Bagging process design

So what is it worth to reduce the use of bags at your local grocery store? OK, so for one store, it may not be worth too much, but if you have over 1,000 stores like Supervalu does, saving a few bags here and there can be real money. Thus the chain has instituted a [...]

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Why do heritage turkeys cost so much?

It’s Thanksgiving so it is time to revisit the question of why heritage birds cost so much more than your standard supermarket bird. This year’s lesson in turkey economics comes from The Atlantic with a post by Bill Niman and Nicolette Hahn Niman of Niman Ranch fame (Heritage Turkeys: Worth the Cost?, Nov 18). Like [...]

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Tracking where food comes from

What is it worth to have visibility in a supply chain? When the consequence of screw ups can be catastrophic and deadly (think pharmaceuticals), it is worth tracking everything from raw materials through to consumption. So why are agricultural products any different? If anything, contaminated spinach or eggs can affect more people than any one [...]

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Operations strategy & Trader Joe’s

At one point or another, we have mentioned nearly every major food retailer in the US. One that has thus far escaped mention is Trader Joe’s. According to an article in Fortune, that’s how the company likes it (Inside the secret world of Trader Joe’s, Aug 23). The company is privately held and generally prefers [...]

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The logistics of India’s food

Here is an interesting supply chain challenge. India has a billion mouths to feed and a large agriculture sector but the process of getting food from field to consumer is hopelessly inefficient.

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Internet groceries redux

If you have been reading this blog for a while, you might have concluded that we have a thing for grocery stores. In some ways it’s an occupational hazard. It is a low-margin, high-volume business that touches millions of people. Consequently, it is a setting where even small operational innovations have big payoffs. Thus an [...]

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Shopping for groceries in England from France

There appears to be no end to European innovation in grocery shopping as this BBC video makes clear:

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Grocery stores, supply chains & the weather

How much does weather affect supermarket sales?  Apparently, quite a bit.  At least enough to justify British retailer Sainsbury’s investing in supply chain improvements to allow faster reaction to unexpected changes in the weather (Sainsbury’s tests new technology to trim food waste, Jun 11, BusinessGreen.com). Sainsbury’s has invested in new technology that will allow the [...]

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More supermarket innovation

So it turns out that craps games are not the only things that float:

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Libraries as oases in food deserts

So far in this blog, we have written about grocery delivery services and drive through grocery stores. Today, we have a third option: Shopping for groceries at the local public library.  The story comes from Baltimore (Check It Out: Get Your Groceries At The Library, Apr 26, NPR). Here’s the basics of how it works: [...]

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