Posted by bookofjoe 1 day ago
It all works, though the article mentions public stores and references military commissaries as an example. We can shop at the commissary if we want. We don't because the other stores I mentioned above cover all our needs better at a better price point.
I do not think the article's author understands the subject matter as well as they think they do and with the many political references to the current New York mayor; it may just be disguised political messaging article.
> ...it may just be disguised political messaging article.
It doesn't seem to be particularly for or against the NYC proposal to me, so I don't understand why you are suggesting this.
While sold in larger packages, they don't last any longer and so must be bought frequently.
Similarities:
* Like you said, both have fewer choices than a conventional grocery store: if you want ketchup or peanut butter, there's only going to be one brand and one size.
* Both of them don't have scales at the registers: unlike at a conventional grocery store, nothing is sold by weight (which I'm sure provides another small efficiency gain).
* Both of them are cheaper than your typical grocery store.
Differences:
* I feel like Trader Joe's leans on store brand / white-labeling items more than Costco -- yes Kirkland Signature is a thing but Trader Joe's takes it further.
* The shopping experience is pretty different both in terms of the in-store experience and the quantities things are sold in.
* Costco requires a membership, Trader Joe's doesn't.
I wonder which elements of the two models would work best for a public grocery store.
They are huge - ~15,000 stores worldwide and growing fast
Costco and TJs both sell items like meat by weight, they're just pre-labeled so they can be scanned rather than weighed at the register. Things like produce that might be weighed elsewhere are sold by each or container though.
IMO Costco’s food hits the sweet spot between high end grocery store quality and walmart level price.
And the reason I chose Walmart at that time is because they offered good products, mostly first-party inventory (despite the marketplace format) but moreover, they offered a quick add-on option at checkout to hire a haul-away service to come to my door and haul away the junked, old mattress.
I own no vehicle; I live on the second floor no elevator, and the haul-away service was a godsend and a bargain price.
the one on Trader Joe's is also excellent.
Membership is $65.
You don't need an SUV to shop at Costco, it is easy to load the groceries into a sedan.
https://www.consumerreports.org/cars/buying-a-car/measured-c...
(just kidding, but they are the best priced hotdogs anywhere! smart move by Costco even if it loses money on them)
On the delivery side: US suburbia is just in general not a sustainable solution. Delivery is just one way in which it bites. Somewhere like NYC, the amortized delivery cost (internalized or externalized) is very low (and opposite to Costcos which require a drive to an inconvenient location).
The bit about agents doing your shopping is falling for the same trap as crypto people thinking NFTs will kill Ticketmaster. These have never been technical problems: the APIs don’t exist for nontechnical reasons.
I don’t know if Vancouver has any of these off the top of my head.
And what you’re saying is true as a generality, that big box stores often fit in at least some parking in dense areas. I have found that grocery stores and big box stores do the most parking subsidies especially when they expect their customers to be buying a lot of bulky items. They seem to frequently have free or deeply discounted validated parking in underground garages.
Maybe not in Manhattan or anything but in many other large cities with high land value in downtown areas.
Thinking of changing this distribution is highly disturbing because of time wasted, much more limited options and huge price differences. Of course YMMV depending on location, Madrid here... the world the article describes is totally alien to me.
I'd much rather order some heavy stuff from Amazon to have delivered and walk to the local grocery store for everything else.
We still drive to the Chinese grocery for a big bag of rice every once in awhile.
I used to buy a lot of olive oil in canisters in Italy when on vacation. Just can’t match the quality with what you get on the open market here.