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Tue 3 Apr, 2007 03:06 pm
Ha! In honor of boom I was going to name this thread "Semi-urban cowboy" but that wouldn't make sense, would it?
Another thread got me to thinking about grocery stores and their layout.
In my neighborhood, about a mile and a half as the crow flies from downtown Austin there's no grocery store within really comfortable walking distance. Keep in mind that we aren't urban enough to just stop on the way home at a little market a few times a week to pick up things for the next couple of days. We have a Whole Foods, the flagship store, with the corp offices on the upper floors, it's really really nice. Generally though you don't see people walking out of there with a huge cartload of items, just a bag, maybe 2. You can walk to it if you live downtown, otherwise you would be having to cross busy highways on foot, and or walk a mile or more in the really hot summer weather (100 degrees plus) There's an almost equally nice Central Market in the other direction, where people do sometime buy all their groceries, but it's in the opposite direction of downtown and now we're getting into 50mph plus traffic around you.
The nearest what I'll call "Family supermarkets" are 2, 3 or even 5 miles away from the families in my neighborhood. My neighbors and myself mostly seem to go to the one 5 miles away because it's the newer, nicer one than the one 2 miles away, and the one 3 miles away just charges too damn much. I don't know how they stay in business.
Now, a few months back a Walgreens that was the anchor store in a small strip center, within a mile of quite a few neighborhoods with families, moved down the street to larger, newer quarters. When I drive by there I always think that they should just tear the strip down and build a good modern "family" supermarket for those that weekly schlep a full basket of food home for their families. There's about 5 or 6 condo buildings being built right around there, I think the neighborhood could well support a store.
The problem is, space. To build a store of adequate size, there'd be little room left for parking. An underground or multi story parking garage doesn't seem like it'd work. That's fine for a place like Whole Foods where you go down to the garage with one bag and no cart. If you have a cart load, it comes down the valet loading area. I can't see moms and dads pushing full carts and babies through a multi level parking garage.
The other alternative is for the grocery store to build up. But, how does one build a supermarket that would be on several levels, to accommodate people with carts and kids? I was thinking of a store that would be a big wide spiral, but any incline would cause carts to take off. Cart friendly escalators would get jammed and crowded. Huge open space elevators that constantly go up and down? One that could hold 20 or more carts and people? If you miss one, you wait less than a minute for the next?
That brings me to a related issue, one that goes on in the way current markets are set up. I know the market wants you to stop and look around, they set up flow of traffic to send you around the store. However, what is the deal with the dairy section? For some reason, no matter what store you are in, there is mass confusion and congestion where people go to get their milk, eggs, cheese and bacon.
The big problem is the fact people clog up the area with their carts. I used to think they should have an area where you would be required to leave your cart while you went to get your yogurt, but, well, you can leave your child in the cart area, strapped to his seat, can you?
Anyway, anyone have any ideas to make a building like this work?
I'm not so sure cart-friendly escalators should be given such quick dismissal here. The local Target store has them inside (it's a 2 story store) and they work very well and are seldom jammed.
But if someone chose to do it you could have parking at ground level with a store above it. After checkout your cart could go into a freight elevator and they could give the customer a chit.
Then the customer could use an elevator/escalator to get back to theiir car without the hassle of their groceries. Once in their car they could pull up to a loading area and have the bags moved from the cart to the car. It'd be a lot like the airline baggage system only your bags wouldn't get misrouted to Anchorage.
That would mean that the store would have to have people there to help load and make sure that people got the right groceries though.
Here at our local beaches, parking is a nightmare and when a rather big supermarket came into the beach community, they had to build and underground parking garage. There are several freightsized elevators
that go right into the supermarket and it works quite efficiently, even on
weekends and busy nights.
You leave your cart in designated spaces underground and that's where
you pick up the cart as well.
Similar things are done where I shop (fishin', you ever get to the Shaw's at Packard's Corner?).
When you check out, you're asked if you want bundle pickup or carryout (plus, they do all of the bagging). Carryout means you're carrying your groceries out. Since the carts don't work past a few feet past the entrance, you'd better only have a few bags if you choose carryout. You're not supposed to wait in your car at the entrance either (one of the entrances is on Commonwealth Avenue; good luck sitting in a car over there for more than 5 minutes). So carryout, really, is for small stuff.
