The Geography of the Supermarket

“What is a greater wonder is that almost 40 percent of our food supply is wasted, a significant jump from the first time the figure was measured, which stood at 28 percent in 1974.”

Makes me wonder how much marketing helps create that waste? It’s ironic that our desires and needs are so easily manipulated, that our minds are embossed with brand names from a very early age.

by Gregory McNamee

In 1916, in the bustling riverport city of Memphis, Tennessee, the first completely self-service grocery store in America opened, the flagship of a chain that would become iconic in the South—namely, Piggly Wiggly. Clarence Saunders, the store’s owner, had put a great deal of thought into how his store would be laid out, and any would-be customers who wanted to come in and eventually get out had to make their way through a mazelike series of aisles that required them to see every single item the store had in stock. Out went the little shopping list, and in came eyes bigger than stomachs, overflowing cupboards, and the beginning of the modern era in American food consumption.

A small part of the produce section of Jungle Jim’s. Located in Fairfield, Ohio, Jungle Jim’s, at 200,000 square feet, is thought to be the world’s largest grocery store. Credit: photograph by Gregory McNamee.

Clarence Saunder’s innovation, clever if a touch heavy-handed, is not widely used these days. But there’s a definite science behind how large grocery stores are laid out—a geography of the supermarket, so to speak. That design is just as dedicated as the Piggly Wiggly model of yore to encouraging shoppers to spend, spend, and spend some more.

One of the key points of that geography is that the things we need the most—bread, milk, eggs, fresh vegetables, cheese, and meat—are located by design as far as they can be from the front door, forcing the shopper to navigate the entire store just as surely as if Saunders had laid out the path himself. The dairy section in particular is almost always at the farthest possible point away from the entrance. If you are inclined toward the life-hacking equivalent of what computer hackers call “social engineering,” however, you can subvert this cunning plan by entering the store and then following a course around the outer walls, steering clear of the interior. You’ll be able to pick up most of those necessities in the bargain, and get to the eggs and cheese without spending a fortune on all the less-essential goodies that lie within.

Let’s take a spin down one heavily traveled aisle, usually the leftmost interior one, devoted to breakfast foods. You will find there, normally on the right hand side of that aisle, dozens and even hundreds of varieties of cereals, with the ones that are remotely good for you down at floor level and the ones that are not so good for you set chest-high. And why chest-high? Because that’s the eye-level height of the toddler who’s sitting in the grocery cart, and who’s now going to be screaming for boxes of sugar- and fat-laden cereal festooned with cartoon figures and improbable animals.

These obvious gimmicks have paid for themselves over and over again; they’re obvious, yes, but they work. One avoidance strategy, of course, apart from sticking to the outer walls, is to leave the youngsters at home while you shop. Most toddlers are too young to have formed strong brand attachments and will eat just about anything that is put before them, so long as it tastes good. That gives the shopper room to roam down along the lower shelves, where the less expensive generic products can be found, as well as the healthier items on the menu.

There is a larger geography of food to acknowledge, speaking of brands. In some parts of the country, notably the South and West, a certain kind of corn chip is highly popular. Travel to the mid-Atlantic region, and potato chips rise in popularity. Travel farther up the Atlantic coast, and brands of potato chips begin to show up that cannot be found in other parts of the country. Travel west and you’ll find many more brands of salsa and tortillas than in an ordinary grocery in, say, New Hampshire. Travel back south and you’ll find both Miracle Whip dressing and mayonnaise on the shelf, but likelier you’ll find twice as many jars of the latter, since Southerners show a noted preference for mayonnaise and the foods with which it’s eaten (such as potato salad and coleslaw). Hit the Potomac River and sweet tea disappears from the menu; leave the upper Midwest and lutefisk can no longer be found on the shelves.

Thanks to modern transportation systems and food preservatives, however, grocery stores show a remarkable sameness wherever you travel. One unavoidable facet is the shopping cart or trolley, invented in 1937, the brainchild of the grocery store manager in Oklahoma who theorized that the more food a shopper could carry, the more she or he was likely to buy. His theory immediately bore fruit in increased store sales, and millions of shopping carts later, the sales figures show that retailers that do not use shopping carts, such as Sears and J.C. Penney, see smaller revenues than those that do, such as Wal-Mart and Target.

Why is it that the bakery is so often located by the snacks and the booze? And why is the bakery so often so far from the door? The scent of a fresh-baked cinnamon roll drifting across a big store is as good a draw as any to get customers into the coveted interior, and it can pull them all the way across the store. And as for the first question, there seems to be something inside our reptilian brains that connects sweets and snacks to alcohol. Just what that something is isn’t quite clear yet, but as far as grocery store placement is concerned, it works. Store designers therefore often link these items, adding prescription and over-the-counter medications to the mix in in states where groceries and pharmacies are allowed to share a roof. Baked goods, snacks, alcohol, and medicines are, of course, splendid profit centers, one more reason why mastermind grocers like to see them in one spot.

It’s small wonder, given all the secrets of supermarket geography, that a trip to the grocery store meant to pick up a few items so quickly turns into a matter of multiple bags and many dollars. What is a greater wonder is that almost 40 percent of our food supply is wasted, a significant jump from the first time the figure was measured, which stood at 28 percent in 1974. That’s a problem that much of the rest of the world would like to have, a perfect storm of overabundance, too many choices, overbuying, and crafty store designers.

From here.