Fears grow over 'food swamps' as drugstores outsell major grocers • Hacker News Board

Re: Fears grow over 'food swamps' as drugstores outsell major grocers

#21

Post by Spooky23 » Tue, Jun 04, 2019, 1:26 PM UTC

brokentone wrote: post #2

Why would we combine Whole Foods and Trader Joe's? Whew, at least it's not bigger than Target and Walgreens combined though! It is however about 40% the size of Kroger... so there is that.

It attracts attention.

It's not very surprising. When you take a broad meta-category like "groceries" and have 10x the number of locations, it isn't shocking that they would move more product.

Trader Joe's and Whole Foods target specific demographics. I live in a metro area of about 300k people and there are 1 each Trader Joe's and Whole Foods. There are probably 40-50 CVS outlets. Their sole income driver is margin on food. CVS focuses on market saturation -- their profit driver is drugs (a market in which they vertically integrate distribution) that are mostly 3rd party paid. They survive in food deserts because the money made on drugs offsets heavy shrink losses.

Re: Fears grow over 'food swamps' as drugstores outsell major grocers

#22

Post by joezydeco » Tue, Jun 04, 2019, 1:26 PM UTC

samayylmao wrote: post #14

manojlds wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> And I imagine the people that are forced to shop at a drugstore are probably poor to begin with Why so?

If you can't afford transportation you're limited to what you can walk to. In the area I live you cannot bring more than one bag with you on public transportation and it takes almost an hour to get across town on the bus. It would be cheaper to buy marked up food from a gas station or drugstore than pay for a taxi ride or waste half a day riding the bus. Edit: essentially, a lot of the time it is expensive to be poor…

I can confirm that. I live near a block of apartment homes that are populated by lower income residents. There's a CVS and a gas station/cstore within walking distance, but the grocery stores and department stores (Target, Walmart) are all more than 2+ miles away. The buses are infrequent and expensive.

Re: Fears grow over 'food swamps' as drugstores outsell major grocers

#23

Post by musicale » Tue, Jun 04, 2019, 1:26 PM UTC

dagw wrote: post #8

TheLoneTechNerd wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah I'm honestly not sure why people would be surprised at this comparison - Whole Foods and Trader Joe's are specialty stores. Nobody goes into them just to buy a head of lettuce. Trader Joe's has their own in-store brands for tons of products, which has spawned various guides on what should/shouldn't be bough there ( https://www.thepennyhoarder.com/save-money/what-to-buy-at-tr... for example). CVS, on the other ha…

I don't live in the US, but I've been to Whole Foods when visiting and certainly felt like a perfectly normal grocery store, not too different from most other grocery stores I've been to. What makes it a specialty store and why wouldn't you go there to buy a head of lettuce?

Whole Foods started out as an upscale/organic grocery store, but now they're mostly just Amazon's grocery store.

Re: Fears grow over 'food swamps' as drugstores outsell major grocers

#24

Post by francisofascii » Tue, Jun 04, 2019, 1:26 PM UTC

CVS is everywhere. Whole Foods and Trader Joes's are only in a few cities and usually there is only one. Guessing about 10 times the number of locations. https://www.wholefoodsmarket.com/stores/list/state https://www.cvs.com/store-locator/cvs-pharmacy-locations

Re: Fears grow over 'food swamps' as drugstores outsell major grocers

#25

Post by Nasrudith » Tue, Jun 04, 2019, 1:26 PM UTC

brokentone wrote: post #2

Why would we combine Whole Foods and Trader Joe's? Whew, at least it's not bigger than Target and Walgreens combined though! It is however about 40% the size of Kroger... so there is that.

My guess is they might fill a supermarket niche more in denser urban areas. I don't know first hand but it cluld make sense.

I heard accounts of ironically Whole Foods which is referred to as "whole paycheck" in other areas being the cheap option in some areas. I would guess traffic vs stock would also influence prices in non-obvious ways. With perishables, more expensive real estate, high traffic, and customers more likely to buy everything by foot they may be less of a speciality niche in urban areas than suburbs.

