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

theguardian.com

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

#101

Post by ilikehurdles »

TrueDuality wrote: post #62

I'm not sure WholeFoods and Trader Joes are good representations of grocery stores nationwide. Both are classified as "Specialty and natural food stores" and have drastically fewer stores than the supermarket chains.

This is part of what I was in the middle of commenting. This article seems like it's trying to force together a narrative from unrelated datapoints. TJs is one of the smallest grocery store chains and WF is just a bit bigger, meanwhile CVS is the largest drugstore chain. It is also unclear to me how "retail food marketshare" is measured. Is it just comparing overall revenue among chains that sell groceries? Sales of, specifically, grocery food items? Share of people who have shopped for groceries at these stores?

Just because someone buys a grocery item from CVS does not remotely imply that CVS is their primary grocery store.

The USDA has better numbers representing the market. https://www.ers.usda.gov/topics/food-markets-prices/retailin...

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

#102

Post by cvsthrowaway64 »

sct202 wrote: post #79
behringer wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I had to stop buying at CVS because of this, it was driving me crazy. I would pick up some over the counter medication and it'd ring up for an extra 5 or 10 bucks. Just walked out one day and now I get my medications at walmart or my closer neighborhood pharmacy.

Oh yeah they put stuff like that stuff on BOGO all the time, which just shows how much they're marking up the normal price if they can give you a free one and still make money.

Keep in mind that Walmart is able to beat everyone in price not by having less of a markup but by purchasing in huge volumes to get a lower wholesale price to begin with. Off the top of my head our typical store margin is between 20-30%. So yes, pretty high. That doesn't tell the what the company actually pays I'm sure. But markup isn't where we make the money.

Most sales, and particularly BOGO are loss-leaders to get people to sign up for the loyalty card. That's where the money comes from because now we have your phone number and email address and purchase history to sell. Every one of those coupons that prints on the receipt is a paid advertisement. CVS gains by promoting those products. By gamifying coupon use. And those ExtraBuck coupons aren't discounts but more like short-term microloans that CVS keeps the interest on.

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

#103

Post by oddthink »

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.

Not in my experience. I have both a CVS and a normal grocery store (a Morton Williams) across the street. CVS beats the grocery store on milk price (e.g. Horizon) by ~$0.50/gal and on breakfast cereal (e.g. Cheerios) by ~$1.

Whole Foods 365 brand organic milk is slightly cheaper than CVS, but it's a slightly longer walk and has longer lines and is in a basement, so I tend not to bother. (I probably should go there more often.)

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

#104

Post by mc32 »

samayylmao wrote: post #88
mc32 wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Being poor doesn’t mean you can’t get a bus ticket. All it means is you are deliberate in your shopping and planning. You plan your trip to take advantage of transfer tickets and such. Sometimes you walk a mile or two or you bike or you bum a ride from someone. Being poor doesn’t mean you can’t plan and are helpless. Sure it’s not ideal and I prefer being able to shop ad hoc at my leisure, no doubt. But when I had to…

> Being poor doesn’t mean you can’t plan and are helpless. obviously not. But anecdotally what I see where I live is that it is a large enough inconvenience that it makes an impact. If you work 8 hours, then have to spend 2-3 hours getting groceries you already have a 10-11 hour day not counting any other commuting you need to do. What if you have kids you need to get off a bus from school? trying to blanket say anyo…

Unless you don’t have a fridge, when you have to make a two hour trip for food, you’re gonna make sure you got just about everything for the whole week. There might be some milk or egg runs, but in those cases one might pay a premium once in a while.

We’re not making two hour trips every day after work for food. No poor person I knew did that when I was poor. I did it mostly on weekends when there was lots of time.

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

#105

Post by Blackthorn »

ghc wrote: post #46
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.

I think maybe urban stores might skew the stats a bit. There's so much demand for groceries within a short walk of all the local condo buildings that my local Walgreens has set up a fresh sushi counter. The cheaper, giant grocery stores are all located in low income areas where land is cheap, but there's 8 CVS, 5 7-Eleven, and 2 Walgreens within a quarter mile walk of where I live and work. So when I run out of flour…

Do people not just add it to the grocery list when they run out and pick it up during their usual (bi)weekly grocery shopping trip?

