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Thread ID: 119861	2011-08-13 20:53:00	Supermarkets are putting 800 per cent mark-ups on some fresh fruit and vegetables	pctek (84)	PC World Chat

Post ID	Timestamp	Content	User
1222999	2011-08-14 00:36:00	Free market - shop somewhere else if you don't like it or grow your own.	Twelvevolts (5457)
1223000	2011-08-14 00:36:00	A veggie shop might not have the overheads but they also don't have the buying power that a large nationwide chain can command. It goes both ways. If you look at it from the flip side, getting away with 800% is just good business, well done to them for making such margins :-P	Chilling_Silence (9)
1223001	2011-08-14 00:46:00	bobh - what I found down there - there aren't the cheap vege places like elsewhere. --wolf-- - yes I do compare butchers with supermarkets. It's why I mostly go to the Aussie Butcher. Occasionally I might something from pak N Save if it's on special - although that hasn't seemed to have happened lately. Their mussells are cheap though compared with the local fish shop.	pctek (84)
1223002	2011-08-14 00:49:00	The consumer is always penalised for spoilage no matter what the product is, it is built into the price of the product. This being from food, glass or any other goods Understood re spoilage in general, but I included the word 'excess' in my earlier post when it comes to idiotic buying practices. Per Wolf's earlier post : "They buy pumpkins in bins of 100 (they sometimes come in crates but not often) and will often have 5 - 20 bins of it sitting out the back depending on the season/cost. Sometimes we have thrown out entire bins, and it's not rare to throw out well over half." So let's take an instance where a supermarket buy crates or pallets of something, to only then throw half away - I stand by my earlier statement that consumers should not be penalised for idiotic buying practices. Wolf's comments support the assertion of excess spoilage and are confirmed in his later post ("You would not believe how much they throw out."). If the supermarket was never going to be able to shift that amount of product before it went off, then why on earth did they buy so much??? If throwing away half of what you buy is not idiotic then please tell me what is. In addition, other practices of not rotating stock etc (Wolf : "stock that sits on the bottom of the shelves") again penalise the consumer. If people did their jobs properly then we wouldn't have some of this spoilage. I'm not having a go at the supermarkets, I think they are great, and I'm not having a go at Wolf (there is nothing personal intended). What I do object to are idiotic policies and practices when it affects me. @Wolf : claiming more costs than the little guy is fair enough, but you have neglected to mention the greater volumes sold by the supermarkets. There are two sides to the profit equation. It's not as if the local fruiterer is selling the same numbers of items than the supermarket. So whilst you put up some good points, claiming we can't compare to the fruiterer isn't right when you consider the variable margins throughout the supermarket. I don't believe the 800% margin for a second (as I said journo's are guilty of interviewing their keyboards) but I object to one food group being penalised (i.e. fruit and veges) to prop up others (e.g. carbonated drinks or bread), which is common practice in supermarkets in the Western world. You said you can't remember why produce is first in the supermarket. I do know why - it is the highest margin section of the supermarket and the owners want the consumers to stock up their trolley with the high margin goods while the trolley is empty. There is a psychology to shopping and the way the stores are laid out. This isn't conspiracy, it is fact based on economics and making money.	andrew93 (249)
1223003	2011-08-14 00:50:00	The Supermarket chain moves into an area and sells produce etc at a low price, people change their habits and go there because prices are lower than their traditional smaller local shops because the Supermarket have economy of scale. Traditional businesses fold due to the competition and thus lack of customers. Supermarkets put up their prices. No true competition amongst the Supermarket chains ie Monopoly. Prices go sky high with a million nonsensical excuses as to why.	zqwerty (97)
