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from the happy-employees-make-happy-customers dept.
Wegmans is a family-owned grocery store chain. NYTimes noted it can actually claim a "cult following".
The Center for American Progress reports
It manages to have a huge selection while offering prices that can compete with Walmart, but that it does it while treating its employees well.
The perks start with pay, which for hourly store employees is a little more than $33,000 a year on average. By contrast, Walmart has admitted that more than half of its employees make less than $25,000 a year.
[...]but that's not what makes the company famous for employee satisfaction, landing it on Fortune's 100 Best Companies to Work For list every year since the list began. It also offers generous benefits. It pays about 85 percent of the costs of health care coverage, including dental, for its full-time employees and offers insurance to part-time workers who put in 30 hours a week. It offers 401(k) plans with a salary match of up to 3 percent of an employee's contribution.
And it has a scholarship program[...]
Wegmans also offers more work/life balance than most retail jobs.[...]
These benefits aren't just altruistic. The company generates $7.1 billion in revenue and is profitable. "When you think about employees first, the bottom line is better," the company's vice-president for human resources has said. The company boasts a 5 percent turnover rate among full-time employees, compared to a 27 percent[paywall] rate for the industry. That comes with a cost, as it often eats up about 20 percent of a worker's salary to replace him.
(Score: -1, Offtopic) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday May 16 2015, @03:35PM
Fuck those greedy bastards walmart! Fuck monsanto! Fuck microsoft! Fuck dow chemical! Fuck the IMF and world bank!
We need multiculturalism and socialism! Social justice! Fagging it up In each others' asses!
(Score: 5, Informative) by Dunbal on Saturday May 16 2015, @04:25PM
It's easy to blame Wal Mart, but capitalism is a race to the bottom. Whoever can provide something for less while making the most profit wins. And capitalism is driven by YOU the consumer. Why does Wal Mart get away with what it does? Because YOU flock to Wal Mart, attracted to the sales and rock bottom prices. In fact most people only care about price and don't care about the quality they are trading off. So a competitor with a slightly higher quality product at a slightly higher price gets eaten alive by Wal Mart. The competitor goes out of business and Wal Mart makes the money. And whose fault is that? Yours. So in fact, fuck YOU!
(Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday May 16 2015, @05:00PM
Some pretty good points, but I think the OP was being sarcastic. Actually, he was kinda off the rails, and probably in the closet (Mark Foley, Larry Craig, Ted Haggard, etc), so you did him a favor by responding.
(Score: 4, Informative) by PizzaRollPlinkett on Saturday May 16 2015, @06:47PM
Unfortunately, I never chose to shop at Wal-Mart. I watched one store after another close down. Then Wal-Mart was about the only store left.
Wal-Mart first put the older chains out of business. These were mostly regional chains. They were so inefficient with their inventory and logistics that Bugs Bunny could have come up with a better system and put them out of business. They could have been Wal-Mart, but chose not to innovate. They stagnated as 1970s retailers well into the 1990s, until they went kaput. (These are stores young people have never heard of, like Kings, Roses, and so on.)
Then Wal-Mart gained enough power with their suppliers to force them to meet price targets. There's a LOT of info about this online, if you want to read about it. This resulted in less choice and shoddy products.
And this resulted in fewer brands. For most products right now, you have one name brand and the store brand. The name brand is whichever brand could meet Wal-Mart's price targets. The others are gone. Sometimes you have two brands. But more than one or two brands is inefficient for commodities, especially consumable ones. Some products carve out a niche, like specialty breads. Overall, there is little differentiation among products right now. It's inefficient for Wal-Mart to offer you much choice, when they can limit the number of SKUs.
Surviving stores suddenly found themselves in the position where they could not differentiate between themselves and Wal-Mart, because the brands disappeared. All stores basically have the same merchandise now. If it's not the exact same brands, it's the same quality level. Even the dollar stores (which have been in a merger frenzy recently!) can't compete on price. These stores sprang up to challenge the inefficient retailers of the 1990s, and can't compete with Wal-Mart. For that matter, even office supply stores are struggling as people don't buy many office supplies and Wal-Mart sells the few that people do still buy. (Guess who else is in a merger frenzy?)
People love Target, but it's a clone of Wal-Mart right now. If you don't like Wal-Mart, you don't like Target. The regional chain K-Mart is struggling. How do they differentiate themselves? They don't. Their stores are tragic.
Sears is the store everyone loves to hate, but they sealed their own fate when they got rid of their decent clothing and brought in el cheapo low quality clothes. Sears had one shining moment when it could have reversed its fortunes: It bought Land's End, one of the few places that has decent quality clothing these days. I thought they'd fill their stores with Land's End, which would make them unique and competitive. They didn't (they never seemed to know what to do with the brand!), and now they're in a death spiral. If you have Wal-Mart quality clothes, you might as well go out of business.
What we're seeing right now is a huge generational shakeout in retail. Any store that isn't Wal-Mart must (1) match Wal-Mart's sophisticated logistics and prices, (2) has to differentiate itself in some niche, or (3) goes kaput. You can tell which industries are going away soon by looking at mergers and outright collapses.
What's going to eventually happen is Wal-Mart and Amazon will be the last two retailers standing. Amazon is a logistics company which is trying to build out a physical presence with warehouses and faster delivery. Wal-Mart is a retailer which has become a logistics company. They're trying to build out all the new stuff Amazon already has. At some point, both will be the same company. Having two companies do the same thing will be so inefficient that Amazon will probably give up on retail and become an IT infrastructure supplier, probably with Wal-Mart as a customer.
