What Unusual Aisle Layouts & Product Combinations in Your Supermarket Drive You Nuts?

In My Humble Opinion
1

They moved the canned soup in Walbaums Supermarket from aisle 11 to aisle 4 last night and that got me thinking: Who in the hell decides what products go where?

Now I’m not talking about end cap promotions or the placement of more profitable items at eye level, I’m talking those strange product mixes you find within each aisle and those instances where items that normally compliment one another are at opposite ends of the store.

The one thing I do know is there’s absolutely no consistency. Whether you’re comparing two different supermarkets across the street from one another or the same store in a different region, product placement is very unique and quite erratic. I don’t know why that’s the case, I just assume you’d see a little more consistency. Either these competing chains all use different market research firms or they throw caution to the wind and let the store managers use their own discretion.

Here’s what I find most perplexing about the layout at my supermarket:[ul][li]Aisle 1: Fresh Produce - Fine. But instead of also stocking salad dressing (which is in aisle 4 with the vegetable oil) and croutons (which are with the bread in aisle 12) my supermarket opts to keep the baby food & diapers at the end of that aisle.[/li][li]Aisle 5: Beer, Soda & Water on the left, bagged chips, pretzels and housewares on the right. Wouldn’t it make a lot more sense to put the nuts and microwave popcorn from aisle 8 in the spot where the mops and light bulbs are – and move those items with the cleaning products in aisle 3?[/li][li]Pasta in aisle 9, grated cheese and jarred tomato sauce in aisle 11. What gives? Take the canned fruits and jelly & move it to the peanut butter aisle – that’ll free up enough space for the Ragu & parmesan.[/ul][/li]I know my local store isn’t the only one to have everything so screwed up. I’ve encountered this phenomenon in every supermarket I’ve ever been to. I hope I’m the only soul out there who’s troubled by such trivial matters, but if not, what layouts in your local mart most bother you?

2

The major stuff isn’t usually that big a deal for me; I shop at the same grocery store so I know their layout.

It’s the “homeless” stuff–the kind you find on endcaps–that drives me nuts. Stuff like Carmex. It’s everywhere and nowhere. And the little spice-pack that you add to two chopped avocados to make guacamole…they’re never in the same place twice! They just float around the produce section; it has taken me 10 minutes to find them!

And I once spent half an hour trying to find those long plastic candle-lighters at Wal-Mart. Wouldn’t you think they’d be with candles? Or at least that someone at the store would know where they are? I found plenty of other lighters, usually at the checkout stand…but where are the long lighters? Maybe near the charcoal? The lighter fluid? The “barbecue” section? The backyard section? WHERE THE HELL ARE THEY?

They were with the Duraflame logs and chimney sweepers. Over in the home-repair section, by the paint and toilet seats and drawer knobs.

That makes sense.

:rolleyes:

3

Frozen ‘meat substitutes’ (ie, veggie burgers, soy chicken nuggets (which rock, btw) aren’t where I’d assume they’d be in a local store (with the frozen vegetables). They’re not. They’re over by the ice cream. Why, I do not know, but it’s vastly increasing my consumption of Turkey Hill Peanut Butter Ripple ice cream (which rocks as well). Maybe I should sue.

I hate that the seafood section (with live lobsters - ick) is right next to the produce section. I don’t want to smell your dead fish as I buy my lettuce, thank you. Put it by the meat section, please.

4

Another pet-peeve of mine is when they take the majority of their stock from the normal area so they can stock an end-cap with it. I went to the grocery store to find batteries for my camera…I went to the film/photo area to find them and was told, “Oh, most of 'em are on a display with a bunch of other batteries.”

“Which one?”

“I think aisle 9? Or 12. Somewhere in there.”

After wandering the aisles for several minutes–b/c she didn’t specify which end of the aisle they were on–I found them on aisle 14.

With the Hallmark cards and gift wrap.

WTF???

5

There are two things I buy regularly that can be hard to find: instant breakfast (sometimes with coffee, tea, cocoa mix; sometimes with pancake mix and other non-cereal breakfast foods, which may or may not be in the same zip code as cereal) and granola bars (sometimes with cereal; sometimes with cookies and crackers; in one store with the peanut butter and jelly).

6

My local store hides canned mushrooms. It would be far too logical to put them anywhere near other canned vegetables. Instead, they’re between the canned olives and barbecue sauce.

Matzos (No, I’m not ;j but they just taste better than plain saltines) are right across the aisle from pork in the meat case, which just seems wrong.

There’s two places spaghetti sauce can be found.

Then there’s the oddball stuff. French-fried onions - not a bad snack, and a better ingredient in casseroles. Last time I hunted them down, they were next to canned yams. Shoestring potatos, which share the same snack and casserole traits are in the baking aisle amid flour and Shake and Bake.

Ginger ale and tonic water have apparently been deemed bar mixers and are with liquor rather than other sodas.

7

Coconut milk powder. In with the coffee and tea. Of course. I mean it’s a milk substitute so of course it goes there. They should move the tinned coconut milk there too shouldn’t they?

This caper goes on in NZ and Australia. Fools.

8

I had one grocery store that not only laid stuff out illogically as all get out, but as soon as you’d figured it out, they’d move everything. I’m convinced it was intentional to make sure every customer had to walk up and down every aisle and hopefully buy more stuff.

