>>2025 Grocery Update Starter Kit.
Greetings, Grocery Nerds. Some essential content for your grocery addiction.
Greeting fellow Grocery Nerds!
Thank you for subscribing to The Checkout Grocery Update!
We have had a busy year and we have a lot of new readers.
As an introduction, here are some of our favorite columns from The Checkout Grocery Update. Feel free to share and circulate!
1. Grocery Pricing 101.
A super deep dive into grocery price inflation, where it comes from, who causes it and who benefits most from high food prices.
Grocery Update #17: How Grocery Cartels Created & Profited From Price Inflation
Discontents: How Grocery Cartels Created & Profited From Price Inflation.
2. Private Label 101.
Speaking of inflation, store brands have really taken off as consumers trade down to private label products. It’s not all bad, but it is complicated. Here are the economics of private label.
3. The Public Grocery Sector.
We take it for granted that grocery stores are owned by the private sector, such as independent owners and big corporations, as well as cooperative players such as community members and employees. But there is also a viable public sector in retail, and maybe we should think more seriously about it. But don’t try to build it before reading this “How To”.
4. How To Read A Grocery Store.
We go to about 150 different grocery stores a year and write about quite a few of them. After working in the industry for 25+ years, we have a methodology for understanding and analyzing what is going on at retail. Here is how anyone can read a grocery store.
5. When Pepsi Met Siete.
Here is our analysis of one of the biggest and most controversial grocery acquisitions of the year. TL;DR: meh.
Grocery Update #23: When Pepsi Met Siete.
Discontents: 1. News and Stuff. 2. Helene Disaster Aid. 3. USDA Funds Spying On Food Activists. 4. WHYY Radio Spot: Why Groceries Are So Expensive. 5. Main Feature: When Pepsi Met Siete. 6. A Regenerative CPG Dialogue For Retailers. 7. Tunes.
The Checkout Grocery Update is proudly sponsored by the Specialty Food Association.
6. Retail and Wholesale Fees.
There is no university business school program that will give you the low down on how the grocery industry actual works. Not like we do. The complex and extractive fee structures of large scale retailers and wholesalers is but one example. Don’t delude yourself that you can survive the grocery industry without this critical information. Here is our deep dive.
Grocery Update#20: Retail and Wholesale Fees and Upcharges 101.
Discontents: Retail and Wholesale Fees and Upcharges 101. 1. Smash and Grab. 2. Dialing For Dollars. 3. Wholesale. 4. Status Quo. 5. Postscript. 6. Tunes.
7. Why Kroger Can’t Buy Albertsons.
Remember when two of the largest grocers tried to merge, we called bullshit and the FTC and our legal system agreed? The Checkout Grocery Update worked for two years to collaborate with anti-monopolists and trade unions to stop this mega merger. And we won. Here is the recap.
8. A Union Organizer Speaks.
We are one of the few industry publications that hands the mic over to blue collar grocery workers to speak for themselves. And we will keep at it.
Grocery Update #35: A Union Organizer At Whole Foods Market Speaks Out.
Discontents: 1. Demystifying Unions. 2. Political Economic Context for the Whole Foods Philly Union Filing. 3. Ed Dupree: Produce Clerk, Union Organizer. 4. Tunes.The Checkout Grocery Update is a reader-supported publication. We are the only industry newsletter of, by and for the grocery industry. Please become a paid subscriber and support independent,…
9. Grocery Recaps and Walk Thru’s.
One of our frequent hobbies is to visit grocery stores, take pictures and write about them. Maybe you will run into us in the field. Feel free to say hello! Here is one of our favorite write-up’s, about a specialty shop somewhere in our home turf of New Jersey.
»This is but a small sampling of The Checkout Grocery Update.
We have plenty more on file, and even more on the way.
Thank you for reading and please stay in touch!
peace.