Future Retail Grocers

In future, retail grocers will be nothing like the supermarkets of today.

In the grocery marketing of today, there is “The Circus”…  Retail grocers want the customer to be able to find the products that they want on the periphery of the store.  There is a natural tendency to enter the center of the store.  That is where the higher-end items are placed.

When special deals (often free items) are advertised through special on-line deals, the shopper must examine closely many other tempting new products before discovering the location of the item that is “free”.  The store is paying you (in freebies) to look at new items in order to obtain the “free one”.

Because of the hoax of “Corona Virus (COVID-19)”, marketing will change substantially.

The new grocery store of the future may be much smaller, but more densely packed with items.  First of all. stores will no longer need to employ people to put products on shelves.  Aisle space will take up very little “foot-print” at all.  Picking of orders will be by overhead robots in a warehouse with no aisles.  You will see what you are asking for through video cameras.  Toilet paper will be allocated based on perceived need.  “Hoarding” will thus be discouraged.

When you order up a shopping list of items, it will be delivered to the check out counter, paid for, and bagged without any human intersection.  You will thus not be exposed to the H1N1 influenza virus, or to any other.

 

© Copyright 2020 Alan J. Pedersen All rights reserved.

Let me go back to the 1970 and the standard delivery method of solvents to the semiconductor industry.  This will be a parable.  There were sudden advances in what “micro-chips” could do.  SHand-held calculators could calculate square roots.  They were able to store sums in two register without anyone needing to pull on a mechanical crank.  One company boasted that they were working on a “chip” that was the equivalent of 5,000 transistors.  Then another said, “That’s nothing!  We are working on a chip that is the equivalent of 10,000.”  Then, another said, “50,000”, and another said “100,000”.  The chemicals necessary to process  the manufacture of these chips began to have unprecedented demands for purity.

At one point, the sulfuric acid used in these processes had visible pieces of rubber in their 5-pint bottles.  (I speak of the problems of one particular manufacturer).  The battle engaged in within the company was over the need for that corporate particular division, that produced and bottled the sulfuric acid, to own up to the responsibility for producing a product free of contamination.

The company for which I worked as an Inventory Controller for its Los Angeles Branch, gained a substancial position in the marketplace (after the “solvent shortage” in the early-mid 1970s.  I rather naively supposed that the semi-conductor industry would come roaring back, once the solvents and acids became abundant.  My interbranch orders not only piled our own warehouse, in Los Angeles, high with stock, it also caused both New Jersey and St. Louis warehouses to be filled to the maximum.  The stock of all warehouses was depleted within 3 months, and Mallinckrodt was, once again, begging for new bulk product to subdivide.  When other supplier were caught short because of undue caution, Mallinckrodt made millions on the sale of solvents and acids to the semi-conductor industry, and established its dominance as a supplier.

The story does not end there.  I ended my employment with Mallinckrodt with the strong suggestion the the solvents and acids that were to be supplied to the semi-conductor industry would need to be supplied with a far greater guarantee of purity.  Within a very few years,m solvents and acids for the semiconductor industry were being supplied in bulk, and delivered through special filtration systems without which purity could not be guaranteed.

So we arrive at the question as to how businesses today can avoid being shut down by insane bureaucrats.

Restaurants, bars, etc. can avoid such problems by creating “Distancing Zones” … markings on the floors to be used in the event of “Official Orders from Governor Dickweed: that we must not get too close.”   At Trader Joe’s, today, there was imposed a “social distancing” rule that marked off spaces 6 feet apart as we stood in line around the side of the store and finally inside.  It did not take too long to get inside an obtain a bag of kale (ugghh!!), two cartons of coconut creamer , one can each of whole coffee beans (one decaf medium roast and one dark-roast regulah-kine), and two packs of 3 Dark Chocolate with Almonds.

The question is, how can each separate type of business avoid being damaged by “Droconian” dictates about closing down.  If, for example, you operate a “Great Clips”, which offers hair-cutting, what precautions can you take to re-assure customers?  Is it a necessity to offer both hair-cutter and customer a “mask”?  If these concerns are addressed in advance, then the Evil Despot” cannot reasonably force you to curtail you business operation.

Lets go back and examine the evolving nature of ordering on-line and either using “curb-side pick-up” or a delivery service.  When I am in a Safeway, I am very much aware of order pickers pushing carts along the aisles to assemble an order for an on-line customer.  All this will soon go away.  There is no point in hiring stockers to open up boxes of product to put them on shelves and then to have pickers move up and down aisles to pick the orders for on-line customers.  Very shortly, this will evolve into a situation in which the most popular products (ordered on-line) will be left in their packaging, and be “picked” for an order more efficiently without first being “stocked” on a shelf.  Eventually, this will be accomplished robotically.

One advantage of this system is that “hoarding” can be controlled.  History of purchasing will tell the Safeway, as an example, that you frequently bake you own bread, and that you often purchase King Arthur flour, and three-packs of Fleischmann’s Yeast.  You will also be noted as having purchased 2 12-packs of your favorite toilet paper, when it was on special.

There are some advantages of such spying.

Eventually, retail grocery shopping will involve less direct personal shopping.  Some traditional stores will remain.  Others will come to depend upon full automation and delivery of goods to the curbside.  One cannot imagine specialty grocery stores following this course.

Corti Bros., in Sacramento, is one example.  They are my “go to” grocery store for Spanish chorizo, Uraguayan brazola, and bottles of Vallpolicella.  They also have wonderful Mortadella, and fresh yeast.  Such markets will continue.   At present, Corti’s has no robotic checkout lines.  they are a true “specialty market”.  Where else , in Sacramento, can you find cans of goose grease, Spumoni ice cream year around, torpedo onions in July, and one hundred kind of pasta that you have never heard of?

But. there will come a time where the low cost leader in grocery store offerings will not be Safeway, not Save-Mart, not Ralphs, not Food Source, not FoodsCo,, not Nob Hill, not Bel-Air, not Raley’s, not WinCo, not even Aldis, but rather some completely robotic place in to which you cannot enter.   It will be a large cube in to which foods pass, and out of which foods are dispensed.  That system may give you exactly what you asked for … for a while … but one day it will fail.

.