Grocery Store Economics

to defend the op - the op is possibly experiencing a grocery monopoly in a food desert. there are no datapoints that track grocery competition per zip code, AFAIK.

Same as supermarkets - once you own more of the wallet you'll get the margins. They're just shifting it from the supermarket to them.. quietly.

Your assumption of the existence of a grocery market competing on price might be wrong.

It isn't when it's commoditized.I have 4 or 5 grocery stores within a short walking distance of me right now. I can buy roughly the same stuff in all of them. I usually go to whichever is cheapest for the stuff I want to buy. They differ in sizes, so they don't stock all the same things, but there's nothing stopping any of them to sell any of the products the others do. This is how healthy competition works.

Supermarkets in my area have a near monopoly and don’t meaningfully compete anymore - they can charge whatever people will pay. It’s all owned by Kroger and the nearest non Kroger supermarket is a dozen miles away.

Maybe you have this switched? Many major retailers (supermarkets) to not own much of their product.

Dollar stores are the killer here. They can easily undercut regular grocery stores (low selection, low worker count) but they do not have produce sections. So people just give up the produce section to get all the other processed stuff cheaper.

Grocery stores sell multiple quality products (generic/branded), and you have various quality of inventory based on the market the retailer is targeting. For example, Whole Foods/local higher end store, down to Costco/Trader Joes/Kroger, down to Aldi/Winco/etc, down to Dollar General.Then you also have lower priced stores operated by immigrants that attract more price sensitive immigrant diasporas.But broadly speaking, it would reflect the disposable wealth g

The difference is that the supermarkets aren't intentionally scarce and they can choose to scale up (profitable for them) or choose to offer the service only to registered customers who affirm their qualifications.

Every year for Christmas my wife continues a small family tradition: every year we go there and buy stocking stuffers for our small family.It's definitely a different experience than going to a grocery store for sure. It's almost like you have a department store or modern pharmacies like CVS with the food capabilities of a gas station or 7-Eleven.I can see why it would appeal to lower-income families. If you assume they are short on time you can probably get all your shopping d