Bundle pickup means the groceries are put into bags which are then placed in bins. The bins are all numbered and you're given a plastic rectangle with the matching number. This is your ticket; you get one per bin and each bin holds about 4 - 6 bags of stuff. The bins are then shoved on a conveyor belt to the pickup area below. You just drive your car to the pickup area, give the guy your tickets (and a tip, really, you should) and he loads your car. If you don't have a car, you can call a cab to do the same.
Getting out is pretty fast. We always make sure to just carryout anything really fragile like eggs but I have no problem with the TP going on the conveyor belt. Very, very rarely, they make an error, e. g. you give them four tickets and you only get three bins' worth of stuff. This has happened to us twice since the system started maybe 10 years ago. Both times, you go back with your store receipt with the missing items highlighted. If the bin was returned to pickup, you just get the contents of the bin. If not (e. g. they put it in the wrong car and the groceries were never returned), they take your receipt and grab replacement stuff for you. For free. Supermarkets are notoriously low-margin operations so mistakes like that cost them -- but it's the good will that means so much to them. They know that if they eat $40 worth of misdirected groceries one day that they'll be rewarded tenfold with my business and any business I direct their way.
So, Chai, when you're next in Boston, I'll take you to the eighth wonder of the world, aka Shaw's. The kosher section is near the Irish section, then around the corner for sushi or Starbuck's. Plus you really should try their cookies ....
Gelsons in Marina del Rey (LA area) was down in the basement of a three story (above the ground level) building. I think, maybe it was only two tall stories..
It was (is) a good market, lots of terrific stuff, much of it expensive, but not all. No big deal taking the cart into the basement parking area. There was a elevator to get to the other floors. Only the basement level parking for all of the shops, as I remember, though there was a big shopping center with parking across the street, and I often parked there, me being odd about seeing in parking garages. In fact that is one of the only parking garages I'd ever drive into at all, because it had "windows" in the garage walls, and had fantastic lighting below that. There were lots of condos in the area, and those residents could easily walk the block or two. It was only, oh, six or eight blocks from my house and I also had my office nearby. However, walking from my house was a tough option as the intersection between was f/hell to cross. I walked for miles west of that intersection, but not those six or eight blocks. My neighborhood could have used a bridge across the traffic.
Don't get me started on Albuquerque, land of ill planning.
By the way, great thread, Chai.
Wow
I never knew these options were in fact working in other places. Good deal.
It's nice to know people can be more organized if there is a good system.
Re the parking lot situation, here's something I find annoying, when you've got a store and pretty much unlimited space around it (if the underground, groceries coming down in bins works, it might solve it)...
So, you trying to park your car on a busy day, and someone stops their vehicle in the middle of a parking aisle, waiting for someone to finish loading their trunck. They sit, and sit, and sit, while 5 or 6 cars line up behind them, trapped. When they finally pull forward and park in the coveted spot, everyone else can finally move, and get a parking spot maybe a dozen spots down. I mean, how lazy can you get? I'm not talking about disabled and/or elderly either. To be honest, even if you have to take a spot at the end (omg, having to walk 100 yards) I usually find myself passing the lazy car with the person still in it, still getting ready to get out.
So, you don't feel it adds much or anything to your wait time to get in que with your car, and pulling up to assigned station to get your groceries loaded?
I've gone to the parking garages at the T stop (That's the subway system here in Boston) here and driven aorund through 4 or 5 floors of car after car and never found a spot. If it's crowded and I see someone getting in their car you can bet I'm waiting.
There have been a few times when I just parked on the grass outside the garage and prayed the truck was tsill there when I got back too!
The few places that I've seen where you got in a line to pick up your groceries weren't much of a problem. There was seldom more than 3 or 4 cars picking up at any one time so waiting was pretty much nonexistant.
I'm sure there are probably days when it gets worse (pre-holiday shopping like just before Thanksgiving Day maybe??) but usually if people go through it once they learn and start to adjust. It seems to work just like traffic on the highways at major holidays does.
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