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Comment by vector_spaces | Hacker News Reader

I hope that you recognize that your casual-outsider evaluation of the assortments of these stores is deeply flawed and not based on actual data. If you think about it even just a little bit, you'll recognize that it wouldn't make sense for a supermarket in one of the highest median income cities in the country to have assortment parity with a chain targeting cost conscious shoppers. The devil here is in the long-tail, which is definitionally less visible to you as a shopper, and in fact may not exist at all for certain retailers -- especially those targeting cost-conscious shoppers.

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I lived in rural areas a large portion of my life. What you are describing is limited to areas with extremely small populations. Meaning even my hometown of a few thousand has a Walmart (put up when I was a kid in the 90s) an Aldi, and two local grocery stores with tons of healthy options.

So yeah, there are a lot of towns that fit that criteria (less than 1000 residents). But as a portion of U.S. population it is not substantial in any way.

i lived in one of those small towns through highschool, just a blinking yellow light and a gas station. What we did, and everyone did, was drive the 20miles to the large town with a Walmart and get groceries there. It only takes 20min because there's no lights or traffic in those areas so the time commitment is about the same as living in a city. My mom made meals from her recipes using basic ingredients so it's certainly feasible to eat how you want in these areas. Only in the most rare/extreme cases are people forced to grocery shop at a gas station.

I've got family in the rural Midwest. It would surprise me if their town wasn't a food desert by these definitions. You might go grab a thing of milk or sliced bread in a pinch at the convenience store, but yeah otherwise you just make the short drive into "the city" to get food at a regular grocery store.

Or you just ate the food you were growing on your own lot, or what your neighbors were growing, or from the farmer selling stuff off the highway.

I hope you recognize that your claims are deeply flawed and don't align with the reality that most middle-class grocery shoppers experience. Regardless of what you think makes "sense", major supermarkets throughout the country have rough assortment parity (with minor differences for regional consumer preferences). In some cases the long tail is actually longer in lower median income cities because labor is cheaper and stores are physically larger (cheaper real estate). That Publix where I shopped in Daytona Beach is enormous.

Instead of making things up you can just go look. Many supermarkets have online ordering now so you can see exactly what they stock at each local store.

Yes -- I know that my experiences don't align with most middle-class grocery shoppers: I worked in the food business for a decade where assortment was literally my job. There is a lot that casual shoppers like you don't notice! That's actually built in.

In any case, I love most of what you have written here.

Online ordering enables larger long tails. In which market do you suppose online ordering is more common, Daytona Beach or Mountain View?

If you were managing assortment at a Publix in Daytona Beach, how would you structure your long tail? Would you look to a Safeway in Mountain View as a model to follow?

Safeway is the cost conscious option in Mountain View, compare it with the other options (Whole Foods, Nijiya). The comparison between Publix and Safeway is apt.

The "cost conscious" option in a city with one of the highest median incomes in the US is very different from a cost conscious shopper in a city like Daytona Beach, where practically a quarter of the population lives below the poverty line!

I will also point out that "cost conscious" is one of several shopper profiles that Safeway targets, but broadly speaking Safeway targets a more affluent shopper (although cost conscious isn't the same as non-affluent). The degree to which a particular location services these targets varies by area. But no, these stores target fundamentally different shoppers and think very differently about assortment, at least with regard to the long tail

Heh, in Mountain View you also have these choices:

- La Plaza Market

- 99 Ranch

- Grocery Outlet

- Rose Market

- Nob Hill

- Lucky

- Smart & Final

- Walmart

- Target

- India Cash & Carry

- Bharat Bazar

I'm probably leaving out a ton.

Ironically in SF it seems inversed. Whole Foods is second cheapest to Trader Joe’s, and Safeway is the most expensive.

I live in Los Altos next to Mountain View and Safeway is very expensive compared to every other option except Whole Foods. There are a few items they have that are the same as others, like bananas so I sometimes walk to the closest Safeway to stock up on those but otherwise one has to be wary of the pricing.

Safeway in the Bay Area regularly comes up very close to the same cost as Whole Foods, unless one regularly uses the app and clips the saving coupons for Safeway.

https://www.sfgate.com/news/article/Whole-Foods-vs-Safeway-W...

Ranch 99 and the little De Martini's produce shop undercut Safeway prices on produce in Mountain View. The comparable items work out to be less expensive at Trader Joe's versus Safeway, too, last time I looked. Produce at Costco is regularly less than all of the above but I only buy a few produce items that I can freeze for later use there. For me the two advantages to Safeway are the extended hours of operation and the locations being convenient.

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