I don't think it fits quite as tightly in that description. I've been to many many walmarts and exactly one hasn't felt sad.

They've installed these gates at the walmart nearest to me that essentially force you to walk through a checkout line even if you don't end up buying anything. Most necessities are locked in cases and I always struggle to find the single employee with the key to any particular case, who then has to follow me to the checkout and have me pay for the item immediately.

The H-E-B two miles down the road is significantly nicer in almost every capacity and only marginally more expensive. The time I save not waiting in checkout lines (I scan everything on my phone at H-E-B then bag it while I shop) and looking for keys quite literally makes up the price difference and then some.

yep, I've shifted buying such locked up things online for in store pickup. It was totally annoying to have such a drag on time buzzing someone repeatedly to come and unlock. They should actually post a notice on the locked cabinets saying, "avoid the wait, order these products online for instore pickup"

I don't know why this is downvoted and I don't know why I didn't think of this comparison.

I've lived in five different states and been to Walmarts and flipped cars and the variance is EXACTLY like variance in DMVs in both QoS, clientele/employee demographics.

Right, the DMV has a monopoly on a service most adults require. There are competitors for simple services like registration renewal @ AAA, but that's less available in smaller communities. So when you go to a DMV somewhere there's only one DMV serving the region, it's a pretty good cross-section of local society.

Another interesting window in this vein is the local courthouse. The smaller towns don't separate out traffic violations from everything else, it's all on display handled in one room. You can get a sense of what's going on and the type of people in a given small town rather quickly this way.

When there's just one grocer serving a given area, it's effectively the same situation. But when competition eventually arrives, I think they tend to quickly divide along class boundaries.

Around here there's only one grocery store in my local town, and as a result it's actually pretty decent. The exact same chain has a very similar store in a significantly larger town ~25 miles away, where there's a competing upper-class grocer in the adjacent lot. The effect is devastating on the mediocre chain. Customers are treated poorly, the place is a filthy mess, cashiers aren't even trusted enough to manually enter prices when a barcode won't scan. The contrast is shocking, just next door in the higher end grocer none of these problems are experienced, but the prices are slightly higher.

Profit per dollar for grocery stores is about half of one cent for every dollar of revenue. Shrinkage eats into that profit very quickly.

This is why Walgreens is closing stores in SF. They cannot survive with the rampant unprosecuted shoplifting in SF.

That profit margin sounds very off. Is there a reference you are using to determine that? For an average $200 bill the store makes 1 dollar?

Every time I hear people talking about "grocery store margins" the numbers get smaller and smaller, and I suspect "Hollywood accounting" may be behind some of the numbers people are thinking/repeating.

I can say some of the shops around here have always been pricey, but a Lidl came in to town and manages to undercut every other store by around 30% on pretty much every comparable item. Overall, stores making 0.5% profit simply doesn't add up. We've got more new chains moving in to the area, existing stores moving (merely half a mile away for access to better demographics), and this is all costing tens of millions in construction alone. Note: I realize that other regions may have store closures to balance this out too - some areas boom, others shrink.

I can not believe multi-billion companies would be putting up tens/hundreds of millions to chase after these minuscule (and apparently shrinking) profit margins. Maybe I'm wrong. Or perhaps this meme of "grocery stores never make a profit!" is wrong, or at least overblown. A quick check up of a regional store indicates their net profit is somewhere around 2.3% of sales volume - not stellar, but not terribly close to 0.5% either.

EDIT: bit more info/breakdown on the subject: https://thegrocerystoreguy.com/what-is-the-profit-margin-for...

EDIT 2: FWIW, on your $200 example, the company making 'only' $1, it's probably more like $4-$5, but that's after all other expenses (labor, inventory, insurance, advertising, etc) is factored in.

It is pretty easy to search for 10-K for all the big retail companies. They all show sub 5% profit margins, frequently in the 2% to 3% range. It is a pretty cut throat business.

Lidl is probably coming in and destroying competition by running leaner operations with less payroll due to not having to deal with legacy unions. It happens and has happens in many businesses (see declining real wages for past few decades for bottom 3 quintiles), but a lot of the “growth” in retail comes from cutting labor costs.

I did reference looking up numbers for a regional chain - net profit was 2.3% - this is still > 4x higher than 0.5%. I don't doubt some operate (for a while) at a sub 1% profit, but have to imagine those end up closing down eventually. Per the article I linked to, there was reference to smaller operations that focus on 'upscale' services may be north of 5% net profits (but are likely doing less volume overall).

Lidl likely is 'winning' there (if indeed there's legacy union component to their pricing). They also scaled back their expansion plans. The one by us is moderately large, and newer ones (and future planned ones) are (and will be ) smaller.

Within a 3 mile radius, we have a Walmart, Lidl, Aldi, Target, Wegmans, Lowes, Food Lion, Harris Teeter, Lowes, and Harris Teeter (yes, 2 Lowes and 2 Harris Teeters). This is in North Carolina - some of these are regional chains. The Lowes and HT have historically been some of the consistently highest prices for anything, and I'm honestly baffled how people can afford to shop there regularly.

Yes, perhaps keeping a bit more money 'local' (vs that money going out of state) might be a 'good thing', somehow, but it's hard for me to justify it. Perhaps, if there's real benefit, they need to do some better PR. Or perhaps they have, and everyone else 'gets it', and I've just not heard it?

I wanted a bag of frozen cherries. Local HT - 'name brand' was $5.25. HT store brand was ~$4.25. Walmart store brand was ~$3. Target store brand was $1.89. (same sizes for all - all late 2019 prices from memory). I have a hard time justifying spending 100% more for generic brand stuff. Cheeses, milk, bread, cereals, eggs, meats - our local HT is almost always at least 50% more than the Lidl or Target or Walmart. Maybe these disparities aren't as great in other regions, and this will shake itself out eventually?

EDIT: found some HT numbers from a few years ago that indicated their net profit was closer to 3.6%. They also have a profit sharing program, which may account for aiming for a higher profit percent.

Depends on the outfit, some are better than others, but this source[1] puts the ave at 2.2%. I knew an mgr at one of these and they told me 0.5% to 1%.

[1]https://smallbusiness.chron.com/profit-margin-supermarket-22...

I would have to guess, that Walgreens is going out of business, because they are the one store which hasn't ever improved their POS methodology beyond what we used to find in Sears, or Rite-Aid, holy cow, I've not forgotten, what did they used to be called ? Lol. I go to Walgreens to buy cigarettes because I know and live around the checkers who work there, but it is always a complete disaster. Today, was a perfect example. They "found" a device on the pin pad, and it took 10 minutes to find people in the store to man another register, then look at it, make sure it wasn't compromised, and there were 15 people in line. But par for the course in there. There will be 10 people lined up at the front, and they'll still man cosmetic and photo stations with no customers, and never really reposition employees. I don't get mad anymore. I go in and know what I'm in for. IC3 .... IC3 ..... IC3 ....

I was going to say Walmart has exactly the feel of a US public institution like a prison, DMV, immigration and customs etc. You can get a good deal but as soon as any human effort to provide service is required all bets are off, and the whole place feels vaguely hostile.

My closest Walmart is in a town of 20,000 or so. There’s also a Target a few blocks away. The people that shop at either could not be more different. I don’t think I’ve ever seen anyone above 350 lbs at the Target. Walmart? Probably every time I’ve been in there.

That was my impression in Vegas. It at least seems kind of glamorous in the casinos, but seeing someone gambling in a gas station doesn’t put you in a good mood.