1223004	2011-08-14 00:52:00	Understood re spoilage in general, but I included the word 'excess' in my earlier post when it comes to idiotic buying practices. Per Wolf's earlier post : "They buy pumpkins in bins of 100 (they sometimes come in crates but not often) and will often have 5 - 20 bins of it sitting out the back depending on the season/cost. Sometimes we have thrown out entire bins, and it's not rare to throw out well over half." So let's take an instance where a supermarket buy crates or pallets of something, to only then throw half away - I stand by my earlier statement that consumers should not be penalised for idiotic buying practices. Wolf's comments support the assertion of excess spoilage and are confirmed in his later post ("You would not believe how much they throw out."). If the supermarket was never going to be able to shift that amount of product before it went off, then why on earth did they buy so much??? If throwing away half of what you buy is not idiotic then please tell me what is. In addition, other practices of not rotating stock etc (Wolf : "stock that sits on the bottom of the shelves") again penalise the consumer. If people did their jobs properly then we wouldn't have some of this spoilage. I'm not having a go at the supermarkets, I think they are great, and I'm not having a go at Wolf (there is nothing personal intended). What I do object to are idiotic policies and practices when it affects me. @Wolf : claiming more costs than the little guy is fair enough, but you have neglected to mention the greater volumes sold by the supermarkets. There are two sides to the profit equation. It's not as if the local fruiterer is selling the same numbers of items than the supermarket. So whilst you put up some good points, claiming we can't compare to the fruiterer isn't right when you consider the variable margins throughout the supermarket. I don't believe the 800% margin for a second (as I said journo's are guilty of interviewing their keyboards) but I object to one food group being penalised (i.e. fruit and veges) to prop up others (e.g. carbonated drinks or bread), which is common practice in supermarkets in the Western world. You said you can't remember why produce is first in the supermarket. I do know why - it is the highest margin section of the supermarket and the owners want the consumers to stock up their trolley with the high margin goods while the trolley is empty. There is a psychology to shopping and the way the stores are laid out. This isn't conspiracy, it is fact based on economics and making money. Fair point, but if the supermarkets didn't buy excess stock to throw away. then the producers would be stuck with excess stock themselves and would probably raise their prices to cover the same situation?	plod (107)
1223005	2011-08-14 00:53:00	Nice summary zqwerty. Same can be said about the warehouse.	andrew93 (249)
1223006	2011-08-14 01:06:00	Fair point, but if the supermarkets didn't buy excess stock to throw away. then the producers would be stuck with excess stock themselves and would probably raise their prices to cover the same situation? A very good point. Did the supermarket buy all of something to prevent someone else getting it? (This happens) If so, that could have been sold through another outlet and there would be less wastage. However, the counter-argument is those other consumers who couldn't buy (let's say) pumpkins through the other outlets, may have bought squash or potatoes instead. I seriously doubt they went hungry, so if the pumpkin didn't go to waste, then something else might have. This leads nicely into my next point and that is the general wastage within the Western world. If we can't sell everything we produce, then why do we continue to produce it? If we are going to let it rot (either in the ground, or in the back of the supermarket) - are we seriously saying there was no viable alternative? We couldn't produce less? We couldn't freeze or can the excess production? We couldn't export it? The counter argument to producing less (assuming the surplus is neither stored nor exported) is that would result in fewer growers as the supply from each shrinks, or the number of growers shrinks to match the lower demand. Then what do these people do? It's not as if we have waiting lists to employ people in other industries. I accept there will be some spoilage and losses just like utilities and most other industries. But there must be a smarter way......	andrew93 (249)
1223007	2011-08-14 01:08:00	Per Wolf's earlier post So let's take an instance where a supermarket buy crates or pallets of something, to only then throw half away - I stand by my earlier statement that consumers should not be penalised for idiotic buying practices. Wolf's comments support the assertion of excess spoilage and are confirmed in his later post ("You would not believe how much they throw out."). If the supermarket was never going to be able to shift that amount of product before it went off, then why on earth did they buy so much??? If throwing away half of what you buy is not idiotic then please tell me what is. You'd actually have to kind of know how it works to know that they certainly don't buy just to throw away. In the end it comes down to the actual product. Some stuff we'd buy enough for one week and other things we'd buy daily. Depends how long it can last. Also it depends a lot on the weather believe it or not. For example we might buy a normal amount of lettuces, and it rains all week. We're going to sell less, therefore throw more out. Also another thing to note is, a lot of