Yeah, that isn't how this works. Popular things are closer to the back of the grocery store -- milk, eggs, meat, produce, higher-volume soft drinks -- in order to force you to walk past everything else to reach them.
Ice cream is not that popular, so it could reasonably be stocked near the front of the store. But all the flavors are stored together, as you'd expect.
Engineers who make house calls are also not a thing in Detroit. You might see that happen in Japan, where airline CEOs have been known to make pilgrimages to call on the families of crash victims. But I'd be (pleasantly) surprised if the car companies have ever done anything like that.
People say this a lot. I think it's mostly not true.
Milk and eggs are at the back of the store because they're high-turnover items that require refrigeration. In literally every grocery store in my area --- Pete's, Whole Foods, Caputo's, and Jewel --- produce and high-volume soft drinks are both in the front of the store; in fact, the major soft drinks are stocked outside the store at Pete's, in the vestibule where the shopping carts are.
In no grocery store I have ever been in have the bulk of the milk and eggs been in the front of the store, despite the fact that stores compete with each other, and are a low-margin business.
Grocery store layouts are certainly optimized. But I don't think the "milk and eggs are hidden so you'll buy snacks" narrative makes much sense. The stores are loaded from the back, and easiest to refrigerate from the back, and having clerks constantly trucking milk from one refrigerator in the back to another in the front of the store seems pretty suboptimal. I think dairy placement is a constraint the stores work around, not an evil scheme.
> Popular things are closer to the back of the grocery store -- milk, eggs, meat, produce, higher-volume soft drinks -- in order to force you to walk past everything else to reach them.
> Ice cream is not that popular, so it could reasonably be stocked near the front of the store. But all the flavors are stored together, as you'd expect.
This part is actually more plausible than you'd expect, especially if you assume that details are slightly garbled by the N'th retelling.
Last year, we went to a convenience store to pick up some ice cream treats after a big hike. There was one of those mini freezers with a set of frozen treats right next to the entrance, facing the cashier. But there was also a line of full-sized freezers containing all the usual frozen goods (including frozen ice cream treats) in one of the aisles. Depending on which frozen treat you wanted, you'd either be picking it right up by the front door, or having to wander down an aisle to find it.
Yep, same with the grocery stores around here, they all have last-minute snacks and drinks at the checkout stands.
Ice cream tends to be somewhere close to the middle of the store. But if you're after staple foods in larger-than-snack-size quantities, you'll be doing some walking.
Ice cream is not that popular, so it could reasonably be stocked near the front of the store. But all the flavors are stored together, as you'd expect.
Engineers who make house calls are also not a thing in Detroit. You might see that happen in Japan, where airline CEOs have been known to make pilgrimages to call on the families of crash victims. But I'd be (pleasantly) surprised if the car companies have ever done anything like that.