Modern Marvels: How Supermarkets Operate (S13, E52) | Full Episode | History

Estimated read time: 1:20

Summary

The supermarket industry, a half-trillion-dollar business, is a quintessentially American innovation that has evolved dramatically over the years. Modern marvels in supermarket operation include complex distribution systems, computerized shopping carts, and robust marketing strategies. Safeway, one of the largest chains, exemplifies the sophisticated logistics behind maintaining consistent product availability. Innovations like RFID technology and smart shopping carts aim to enhance customer experience. Meanwhile, fresh, local markets and chains like Whole Foods cater to evolving consumer preferences for organic and specialized foods. With roots in early 20th-century innovations, supermarkets reflect societal changes and will likely continue to adapt.

Highlights

Supermarkets: A unique American creation, tracing back to self-service retail concepts. 🇺🇸
Safeway operates massive warehouses and a private fleet for efficient distribution. 🚚
Innovations like voice-activated order picking and RFID tags streamline the shopping process. 📦
Strategies to entice customers include strategic product placement and sensory experiences. 👃🎶
Whole Foods markets offer a luxurious shopping experience with an organic focus. 🌿
Farmers' markets and eco-friendly initiatives reflect a growing trend towards sustainability. 🌍

Key Takeaways

Supermarkets are a significant American innovation, evolving to meet consumer needs and technological advancements. 🛒
Huge logistics operations, like those at Safeway, keep the shelves stocked and the bananas ripe. 🚛
Technology is everywhere! From computerized shopping to RFID tags, supermarkets are getting smarter. 🤖
Supermarkets have adapted to consumer desires, with specialized products and themes—like Whole Foods and their organic focus. 🥦
The layout and sensory experience in stores are meticulously designed to maximize purchases. 🛍️
Farmers' markets and eco-friendly options are gaining traction as customers seek fresh, local produce. 🌱

Overview

Supermarkets, the uniquely American contribution to shopping, revolutionized how we purchase goods by combining food items, household goods, and services in a singular, convenient space. From its early origins in self-service to the sprawling giants we see today, the supermarket industry is a reflection of societal evolution and innovation.

At the heart of supermarket operations are the complex logistics and technologies that keep products flowing from suppliers to consumers. Giants like Safeway exemplify this with their vast distribution centers and a private fleet that travels millions of miles annually. Their use of modern technologies like RFID tags and computerized systems streamlines many operations, improving efficiency and customer experience.

Environmentally, supermarkets are adapting by offering more organic options and promoting sustainable practices—a shift driven partially by consumer demand. Chains like Whole Foods have capitalized on this trend, building their brand around natural products. Meanwhile, farmers' markets and local produce are resurging, indicating a blend of nostalgia and modern eco-consciousness in how we approach shopping today.

Chapters

00:00 - 00:30: Introduction to Supermarkets The chapter 'Introduction to Supermarkets' explores the massive scale and complexity of the supermarket industry, a $500 billion per year sector. It highlights key components such as immense warehouses, large fleets of trucks, highly efficient processing plants, and innovative technologies like climate-controlled banana ripening rooms and computerized shopping carts. These are all part of a sophisticated system driven by marketing strategies aimed at ensuring customer loyalty and repeat visits. The chapter sets the stage for understanding supermarkets as modern marvels.
30:00 - 33:00: History of Supermarkets Supermarkets have significantly impacted modern life by introducing self-service retailing, expanding the range of available global foods, and influencing suburban expansion. They have also increased reliance on automobiles, marking a distinct American contribution alongside jazz in the music realm.
40:00 - 60:00: Supermarket Innovations The chapter titled 'Supermarket Innovations' discusses the origin and rapid global spread of supermarkets. These are essentially large grocery stores with departmentalized sections offering a broad range of food, household merchandise, and services. Traditional supermarket designs typically feature large, single-level floor spaces accompanied by expansive parking lots for customer convenience.
71:00 - 73:30: Conclusion This chapter concludes by discussing the business requirements and scale of modern supermarkets. It highlights that to qualify as a supermarket, a business must generate at least two million dollars annually. In total, there are approximately 34,000 supermarkets which together achieve around 480 billion dollars in sales. The typical supermarket has a median size of 48,000 square feet housing about 45,000 different products.

