Milk is kept at the back of the store because that's the easiest please to put it from a logistics stand point. The truck the milk comes in pulls up to the back of the store and can immediately unload it into the giant refrigerated rooms at the back of the store. The fact that it helps "build the basket" by being at the back is a happy coincidence for the store.

My supermarket has a stock of the higher priced name brand milk at the front of the store, near the checkouts. I assume that's to grab both people who forgot to get milk and don't want to lose their place in line, and people who are there only for milk and want to get in and out.

The less expensive store-brand-label milk is at the back of the store where the big walk-in coolers are.

Contrary to what you would think as a consumer, grocery chains almost always want you to buy their brand (the less expensive one) because the margins on store-brand items are much better. That's why the stores bother selling them in the first place (and why margin-hungry companies like CVS will have every popular placed side-by-side with a store brand)

Name brands pay for premium shelf/fridge space.

And that is probably the reason for the milk up front. The name-brand milk producer is paying big bucks for space in that cooler near the checkout, enough to offset the supermarket's probable loss in sales of their own store-brand milk in its normal location in back.

The cold chain thing is plausible, but I doubt it.

Supermarkets have varying strategies for stuff, including cold items. The supermarkets around me put ice cream in either a center aisle or the second to last aisle, in the front of the store. The "smarter" store from a data standpoint has pint ice cream in an end cap next to the florist to nab women. Milk is always back corner.

If they can figure out how to maintain the cold chain for ice cream, I'm sure milk would be easier to move around.

They almost certainly move vastly higher volumes of milk than ice cream, making logistics a bigger concern.

It not that it's impossible to maintain the cold chain with other placements, it's that there is a cost (including that imposed by floor traffic) in doing so. Putting it someplace where a large volume walk-in cooler can be directly loaded from a truck and the display stocked from that without employee floor traffic across the store reduces the costs (labor, losses, and otherwise) of selling milk.

> pint ice cream in an end cap next to the florist to nab women

My wife never buys me flowers :-(

But I am a sucker for a pint of ice cream :-)

Every Target I've been to has the milk before just about every other grocery item. Strangely enough, the seasonal stuff is tucked away in a corner.

Then again, I guess if you're going to target for milk you're probably doing it wrong...

Your last sentence is more relevant than it seems on first glance. If the majority of Target shoppers are looking for the seasonal section and not milk, then it's actually pretty equivalent.

I always find this interesting, as Target is pretty smart about merchandising. My guess here is that they know that they usually (at least around my hometown) are not top of mind for grocery. Milk is probably a trigger.

Seasonal stuff needs to be in an area of the store they can close off for a few weeks everytime the season changes while they redecorate. During those times they want the seasonable stuff to be out of the way so the construction efforts do not get in the way of customers.

I don't know if this is their logic, but it makes sense.

Definitely down to personal preference, but the milk at our Target is generally in better condition, tastes better, and lasts longer than the milk from Safeway. And the shopping experience in general is much nicer than Safeway.

Safeway is pretty much the bottom-of-the-barrel grocery store in my area, so while I'd agree with that comparison of Safeway to Target, it's less true of Target than just about any competing conventional grocery store.

Oh totally. What's weird is their organic milks expiration dates are really far out compared to other brands. Kind of insane actually.

It's not weird, there's a good reason for it. As I mentioned in a previous comment, its because the milks with a longer shelf life are UHT pasteurized, which uses higher temperatures for a shorter period of time than traditional pasteurization. They are typically labeled "ultra pasteurized." This extends the shelf life of milk.

Additionally, any time you see milk that is shelf stable (doesn't require refrigeration until opened) its been UHT pasteurized and packed in special aseptic packaging.

And, yes, I've noticed that, for some reason, organic milk tends to be UHT pasteurized more often than non-organic milk.

The amount of consumer studies done on grocer layouts is enormous. The direction of foot traffic has been decided from rtl despite our common ltr reading format because it's more profitable to do so, the checkout line with small items marked higher than in other parts of the same store for the same reason, and so much more.

