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Comment by garply | Hacker News Reader

I absolutely love Walmart.

I live in China. Walmart is by far the most hygienic grocery store here. Everybody attacks Walmart for its size and for running small players out of business. But you know what that economy of scale allows it to do? Have a completely cold chain for its meat supply. No other grocery chain (both indigenous ones and other international chains like Carrefour) in China can do that because the costs for them would be too expensive and they would lose money.

So Walmart significantly raises the bar for meat safety in a country of 1.3 billion.

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A little tangential, but when in China I actively sought out McDonald's because their bathrooms were generally cleaner (and had TP) compared to the average establishments.

But I once got kicked out of the McD's just for taking a photo of a China-style McD's menu. Go figure.

I got yelled at for taking a picture of "The House That Waffle Built" in the Philippines -- standing on a sidewalk 200 feet away. I've also gotten yelled out for trying to take a picture of a shark fin in China Town in SF. Is there some cultural faux pas that I'm missing? Or am I just unlucky.

As a visitor in China for a couple of weeks, I also appreciated Walmart.

Low prices and no haggling.

Want to know a trick to haggling? Decide how much you're willing to pay for something, pull out the money and say "I'm willing to give you this. Otherwise I'm leaving." If they protest, walk away. If the seller can make money at that price, I guarantee you will get called back and you will end up having your purchase at your desired price very quickly.

At least, thus far, it's the most efficient haggling method I've found.

i've heard from people who've been to walmarts in china and america that walmarts in china are nicer than the ones in america and are marketed as relatively higher-scale than how they're marketed in america.

i'd take that with a grain of salt, though.

No, their quality of service is about the same (although, like McDonald's and Pizza Hut, they are upscale here, simply because of the different average economic level of a consumer). But the cold chain thing is real - my business partner was a consultant for a major retail chain and got access to all the interesting info about the market.

interesting. perhaps that was the idea he was trying to convey, then. or that the same store is perceived differently, from the relative consumer's standpoint.

I went to the Wal-Mart in Mazatlan, MX and it seemed like a pretty nice store. Maybe just a little nicer than the ones in America but it seemed much nicer and better stocked than the other stores in the area.

I never buy meat at Wal-mart. They don't have any local butchers. The story I heard was that one store's meat cutters were attempting to unionize so Wal-mart fired all of it's meat cutters nationwide and consolidated it's meat cutting and now ships cuts of meat to individual stores.

Maybe it's because I live in the Midwest United States but, I like knowing there's a professional handling meat and someone I can speak with if I need a special cut or something that's not available.

What do mean by this

Have a completely cold chain for its meat supply.

What's a "cold chain"? Does it control the meat from cow to selling it and therefore can control the safety?

It means the meat stays refrigerated all the way from slaughter to sale. The meat in all the other chains spends significant time sitting in areas without temperature control (read, sitting in hot areas).

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cold_chain

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