flanner - as usual very edifying and a fun read. Some comments:

<All of which said, Wal-Mart's not only ahead of Carrefour in sales, but actually had sales greater than the other four mega retailers (Tesco, Carrefour, Metro and Ito-Yokado) combined.
Can't possibly be the fault of third-rate management, can it? Bentonville Buffoon's>

sounds like those Buffoon's are an investors dream


<The other three (Tesco, Carrefour and Metro), by contrast, have shown extraordinary sensitivity in understanding new markets and adapting their operations to local peculiarities.>

we'll see how visionary Tesco will be in its foray into the ultra-competitive California market with its super-duper convenience stores!

Let me say that i am a Wal-Mart hater due to their many well-documented unfair labor practices and ruthless competing - forcing suppliers into favorable contracts, etc. - actually extorting them and because Wal-Mart is a huge supporter of right-wing causes - even though they are getting away from rabid right-winger religious zealot Sam Walton's iron-fist control where, like the Swiss Migros chain, did not sell booze... and recently the morning-after pill and now sell anything, I feel Wal-Mart, though arguably great for consumers, has a deleterious effect on society.

Migros built a number of hypermarkets on the French side of the border, because their clientele was deserting them for the lower French prices. They still don't sell alcohol directly in the store, but they were obliged to add a liquor & wine store in the attached shopping gallery. Also, Migros didn't take Visa and MasterCard, but they knew they had to in France, because if you don't, you're dead.

One thing I like about going to Migros in France is that some of the Migros brand products (with the CHF price printed clearly on the item) are cheaper than in Switzerland when you convert the price. And in the gigantic chocolate aisle, prices are no more than about 2% more.

Speaking of chocolates... Aldi, who i think originally in Germany used chocolates as one of their key selling points - and Lidl and similar no-frills discount food stores - not hypermarches seem to be flourishing in France.

Carrefour recently began price cutting across the board - they say - and proudly display a sign saying they will match any price - i wonder how the down-market Aldi type places are impacting the overall grocery market?

I have been to extremely few Aldi and Lidl stores, because they are extremely rare in the Paris metropolitan area. But I know that they bother some people, because there was a big exposé on a public affairs show a couple of years ago which showed conditions at one of the two chains (I don't remember which one). One of the reasons that prices are low (it was said) is because they don't bother to have any storage room for the products. So all of the pallets of dairy products, meats, etc., were shown being delivered next to the back door of one of these stores, where everything sat in the heat for at least two hours before it was brought into the store. True? False? A common occurence? I have no idea, but the report was clearly effective since I remember it.

Aldi (and to a lesser extent also Lidl) have had some bad press in the Netherlands. Especially regarding their terms of employment: long work hours, low pay, few breaks, too little staff etc. Up until a few years ago they also did not have scan-cash-points. So the cashiers had to memorize all the (three of four digit)codes for the products themselves!

Aldi and Lidl were growing very fast in recent years, so they were gaining market-share very quickly. The largest retailer in the Netherlands (Albert Heijn, part of Ahold; one of the largest retailers in the world, they own Stop&Shop, Giant, Tops and US Foodservice in the USA) started what is now called a price-war in 2003. The rigorously lowered the prices of a lot of brand-name products. Every other supermarket followed. So at this moments prices in the Netherlands are among the lowest in the EU and the winning of market-share bij Aldi and Lidl stopped.

Btw they could start a price-war, because in the Netherlands you are allowed to sell products below their cost-price. We for instance have a lot of 'buy one, get one free' promotions in the supermarkets.

One other thing; when I was at my local supermarket yesterday, I watched the shopping-carts very close...and waht do you think....they have four-wheel-swivel-wheels!

So it is not just a french 'problem'..... ;-)

I must say that I still don't consider it a problem. Only when one of the wheels is jammed the cart is hard to steer, but otherwise....

It is probably what you are used too!

One good point for hypermarche:

the clerks get to sit down at the cash register

One negative point:

The customer has to bag his/her groceries

Jeannette

In Florence last month i saw my first supermarket with a truly self-serve cashier system - and not talking about U-Scans in many U.S. supermarkets.

When entering you took a hand-held computer or such and scanned each item as you put it in your shopping cart and then just handed the device to the clerk when leaving and paying automatically i believe like the store had your info.

Not sure how it really worked but never seen nuthing like that.

The same system is now used in selected supermarkets in the Netherlands (especially the Albert Heijn XL).

In the AH XL you can get a hand-held-scan, when you scan you loyalty card from the store. You can just do you shopping and scan every product while shopping. At the end you put your hand-held-scanner back in the rack and you either pay electronically (debit-card) are you can pay with a special assigned casshier. After that you can just leave the store and put the stuff in the car! Randomly they will check a few customers out to see if they have scanned all the products.

It truely is a very efficient system. No more standing in line, just scna your products and put them directly in you shopping bags.

