I was in Whole Foods yesterday where about 1/8 of the sales floor is a nutrition department and couldn't help but notice despite a packed store, that department was deserted. Still plenty of LARGE ($250+) baskets making their way out of Whole Foods full of various other items from throughout the store.veteran+ wrote: ↑January 7th, 2024, 8:28 am I would love to see the data on how much they actually sell in the vitamin/supplement department.
What could be the sales per square foot in that part of the store? So much space dedicated to this category.
The labor to stock these mostly small packages is quite different than that of other departments.
I ask because I have never witnessed this area to be busy at any Sprouts I have ever been in (Florida, Colorado, California). And often there is no knowledgeable clerk in that department.
In the case of Sprouts while there is not much traffic in the department, the few large baskets Sprouts sees, typically have an item or two from the Nutrition department. Would Sprouts lose that entire basket if the department was removed/scaled back?
Sprouts nutrition department runs like the GM/HBA department of a grocery store with the single unit sales and different distribution.
This is not a high sales department but it is very high margin.
The same can be said for how they are running their center store with very strange products hardly anyone is buying. Same type of effort as restocking a nutrition department.
Their entire strategy (cutting promotions, focusing on "picky eater" groceries that they feel will get them higher margins) is basically taking the nutrition department strategy and applying it across their entire store.
Theft has also become an issue in that department. An issue they seem to not be doing much about. One store near me has a very knowledgeable employee who is a "lead clerk" over that department, but they have that employee on the cash register 90% of the time. The departments are right next to the door in many locations. While the manager's office is also often in the front corner in that department, the way the office is made/positioned the manager has their back or side to the department and isn't watching it from the office, if they are even in the office in the first place.
You don't need much volume if you have Nutrition/Organic foods. Study Natural Grocers. These stores hardly do any volume yet they stay open and they are profitable. They do not pay top of market wages (trying to be polite on my comment here), do not have any in-store prep/service departments...