Modern Marvels: How Supermarkets Operate (S13, E52) | Full Episode | History Transcription

00:00 - 00:30 it's a half trillion dollar a year industry gargantuan warehouses enormous fleets of trucks hyperproductive processing plants climate-controlled banana ripening wounds and computerized shopping carts all fueled by a variety of marketing strategies designed to keep us coming back for more now the supermarket on modern marbles
00:30 - 01:00 they've changed our lives from the growth of self-service retailing to the availability of global foods from facilitating suburban sprawl to creating a greater reliance on the automobile if jazz was the uniquely american contribution to music the supermarket is the uniquely american
01:00 - 01:30 contribution to shopping it was invented here and spread very quickly around the world supermarkets are basically super-sized grocery stores that are departmentalized and offer a wider selection of food along with household merchandise and services the traditional supermarket design occupies a large floor space on a single level and usually has the convenience of an expansive parking lot
01:30 - 02:00 and longer if not around the clock shopping hours fiscally they must bring in two million dollars a year to qualify as a supermarket today we have about 34 000 supermarkets they would do 480 billion dollars in sales the average supermarket would be a median size of 48 000 square feet and they would carry about 45 000 different products in that store
02:00 - 02:30 a supermarket is often part of a chain that owns or controls other supermarkets located in the same town or multi-state region this increases the opportunities to offer lower prices made possible by volume sales on the wholesale and retail levels they've also had a big effect on food safety they can't afford to have a thousand stores go out of business because something wasn't clean or they
02:30 - 03:00 didn't follow sanitary conditions their really have one of the best food supplies in the world as shoppers travel up and down the aisles of their neighborhood store they are for the most part unaware of the massive behind-the-scenes operations it takes to keep a steady supply of everything from apples to ziploc bags streaming to each of the stores in the chain i always say that when you go into a supermarket it is the tip of the iceberg
03:00 - 03:30 safeway is one of the largest food retailers in north america it operates over 1700 stores in the western and mid-atlantic regions of the united states and in western canada to support its stores safeway has invested in extensive distribution and transportation systems to continually resupply our stores in canada and the united states safeway currently operates the
03:30 - 04:00 12th largest private fleet in north america with over 1100 tractors and 4 500 trailers we travel approximately 85 million miles a year deliver 475 000 truckloads of product to our retail stores every year most of the fleet is outfitted with 64 000 btu refrigeration units capable of keeping a trailer hauling frozen products at minus 20 degrees
04:00 - 04:30 and the trucks are equipped with onboard computers the onboard computer tells the driver exactly where he is to go what story is to go to how many pallets of product he used to deliver at each store the onboard computer also provides a driver with a method to track dot hours of service which is required currently by the department of transportation
04:30 - 05:00 to service its truck fleet some of safeway's distribution centers have their own maintenance areas fueling stations and automated truck washes safeway operates 13 distribution warehouse centers in the united states and four in canada one of the company's newest centers located in auburn washington
05:00 - 05:30 services its stores in the northwestern united states the sprawling 116 acre complex includes administrative offices a recycling center and two enormous warehouses surrounding the buildings is just over two million square feet of nine-inch thick concrete paving to provide a durable surface to handle the heavy truck traffic
05:30 - 06:00 the largest facility is the grocery warehouse inside are nearly three miles of shelving filled with product ready for shipment this particular building is 518 000 square feet holds about 44 000 pallet positions and typically will ship in the neighborhood of around 2 million pounds a day we typically have two shifts that are
06:00 - 06:30 picking products and shipping to our stores we deliver on a 24-hour basis seven days a week an army of forklifts load incoming pallets on the shelves and make sure the ground level has product available for those who are putting together the outgoing orders those responsible for order fulfillment are called pickers the headsets the pickers wear are part of an interactive computerized system
06:30 - 07:00 designed to make assembling an order more accurate the voice selection technology is a technology that has taken the place of the old paper list of the things to pick on a pallet to go to a store it delivers the list of things via the headset to the order picker the computer just told me to go to slot 444 of five
07:00 - 07:30 so i pull up to the slot slot location 444 confirmation number 44. peter tells me to pick one item so i pick up one item and i tell the computer one four five one my computer then tells me to go to the next location all the vehicles used in the warehouses are battery powered
07:30 - 08:00 so it was necessary when designing the buildings to set aside space for large recharging rooms the building that serves as the cold storage and perishable warehouse is one of the largest in the nation the powerful refrigeration equipment keeps the different rooms at specific temperatures