@Karina!
>One negative point:
The customer has to bag his/her groceries<

As is custom in almost all of Europe. Almost never will your groceries will bagged! I only encountered this system in the USA and a very, very rarely at a supermarket in Europe. Unfortunately....

All my large local supermarkets, Tesco, Morrisons and Asda, ask if I need help with bagging.

Waitrose supermarkets in the U.K. have a similar self-scan system. After scanning your items, you can pay using a machine which reads your credit/debit card and ask for your pin. You can do all your shopping without having any dealings with a member of staff, although Waitrose staff are the best. It is much quicker and easier than waiting at the check-out.

You don't need help with packing, as you pack your items in the bag as you scan them. Waitrose issue long-life shopping bags, which also saves on the cost of plastic bags.

Not only will they bag my groceries but they will also walk me to my car and load them in the trunk.
I think it's very hard on older people in France to bag their groceries. The clerk won't even lift heavy items. You have to unload them on the counter and then place them in your cart.
Years ago, the cashiers would not even say "bonjour" and "merci". Now they seem to be a bit more friendly and even say "bonne journee". Maybe in the future, they'll have baggers to help you bag your groceries :-)

They bag your groceries in the Picard frozen food supermarkets.

But as a general rule, I would say that the French have a different take on the elderly. Domestic assistants are free of charge for many elderly people, relieving them of the problem of having to haul groceries from the store themselves. As absolutely all of the presidential candidates are in favor of developing more and more jobs for assisting the people who need help, it is doubtful that cashiers will ever be called upon to bag groceries for customers. In fact, it is considered by many to be an unwanted interference: people have different ways of packing or sorting their purchases, which a "bagger" will never understand.

Some supermarkets, especially in Paris i've seen, advertise a home delivery for a minimum amount of grocery purchase.

Absolutely true. Both my Monoprix and my Franprix have free delivery for 50€ of purchase. In richer neighborhoods, you sometimes have to pay 6-8 euros for the delivery.

Actually, though, I have more and more colleagues who are ordering 80% of their groceries on the internet sites of the hypermarkets -- www.ooshop.fr for Carrefour and www.auchandirect.fr for Auchan, among others. www.telemarket.fr is also popular. Telemarket was the online pioneer more than 20 years ago, back in the days of Minitel. All of them make you pay a certain amount for delivery, but for working mothers, it is considered to be a godsend.

Jack - just curious is Minitel still around. I think Coco said it was but can't remember.

"Domestic assistants are free of charge for many elderly people, relieving them of the problem of having to haul groceries from the store themselves."

Kerouac, this is NOT true. Domestic assistants have to be paid, except possibly for very low income people.

And the excuse that people prefer to bag their own groceries in their own way is ridiculous. Do you really believe that the elderly and women with children would not appreciate having their groceries bagged by the cashier or a bagger?
Yes, Picard does bag your groceries and I've shopped there quite often. I've never heard of anybody complaining about it.

"Domestic assistants are free of charge for many elderly people, relieving them of the problem of having to haul groceries from the store themselves."

Karina, I am afraid that you are sadly misinformed if you see anything false in this statement. Please contact the Cotorep of your department for further information if confused.

Regarding the fact the you find it ridiculous that people prefer to bag their own groceries, you should visit the other thread here regarding the disappearence of free plastic bags in France, where an American user of reusable bags mentions that the baggers have no idea how to fill such a thing properly. If you personally prefer to wait with your arms folded while the cashier scans your items, perhaps you should have your arms (or your brain) examined by a medical professional. I have never seen a cashier in France refuse to help a person bag their groceries when they truly need assistance. In fact I see it every day in my local Franprix, which has a number of decrepit old customers as well as others who are mentally retarded. I find the behavior of the Franprix cashiers exemplary with these customers. I would be appalled if they provided the same service to all of the young healthy construction workers buying beer.

In reply to PalenQ, yes the Minitel is still alive and refusing to die. It was such a fabulous invention (and free!) that it caused great harm to the development of the internet in France for a long time. However, it will not last much longer due to ADSL and cable connections -- a whole other ballgame -- regarding which France is apparently the world leader after having lagged for so long.

"I have never seen a cashier in France refuse to help a person bag their groceries when they truly need assistance."

My elderly mother shops at different stores. She goes to Carrefour and Geant and has NEVER been offered any help with her groceries. She can hardly lift a pack of water bottles but the cashiers have never even stood up to help her.

I am very familiar with the domestic assistant program and my mother is NOT eligible for them, even though her income is not very high.

And YES, I like not having to bag my own groceries. It's part of good service. I don't see why you think I should have "my head examined" for that.

Oh my goodness, you should ask the downstairs maid to come with you next time after she has done your foot massage.

Kerouac,
It may sound strange to you because you're not used to it. If you are accustomed to having your groceries bagged, you would miss it when you are not receiving this service.
On the other hand, a French person who is used to having doctors make house calls would be surprised that one does not get this service in the US.
It's all a matter of expectations.
Karina

I find that when you have to bag your own groceries, the checkout line moves much more slowly, since you cannot pay and bag at the same time. Combine that with the glacially slow pace of customer service in France to begin with, and it makes for very long lines at checkout.