the time you buy when you can, or you miss out. Markets don't always have things in stock. You as a supermarket still need to be able to provide bananas all week (just an example, very rare to not be able to get bananas, though not rare to be sent pallets of green ones that don't sell very well which is another good example of waste) but if the market doesn't have any after Tuesday, then you're going to need to stock up on Monday so you have enough. Believe me, the way they buy are not idiotic. But all they can go buy is their average sales. They have a figure that they work on, be it 40 crates of lettuce or 2 pallets of bananas. When they buy they just try to keep as close as they can to the number needed. (excluding things like specials, quality etc) The ordering is done very early in the morning, and the stock comes in late morning. That stock has to last that entire day AND the following morning until new stock comes in. It's not actually unusual to run out of some stock at the end of the night and have none for the following morning until more comes in. In addition, other practices of not rotating stock etc (Wolf : "stock that sits on the bottom of the shelves") again penalise the consumer. If people did their jobs properly then we wouldn't have some of this spoilage. I'm not having a go at the supermarkets, I think they are great, and I'm not having a go at Wolf (there is nothing personal intended). What I do object to are idiotic policies and practices when it affects me. Stock rotation is a funny thing. It can't be done 100% perfect for some things. There is pressure on the staff that when the display starts getting low (and therefore not looking good) then they need to top it up. If it is a special bin for example, and there's still maybe 5 - 10 crates of stock on the display it's impossible to COMPLETELY rotate it all before putting another 10 crates on it. Where I worked the staff would start at 5 or 6am and spend almost the whole morning taking old stock completely off (can really only do this before the store opens) and putting new stock underneath. You can't really do this when, for example, at nights there might only be 1 or 2 people keeping the entire department full (not including the work out back to be done) @Wolf : claiming more costs than the little guy is fair enough, but you have neglected to mention the greater volumes sold by the supermarkets. There are two sides to the profit equation. It's not as if the local fruiterer is selling the same numbers of items than the supermarket. So whilst you put up some good points, claiming we can't compare to the fruiterer isn't right when you consider the variable margins throughout the supermarket. Fair point, but again I have never worked at a fruit n veg shop and don't know what they buy for so whether or not they do buy differently may play a big role in their prices as well. Did the supermarket buy all of something to prevent someone else getting it? (This happens) If so, that could have been sold through another outlet and there would be less wastage. I have actually seen this happen where one supermarket pretty much got all the stock of an item, but it was because they had a special running not because they didn't want another supermarket having any. After all, there are about 3 - 4 major markets we would buy from daily I accept there will be some spoilage and losses just like utilities and most other industries. But there must be a smarter way...... Believe me, they do the best they can. You either have too much, or you run out. It's impossible to guess EXACTLY how much stock you are going to sell in one day. But it's better to have more than enough than not enough.	--Wolf-- (128)
1223008	2011-08-14 01:08:00	The Supermarket chain moves into an area and sells produce etc at a low price, people change their habits and go there because prices are lower than their traditional smaller local shops because the Supermarket have economy of scale. Traditional businesses fold due to the competition and thus lack of customers. Supermarkets put up their prices. No true competition amongst the Supermarket chains ie Monopoly. Prices go sky high with a million nonsensical excuses as to why. Complete nonsense on your part. Firstly there clearly is competition between the supermarkets and the prices are pretty good as far as I can see compared to those I experienced on my recent holiday in Oz. Secondly there are all sorts of markets and small shops around, so to suggest they have been put out of business is clearly incorrect. Thirdly you can go down the garden centre by your own seeds and do it yourself at quite a reasonable cost. Hard to beat the produce that comes out of your own garden. The suggestions of Sue Kedgely of having a Supermarket Ombudsmen and a code of conduct are ridiculous, and will only achieve higher prices as the cost of the system is passed on to the consumer.	Twelvevolts (5457)
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