If your sentiment were true, most heavily weighted expendables would all be located in the back simply because of labor. Labor is cheap when you can increase revenue from every potential customer with basic layout adjustments.

> most heavily weighted expendables would all be located in the back simply because of labor

They are. At least in almost every grocery store I've been in. The milk coolers are almost invariably against the back wall, accessible from the stockroom (which itself has the loading dock), as is the butcher / meat department. Both of those departments are probably getting daily deliveries, and it's of stuff that needs to be kept cold, has a short shelf life, and in the case of milk specifically, it needs to be stocked from the back of the shelves so that the oldest items get bought first (i.e. it's FIFO not FILO). It's a real pain to do this if you can't get to the back of the cooler.

Bread, however, is generally in its own aisle because it's not stocked by the store. Vendors (the bakeries) send their own delivery/logistics people in to stock it, so the stores don't really care about how easy it is, and those vendors also pull expired or near-expired items back off.

Produce, despite being expendable and delicate, tends to be towards the front because it's very high-margin for the store and also requires a lot of continual employee attention (and it generally has dedicated employees who just do that). It's admittedly been a long time since I worked in a grocery store, but back in the day in the pecking order of grocery-store floor workers, the produce guys were sort of at the top of the heap. (Although maybe that was because they could hook you up with the "damaged" fruit...)

The store is inevitably surrounded by 4 walls. Often more than one of those walls leads towards the front as part of the "cold chain".

If it were more profitable for the store to stock milk in the front they would - I agree. But the reasoning isn't delivery layout when they manufacture their own layout.

Either way, I thought this was an interesting take on it http://www.npr.org/sections/money/2014/07/23/334076398/episo...

Planet Money #555: http://www.npr.org/sections/money/2014/07/23/334076398/episo...

Their conclusion: the jury is out, but "never breaking the cold chain" is a good contender.

Thank you for this! For the couple of industry insiders they interviewed it seemed like they catered towards a 'helpful to customers' attitude despite what they implement. Could be saving face, could just be easier.

Idk being told to try making it more accessable by a consultant who's job it is to maximize profits and the grocer does "what it wants anyway" doesn't sound right on an industry scale.

I don't think that's really comparable. No one's going to arrive at a store and decide not to buy the milk that they came for because the walk to the back of the store is too much hassle.

More comparable would be like someone standing in front of the checkout and insisting you take a survey before you can pay. In that scenario I can very much imagine someone getting pissed off and leaving.

In the UK there has been a move away from giant supermarkets over the last few years. The consumer electronics and other non-food items that pad out the giant supermarket and make it hard to get to the milk, people buy that stuff online now so it is not possible to 'pile high' in the big box supermarkets.

With this move has been a growth in convenience stores that are operated/franchised by the big supermarket brands. People go to these places for their milk. (And do a big online shop for the bulk of their groceries).

So people are just deciding not to go to the big box stores in the first place.

Anecdote, but this happened to me. Where I was living the largest 'Tesco Extra' imaginable opened up literally across the road. This was AMAZING. Well, not really, within a week we were back to the convenience store buying everything there, it really was too much hassle going to the giant Tesco. Didn't need the kilometre walk past the TV's, clothing and other stuff that was placed between the store entrance and the milk. The 24/7 novelty wore off too, didn't actually need to go shopping for that pint of milk at 2 a.m.

Another part of the problem was that the customer service in the local store was more friendly. They didn't have people to greet you or people giving you free samples or any coupons at the checkout or any loyalty cards. Just polite 'how's your day?' chat with the small team of staff - all known by name - sufficed.

