Spoilage due to overstocking isn't just problematic because they have too much stuff sitting in the backroom that will never get sold. It also means they spent too much money buying and shipping that food, with shipping sometimes being the more expensive part (in addition to it being hard on the environment if you think of the fuel used to ship it and emissions it produces).
I'm not their ideal customer, mostly because I prefer cheap, processed, easy to store and make food (think mac-and-cheese). But if I was the type to shop at whole foods due to concerns about ethics and environmental friendliness, I'd be OK with this from that perspective. So long as there are some sort of options available, changing up dinner plans for the week isn't really a huge inconvenience. Maybe they can pitch it that way until they get it better optimized.
As a customer I don't really care about that kind of thing -- if a store consistently doesn't have stuff I need I'm just going to go somewhere else.
This issue strikes me as short sighted thinking by bean counters. It might save money in the short term, but you're going to lose customers and employees this way.
> Spoilage due to overstocking isn't just problematic because they have too much stuff sitting in the backroom that will never get sold. It also means they spent too much money buying and shipping that food, with shipping sometimes being the more expensive part (in addition to it being hard on the environment if you think of the fuel used to ship it and emissions it produces).
That doesn't matter to consumers. One of the purposes of a local store is that they buffer enough stock, so they almost always have available stock to sell. Otherwise, I'll stop going to that store.
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Q: What should you call an advice column for queueing theorists?
A: Q-Tips!
On a serious note, though, a store should understand how to queue stock, not just to minimize overages but to optimize sales. A store should never have an empty shelf, even if they have to put something else there temporarily.
I'm not their ideal customer, mostly because I prefer cheap, processed, easy to store and make food (think mac-and-cheese). But if I was the type to shop at whole foods due to concerns about ethics and environmental friendliness, I'd be OK with this from that perspective. So long as there are some sort of options available, changing up dinner plans for the week isn't really a huge inconvenience. Maybe they can pitch it that way until they get it better optimized.