The Incredible Logistics of Grocery Stores

Writing by Sam Denby
Research by Sam Denby and Tristan Purdy
Editing by Alexander Williard
Animation by Josh Sherrington
Sound by Graham Haerther
Thumbnail by Simon Buckmaster

Select footage courtesy Nikko Williard
Select footage courtesy the AP Archive

References

Musicbed SyncID:
MB01BW6CVXB54C2

[janmelantu]

The logistics of small-town grocery stores are even funnier, as one person can constitute the entire demand for a product. My brother is most of his small town’s demand for quarts of vanilla yogurt

[IskaralPust]

As someone who works in retail, my only response to your description of how pallets are organised and built is this: I freaking wish.

[tehGazzy]

As a Grocery store shelf stocker, I can confirm what everyone in the comments is saying about the pallets not being stacked in any organized fashion, but I can also speak on the slow moving items point. It seems every time we stop carrying an item because it doesn't sell well, a handful of people will start complaining to us (because we, as shelf stockers, control what the store sells) that it was their FAVORITE brand and they can't get it at the other stores in our area.

There was this 1 brand of almond butter that wasn't even shelf stable so it had to be refrigerated, I was rotating it one day and realized that all of it had expired a few days prior. So I pulled them from the shelf and my boss looked up their sales in our system. WE HAD SOLD EXACTLY 1 JAR IN THE LAST YEAR! We discontinued it, and you know what, we still had SEVERAL people come in complaining to us that we stopped carrying it, FOR WEEKS! WE ONLY SOLD 1 JAR IN AN ENTIRE YEAR, and people, that didn't even buy the product, were mad at us!?

[jimmyhuesandthehouserocker]

You can barely imagine the old days before computers and bar codes, where the local grocer had to do inventory and logistics by hand. He had to either mentally or pencil and paper, keep track of every item in the whole store. What an unbelievable job that must have been. Everything had to be priced by hand, too. The checkout girls and women were masters of memory and logistical intelligence. They pretty much had to be.

[ydid]

Honestly variety is what i learn from this man, he goes from building an Airline to Vaccine Distribution Logistics to Grocery Stores

[colonelcactus]

As a former Walmart shelf stocker I would like to point out that Walmart does not organize pallets based on a products location in the Aisle.

[capmidnite]

4:47 "More than one way products can leave a store." At an ethnic grocery store, I once saw fertilized chicken eggs starting to hatch.

[paramm]

We need to know the logistics of creating a logistics video, like from getting the video idea to all the hardware to storing it and finally releasing it online

[smashexentertainment]

The most annoying thing about supermarkets:

Supermarket management meeting:
- Lets build a huge supermarket! With lots of food and stuff. And 15 checkout counters.
- Yes! And lets keep only 2 of them open.

[BMWROYAL]

I use to work at Walmart and people would always complain about the shelf’s being empty and one thing people don’t realize is how much stuff is actually being bought. We could over stock the whole meat section Saturday morning and by 4pm it’s all gone and there’s only so much we could actually fit in the store. Same for milk and water and eggs. It’s not that we are doing a terrible job keep the selves stocked. It’s that there’s only so much we could fit in the store each day

[IOUaUsername]

In Australian ALDI stores they don't keep any niche brands. They just keep highly profitable staples at great prices and position all their stores adjacent to one of the big two grocery brands. So as a consumer you can save money on the basics, while still getting the niche things next door, and ALDI can be hyper-efficient by only stocking highly profitable fast-moving items. This leaves the big grocery stores "holding the bag" as the saying goes, selling more unprofitable niche products relative to the efficient staple items.

[MS-icrd]

Anyone that’s ever unpacked a grocery pallet KNOWS that they are NOT organize in anyway that’s helpful 🤣

[dekaredfire]

Sam is kind of person who take "Amateurs study tactics, while professionals study logistics" to a whole new level.

[PrimeEpoch]

I work in a distribution centre. There are 2 things to understand about how pallets are organised, because it's not by their location on the shelves at the store.

1. They're organised by weight. The heavy stuff goes on the bottom, the light stuff goes on the top. This makes the pallet more stable. Putting the heavy things on top may also crush some of the lighter things, for example you would not put lots of pasta sauce on top of crisps (chips for you Americans). The heavier things will therefore be located at the front of the picking aisle, and it's a 1 way system.

