The phrase “grocery store” may imply more than a single meaning. A large scale grocery store is also called a supermarket and a fruit and vegetable store is known as a greengrocer. Traditionally speaking, a grocery store is primarily established for the food retailing. A grocer (grocery store owner), stocks different kinds of foods and sells them to customers. Supermarkets are large grocery stores stocking products other than food, such as household items or clothing. Small grocery stores selling fruits and vegetables are known as produce markets in the US and greengrocers in Great Britain. Small grocery stores that predominantly sell snack foods and sandwiches are delicatessens or convenience stores.
In the US, the first grocery stores were trading posts, which sold food as well as household items, tools, clothing, furniture and other varied merchandise. These trading posts evolved into larger retail businesses known as general stores. These facilities generally dealt in dry goods such as flour, canned foods, dry beans and baking soda. Modern grocers are descended from general stores. Based on trust, these stores normally offer credit facility to their known customers.
The business of grocery stores is different in every country but the stores are similar in their principle selling of edible goods. The nature of these goods varies with local availability and traditional diet. American grocery stores range in type such as rural family-owned, such as IGAs, suburban and urban boutique chains like Whole Foods Market. All in one hypermarkets such as Walmart and Target has forced consolidation among the grocery business. Global buying power of the giants put an increased financial burden on the national supermarket chain and the traditional local grocery stores. In today's ultra competitive world, about the only unique selling proposition of a traditional grocery store is its closeness to a residential neighborhood. Many grocery stores that carry food products from a certain culture such as Indian, Middle-Eastern or Italian serve as meeting points for many immigrants.
Grocery stores in the developed western countries are far ahead on the evolutionary path or urban grocery stores. Same is the case with rural grocery stores. The rural grocery stores in the developed countries are rustic, with bare functionality and at best something like the trading posts of yore. The urban grocery stores are evolving in the urban cities of the developing world at more or less the pace of urbanization of the cities.
However some leading retail market chains are making significant investments in the major cities of countries such as India hoping to mop up a larger number of customers in the years to come. The traditional grocery stores in India have stayed very much the same way as far as outword looks are concerned. But at the same time, the profitability of these stores seem to have surprisingly increased as while not losing significant number of customers, these stores are reaping trade benefits from distributors by way of more freebies, POP and shop display. And this while some are doing well, most of the hypermarkets are staggering under the load of overheads spread over a relatively smaller customer footfalls. A very interesting fact is that many grocery stores in India are owned by the frugal and visionary Marwari community and there are many a business empire in India today that has its origins in a humble grocery store.
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