Supermarket wars in suburbia
I live in Eltham - an outer Melbourne suburb. Apparently it has just over 18,000 inhabitants - mostly fairly well off and predominantly of anglo-saxon descent I would guess. It likes to think of itself as 'green', slightly hippie and artistic. And yet we seem to be becoming a centre for supermarket wars. You would not have thought that a population of this size would warrant four supermarkets - and yet a new one - Farmer Joe's Market has just opened where the defunct Dick Smith's was. Rather brave of its owners I would have thought to take on the very big two - Coles and Woolworths and the increasingly large Aldi. Aldi is almost next door and Woolworths is just across the road, with Coles no more than a few steps away. In fact I would have thought it was completely insane.
For in addition to the big three, we have a delicatessen (next to Coles), a Farmer's Market every Sunday - to satisfy the greenies, a greengrocer's in the Coles arcade, a butcher opposite Coles, a specialist poultry shop next to Coles, a Health-food shop, at least two bakers and probably lots of other shops that I don't know about. Well vaguely - Bolton Street, which is away from the centre, has a delicatessen too I think. I guess, because of the size of the shopping centre that we draw in some customers from outlying suburbs, but not many - from Research maybe. All of the other adjoining suburbs have their own supermarkets - though not all of the big three at once - Greensborough shopping centre excepted.
Why would you do it?
We did go in briefly but I must admit I didn't check it out all that carefully. I thought it might be a greengrocer's from the name and the slogan ("we love it fresh"), which is not all that different from Woolworths, but no it seems to have a cross-section of just about everything you find in a normal supermarket, and because of its smaller size, not as much choice. There was cheap grana padana and David did buy some, but as far as I could see it really didn't have anything distinctive going for it. And it's design was not that wonderful either. I would have thought that if you were going to compete with Coles, Woolworths and Aldi that you would have tried harder to differentiate yourself.
Like the other two supermarkets that I know of - Leo's and Colonial Food Markets.
Both of these only have a couple of stores but their location is carefully chosen and their offerings are different. Leo's is upmarket gourmet stuff - you can find difficult to source ingredients there and yes it is pricey but that's OK. It's in pricey areas. Colonial Food Markets is also in pricey areas and is heavily Italian, though it does have a massive range of Asian stuff and other rarer things - and it can be cheap. So both of these have something different to offer. I just love wandering around them. Not so Farmer Joe's Market. Apparently they have two other stores in Boronia and Wantirna - neither of which I would have thought was as upmarket as Eltham. Eltham seems a weird choice. I wish them well but I suspect they won't last long. If they try price-cutting the big three can beat them at that game.
I had a brief look at how we use supermarkets today and apparently we now visit them several times a week. The once-a-week big shop is a thing of the past. Maybe this has something to do with the longer opening hours - busy people can shop early in the morning or late at night, or all day over the weekend. I can remember when everything shut around 5 or 6 o'clock, wasn't open at all on Sunday and closed at 12 noon on Saturday. We had lots of rows about not getting up early enough on a Saturday and consequently having to rush to the shops. The fact that we are shopping several times, also probably enables us to patronise several different supermarkets - hence their ability to survive in close proximity. The big three are all slightly different - well Aldi is quite different - it has a smaller but interesting range of foodstuffs, but it has all those special buys that are so popular. They are what draw people into the stores - and they then buy the food as well. But you can't get everything there, so you also have to go to one of the other stores. In Eltham, Woolworths has a sushi bar - if you are into such things, and Coles has better bread - well comparable but cheaper bread - I have just learnt that their very tasty rustic baguettes actually come from Laurent Patissier which might explain it. I could go on to list all the little things that are different, but they are meaningless really. What it actually means is that we shop at a combination of the big three - sometimes on the same day! I doubt very much that we shall be adding Farmer Joe's Market though - it would have to have something really special to make our shopping even more complicated than it already is.
And a brief word about my childhood and youth - when there were no supermarkets at all. We had to go to a grocer's, a butcher's, a greengrocer's, a baker's to do our shopping. High streets just had rows of little shops in them. I can still remember our first supermarket in Hornchurch. It was called Fine Fare, later Safeway. It was a totally new concept to pick things off the shelf yourself and pay for it all at a checkout. We thought it was very exciting. Nowadays you can even check yourself out and use the supermarket as your bank.
And french hypermarkets are a whole other topic.