2. By shape/size. There are certain patterns to how products will fit together. It makes your job much harder and slower if you try to play a game of tetris, much easier and faster if you already know where everything is going. Typically, you will spilt the pallet into zones (⅓, ⅛, etc) and after enough time you'll be familiar with all the products enough to know in which of these zones they fit. This is the part that takes longest for a picker to learn, so many of the newer pickers mess this up and create weird looking pallets.

I also used to work in a supermarket, and we used to change the location of our stock fairly frequently, probably more than you'd expect. On night shift, we would change product locations (mostly either end of aisle or season products), do stock counts and make sure the store is in a clean and acceptable state in addition to our main responsibility of stocking products. The spots for the products change enough to where the distribution centre can't really be expected to update to product placement on the pallets to that degree.

I can't speak for the automated distribution centres, since I don't have experience there. It's possible that optimising the placement is a feature of automation, but it's definitely not a feature of manual distribution centres. It would create way too much chaos for us.

[EqualsThreeable]

As a gas station owner this logistics system becomes more and more in depth as we have the ability to micromanage products. I know the names of many of my customers so it’s fun making sure I have each of their products. Tammy, Joe, Tom, Erica, they all have products that I carry just for them. Unfortunately it’s easier for us to be out of stock of items because we don’t carry a large amount of any one item in stock. Deliveries from each vendor are traditionally once a week. Sometimes a customer is going on vacation or something they inform us they need extra of an item we can get it in for them so they have enough to last them.
The one thing we have trouble with are not the slow sellers but the “no sellers” items that do not move, cannot be returned or even discounted to be sold. These items clog up precious shelf space and can make our store get cluttered quickly.

We carry everything at our gas station a small neighborhood could need; gas, diesel, e85, cigarettes, cigars, CBD, lottery, medicine, health & beauty products, chargers and phone accessories, propane, automative fluids/oils/accessories, firewood, pool chlorine, clothing items, ice cream, fishing bait, ice, coffee & tea, hundreds of snacks & beverages, candy, beer, wine and liquor, grocery items like condiments, toiletries, canned goods, pet food, the list goes on and on. It’s like a mini grocery store and it’s amazing how much stuff fits into a small space, we have roughly $150k-$200k in retail inventory.

[Puhdull]

More like the ILLUSION of choice. A large percentage of items in grocery stores are all owned by the same 10 companies, regardless of what "brand" is on the box, bag, or bottle

[MikeyAtalla]

Once I see “the logistics” I come running 🏃‍♂️

[Jade]

As someone who works in retail, I wish that my distribution center would stack things in the 'most efficient manner' on palettes. Usually its just completely random, if not dangerous. Frequently they'll put light stuff on the bottom and heavy stuff on top so that it falls and almost hits someone. Also there are frequently falls while on the truck so the delivery driver will have to go back and try to figure out what stuff was ours vs stuff for another store. We damage out a least one item, usually way more, every single week (we have weekly deliveries) because it was stacked poorly.

[andrewfox]

One of the nicest things about shopping in NYC is that grocers aren’t competing with Walmarts or (many) enormous supermarkets, so it’s normal for things to go out of stock. Which means a lot less waste. And nobody dies if blueberries are out one day.

[neutronpixie]

The last store I worked at had a $10, 000 loss (wholesale cost) for the quarter on the bulk nut isle alone. People will get $15-30 bags of things, walk around snacking on them, decide they don't want them after they've filled up on them and throw the bag on the shelf somewhere. That bag and whatever is inside is now garbage. Honestly, I think if people think it's ok to do that, then stores should think it's ok to put the content of the bags back into the bins they originally came from. It kills me that some things are grown for months, shipped half way around the world, just for greedy a-holes to think it's ok to get a free snack and then are absolutely wasteful about it. If you think only a couple people a day do it, guess again. Night crews can find dozens of bags hidden around stores when they're working. $10, 000 a quarter. $40, 000 a year. The store lost more than I made yearly because of self entitled twats stuffing their fat fucking faces. And again, that was wholesale loss. The loss for from the profits could've went into keeping the stores in good condition, paying employees better, and overall, just doing more for their communities. Besides... Didn't your momma ever tell you to pay for something before eating it?