[mikeash]

Not at all. A grocery store being out of any normally stocked product is really unusual. If it happened with any regularity for stuff I wanted to buy, I’d stop going to that store.

The concept of “never out” products doesn’t make any sense to me. That should describe everything!

[pbhjpbhj]

It sounds like they're trying to optimise their just-in-time delivery. I think Lidl/Aldi do this, they have a very small "back area" so almost all goods are on the shelves. This presumably optimises so floor usage and reduces storage costs/wastage and such.

[notyourday]

Aldi's business model is "few things that you need, cheap".

Whole Foods business models is "Look at the stuff we have that you never knew about so you have no idea of what the price on it should be or what to use it for. Buy it!" The entire thing was based on a blow job with a smile level customer service. Do you know that employees of Whole Foods carried sharpies so if a customer looked lost trying to figure out if the customer wanted to try this or that item, the sharpie came out to wipe off the UPC code of the item and that item went into customer's bag for free because Whole Foods determined that losing $3-10 on the item is perfectly fine as they made $300 on a basket that this person was likely to buy on average a month? Or how about a knife that everyone in produce carried? So if a customer was not quite sure about that apple, the knife came out the apple was cut right in front of him or her, a piece was given to them and the rest became sample?

That's why Whole Foods had insane revenue. It was the level of service one only got at specialty stores delivered to the masses.

Drop that and Wegmans would destroy it.

Source: Wife used to work at Whole Foods.

[mikeash]

That's a great thing to do as long as you don't take it to the point where you end up with products out of stock. The moment you do, you're encouraging your customers to patronize the competition instead.

[jdminhbg]

> The concept of “never out” products doesn’t make any sense to me. That should describe everything!

Definitely not; plenty of items are seasonal and therefore only available at certain times. One of the reasons I prefer WF to e.g. Safeway is that they stock certain vegetables, fruits, and seafood without requiring that they be available year round. WF has persimmons in the fall; Safeway never does.

[mikeash]

That’s why I said “normally stocked products.” Seasonally available products are fine. The problem is products which are supposed to be available but can’t be purchased when I’m there because the store is cutting their JIT delivery too close.