The History of Grocery Stores goes to the times when grocery stores were set up as trading posts. These trading post not only sold food items but clothing, tools, furniture, and other miscellaneous merchandise. According to History of Grocery Stores these trading posts evolved into larger retail businesses known as general stores. These facilities generally dealt in "dry" goods such as flour, dry beans, baking soda, and canned foods. Fresh meat was also available from the local butcher, milk from a local dairy, eggs and vegetables were either produced by families themselves or exchanged for with the surrounding neighbors.
Now with the coming up of modern grocers—like supermarkets, greengrocers, and convenience stores. The traditional grocery stores have descended from general stores. Many rural areas still contain general stores which sell goods from indigenous cigars to imported napkins. In certain places, these may also handle goods deemed illegal by the local authority. These stores normally offer credit facility, a system of payment which works on trust rather than current day credit cards. In the past, this allowed farm families to buy staple products until the harvest arrived. Now also a village grocer owner will keep all necessities which the villagers require like oil,soap,grains,pulses,spices, match boxes and various other essentials. The History of Grocery Stores in India still witnesses the traditional grocery shops. People are quite loyal to their grocery shops. They find their basic ration for the month in these shops. Sometimes things are also offered on credit that only after building trust with the owner. The business of grocery stores vary from country, city and region.
European countries are hugely populated and have large supermarkets. It will almost undoubtedly never replace the local grocery store. However, 'Metro' stores have been appearing in town and city centres in many countries, leading to the decline of independent smaller stores, and large out-of-town supermarkets and hypermarkets, such as Tesco in the United Kingdom, have been steadily sapping the trade from smaller stores. American grocery stores are set up in different styles ranging from rural
family-owned, such as IGAs, to urban or suburban boutique chains, such as Whole Foods Market.
IGA or independent grocer alliance is the world’s largest voluntary supermarket network with aggregate worldwide retail sales of more than $21 billion per year. The Alliance includes more than 4,000 Hometown Proud Supermarkets worldwide, supported by 36 distribution companies and more than 55 major manufacturers, vendors and suppliers encompassing everything from grocery to
equipment items. IGA has operations in 44 of the United States and more than 40 countries, commonwealths and territories on all six inhabited continents
The History of Grocery Stores states that establishment of "all-in-one" hypermarkets such as Wal-Mart and Target has forced consolidation among the grocery business. The global buying power of such companies has put an increased financial burden on traditional local grocery stores as well as the national supermarket chains.
When a small grocery store is in competition with large supermarkets, the grocery store often creates its own niche market by selling unique, premium quality, or ethnic foods that cannot be easily found in a supermarket. A grocery store may also compete by being located in a mixed commercial-residential area that is close to, and convenient for, its customers.
Some local grocery stores may distinguish themselves from larger supermarkets by providing ready-made foods such as sandwiches, hot dogs, and ice cream. Although large chains have begun to add food service, smaller grocery stores have an advantage in that they can generally provide fresher and cheaper prepared foods, and a less busy environment in which to eat them.
The modern grocery store is an old saga in India with about 7.8 million retail stores, but most of those are traditional ones, which only recently started making way for hypermarkets, supermarkets and specialty stores. Modern trade in India is witnessing tremendous growth, especially in metropolis.
It accounts for 4 per cent of urban FMCG(fast moving consumer goods) sales but for the top 15 metros it is about 9.7 per cent of the total FMCG sales. For South Indian metros it touches about 16 per cent, because modern trade started there a little earlier. There are more than 3,430 modern trade stores in India now. With more modern format stores setting up shop in the country we are also witnessing an expansion in these segments in terms of availability of innovative packaging sizes, product
innovation and overall ranges.
Food products accounts for about 48 per cent of FMCG sales in the country and for modern trade the number is even higher, at 51.3 per cent. Like other Asia-Pacific markets, in India too, among the processed food segments, the breakfast cereals category is exhibiting a stupendous 40 per cent growth rate. Other growing categories are biscuits (26 per cent), vermicelli and noodles (28 per cent), beverages (24 per cent) and ketchup and sauce (29 per cent).Indians have an old fascination for home-cooked food, especially when it comes to lunch and dinner. With the changed lifestyle, the trend is changing and people have started showing interest in ready-to-cook foods. However, even today a majority of these consumers are willing to restrict the experiment to packaged foods and accompaniments meant for breakfast and snack time.
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