Item — HN Reader

Perhaps the most relevant point:

A closer look at its selection of items underscores the brilliance of Coulombe's limited-selection, high-turnover model. Take peanut butter. Trader Joe's sells 10 varieties. That might sound like a lot, but most supermarkets sell about 40 SKUs. For simplicity's sake, say both a typical supermarket and a Trader Joe's sell 40 jars a week. Trader Joe's would sell an average of four of each type, while the supermarket might sell only one. With the greater turnover on a smaller number of items, Trader Joe's can buy large quantities and secure deep discounts. And it makes the whole business -- from stocking shelves to checking out customers -- much simpler.

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I see the opposite side of that here in London. All the main supermarkets - Tescos, Asda, Morrisons, etc. - have very little in the way of product choice. Living in east London, I have to go well out of my way to find a different branch of Sainsburys or Waitrose to get certain products.

For example, "McCains Simply Gorgeous Chunky Chips", a variety of oven chips in beef dripping, is vanishingly rare; there's a Sainsburys in Bethnal Green which sells them, but that's going well into the city.

Similarly, for The Berry Company juices - things like açaí, blueberry, goji berry - I have to go to Waitrose in Canary Wharf. Other Waitrose outlets are hit and miss, with patchy coverage of the line; and there's virtually no chance of finding the products elsewhere.

I was amused to find once I went to a Tescos Extra that they largely just had twice the space on the shelf for the same number of SKUs.

From what I've read, Brits don't have the insane supermarkets we do here in the states.

Having grown up in the States and lived in London for nearly seven years, I have to agree.

It's not that UK supermarkets don't have choice, it's that US supermarkets are spoiled for choice. I mean, I went back home and saw a WALL of bread, and a long aisle where half was just cans of soup! For me, it's not just the difference between 10 different SKUs of peanut butter and 50+, but US stores seem to have much more stock of each SKU, too.

That said, YMMV.

Tesco's one of the world's most profitable retailers (I think it's #4 globally) and ASDA is a subsidiary of Wal-Mart. London's just a special case - where do you put an out-of-town superstore in zones 1 or 2 of the Tube map?

I wouldn't mind if they were in zones 4 or 5, but it still doesn't add much choice. Tesco Extra stores aren't exactly small, but they still don't have much choice in the grocery side.

If a different store had the range, I'd go there instead. But each store targeting a slice of the demographic pie has very much the same limited range with a tiny bit of diversity outside of store brands.