380
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
this post was submitted on 03 Aug 2024
380 points (99.2% liked)
News
22903 readers
3445 users here now
Welcome to the News community!
Rules:
1. Be civil
Attack the argument, not the person. No racism/sexism/bigotry. Good faith argumentation only. This includes accusing another user of being a bot or paid actor. Trolling is uncivil and is grounds for removal and/or a community ban.
2. All posts should contain a source (url) that is as reliable and unbiased as possible and must only contain one link.
Obvious right or left wing sources will be removed at the mods discretion. We have an actively updated blocklist, which you can see here: https://lemmy.world/post/2246130 if you feel like any website is missing, contact the mods. Supporting links can be added in comments or posted seperately but not to the post body.
3. No bots, spam or self-promotion.
Only approved bots, which follow the guidelines for bots set by the instance, are allowed.
4. Post titles should be the same as the article used as source.
Posts which titles don’t match the source won’t be removed, but the autoMod will notify you, and if your title misrepresents the original article, the post will be deleted. If the site changed their headline, the bot might still contact you, just ignore it, we won’t delete your post.
5. Only recent news is allowed.
Posts must be news from the most recent 30 days.
6. All posts must be news articles.
No opinion pieces, Listicles, editorials or celebrity gossip is allowed. All posts will be judged on a case-by-case basis.
7. No duplicate posts.
If a source you used was already posted by someone else, the autoMod will leave a message. Please remove your post if the autoMod is correct. If the post that matches your post is very old, we refer you to rule 5.
8. Misinformation is prohibited.
Misinformation / propaganda is strictly prohibited. Any comment or post containing or linking to misinformation will be removed. If you feel that your post has been removed in error, credible sources must be provided.
9. No link shorteners.
The auto mod will contact you if a link shortener is detected, please delete your post if they are right.
10. Don't copy entire article in your post body
For copyright reasons, you are not allowed to copy an entire article into your post body. This is an instance wide rule, that is strictly enforced in this community.
founded 1 year ago
MODERATORS
It's my understanding that grocers themselves tend to operate is miserably thin margins, especially when they don't have the kind of leverage of large, national chains. I know someone whose family operated a community grocery and they were actually relieved when the building caught fire. They didn't depend on the income, it was just something they took over to serve the community, and it ended up feeling like an anchor around their neck. Seems likely that this is largely an issue that lies with the food producers.
My father says the same thing about the slim margin of oil companies. That being said, when that slim margin is in the billions and millions of people suffer for it, there's room for inquiry.
Idk. I live in a food desert, I've thought about trying to scrape up the capital to start a grocery bus to serve my area, but I'm pretty worried about whether I'd be able to pay my bills if I made it my full time job. I've pretty consistently heard that grocery is a sector that operates on thin margins, and I wonder if the notable disappearance of small neighborhood grocers over the course of my lifetime isn't evidence to that end.
"high grocery prices"
I don't think most people are specifically targeting retailers, who make very little percent per item, as you said. But manufacturers were raising prices before the pandemic, during it, and now...
Thin margins has always just been corporate propaganda. Those margins have widened alongside the wealth gap for decades.
Can't speak for grocery but I owned a bar in my community for a time.
Even if every seat was full every night, once you subtract rent, utilities, labor, taxes, licenses & fees, benefits, accounting costs, maintenance costs, processing fees, etc...
...in multiple years of operating it I put more money into it then I ever got out.
But I loved the customers and it was nice being able to give the employees a job and benefits.
I think it could have made me money if I worked there beyond full time, but I couldn't because I had a day job that paid more.
It also could have made money if I added lottery, but...I couldn't bring myself to do that and a lot of the customers I talked to said it'd ruin the ambiance.
When COVID finally took it, I felt sad, but I, too, felt relieved because it was just one headache after the other with no end in sight. And with rising costs it would have only gotten worse.
I don't have a ton of evidence, but I think this Fall / Winter is going to see another string of closures and my guess is it's because everyone is leveraged to the hilt and Summer isn't going to save them.
And it's sad :(
I work in a family owned grocery. They use MSRP for most things. Distributor prices went up, which made store prices go up. Manufacturing prices probably also went up. But the markup that the store gets is about 10% less now (45% to 35%). They are still well off.