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Mr. Hooper in the Internet age
Scifi author and op-ed columnist Orson Scott Card has some prescriptions for making more livable neighborhoods and specifically how grocery stores can rebuild community. Yes, really.
The column isn’t just about grocery stores, but about “walking neighborhoods,” places that are conducive to getting people out and about without their cars, which is one way to build up a sense of community. In my neighborhood of closely packed homes, I don’t know any of my neighbors because whenever they leave their houses, they do so in cars. I never encounter them on the street when we’re out walking. I don’t agree with all his prescriptions, but it’s his thoughts on neighborhood stores that really got me thinking.
Most people drive to the big-box grocery stores because they offer a better selection at a competitive price. Melanie and I do the same thing. We’d love to give all our business to the small local grocery chain store that’s just at the end of our block, but can’t because they don’t stock everything we need or want. So we go to the local place, Crosby’s, for the occasional trip for the basics and trek out to the big chains, Shaw’s and Stop & Shop, for the big stuff.
But now an innovative use of computers and data mining could let the little guys compete and bring back the corner grocery store.
At the moment, grocery stores are doing almost nothing with the data they collect using their frequent shopper cards. They know which stores we shop at and what we buy. But they still don’t use that information to tailor their grocery stores to fit the neighborhood and the shoppers.
Idiotically, they still make decisions about what to stock based on the big numbers, as if they were still doing their figures on paper with quill pens. They could develop just-enough stocking practices that would allow small neighborhood stores to stock only what they actually sell to regular customers, plus a little more of the most popular items for walk-in trade.
They could make special-ordering quick and easy, using the internet, so that customers can get extra quantities for special occasions. The profitable corner grocery is easily within our reach.
In fact, we could have grocery stores every few blocks — competing on quality of tailored service as well as price and selection. Those regular-customer cards could become memberships or subscriptions that bring the privilege of having the things you buy regularly *always* in stock for you.
You can't always get what you want
Technorati Tags: crunchy con | neighborhoods | technology | grocery | retail |
This is a great idea. I would love to have a local store that used all the data all its disposal to cater to its local customers. Everybody wins in that situation. Sure, supposedly you can request specialty items from the store as you need, but it rarely works out. I once asked for a particular kind of iced tea, nothing special just a different package of Lipton. The store was selling individual serving tea bags and I wanted the quart-size serving bags that I could get at the big grocery store. Never showed up. More than once Melanie has asked them to stock the whole milk French Vanilla 32 oz container of Stonyfield Farms organic yogurt, but no deal. They stock the low-fat and no-fat version of the vanilla and the whole milk plain yogurt, but not the kind we want.
And even when they do get the item you want, it doesn’t become a regular stock, just the one-time special purchase.
Take this idea to its logical conclusion and you could return to the days of the little corner grocery store. A place the size of a typical corner store of yore could provide everything for a neighborhood of a few dozen families and, if they stock it according to our needs and wants, we wouldn’t have to go anywhere else.
So what if I want something esoteric? What if I ask for some little known brand of lavender-flavored olive oil (God forbid!) that only I will ever buy and only once every six months? How can the store stock it without losing money? Let’s say no one else in the neighborhood wants it. If the little stores are owned by a big company, then the warehouses can hold overstock that might be requested in other stores. And if no one in the whole region wants that item, then it’s a loss leader. Stores already do this: they sell popular items at a loss in order to keep customers. If my corner grocery sold me the few items I wanted that I had to drive elsewhere to get, then they’d get my entire grocery budget.
Oh how I would love to return to the day of shopping at the corner store, getting to know the grocer, the butcher, the baker. And ironically, it’s high technology that could help big companies and small alike to accomplish it.
I think I need to write a letter to the owner of the Crosby’s grocery store chain.
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