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

#106

Post by elektor »

sandworm101 wrote: post #76

>> A representative of the company, which launched an initiative in 2014 to become the first pharmacy to quit selling cigarettes, indicated via email that they see food as the next frontier. Wow. What leadership. It only took a couple generations for a place that sells medicine to stop selling cigarettes . It should be only a quick thirty or forty years before they stop selling the deep fried salt cakes. Are they sti…

San Francisco was the first city in the US to ban tobacco sales in pharmacies back in 2008.

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

#107

Post by schoolboard »

alexhutcheson wrote: post #95
Shivetya wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well until SNAP[1] is blocked from being spent on snacks and sodas these sites will always be in use. The list of foods that are acceptable encourage these stores to focus on the high profit side of the list which equates to what many would see as pure junk. Plus in some areas you cannot get a grocery in due to zoning or regulatory agencies which can increase the costs of worker and compliance needs beyond normal. Th…

Zoning in Manhattan has made it essentially impossible to build a new grocery store in a normal location. Pretty much all recently-built grocery stores are in basements, due to a "zoning hack" that makes that compliant: https://twitter.com/MarketUrbanism/status/105451854997111193... This is unfortunate, because Manhattan clearly has excess demand for good grocery stores, and the incumbents (Gristedes, etc.) are terri…

When I lived there we called Gristedes "Grosstedes" and Gourmet Garage "Greedy Garage"... 125th street Fairway made up for it but it was Hell getting through there ...

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

#108

Post by asdff »

Blackthorn wrote: post #105
ghc wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think maybe urban stores might skew the stats a bit. There's so much demand for groceries within a short walk of all the local condo buildings that my local Walgreens has set up a fresh sushi counter. The cheaper, giant grocery stores are all located in low income areas where land is cheap, but there's 8 CVS, 5 7-Eleven, and 2 Walgreens within a quarter mile walk of where I live and work. So when I run out of flour…

Do people not just add it to the grocery list when they run out and pick it up during their usual (bi)weekly grocery shopping trip?

If it can wait

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

#109

Post by alexhutcheson »

schoolboard wrote: post #107
alexhutcheson wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Zoning in Manhattan has made it essentially impossible to build a new grocery store in a normal location. Pretty much all recently-built grocery stores are in basements, due to a "zoning hack" that makes that compliant: https://twitter.com/MarketUrbanism/status/105451854997111193... This is unfortunate, because Manhattan clearly has excess demand for good grocery stores, and the incumbents (Gristedes, etc.) are terri…

When I lived there we called Gristedes "Grosstedes" and Gourmet Garage "Greedy Garage"... 125th street Fairway made up for it but it was Hell getting through there ...

Heh, we call it "Gristicky". I'm consistently shocked that anyone shops there. Expired food on shelves, wilted or moldy produce, long waits for slow checkout clerks, and prices that are easily 3x what comparable items cost at Trader Joe's.

Those grocery stores would easily be extinct with more meaningful competition. The only thing that keeps them in business is the "natural monopoly" caused by the fact that most Manhattanites don't have cars and aren't willing to travel very far for groceries.

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

#110

Post by ghc »

Blackthorn wrote: post #105
ghc wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think maybe urban stores might skew the stats a bit. There's so much demand for groceries within a short walk of all the local condo buildings that my local Walgreens has set up a fresh sushi counter. The cheaper, giant grocery stores are all located in low income areas where land is cheap, but there's 8 CVS, 5 7-Eleven, and 2 Walgreens within a quarter mile walk of where I live and work. So when I run out of flour…

Do people not just add it to the grocery list when they run out and pick it up during their usual (bi)weekly grocery shopping trip?

I remember the weekly shopping cadence growing up in a relatively rural new england town, but there was still always the inevitable "milk run" when you ran out of something unexpectedly. With smallish high rise condos it's hard to store a lot of food (kitchen designers assume you don't need a pantry or full size freezer for some reason).

Another factor is that in this age of instant gratification if I were to buy a week's worth of perishables items would go bad because it's so easy to have a shitty day and say screw it, let's go out, get takeout or get delivery (369 restaurants will deliver to me via uber eats) instead of cooking.

Not saying that it's a healthy way to live, but it's become a strong pull over the 10 years since I've made the transition to fully urbanized life. The way we cope, especially after having a baby, is to shop at the local butchers, bakers and markets for fresh stuff every few days and order delivery of heavy bulk goods periodically.

Accidentally running out of flour, coffee filters, half and half, etc., is probably an inevitable side effect.

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