08:00 - 08:30 the coldest is the frozen foods warehouse that is maintained at 15 degrees below zero produce is kept in the low 50s bananas are picked and shipped green and need some special handling so safeway built 12 banana ripening rooms in the warehouse each one can hold up to 1 000 40 pound boxes of bananas
08:30 - 09:00 by controlling the temperature and humidity in each room safeway can speed up or slow down the ripening process to keep pace with consumer demand we're essentially trapping the gases the same way you would trap the gasses in a paper bag with any type of fruit and facilitate the ripening process this technique eliminates the need for unboxing and re-boxing this easily bruised fruit resulting in significant savings of time space and labor costs
09:00 - 09:30 among the produce and groceries distributed to the stores of major supermarket chains are a selection of products they manufacture themselves safeway's bakeries get an early start to mass-produce a fresh supply of bread at the facility in bellevue washington white flour is brought in by the train carload presently we are in our bulk storage area this tank here holds
09:30 - 10:00 110 000 pounds of flour from this tank we blow the flour into a sifter from this sifter the flour goes to the mixer where we use it for making bread once the flour is mixed with the other ingredients the dough is cut into appropriate size pieces shaped and put into baking pans then it travels to the proof box so the dough can rise
10:00 - 10:30 once the bread comes out of the proof box we go on this conveyor into the oven where it's baked in the oven it can take anywhere from what 19 minutes to about 24 minutes depending on the variety after the bread is baked it's cooled for 60 minutes the bread is cooled now we are slicing it here
10:30 - 11:00 after the bread is sliced we put it in a bag bag is opened with air after the bread is in the bag we enclose it as you can see with a little quick lock the whole bread process takes about three hours and right now we are producing about six thousand loaves an hour and that's the bread business
11:00 - 11:30 another line of product many chains package under their own brands is dairy at safeway's bellevue milk plant truck after truck arrives filled with milk purchased from local dairy farms you're looking at a scene where we're pumping uh 7 000 gallons of milk into these silos behind us these storage silos hold upwards of 60 000 gallons we're looking at a storage capacity of a quarter million gallons of milk for the day
11:30 - 12:00 inside the first step is to pasteurize the raw milk by raising its temperature until harmful bacteria and other unwanted organisms are killed then it's processed into a variety of milks whips and half and half since the plant outputs so many gallons of milk a year safeway decided to install an assembly line to blow mold plastic gallon jugs on site at a rate of over 2 million per month
12:00 - 12:30 once they're trimmed they travel across the building to be filled with milk our plant has the fastest gallon filler in the country runs in speeds of 160 a minute it'll fill a truckload of 4200 gallons in 22 minutes the bellevue plant also produces 20 million pounds of cottage cheese a year the process to make lucerne cottage cheese is to fill our bats which holds 50 000 pounds of skim milk heat the
12:30 - 13:00 product up add bacteria and separate the whey from the curd from there we pump the curd up to mixers and we make our four percent all the way down to our fat free looser and cottage cheese from there after it's mixed it goes into the packaging to cold storage and outdoor distribution channels in an adjacent building is an ice cream plant it's one of the largest in the united states
13:00 - 13:30 there are two assembly lines to fill gallon containers one designed to handle round cartons and the other to fill square ones both of the lines output one gallon of ice cream per second adding up to a total of 18 million gallons per year the facility also manufactures a variety of ice cream treats
13:30 - 14:00 one machine puts together ice cream sandwiches at the rate of 1800 per hour this assembly line produces 350 stick bars per minute safeway manufactures between 40 and 50 million bars per year in addition to the items supermarket chains produce themselves and other domestic products foods from around the world are a common part of the vast selection
14:00 - 14:30 fresh produce on display in stores may have been picked on another continent and cheeses from france are sold alongside those from a local dairy the equipment the entire grocery industry needs to warehouse transport and display perishable and frozen foods accounts for about one-third of the total u.s energy use for refrigeration
14:30 - 15:00 this gigantic enterprise had to start somewhere and a big king and a little pig did their part to make supermarkets the nation's supreme suppliers of food supermarkets may have played a vital role in the development of our modern suburban lifestyle but providing an adequate food supply has been an essential element in the success of cultures throughout human history
15:00 - 15:30 we can't get along without it we can't transport without it napoleon says an army moves on its belly so this has been a key ingredient to civilization and society wherever major cities developed street vendors stores and markets flourished to supply the urban population so far removed from the self-sufficiency of farm life during the settlement of north america by europeans trading posts were some of the
15:30 - 16:00 first retail establishments they made available foods that people couldn't grow or hunt themselves including sugar and coffee plus basic supplies like blankets as more people settled into an area larger retail businesses known as general stores appeared they sold a wider variety of foods and canned goods along with just about everything else for the home or farm
