Grocery Stores - Customer Service? Low Prices? Or What?

There are "Grocery Wars" going on in my neighborhood. Some are slowly sliding out of business, new ones are opening and some established ones are clearly headed for trouble.

We've got Market Street, Whole Foods and Central Market occupying the high end in my area of the world. Each is different and each has their advocates and loyal shoppers. But what they all share in common is that they are focussed on customer service, selection, and creating a wonderful in-store experience for their shoppers.

At another extreme is Costco and Sam's. They also occupy a solid niche. Value. You've got to buy in bulk but you get great pricing.

The competitors I can't figure out are all the "traditional" grocery store brands. I visited a Kroger this morning (we'd run out of milk and you can't have breakfast without some milk) and here's what happened.

I was greeted by a giant display on the way in the store for Vitamin Water (normally $1.59/bottle, selling for $.99). I put eight different flavors in my cart and headed for the milk section. So far, so good. They got me to make an incremental purchase, one I was not intending to make.

The problem came at check out. Kroger has implemented these self-service check out lines which I normally avoid like the plague. This morning, I had no choice. It was early and these self-service check outs were the only ones open. I think these self-service check outs are a really bad marketing idea. Kroger makes you do the scanning and bagging yourself, so they make the shopping experience harder (not easier). They also remove the one opportunity they have for you to interact with a Kroger employee, which could be a nice branding opportunity for them. That would all be bad enough, but those self-scanning systems never seem to be working right. So instead of speeding up the check out process (which might actually appeal to some people), Kroger usually creates an additional hassle when you have to track someone down to come over and solve a problem you're having with their system.

That's what happened to me this morning. Six of my eight Vitamin Waters scanned correctly but two failed to ring up the correct price (I was paying attention because I KNOW this self-scanning system is full of bugs.) We're talking a $1.20 here. Not a lot of money, but it was the principle of the thing. It took two different Kroger employees and about 10 minutes to straighten this out. So, instead of a nice and quick "in and out" shopping stop this morning (along with maybe a pleasant "hello" or "how are you" from an employee), I got an impersonal, needlessly delayed, flawed and aggravating shopping experience.

Why should I ever go to this Kroger again? I have other better options that are just literally a few minutes further away. Whole Foods is right across the street. Market Street is two blocks down.

Kroger and many other of their traditional grocery store competitors are in the unenviable position of being stuck in the middle. They are outflanked at the high end by service oriented options and they are outflanked at the low end by Costco. When you're positioned in the middle of the road like this, you only get run over. Nothing good happens when you occupy this grey middle of the market.

We've recently lost an Albertson's in the neighborhood. I'm betting that this Kroger is next. There's a Tom Thumb just a block away but I think they'll hold out longer. They still scan and bag your groceries for you.