With the big supermarket I don't think there was this inate customer service aspect, 'customer service' was contrived marketing, nobody cared about you. And so it is online. People that do marketing online care more about their Google analytics and loading up websites with spam-scripts than they do about 'reality'. They may have one result per quarter from that pop up, that extra sale is good, a result, success even. Not on their dashboard is how many people didn't buy because of the stupid 'enter email address now:' popup they had on there. Marketing people are not the sharpest knives in the drawer, far too often they lack the skills of empathy and cannot see things from the customer's perspective. Hence they have to use things like statistics in an attempt to make up for their lack of intuition and appreciation of customer service.

I've always taken for granted that I'm only ever about a 15-30 minute drive from a Walmart Supercenter (which has a grocery store in it) that's open 24 hours a day.

They just won't go to the grocery store in the first place. They will buy milk at the gas station instead, or at a drugstore, precisely because the supermarket is so much hassle.

Working with a big food manufacturer some years ago, had a detailed discussion about their relationship with big super markets and how they had to do X offers per year. More interestingly, the end of aisles were known as sh*t bins. You could sell anything there. It just shifted.

Milk? That's funny. Here in France, it's drinks and wine ;-) But most of the milk sold here is pasteurized, so not kept in fridge (only once opened).

Milk in the US is pasteurized as well, but to be shelf stable you need to use a different pasteurization processes called UHT (ultra high temp) and package it in special aseptic packaging. UHT milk is put in traditional containers and stored in the fridge as well.

You can buy self stable milk in the US but it's not very popular for some reason. Except for Yoo-hoo, that's a popular milk product that's usually sold in shelf stable "juice boxes"... and I think it tastes even better at room temperature.

When milk alternatives like soy milk, almound milk, coconut milk, etc., first came to market they were almost always sold shelf stable. I can only assume that's because refrigeration space in supermarkets is sparse and expensive (learned that from Shark Tank) and these were niche products at the time. Now that they are mainstream you can find them refrigerated right next to the dairy milk. I guess Americans prefer to buy milk that way.

Re: wine. Interestingly in the US, due to the fact liquor laws are regulated by the state, when you cross state lines your supermarket alcohol selection will vary drastically. Some states ban alcohol sales in supermarkets entirely. Some allow only beer and wine. Some allow only beer only. Some allow beer, wine, and liquor. I've never heard of a state that banned beer but allowed liquor but who knows, it's possible. It mind boggling just how many crazy (and different) regulations about silly stuff like this exists around alcohol in the US. Funny story, a friend of mine went to a supermarket outside of the state she lived in and was totally mystified she couldn't find Bacardi's. "I've never been to a grocery store that didn't have Bacardi's" She didn't know they weren't allowed to sell it there.

Personally, I'm in a "beer only" state and and wine coolers and malt liquor (colloquially known as "40s") are categorized as "beer."

To be self stable milk needs to be heated hot enough to change the flavor. Americans prefer the taste of milk that has not been heated as much.

I once has breakfast on a real dairy farm, they got their milk from the tank right after milking. After drinking milk that was in the cow just 3 hours before I cannot stand milk you can buy. I cannot say if this is because it was never pasteurized, or just that is was fresh, but the flavor was better.

Note, do not take the above as advocacy for unpasteurized milk. The risks are real enough.

There's no discernible taste difference (to me, at the very least) between traditionally pasteurized milk and UHT pasteurized milk. I seriously doubt anyone could tell the difference in a blind taste test. Additionally, plenty of UHT milk is sold in the refrigerator section, so it's not an aversion to UHT itself. Organic milk is more often UHT pasteurized than non-organic milk and people usually buy organic because they believe it to taste better.

I think there's a very noticeable difference – but you don't have to take my word for it, because lots of research has been done on this subject. For example, see Vazquez-Landaverde, P., Torres, J. & Qian, M. (2006) Quantification of trace volatile sulfur compounds in milk by solid-phase microextraction and gas chromatography-pulsed flame photometric detection, Journal of Dairy Science 89, 2919–2927 – or just search for 'uht milk taste' on Google Scholar.

Physical store layout has nothing to do with online shopping.