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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: 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?
(E-mail me if you want a pizza roll!)
(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.