16:00 - 16:30 as urban populations grew stores became more specialized and usually neighborhoods had their own butcher shop bakery and grocery store by the beginning of the 20th century the great atlantic and pacific tea company or a p had become america's first major chain of grocery stores shopping in a store 100 years ago was very different than it is today stores were set up with clerks who did all the work all the
16:30 - 17:00 customer had to do was walk in the store hand the clerk of list of items that were to be purchased the customer's not allowed behind the counters and the clerk would select the items for the customer in the early 20th century clarence saunders a grocery store owner in memphis tennessee felt that having clerks gather up each customer's order was too labor-intensive today at the pink palace museum in memphis is an exact replica of his creation
17:00 - 17:30 that revolutionized the grocery industry the first successful self-service grocery store no one seems to know why he named his store piggly wiggly but customers flooded in when it opened in 1916. and there were innovations that customers would see that would really influence their shopping habits the first is the turn style once you went into the store you couldn't get out until you finished your entire trip to the store the second was a shopping basket shopping baskets allowed the customer to
17:30 - 18:00 pick up the produce and the and the materials and to put them in the basket themselves one of the most important ideas of clarence saunders was the use of price tags for the first time customers knew exactly how much their products cost they could select the quality of the goods that they wanted to buy put them in their basket and go through the store and continue shopping piggly wiggly stores multiplied as other grocery store chains adopted the self-service format
18:00 - 18:30 but it would be more than a decade before the larger supermarket format made its debut today on new york's long island there are 45 stores of a family-owned chain of supermarkets named king cullen according to the smithsonian institution these are the direct descendants of the first true supermarket that opened in 1930. it was the brainchild of michael j cullen who had first come up with the idea while
18:30 - 19:00 working for a p and kroger in a letter to his employers he outlined the concept of a bigger store in which lower prices would be offset by a higher volume of sales michael cullen my uncle sent this famous letter outlining his vision of a supermarket and of course they didn't do anything with it so mike moved to new york and teamed up with
19:00 - 19:30 a wholesaler who gave him an advance to start this first supermarket which he did in jamaica long island in 1930. his timing was perfect by 1930 most households had an automobile refrigerators were becoming a standard home appliance and america was sinking deeper and deeper into the great depression lower prices were a welcome relief mike was a great promoter and his two big slogans that he
19:30 - 20:00 used and he used them quite effectively put him on his stores in his ads one was the world's greatest price record and the other is why pay more and he pounded those home consistently by 1936 there were 17 king cullen supermarkets doing approximately six million dollars in business annually retailers who had held off on adopting the concept thinking it might fail
20:00 - 20:30 finally realized that supermarkets were the future america's entry into world war ii widened the supermarket's place in the food retailing industry during the first three years of the war thousands of grocery stores which were usually small family-run businesses had to close their doors when the head of the household went off to join the armed services or work in the defense industry world war ii was really a coming of age for supermarkets because they were changed because
20:30 - 21:00 they were multi-store operations losing one or two people didn't put the chain out of business in fact they kind of endeared themselves to women in america by hiring them and having them working in the supermarkets during these really difficult times at the end of the war supermarkets were in a perfect position to benefit from the period of unprecedented prosperity and growth that followed in the 1950s
21:00 - 21:30 they became symbolic of the american way of life in the late 1950s leaders from all over the world queen elizabeth specifically and nikita khrushchev specifically visiting america and the thing they all wanted to see when they were here was a typical american supermarket it was a symbol of the benefits of our economic system to the average citizen day in and day out week in and week out
21:30 - 22:00 by the 1960s supermarkets were responsible for more than 70 percent of american grocery sales this kind of success spread intense competition in the 1970s many supermarket chains opened larger stores with additional non-food items in response to the increasing number of low-priced discount stores including walmart then in the 1980s warehouse stores began to appear proving people were willing to buy
22:00 - 22:30 in bulk size in a more industrial looking environment to save money supermarket owners converted some of their stores to this format supermarkets have continually restructured to keep up with changing consumer desires in reaction to modern life's busy schedules prepared meals departments are becoming increasingly important and being given more floor space many supermarkets are targeting particular groups of customers like those interested