When you say "fuck Wal-Mart" or fuck anything (except for my cat) you're ignoring these large trends in society. Wal-Mart in one way or another was inevitable as soon as the first computer was invented. It just took them about 20 years to go from a good idea to dismantling retail. If not Wal-Mart, then some other store would have played the same role. The "fuck you" reaction is basically saying change is bad and we should all be shopping at A&P and Roses like we did in the 1970s, paying higher prices because of extreme logistics and operational inefficiency. Why don't we go back to using a 286, too?
(Score: 2) by Dunbal on Saturday May 16 2015, @09:11PM
The "fuck you" reaction is basically saying change is bad and we should all be shopping at A&P and Roses like we did in the 1970s, paying higher prices because of extreme logistics and operational inefficiency. Why don't we go back to using a 286, too?
No, it's a reaction to people who bitch about Wal Mart and all the "evils" it represents, but continue to shop at Wal Mart. No one forces anyone to shop there instead of "A&P and Roses" except the idea of saving a few bucks. Well those few bucks of "logistical and operational inefficiency" happened to be supporting inefficient jobs. You can't insist on rock bottom retail and then wonder where all the retail jobs went. Tell me, in the near future when everything is made by robots who exactly do manufacturers plan on selling their products to if they don't have any actual employees? You'll have perfect efficiency and everyone will be broke except the factory owner and the guy who repairs/installs the robots. Inefficiency is not necessarily a bad thing if it keeps people employed. The alternative is when they come with pitchforks to smash your factory. How efficient is that?
(Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday May 17 2015, @03:34PM
If our system holds back technology progress so people can keep doing jobs they are less efficient at than the technology, then our economical system is broken and needs to be replaced. Perhaps we should think about a basic income for everyone rather than slowing down innovation.
(Score: 2) by Marand on Saturday May 16 2015, @10:03PM
They stagnated as 1970s retailers well into the 1990s, until they went kaput. (These are stores young people have never heard of, like Kings, Roses, and so on.)
Not exactly related to anything else you said, but I actually saw a Roses store a few years ago somewhere in the southeast US, so they aren't quite dead yet. Understandable to think they're gone, though; before that, it had been so long since I'd seen one that I thought they went out of business.
(Score: 2) by PizzaRollPlinkett on Sunday May 17 2015, @10:22AM
Wow... something in the back of my mind ... yes, here it is: http://www.vwstores.com/ [vwstores.com] ... "Roses was purchased by Variety Wholesalers Inc. in 1997" ...
But I'm a little shocked that they're still around, but I guess they serve small communities other retailers won't go into or something. Yeah, a shocker that they're still in business. But it's not the same Roses we knew and loved in the 1970s, it's someone who bought the name.
(E-mail me if you want a pizza roll!)
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday May 17 2015, @03:30AM
People love Target, but it's a clone of Wal-Mart right now. If you don't like Wal-Mart, you don't like Target.
Um, no. While the two chains are certainly competitors, Target is about a comfortable shopping experience. Wal-Mart is about low prices.
(Score: 4, Interesting) by Thexalon on Saturday May 16 2015, @07:54PM
The thing is, what's smart for one company is really dumb if everybody does it.
The reason is that Peter's costs are Paul's sales. So if Peter manages to cut their costs, then Paul's just lost a bunch of revenue, and has to cut their costs too. But their costs are paying Peter, so now he's lost sales too, and so forth. And that in a nutshell is why businesspeople usually don't understand economics and macroeconomics in particular: they're only looking at their own role in the system, not the system itself.
The only thing that stops a bad guy with a compiler is a good guy with a compiler.
(Score: 2) by sjames on Saturday May 16 2015, @08:24PM
It's easy to blame Walmart when we see other operations that treat their employees better making a fair profit. Its the same pool of consumers. It's true that people should avoid the Walmarts of the world if they can afford to, but that's not the whole story.
For example, quality. It does make sense to pay a bit more for quality, but that presumes you have a reasonable basis to judge quality BEFORE you buy. Too often "quality" brands at some point pull a fast one and just re-brand the same crap that is also sold as a no-name product. Wityh that happening, many consumers must rely only on price. If you're going to be ripped with poor quality either way, you might as well get ripped off for a few dollars less.
TFA is showing us a company that was willing to accept a little less on this quarter's report in order to show better results next year through better employee loyalty.
(Score: 2, Insightful) by nitehawk214 on Sunday May 17 2015, @03:50AM
I think Wegmans is proving this isn't always the case. It is a rare thing for a company to compete and win against Wallmart, and nearly unheard of for a company to do this while being so loved by both customers and employees. Most markets have a Wegmans/Publix like chain because of this.
Though you are right, Wegmans is being anti-capitalist in providing this to people. They could simply focus on being slightly-less-shitty than Wallmart and still be successful. I fully expect if they were publicly owned, this is what they would be.
"Don't you ever miss the days when you used to be nostalgic?" -Loiosh
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday May 17 2015, @04:52AM
We are between two Wegmans grocery stores and there is a Walmart (with grocery section) even closer. We rarely buy food at Walmart, in particular the produce quality at Walmart sucks while Wegmans produce is the best I've seen pretty much anywhere in the eastern USA.
Some of the earlier comments on Walmart pushing brands out of the market could be true. In the last few years, Wegmans seems to have less brand name packaged goods and more house branded stuff (which often isn't as good).
One pet peeve is that no one here in the east has consistently good avocados, they often have inedible black lines through the flesh. It's to the point that I suspect a conspiracy -- the California avocado growers keep all the good ones for local sale...!
(Score: 2) by kaganar on Monday May 18 2015, @02:11PM
(Score: 1) by nitehawk214 on Tuesday May 19 2015, @12:22AM
Costco avocados are pretty decent usually. They get them super green, so you usually have to wait a couple days before you can eat any them, but once they are ripe and in the fridge they might last at least a week.
Or they would if avocados lasted that long at my house.
"Don't you ever miss the days when you used to be nostalgic?" -Loiosh