But my pet peave is when the nothing-but-peanuts peanut butter is not with the peanut butter and jam and honey, but in the special healthy food'' section. Meanwhile, lime marmalade is also not with the other toast-covering things, but in the special international foods’’ section, as it is British. Vegemite and Marmite, meanwhile, are with the stock cubes and bouillon mixes. (and, no, I was not intending to put all of those on the same piece of toast :slight_smile: )

9

On the one hand, I’d wondered in the past if there wasn’t something like a Dewey Decimal System for grocery stores when I noticed that all of the local grocery stores have an aisle labeled:

AUTOMOTIVE
DOG FOOD

I’ve been meanin’ to pick some up, just to see if the car likes it (I’ll know, if it wags its little trunk lid - I’m not sure what it might do to a dog).

OTOH, yes, some stuff is apparently distributed in a manner meant to prevent its sale.

Q-tips are rarely found on the aisle-with-all-of-the-other-stuff-you-use-in-the-bathroom (with the notable exception of TP, found with other paper products). They’re usually hanging out with the baby stuff, but make rare appearances in the womens’ stuff section, which is usually close to, but not part of, the previously hyphenated aisle. Razor blades may be on the hygiene aisle, or at the register.

Most of that I can deal with.

My local Fiesta has olives in four places (that I’ve found - perhaps there are more?). They’ve got your average everyday canned, pitted, sliced and diced black olives, along with fake-Pimento stuffed “Spanish” olives grouped in with artichoke hearts (in glass - the canned ones are elsewhere), pickled okra, cocktail onions and various other vegetables you didn’t know about in grammar school.

Then over in the International Foods section, under Greece, you’ll find the Kalamata (apparently that spelling is as strictly held to as the spelling of the Libyan leader’s name) olives, under Mexico you’ll find jalapeno-stuffed olives and, finally, in the deli you can by, by weight, “mixed” olives or pick up Peloponnese brand Mixed Country olives.

The canned artichoke hearts, BTW, get to promenade with the othe canned “real” vegetables.

We soldier on.

10

Orange Skinner and I tried to find some candied cherries at the grocery store. Instead of being in the baked goods section, or in the toppings section, or near the ice cream, they were between soup and cigars.

11

Another thing I don’t get, why are the coffee filters in the diaper section? If anyont thinks that coffee filters are a good diaper substitute, they should not be allowed to have children, not should they be allowed to drink coffee.

12

Ever try to find those aseptic milk cartons?

In my regular grocery, the quart size ones are with the coffee and tea. The 8 oz. ones are with the juice. Other stores keep them next to the deli. Still others give them their own end cap.

13

My local grocery store likes to play hide and seek with the Shake and Bake. It’s never in the same place twice. I now buy more than one box at a time so I know I won’t have to worry about it for a couple of months.

[slight hijack]
Oh, and another thing I’ve been wondering about that same grocery store–why are there approximately 1.4 million boxes of ReadyCrisp microwave bacon set up in little displays all over the store? They’re everywhere! There’s little towers of bacon in the drinks aisle, the hair products aisle… even the automotive section has its own little personal bacon display.
What the hell? Did someone accidentally write in a few extra zeros on the restock form or something? Can the demand for microwave bacon be that huge? Is there some sort of microwave bacon cult activity going on that I don’t know about?
It really bugs me.
[/slight hijack]

14

Okay. Crackers/Cookies. Two seperate things to me.
Now, I can grasp why they’re on the same aisle, but -
why the hell are they* alljumbledtogether* :confused:
why must a human saunter up and down trying to locate their
favorite cookie or cracker in between each other?

It drives me nuts !

which is why I wander into the nuts)

15

Why does my favorite grocery store hide raisins in the produce section, instead of with the other dried fruits? And more importantly, why do I forget this each time I go there and waste 10 minutes searching for raisins amongst the prunes, apricots, etc?

Apart from that, either most of the food is logically arranged, or I’ve gotten too used to the odd arrangements. :slight_smile:

16

Now, if we were all to go in and ask “Where are the raisins?” (followed, in the case of olives, by “No, not that kind. Where are the Kalamata olives?” they might get the hint.

I asked the produce guy at a local supermarket about his arrangement of the fruit and veggies, and he said he decided on the basis of what colours look good together. I’ve also heard that they spead staple foods around just to make you go through the whole store to get the basics, in hope that impulse buying will take over.

17

I ran into an arrangement at the local Safeway this morning that struck me as rather odd.

Dog and cat food on one side of the aisle, and while I looked for the Iams, I was overwhelmed by the nauseating smell of laundry detergent, which filled all the shelves behind me. I had to wonder if that smell was seeping into the bagged kibble.

18

They do it to force you to wander throughout the store, and, they hope, make impulse purchases. There’s a very large new supermarket near me, and the cereal and the milk are on opposite ends of the store. Naturally, the milk is at the absolute farthest end.

19

Exactly it. I read an article in some magazine that talked about other things supermarkets would do to get more money from you… like bread and milk at different ends, the better deals on things are on the tops and bottoms of shelves, as opposed to eye level; they play slow music in an effort to get you to take longer… that’s all I remember…

20

Why is the sushi ginger in the olive/artichoke hearts section and not next to the rest of the sushi making stuff? Why does box stuffing go with pie fillings and canned fruit? Why are bacon bits in the pickle section? Why are dip mixes next to spray cheez in the cracker section and not near either sour cream or chips? Why is pomegranite juice in with the button mushrooms and baby carrots?

It’s no wonder I hate grocery shopping, with illogical planning like that.