22:30 - 23:00 in organic foods or specific ethnic groups or immigrant populations over 30 percent of all new supermarkets under construction in the united states are aimed at hispanic customers but the evolution of supermarkets has always reflected societal change and that evolution has always been facilitated by new technologies
23:00 - 23:30 when in a supermarket we're always one step closer to the future owners attempts to make customers visits to supermarkets as accommodating and efficient as possible have led to many important innovations over the years some have been so successful they spread to other retail applications perhaps the most widely used and copied is the standardized barcode known as the universal
23:30 - 24:00 product code or upc each product is assigned a number which is represented by a set of lines and spaces of varying thicknesses scanners using a laser or digital camera are used to read the codes supermarkets were the first to use the system at the retail point of sale ibm's first systems that were able to process barcodes were the ibm 3660 supermarket system
24:00 - 24:30 which consisted of a controller registers and scanners and these systems were first shipped in july august of 1974 the use of barcodes revolutionized both the checkout process and inventory management as the system checks you out it's not only calculating your prices but it's also writing down every item that goes out of the store so at the end of the day the retailer knows every item that went out so that he can reorder automatically
24:30 - 25:00 the data collected serves many purposes including analyzing store traffic patterns to better plan store staffing needs what may be the most important shopping aid ever invented the shopping cart was created back in 1937 by sylvan goldman a supermarket owner in oklahoma city he had noticed shoppers struggling with the metal shopping baskets they carried through the store
25:00 - 25:30 then a folding chair in his office gave him an idea it could be mounted on wheels and the seat could serve as a platform for the shopping basket after some more tinkering on prototypes goldman decided to provide more storage space by having double decker baskets once he manufactured his carts he still had to convince the public to use them people walking into the stores would tend to say one of two things if it was a woman
25:30 - 26:00 she'd say i've been pushing a baby carriage so long i don't want to push another cart if it was a man he'd say don't i look muscular enough to carry one of these little baskets around sil goldman actually had to hire shoppers around the front of the store to push these cars with products in them and then a lady at the front of the store when somebody came in would say well hey look everybody's using the cart why not you it would be another 10 years before the typical shopping cart we know today appeared a larger single basket replaced the double-decker basket
26:00 - 26:30 and by redesigning it so that the back end would swing one card could be pushed into another a supermarket could have hundreds of them in a very small area not take up space that could be used to sell products but it did more than that it made it easier for parents to bring their children shopping not only that it provided them a space to put heavier items not only that it provided
26:30 - 27:00 advertisers a place to remind consumers every second that they're in the store of their products today's low-tech shopping cart is getting some high-tech additions where shopping cart theft is particularly frequent some stores have invested in electronic locking wheels the wheel locks are triggered when they pass over a wire emitting an electronic
27:00 - 27:30 signal that is buried just under the cement or asphalt along the store's property line and the ibm industry solutions lab in hawthorne new york has been working on a wireless touch screen computer to smarten up the carts when you walk into the supermarket you take this out of the charging rack and you place it on your cart then what you do is you take the scanner you scan your loyalty card so it knows who you are
27:30 - 28:00 i then hit start shopping and i begin my shopping trip as i go through the store i'm able to scan my items and bag it as i go the ability to scan selections and keep a running total is only one of the computer's functions customers can enter their shopping list via the
28:00 - 28:30 internet and the computer will tell them where the items are in the store it also lets you know when your deli order is ready and it offers recipes and personalized coupons and because the customers scan and bag as they shop checkout only involves payment of the already established total another innovation ibm has created is veggievision it takes the guesswork out of pricing fruits and
28:30 - 29:00 vegetables by using a digital camera to capture an image of the object placed on the scale so it can be visually compared to a database of stored imagery what veggievision does is it has a visual recognition system that looks at the hue the saturation and the intensity it's looking at the segmentation so the lightness or darkness of that fruit or vegetable and finally the features the texture curvature and width it's making an analysis and recognizing that it's a
29:00 - 29:30 tomato so now all you have to do is print out a barcode tag and you're ready to leave the store as the number of self-checkout lines increases technologies like veggievision may become an important part of supermarket modernization but there's another technology under development that could do away with checkout lines all together this is the future of item tagging this is an rfid tag radio frequency identification tag
