My wife likes Aldi and Trader Joes, affiliated for their organic stuff. She also goes crazy at Fresh Thyme now, and it does seem to be pretty great produce there...

They are terrified of Amazon owning Whole Foods.

Understand.

The information is dated. The report was pre-amazon. Amazon is definitely feared. There is a bit that couldn't be mailed though.

The funny thing is that Whole Foods sells, under the guise of unique and healthy, is the same fresh produce that you can buy at Walmart. What a joke. Product recalls are a real eyeopener regarding food sources. Whole foods buys from the same people as Walmart.

Branding is good, even if its 100% bullshit.

Amazon doesn't particularly care too much about the actual Whole Foods stores themselves as much as they did about the distribution chain they had.

They want to control the entire delivery process and shut Walmart out of the grocery business by making groceries comparable in price while having fast delivery vs slogging through a store filled with Jethro's.

Walmart is ****ed long term in this game for 2 reasons.

First, they have an ungodly amount of physical stores where the upkeep is going to be a crusher. Maintenance, theft, asset protection, workers salaries/benefits, utilities, real estate costs, remodeling costs etc really adds up fast with how many stores they operate.

They also had the benefit of being by far the #1 grocer and they absolutely used this to their advantage. They got sweetheart deals from food distributors for being the biggest bulk buyer and they were able to **** farmers in the ass by completely dictating whatever they felt like paying for a load.

With a crowded market, food sources have more options at hand and can tell Walmart to eat a sack of cocks with better flexibility.

Basically rising store upkeep costs and slimming profit margins on food is hurting them and they're going to be in for a massive hurt if Trump and China expand the tariff pissing match.

I don't care about all of that. I have an Aldi, Sprouts, HyVee, Price Chopper and Walmart within 4 miles. Great specials every week. Pick and choose.

You make many valid points. I don't know enough about Trader Joe's as I left the business about ten years ago after being in grocery retail management. I left after Wally World had taken it's toll on the biz. A friend of mine who'd left the industry after college said to just wait out the storm

He basically said that specialty retail will never go away and probably eventually make a comeback. It did. It's a lesson that Aldi, Price Chopper/Hen House, HyVee, Target, Winco, HEB, Safeway, Kroger, and a few others either knew or learned. Kmart decided to merge with Sears and go into the real estate market, and mall mart has a bad rep and can't trick people with a 1000 dollars a month in discretionary spending to shop there unless they're in a rural market. I wouldn't be all too surprised if CVS, and Walgreens start doing a better job of expanding their food services

scored me some mccormick seasonings, stubbs bbq sauces, sweet baby rays bbq sauce, four slabs of pork ribs (didn't know they sold slabs, but i do now), american mustard, and bratwurst packs :thumb:

Man, Sweet Baby Ray's has so much corn syrup in it it's like BBQ sauce flavored pancake syrup.

Stubbs is good stuff. Closest thing to Gates and Sons that isn't Gates.

So you and Clay share a shitty grocery store in beautiful Waldo? The Nigro family (Dick) has certainly done well with tenants like Firestone, CVS and Aldi as the neighborhood lost almost all other viable tenants.

Aldi is basically a private label grocery store that sells the produce and meat that is bought (passed on by other grocery chains) at regional auctions. What HyVee, Hen House, wouldn't buy and what Price Chopper passes on Aldi Buys. Sorts through it, packages it, and sells it in their stores.

I buy very little there but they do have great prices on St Louis ribs and butt roasts sometimes. I buy flour tortillas for parties there as they are 1/2 what the grocery store sells and just as good. Frozen cod, and most seafood, is great there too

They are also stepping up on quality and their guaranty proves it. " ALDI offers a Double Guarantee where we will gladly replace the product AND refund your money."

I have been buying Bryant's and Rural King in IN recently. SBR and Kraft are the same shit and I do mean shit.

Stubbs isn't my fav. but not bad and fair priced.

Grocery used to be a low mark up business and now it's all about steering you to merchandise that they can Keystone.

The use of data from their customers has certainly changed the way people look at buying groceries but Kroger and all it's brands make them the 800LB Gorilla in the room.

ranking nationally : Number of employees
3 Kroger 443,000

Grocery used to be a low mark up business and now it's all about steering you to merchandise that they can Keystone.

The use of data from their customers has certainly changed the way people look at buying groceries but Kroger and all it's brands make them the 800LB Gorilla in the room.

ranking nationally : Number of employees
3 Kroger 443,000

Like less than 1% net profit. I remember the chart that I was given at Food Barn that showed the average costs of doing business for a grocer at that time. I stay away from the member cards. And most of the places that use them

I like to just go to a place and get what's on my list. I don't like being swayed by the card savings. If something that I'm going to purchase is marked down that's great. I recall the first place that I went to that had the cards when they first came out a lady swiped hers and her name appeared in the screen where they show the prices and the total. I was like that's safe

I also remember was working for a contractor while we were dealing with Safeway and one of their employees mentioned quietly that she shopped at two other places in the area. The company knew that half of their employees didn't set foot in their stores anymore. Another time a cashier was arguing with me about their stores gas saver card. I asked what company they got their gas from. Of course she didn't know and I was like then it makes no sense for me to buy certain items to save on gas where I'm not sure if it's worth getting

Thanks for the tip. I didn't know that about Kroger. I'll be looking into that about them

Really kind of curious how that's measured. No way losses are that stable across stores. And no way stores with high losses stay open just balance out more profitable ones.