Re: Fears grow over 'food swamps' as drugstores outsell major grocers

#26

Post by mlrtime » Tue, Jun 04, 2019, 1:28 PM UTC

dsfyu404ed wrote: post #19

AdmiralAsshat wrote: post #9

That's a pity, because doing grocery shopping at CVS is like doing grocery shopping at a gas station / convenience mart: there's a $1-3 markup on damn near everything. And I imagine the people that are forced to shop at a drugstore are probably poor to begin with, so, that hits them even worse.

Where real estate is expensive the only grocery stores that can stay afloat are fat margin chains that cater to upscale customers. The poor people are then forced to shop at CVS or wherever, sure it's more expensive than Walmart or a proper grocery store but it's still cheaper than whole paycheck. WF (or Trader Joes for that matter) simply doesn't sell value priced versions of a lot of items. CVS will sell it at a ri…

CVS is not cheaper than WF on staple items.

Re: Fears grow over 'food swamps' as drugstores outsell major grocers

#27

Post by basseq » Tue, Jun 04, 2019, 1:34 PM UTC

This is a matter of scale. The more interesting metric would be a per-store figure, where TJ and WF outsell CVS by a factor of 5–7x.[1] I'm surprised that it's not higher.

> The eyebrow-raising figure probably comes down to an issue of scale – last year CVS and Walgreens each had close to 10,000 stores in the US, while Trader Joe’s and Whole Foods each had fewer than 500 locations.

[1] https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1CzhWggSef2pbRMJam1m2...

Re: Fears grow over 'food swamps' as drugstores outsell major grocers

#28

Post by [deleted] » Tue, Jun 04, 2019, 1:34 PM UTC

AdmiralAsshat wrote: post #9

That's a pity, because doing grocery shopping at CVS is like doing grocery shopping at a gas station / convenience mart: there's a $1-3 markup on damn near everything. And I imagine the people that are forced to shop at a drugstore are probably poor to begin with, so, that hits them even worse.

[deleted]

Re: Fears grow over 'food swamps' as drugstores outsell major grocers

#29

Post by momokoko » Tue, Jun 04, 2019, 1:35 PM UTC

dsfyu404ed wrote: post #19

AdmiralAsshat wrote: post #9

That's a pity, because doing grocery shopping at CVS is like doing grocery shopping at a gas station / convenience mart: there's a $1-3 markup on damn near everything. And I imagine the people that are forced to shop at a drugstore are probably poor to begin with, so, that hits them even worse.

Where real estate is expensive the only grocery stores that can stay afloat are fat margin chains that cater to upscale customers. The poor people are then forced to shop at CVS or wherever, sure it's more expensive than Walmart or a proper grocery store but it's still cheaper than whole paycheck. WF (or Trader Joes for that matter) simply doesn't sell value priced versions of a lot of items. CVS will sell it at a ri…

This is a massive misconception and nicely illustrates how much people are influenced by branding and merchandising. Whole foods 365 brand is actually cheaper than many grocery store generics. The data is available online if you want to explore this further.

Re: Fears grow over 'food swamps' as drugstores outsell major grocers

#30

Post by JoeAltmaier » Tue, Jun 04, 2019, 1:37 PM UTC

samayylmao wrote: post #14

manojlds wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> And I imagine the people that are forced to shop at a drugstore are probably poor to begin with Why so?

If you can't afford transportation you're limited to what you can walk to. In the area I live you cannot bring more than one bag with you on public transportation and it takes almost an hour to get across town on the bus. It would be cheaper to buy marked up food from a gas station or drugstore than pay for a taxi ride or waste half a day riding the bus. Edit: essentially, a lot of the time it is expensive to be poor…

Anecdata: I have money and property and plentiful transportation (three vehicles for the two of us). Live miles from town.

I drive to one or more grocery stores infrequently to get what I want. Buy quality food and freeze/store it in my large house. Garden provides some more. Waste is composted and feeds the gardens.

Meals cost me a buck or two to prepare from my plentiful stock. All because I can afford to. Food is a negligible fraction of my budget.