mister sends out a fine spray every so often.

Further on up the rack you will find most of the tuber vegetables with the exception of the potatoes and other tubers that just don’t need much refrigeration. On the wet rack, you will usually see carrots, turnips, parsnips, Brussels sprouts (I know!), beets and the occasional kohlrabi or rutabaga. Celery can usually be found here as well. While some of these veggies don’t need to be kept cold, you will find them in the cold because it is comforting to the customer while at the same time it helps the produce department keep within food service guidelines. More on that later.

Last on the wet rack is the bagged salad section. Only ten years ago, the huge profit of this sort of thing went unrecognized. In a brief time, people have realized that Timesavers like bagged salads are incredibly convenient while also returning a high margin of profit. It is a win/win situation for both the store and the customer. In this section, you can probably find any sort of salad you could imagine. Depending on the season, you will see everything from vegetable trays and “American salad” all the way over to Waldorf salads and fruit cups. Again, the markup is very high on these products, but the convenience is what you are paying for. An adroit shopper who has a little extra time on his or her hands will avoid this section.

Most of the rest of the produce department is made up of tables or free standing stalls that display veggies, juices, fruits, nuts and all sorts of other things that do not need to be misted by a wet rack’s watering system. Some tables are refrigerated and this gives them excellent visibility. They can be moved around on wheels and they can be adjusted to show whatever is on them in a better light. They also make a great place to put a produce department’s sale items on. If it is fall and the leaves are turning, you can bet the tables are loaded with apples, apple cider, gourds, pumpkins and fire starter logs. If it is Christmas time, you can bet the tables are loaded up with melting chocolate, nuts, dried fruits and occasionally dried vines and pinecones for making homemade wreaths. If it is high summer, those same tables are piled high with tomatoes, berries, pound cakes and pitted fruits. You get the picture, those tables are the “all star” of the produce department; doing several jobs depending on what is currently going on.

Behind the rolling tables are the more static tables (that may or may not look like vegetable crates) where the year-round “everybody needs them” variety of goodies are located. Potatoes, onions, bell peppers, chili peppers and squash find their homes on these tables. Tomatoes, during off-season are usually relegated to a section off by themselves due to their fragile nature and the fact that they are a high traffic item—but they are still on a stationary table. Whole sections of fruits are on these immobile tables. When not on sale or in their off season; oranges, apples, grapes, tropical fruits (mango, papaya, star fruit, guava, coconuts, etc), fruit juices and berries are all placed in sections like the shelves in the store. If a particular item is hard to get, you will probably see a very small section of it if you see it at all.

So far I have not mentioned bananas. Bananas are a special case. These wonderful fruits are the number one selling produce item in the world and as such they are a loss leader. It is a foolish produce manager who puts his banana display in the front of his department; they sell so fast and in such quantity, his bottom line will be compromised by their movement. When looking for bananas in a grocery store, the first thing that should come to your mind is “the back.” Sometimes you will find mini displays of bananas around the store. In front of the milk or near the checkout lanes. These mini displays are more for impulse buy.

The Bakery

The bakery is found near the produce. Along with the deli department and a store’s café, the bakery makes up what the industry used to call a “power alley.” This power alley is where all the fresh, wholesome parts of the store are shown off, publicizing the store’s nourishing and natural commitment to its customers. The bakery is part of this because it is a service department. This means that actual labor is done on the premises to produce the items found there. Recently, there has been a trend in many bakeries where cakes, cookies, donuts, bagels, breads and rolls are all brought into the store frozen. They are then thawed out and displayed. While the quality is not what it used to be, convenience is king. A bakery can use less skilled bakers and use that payroll to utilize more service agents. While I don’t agree with this method, I do understand its merit. I purchase my donuts elsewhere because I just can’t get a good donut around here in a grocery store.

If you shop very early in the morning, you will see an actual baker on the premises, but if you are like 90% of the population that makes up shoppers, you probably won’t ever see him or her. This isn’t because they don’t like you, this is because they usually get to work at about midnight and heat up or thaw out their products. It takes a lot of labor to get a bakery up and running for the morning. Out of date products must be removed, close dated products must be marked down, and new products must be displayed strategically. Also, if there is any on site baking actually done, they do it early. This last rule does not apply to brownies and chocolate chip cookies. I’ll explain that later.

The bakery has the same kind of tables as the produce. When they display their hot Italian bread, chances are it is right out where you can get to it and where it’s aroma can get to you…and it is on a moveable table. Pies, pre-packaged cookies, bagged bagels and specialty breads can all be found on these tables as well. Just like the produce, they are set up and moved around according to the season or the holiday that happens to be coming up.

Over by the bakery counter, you’ll find the individual donuts, single cookies, baked candies and cakes. These items are a bit more hardy and tend to have a longer shelf life than the items on the tables. They also are items that you or a bakery service person must retrieve from a case that usually has a door on it. Cakes are kept where they can be lighted with the best possible lighting, single cookies and individual donuts are kept behind glass doors to keep fingers off of them but can be easily gotten to by a customer. There is usually a cake decorator around here too. He or she is ready to take your order.

Back behind the counter is the upright frozen case. In this thing you will find frozen cakes, ice creams and sherbets. It’s a good spot to head for if you are hosting a birthday party in the summertime. Just be careful around here, I have always had trouble with my bakery managers when it comes to keeping good dates on the items on the frozen cake shelves. This isn’t a reflection on them as good people, it is more a reflection on the sales that come out of the frozen bakery cases…they are not very busy.

A word about brownies and chocolate chip cookies. Most of the stores I have worked in still make these items on the premises. I don’t want you to think that there is some sinister plot involved, but the coincidences are just too alarming to say that I know for sure. When a store is baking brownies, you can tell. The whole store fills up with an aroma that is seductive, inviting, and alluring. If you are in the store when they open up those ovens, you know what I am talking about…it’s just plain hypnotizing. I can’t think of a better way to get people to think your store is wholesome and fresh. I have heard (jokingly) that the scent of baking brownies in a grocery store is akin to the cheap perfume put on by a hooker. Woe to any shopper who is shopping hungry when they are baking brownies!



Coming up: The Deli, The Butcher’s Shop, the Dairy…