I noticed the other day that added sugars are wildly prevalent in breakfast cereal, even the healthy ones (excepting plain shredded wheat). Each serving has 8g of sugar or more! And since I never just eat a single serving size – probably more like 4-6 servings in a meal – this is a sizeable sugar intake. Therefore, now I’m leaning away from consuming breakfast cereal, since I’m not wild about plain shredded wheat. Bummer, since it’s historically been my go-to for efficiency reasons (easy to prepare, easy to clean up, and reasonably cheap).
For now, I’ll instead go with some variation of overnight oats. But I don’t love overnight oats, so I need new breakfast ideas.
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I’m impressed with the local food co-op (WINCO) for their ability to offer radically lower prices than neighboring grocers (Albertsons, Fred Meyer, etc). I suspect this is because of scale and governance.
Scale – Oftentimes, market share growth requires expansion into less profitable areas. I can envision a grocery chain opening a bunch of money-losing stores, maybe out of desire to serve rural customers, or maybe delusional corporate leadership. Because you’re big, you can absorb the losses for some time without needing to take action. As far as I can see, WINCO limits its footprint to only highly profitable areas, so they don’t need disproportionately high margins at any given outlet.
Ownership – WINCO is employee owned. Albertson’s and Fred Meyer are publicy traded*. Presumably WINCO’s owners are more normal people, less liquid-type investors. Whereas wall street shareholders will chase the best returns, forcing the companies to hit relatively higher profit margins.
I view this as a good representation of the adage, “more expensive does not necessarily mean better.” Also a curious example how a nominally local “mom-and-pop” franchise can better a national chain. Or alternatively, how much value Wall Street carves out for itself.
*Albertson's itself is publicly traded, but has a lot of brands beneath it. The Fred Meyer brand falls under its parent company Kroger