29:30 - 30:00 it consists of an antenna and a microprocessor it essentially carries the same information and more as a barcode does today when these tags become cost effective and all items are tagged with rfid tags when you go shopping your checkout operation will be much faster you will gather your items pass them across a scanner or walk through a portal and your transaction is done
30:00 - 30:30 once rfid technology is perfected for use at checkout it will be possible for a customer to simply leave the store all of the tags on the items in the cart will be read along with the customer's credit card which will have rfid technology as well the total will be charged directly to their account already in place is another technology that makes it possible never to set foot in a supermarket the internet new york city with its concentrated population was the perfect proving ground for an
30:30 - 31:00 internet grocery company called fresh direct here's how it works the customer places their order online at the freshdirect website when all the orders are done being placed today we begin picking the produce and getting all of the other items that our customers have ordered organizing boxes in our 300 000 square foot facility there are miles of conveyor belt and at the end of the process
31:00 - 31:30 there is 130 refrigerated trucks that deliver the product into the city and into the suburbs supermarkets have always relied on technological innovations but maximizing sales also depends on employing some of the social sciences especially psychology supermarket owners give much thought to how to get people into their stores
31:30 - 32:00 and encourage them to become loyal customers location is obviously a primary factor and so is the promise of low prices there are two basic pricing strategies supermarkets typically use to convince customers they're getting the most out of their food dollar one they call everyday low pricing edlp edlp is really a model that says let's try and find
32:00 - 32:30 what the lowest possible price is let's sell it that way all the time the other is called high low high low is where they really try and put some products on promotion that are just incredible incredible values and they use these to bring customers in who buy the full basket of products which include products at their regular levels beyond pricing strategies supermarket owners have done a great deal of analysis in determining how the layout of the store impacts sales
32:30 - 33:00 first impressions are important and stores want to appear clean and filled with fresh foods so owners often place produce sections at the entrance of their supermarkets many stores have installed tungsten rather than fluorescent lights over the produce department because it helps make the fruits and vegetables look brighter and more colorful almost all supermarkets place the frozen foods in the aisles nearest the checkout
33:00 - 33:30 to minimize thawing but there are several reasons why most supermarkets have the perishables around the perimeter and the dry goods and household items on the shelves in the center of the store refrigerated cases need to be where they can get to the equipment that runs those cases the dairy case or the frozen cases or the meat cutting room so part of it's practical but this arrangement is also how shoppers prefer it in 1964 department of agriculture studies
33:30 - 34:00 found that if the perishable items were placed in the center aisles instead of around the periphery of the store there was a decline in the number of items purchased one reason why commonly purchased products like milk are placed in the back of the store has to do with marketing strategies to maximize sales the idea that a supermarket would have in strategically thinking about what its layout is is to make sure that the consumer
34:00 - 34:30 sees as much of the product as possible and so there's a couple things that you would want to put far away from the door and milk is usually the example given there are many marketing strategies that dictate exactly where products are placed on store shelves there have been a lot of studies done on shelf placement and it is obvious that eye level at female eye level i think is about 54 inches or something like that and male eye levels a little higher is the premium place so vertical placement on the shelf makes a huge difference and marketers
34:30 - 35:00 who are marketing to children because children can be very influential decision makers in the supermarket will tend to put items that might appeal to children sugared cereals candy at the kind of level that a kid might see it certainly makes sense that you put the best products at eye level the most famous brands want to be at eye level but there's a better spot the better spot is right at the end of the aisle in the industry we call them end caps as they say
35:00 - 35:30 pile it high and watch it fly one of the things that they know is that you're going to spend some time at the checkout counter and looking at items you know to entertain yourself while you're sitting there waiting and so they tend to put impulse type items right at the checkout counter supermarkets also pay a great deal of attention to atmospherics the things that affect customers visual auditory and even all factory sensations
35:30 - 36:00 we're seeing all the major supermarkets with fresh bakeries and it has two advantages number one is it's an opportunity to sell product number two it's an opportunity to send that bakery aroma throughout the store and so when people walk in saying i'm not that hungry they get in the front door and they say i am hungry which translates into what can i buy now
36:00 - 36:30 the evidence on music shows that soothing music slow tempo music makes people stay in the supermarket longer and that makes a difference softer lighting will make people stay in the supermarket long where harsh lighting tends to make people just want to rush and get out of there there's also uses of colors there's a general sense that blues for example are more pleasant and people like to stay around and will perhaps buy more in a blue environment
