TRI-LAKES AREA — A trip to the supermarket is easily my favorite chore. It’s labeled a chore only because most people think of it that way.
Supermarkets are places where products come from all over the world. They arrive by every mode of transportation, from overnight air cargo to local pickup trucks, and are placed on the shelves using the most sophisticated marketing methods. Yet when it all comes together, a store appears ordinary.
I got into supermarkets by covering and writing about them in a national magazine for more than 10 years. I found them complex and interesting, and still do.
The first time I came to Arkansas was to write about Affiliated Foods-Southwest, and I spent a week inside the warehouses that are now vacant along Interstate 30 in Little Rock. The staff showed me more than you might ever want to know about potato storage, bottling spring water and merchandising.
The supermarket business can be an art. Take bananas. They get to your store from faraway lands. When they first come in, they are very green, but a gas the fruit gives off on its own ripens them. To make them last longer, you spread them out and keep the air stirring around them. To speed up the process, you place them close together and even cover them. I think someone times the bananas’ arrival almost to the hour so they come in looking fresh, with some able to last a few days and some ready to be eaten on the way home.
Where a product is placed in a supermarket is not something done without planning. The exact location in each store can be planned nationally with computer-generated maps for personnel to follow. Placement generates dollars. Getting a product in the stores and on the shelf at eye level can be expensive.
You might notice a half-dozen new products every week, but there can actually be hundreds, but thechance they will make it to the shelves is usually very small.
I fight the urge to try every new candy bar or crunchy snack. But I will look at them all. I am also interested in all the things drink companies do with cola. Then there is the sauce aisle. Sometimes I just wonder where they get those ideas.
Exploring a large store with all the departments is at least as interesting as going to a mall, and you need food anyway, so enjoy the journey.
Every supermarket is a bigdeal business for a community that generates jobs, business and taxes. It is impressive.
And now you may also know why I usually groceryshop alone.
Tri-Lakes, Pages 56 on 07/29/2010