UK Supermarkets using cardboard cutouts to hide gaps left by supply issues | Hacker News Reader

UK Supermarkets using cardboard cutouts to hide gaps left by supply issues

theguardian.com

31 pointsunderscore_ku19 comments

Rising inflation and related rise of supply chain issues with empty store shelves - I remember that in USSR 30 years ago. Western world had issue with the basics, like food/etc., in 193x, in 197x - 2 generations apart allowing people to forget and get complacent - and thus i guess we're due for another.

The term Potemkin village springs to mind. It's used to showcase a "pristine" version of a town to others, for media and PR purposes. While the reality is often something else not reflected here.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Potemkin_village

That's how I describe it too: Potemkin Retail. The elders don't like the other comparisons that we make to being lucky that there are at least bread lines. That means the store has bread that day.

My local Sainsbury’s supermarket used to have a cardboard cutout police officer in the window as a crime prevention tool.

I seem to recall it being fairly common at the time. Clearly we humans are easily nudged with these visual cues.

They still do that at Morrisons, B&M and Home Bargains. Apparently it does work to deter theft to some degree.

> deter theft

and birds

"Tesco, which has boasted that its sales have been boosted by its ability to keep shelves stocked, said the fruit and vegetable pictures were not linked to the recent supply chain issues and had been in use for many months."

The shelves have been pretty sparse for the last year or so!

Just a "smaller scale" version of those billboards/coverings in the high street on empty shopfronts we've seen for years...

Plenty of them around at the moment too!

Yeah this feels like groundhog day here. I could swear I read this same headline a few months ago already...

Edit: ah, that was the "pingdemic" news cycle. Oh well...

What i find really interesting with this UK crisis is the resurgence of rail as a fret solution in the UK. I hope rail get half as subsidized as HGV in my country so we can keep some small passager lines open and reduce truck traffic in in areas where the local taxes cannot pay for a road where fifty 10-tons truck pass everyday.

wouldn’t the purpose of these be so customers don’t continually ask staff for produce they don’t have in stock

It would if there'd be a clear "out of stock" label.

If I didn't know the shop well and was looking for something particular (without knowing where), I'd much rather have something identifiable from a distance than scour printed labels on empty shelves.

I understand this is a fairly well studied phenomenon in retail, that empty shelves reduce customer spending.

Years ago when I worked at a big box home store, it was common policy for department heads to fill empty shelf space due to missing inventory with random nearby product.

I personally hate this, because it looks like someone left a mess or worse mislabeled something. But I’m also not sure I wouldn’t be more turned off by empty shelves.

thank you that is really insightful, while the article touched on that practice it didn’t explain why. I could see how this helps the buyer’s psychology in other ways - empty shelves could look like a neglected store, which doesn’t speak freshness or quality.

nothing says "everything is fine" like a bunch of hastily applied cardboard

New product idea: Cardboard cutouts to make your empty pantry look full.

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