36:30 - 37:00 so while the usual goal is to establish a calming environment in new york and connecticut stu leonard stores have their own unusual environment the audio animatronics costumed characters and general ambience of a county fair have made these stores a favorite family destination the mix of good food and theme park style fun is paying off
37:00 - 37:30 there are only three stu leonard stores so far but with revenues hitting 300 million dollars a year expansion is in the works standing out from other stores has become very important in this highly competitive business and there is one chain that has become hugely successful by standing out because of the unique foods it carries natural and organic a growing percentage
37:30 - 38:00 of the public interested in eating healthier more and more supermarkets are carrying natural foods but one large and successful chain has built its reputation on it whole foods you'll even find a store in the pricey real estate of manhattan's columbus circle whole foods now a fortune 500 company has worked hard to transform a trip to the supermarket into a
38:00 - 38:30 favorite destination while offering food and other products its customers feel good about purchasing when you walk through the door it is like a filter that nothing in our store has artificial colors flavors and preservatives whole foods began in austin texas back in 1980 when health food was still considered counter culture
38:30 - 39:00 the history of whole foods market interestingly enough was the merging of three small hippie health food stores into one big hippie supermarket owned by john mackey craig weller and mark skyles john's vision from that day and why he was in the business really still permeates the company today as ceo he's mission driven like he was in the very first store just a few blocks from where the original whole foods market opened more than a quarter century ago are the company's corporate headquarters
39:00 - 39:30 at the base of the office building is the chain's biggest store eighty thousand square feet of specially selected foods presented in an upbeat state-of-the-art shopping environment their proactive approach to marketing often begins even before entering the store i'm roasting hats chili's from hatch new mexico
39:30 - 40:00 and the smell of these roasting peppers is going to waft in through the store down that escalator through the parking lot and people are going to come across here and say what is that smell that opens the door for me to offer them opportunities to taste new things that they never had before and of course we do a lot of tasting in the store whole foods has staked its reputation on their commitment to quality natural products while the higher costs have led to the nickname whole paycheck the company feels their customer
40:00 - 40:30 loyalty is built on the philosophy behind their motto whole foods whole people whole planet organic is simply a sustainable farming method that leaves the land as it was it doesn't take away from the land that it was grown in and because of that the land will be vital for the next 20 50 hundred years and beyond whole foods believes that being concerned about the food supply doesn't have to result in a dreary diet
40:30 - 41:00 a vast selection of wine a super chilled room filled with domestic and imported beards exotic cheeses and tantalizing desserts are just a few ways to over indulge in this foodies paradise here we have our chocolate fountain here at whole foods market it has about 30 pounds of chocolate in it that circulates through it the entire day and i'm gonna dip for you some triple cream brie we'll dip anything from strawberries
41:00 - 41:30 potato chips hatch chilies to cheese just about anything the customer wants whole foods augments the customer service in its flagship store with a variety of technologies there are digital billboards across the front of the store delivering store and community event information computer stations and multiple touch screens throughout the store offer price checks product information recipes and store maps all of these along with the refrigeration and lighting
41:30 - 42:00 gobble up power but whole foods has found a way to maintain its eco-friendly values we buy energy efficient uh lighting for the most part and and and we have controls on our on our lighting system that uh bring our lights up and down uh at this store depending on the sunlight that's outside uh to help control energy costs in the store and also whole foods market is uh the number one
42:00 - 42:30 purchaser of wind energy in the country corporate virtual wind energy so we're very proud of that whole foods like other supermarket chains has risked billions betting on the right formula in this highly competitive business but oddly customers have also been rediscovering the simplest and oldest style of shopping for food the street market according to the department of agriculture there are currently around 4 800 farmers markets
42:30 - 43:00 operating in the united states it's interesting to think that the things that were time consuming and a chore and nobody wanted to do in the 30s now we've evolved to the point where they're kind of fun and maybe a little bit of luxury and we will spend some time in these these kinds of markets but of course there's more to modern life than fresh produce so when it comes time to stock up on everything else from canned goods to kitty litter
43:00 - 43:30 not to mention paper towels soft drinks and light bulbs the odds are you'll head back to the place where you know you'll find a never-ending supply your neighborhood supermarket
43:30 - 44:00 you