It will be interesting to follow whether Mayor Zohran Mamdani will bring the publicly-owned grocery store to fruition and whether they will geographically serve those who could use the price break. Large scale stores do well managing shelf-stable goods; I'm curious about the track record for managing produce and perishable stock?
We have a model we will be publishing separately, but at a high level that 30% accounts for the layers of cost in grocery markups, including labor (10-12%), utilities and rent (8-10%), shrink (2%), administration and IT (@5%), and assuming no taxes or profit margin. The point would be public underwriting of this retail margin. Thanks for asking.
Thanks for this piece. This is a much stronger argument for public ally owned retail grocers. You state that smaller efforts have e failed bc the distribution sector remains concentrated. Why not remedy distribution by supporting cold chain and warehousing infrastructure as they do in France? This supports robust small locally owned retail grocers and provides a market for local and regional produce. Until concentration in distribution is addressed independents will suffer.
But it is not what the campaign promised and we came in to help them articulate "how" they could articulate such a grocery retail vision. In Canada in particular, distribution is consolidated and vertically integrated with retail, so from my experience leveraging scale with other public programs as well as developing alternative, localized infrastructure is the stopgap we can account for. Thanks for checking in.
A lot remains to be proven of whether a government managed grocery "co-op" chain could provide the same quality and efficiency (ie, compete with) existing corporate chains. The liquor store comparison mentioned os a good one, as none of the provincial government chains (LCBO, SAQ, NSLC, etc) can outperform in efficiency compared to the larger private chain stores in Alberta (eg, BSW). Presenting theoretical pricing models based on hypothetical margins does not even begin to provide any sort of useful evaluation of whether public-run grocery stores can compete without running substantial deficits adding substantial tax burden
Thanks for being interviewed on CBC radio this morning, Apr. 7, on The Current. Having lots of examples of how the type of figures used by corps can influence opinions was helpful. To be effective, %, actual dollars and time frames need to be included. Re chain profits, 1% does not sound like much returning but $2 or 3 billion to consumers does. Also pointing out that having affordable housing and public grocery stores is not an either/or argument was great.
It will be interesting to follow whether Mayor Zohran Mamdani will bring the publicly-owned grocery store to fruition and whether they will geographically serve those who could use the price break. Large scale stores do well managing shelf-stable goods; I'm curious about the track record for managing produce and perishable stock?
Hey, do you know where can I find the math to find the 30% savings in groceries?
We have a model we will be publishing separately, but at a high level that 30% accounts for the layers of cost in grocery markups, including labor (10-12%), utilities and rent (8-10%), shrink (2%), administration and IT (@5%), and assuming no taxes or profit margin. The point would be public underwriting of this retail margin. Thanks for asking.
Thanks for this piece. This is a much stronger argument for public ally owned retail grocers. You state that smaller efforts have e failed bc the distribution sector remains concentrated. Why not remedy distribution by supporting cold chain and warehousing infrastructure as they do in France? This supports robust small locally owned retail grocers and provides a market for local and regional produce. Until concentration in distribution is addressed independents will suffer.
makes sense
I absolutely agree and wrote about this 5 years ago. https://goodfoodpurchasing.org/why-we-need-a-public-food-sector/
But it is not what the campaign promised and we came in to help them articulate "how" they could articulate such a grocery retail vision. In Canada in particular, distribution is consolidated and vertically integrated with retail, so from my experience leveraging scale with other public programs as well as developing alternative, localized infrastructure is the stopgap we can account for. Thanks for checking in.
A lot remains to be proven of whether a government managed grocery "co-op" chain could provide the same quality and efficiency (ie, compete with) existing corporate chains. The liquor store comparison mentioned os a good one, as none of the provincial government chains (LCBO, SAQ, NSLC, etc) can outperform in efficiency compared to the larger private chain stores in Alberta (eg, BSW). Presenting theoretical pricing models based on hypothetical margins does not even begin to provide any sort of useful evaluation of whether public-run grocery stores can compete without running substantial deficits adding substantial tax burden
Thanks for being interviewed on CBC radio this morning, Apr. 7, on The Current. Having lots of examples of how the type of figures used by corps can influence opinions was helpful. To be effective, %, actual dollars and time frames need to be included. Re chain profits, 1% does not sound like much returning but $2 or 3 billion to consumers does. Also pointing out that having affordable housing and public grocery stores is not an either/or argument was great.