I’ve been to grocery stores in several European cities. They feel incredibly cramped to me, compared with their American counterparts.
Ed
I wonder if warehouse space is considered ‘retail’ space in this calculation.
Our system seems to require FAR more warehouse space than in other countries (by observation).
The Trader Joes around here typically limit their size to 10,000-15,000 square feet, though that’s not so obvious when you go into one (unless you know it is occupying only part of the building another grocery store used to, like I do for the one near me).
While some argument can be made for “we have lots of room”, there’s also a massive amount of hard-to-justify building of retail space just to keep up with the corporate Joneses. Example: Home Depot plans a site in Hadley, MA (for example). Lowes, who previously has never had any desire for a site in Hadley, now builds a completely unnecessary store adjacent to the Home Depot because heaven forfend that there should ever be a Home Depot without a Lowes within easy driving distance. Otherwise, Home Depot would gain sales at the expense of Lowes. In the meantime, yet more countryside gets paved over for no good reason.
CVS is a major offender. They seem to be bound and determined that there should be no more than a mile between any two CVS drug stores. (Another Hadley, MA example – CVS built a large new pharmacy despite the fact that there were already two CVS stores within a five minute drive, as well as a Stop and Shop pharmacy and, I believe, another large supermarket/pharmacy right next door.
And let’s face it, the economy depends on new retail space being built at a regular clip. If no one is putting up buildings, then no contractors are working and no additional tax dollars are coming in. So the zoning boards roll right over and spread their legs, even if there’s no practical justification for new retail space and not enough road capacity to get cars there.
I question the accuracy of the figures in the OP, and wonder if there is something being included in the US figures that is skewing things. It also seems to me that some of you are comparing city centre supermarkets, that you may have encountered on the European tourist trail, to the large out-of-town stores where you buy your groceries back home. But Europeans also tend to shop at giant hypermarkets out in the sticks, rather than at the Tesco Metro beside the Tower of London.
In my brief visits to US supermarkets I haven’t noticed a greater range of products on sale. There were differences, sure - less store-brand stuff, more brand names; more variety in frozen food, less in chilled; limited choices in bread and cheese; few stores sold alcohol.
Could it be the lower price of fuel in the US, making it possible for mega-stores to be built further away from population centers where land is cheaper, and attract people with such large ‘open space’ stores?
I wonder if those figures include the area of the stores’ carparks. US stores tend to sit in their own lot, surrounded by huge carparks on at least 3 sides, whereas European stores tend to be part of a group of stores all on an existing street frontage.
Also retail wages are lower in the US so the stores can afford bigger premises and to stock more each of more items.
Is that the one on Paseo? It’s not tiny, but it’s a lot smaller than the Whole Foods and I think all the other normal grocery stores.
The US does not lead the way. Here in Saudi we have hectares of retail and commercial space that is unused, and which is underused. I just got back from the US, in comparison the stores there are packed to the gills with customers.
Two things come to mind on this one:
1 - Cheap fuel may be a big factor (as i expressed in my above post), or the willingness to drive to a more desirable store, where more desirable means open spaces.
2 - There is a big difference between the open spaces in city stores to stores in te 'burbs, if you only went to city stores, those are pretty crowded.
I live in a pretty in-town location. I suspect that it is simply a massive misallocation of capital expenditures. Everything here is overbuilt.
There’s a rather obvious correlation there between retail space and population density. Note the author has, conveniently, NOT included other lightly populated Western nations like Canada or Australia, which doubtleslly are up around the U.S. figure, thereby making the USA look like more of an outlier than is actually is.
U.S. retail stores are bigger because space is cheaper. You’ll also find the average home is a lot larger. You’d probably find the average playground or city park is larger. Everything’s bigger than it will be in, say, Italy, because there’s more room.
It appears that this is at least partially due to the (intentional or unintentional) mislabeling of the graph. I’ve so far been unable to find the source for all of the data, but this article from the source quoted in the graph states, in part:
Note that it specifies “shopping center space” whereas the graph states “retail”. That’s a very misleading mislabeling of the data. Also note that the article states that Israel is #4 at 3.3 square feet, so the graph is obviously leaving out some data points that fall between the US and Sweden.
I’m an American who spends a significant amount of my time doing real estate consulting in Europe and am currently working on a project involving German malls. In my admittedly non-scientific observations, European retail is much less likely to be in organized shopping centers. I wouldn’t be surprised to learn that total retail space per capita is not significantly different between the US and western Europe, but data of this sort is not as widely available outside the US and small unattached retail space is notoriously hard to gather data on even within the US.
The grocery stores I’ve been to on both sides of the pond were about as cramped (or non), I know examples for both cramped and non. The kind called “convenience store” in the US are pretty much missing in much of Europe.
The “supermarkets” in the US are often the size of a Euro “hyper” (which is bigger than an Euro “super”). One of the differences between Euro chains is how much they cramp aisles and how often they change the floor layout - Alcampo in Spain is horrible because everything is cramped, the layout keeps being moved and you may go on Monday and have lamps in one place (right beside the lightbulbs, cables, etc) and toys in three, go back the next Saturday and have lamps in two places (a good distance from the lightbulbs, which are now in a different spot than electric-stuff-not-bulbs) and toys in five. Leclerc also in Spain (haven’t been to one in France) has very wide aisles and never changes the basic layout; they may have a section spread and shrink (toys for Christmas take over a lot of the outlying areas) but not move.
My WAG was the same as for the first reply, that it’s just another case of “we have space, so we use it.” After all, many of our “hypers” need driving and many of our “supers” don’t; in much of the USA, you need a car to go anywhere farther than your bathroom, so I think it makes sense that there will be more similarities between our “need a car” markets and your “always need a car” markets than between our “don’t need a car but it’s bigger than a grocer’s” and your markets. I’ve never seen an American store that was equivalent to those Euro “supers”.
The little stores are similar; the huge ones are similar; the malls are similar. The size of European “supers” is MIA in the US as far as I know (and I’ve only spent 5 years there).
And when Walmart goes completely solar, they’ll lose energy efficiency as a limitation and turn the planet into one, gargantuan Wally World!
It’s probably also the widespread popularization of warehouse style “big” stores.
Lowes and Home Depots where back in the day all we had was the tiny True Value Harware. Grocery stores and general retail are going to the Super Target and Super WalMart style stores.
Radio Shack and mom & pop electronic stores are now replaced by Best Buys and Circuit Citys. Little pet supply stores are now PetSmarts and PetCos. Little shoe stores are now DSW shoe warhouses. Dick’s sporting goods, Sports Authority, Bed Bath & Beyond… the list goes on and on.
And lets not forget the mega CostCos and Sams Clubs.
The public likes wide aisles, high ceilings, non-cramped displays, big open indoor spaces and that’s what they’re giving us.