Interesting, because I have read that French cashiers handle more than twice as many customers as cashiers in the United States, but that may be due to lack of conversation.

I was trying to hunt up some reliable satistics, but this is all I found for the moment:

Chez Lidl, les caissières doivent enregistrer 45 articles à la minute (environ 27 dans les supermarchés classiques), rendre la monnaie en 30 secondes, et expédier le client en deux minutes.

Lidl may not be representative. Isn't it a German chain? And an extremely low-cost, low-overhead one at that—the Ryanair of supermarkets.

Yes, Lidl is German-owned, but it opened its first store in France in 1988 and there are now 1050 Lidl stores in France (out of a worldwide total of 5600) -- so most of its regular French customers find it to be French enough.

I'm always amazed at how fast Aldi cashiers move the items thru - breakneck pace - nevertheless lines seem ubiquitously long - part of their cost-cutting plans i guess. And don't cater to 10 items or less - buy a few items and you'll be stuck behind several carts overflowing ahead of you.

We have Aldis in America and they don't bag groceries either i understand... appealing to the low-price seeking consumer.

Call me a tacky lowbrow tourist, but I really do try to visit local supermarkets when traveling - it is a great insight into the culture. We often get to Paris just before Christmas, and if time permits we do make a stop in an Auchan to pick up some of the nicely prepackaged chocolate gifts, so much so that friends have come to expect it.
There was an Auchan hypermarket in southwest Houston in the 1990's when the area was just being developed. At the time it was something of an oddity and people actually went there just to see all 54 checkout lanes open at the same time. I went there because they had the BEST croissant and selection of cheeses to be had in town. It was also a great place to find all sorts of "exotic" ingredients for ethnic recipes, and at prices well below what one would see in smaller specialty shops.
The major public antagonists of the place were union organizers, who picketed with signs decrying "foreign ownership." Not sure who were the real foes of the place (this is Texas after all, and most deals are done behind closed doors, the epitome of low deeds cloaked in high words) but it went away, much to my chagrin.

flanner - not that I am in any way a fan of WallyWorld, but they are far from amateurs. Simple minded in the sense of retaining focus on business rather than the socially infused "business of business", but it's rather like Hollywood - they produce schlock because that's what people buy. And it is not just one country - they are now close to monopolizing Mexico. Costco seems to be staking out a middle ground and doing quite well at it.

Back to shopping cart wheels.

I went to Carrefour at the Bay 2 mall in Collégien this morning, and the very first thing I looked at was the steering system of my shopping cart. The two front wheels swiveled and the two back wheels were straight.

Aha! I thought. Some people here have been talking through their hat! But then I noticed that there were two models of shopping cart in use -- on the other model, the four wheels swiveled. Nobody seemed to give the least bit of thought to which sort of cart they were using. This was equally true at the Leroy Merlin hardware hypermarket next door -- also two sorts of cart, just like at Carrefour. Leroy Merlin is owned by Auchan...

kerouac, thanks for coming back to this. You've saved me from making a special trip to France just to photograph shopping carts!

But seriously, it's interesting that they would have both types of cart. Perhaps they have finally realized that the "four-swivel drive" is a flawed design?

Anselm

No idea. I will have to visit other establishments before I can see a trend. The Bay 2 mall is rather recent (no more than 2 or 3 years old); I want to look at an older store, even though shopping carts probably don't live more than about 5 years at most.

I have also done some research on the swivel-wheels here in the Netherlands; up until now (visited about 5 supermarkets in the area) I have only found four-wheel-swivel-carts..... And have not yet encountered people facing real problems managing them....

Maybe a new difference between the US and the EU?? In the US mostly two-wheel-swivel, in the EU mostly four-wheel-swivel??

seems like the 4-wheel swivels ones would be more manouverable than two-wheel swivels... and in more congested aisles making a turn around easier?

And of course harder to coordinate than just two-wheel-swiveled carts.

Aren't many of the shopping carts in European stores a lot smaller than the usual ones seen in US food stores?

I would say so.

And the carts found in Sam's Club or BJs in the US compare in size with European automobiles.

Dukey, yes, in a Monoprix, the shopping carts are smaller. But in a hypermarket, the shopping carts are hypermarket size.

Carts in the Carrefour i often go to in Saran seem exactly the same as in supermarkets at home, size wise.

I think it's a question of urban zones or not. Shopping carts in the middle of Manhattan are small. Since I moved to where I am now, I have never used a shopping cart in my neighborhood -- only a basket, to make sure that I don't buy more than I can carry. In my old neighborhood where I sometimes used a car, I would use a shopping cart if not on foot.

I'll be in the UK next week and will undoubtedly be in at least one "supermarket" if that is the correct term and now I am certain I'll be looking at the wheel configurations on those carts!