New supermarket openings - a revolution in quality

Just to let you know: there is an excellent new supermarket in Unterhaching now called Edeka / Simmel. Been there couple of times and its worth it! They offer an excellent range of products and the wine department is a paradise for those of you who are wine drinkers. There is also a huge fruit and vegetables section. Everything is really well presented and totally clean.

They also have self-checkouts - you choose if you want to scan yourself or if you need a shop assistant who helps you scanning or packing your products into free bags.

there are pictures of the store on www.simmel.de - go to "Entwicklung" and then "Bavarian store".

Check it out!

You mean this?

http://www.simmel.de/unterhaching.html

It's been open since November 2005. Self-Checkout sounds cool though.

Tried it and didn't like it. The stuff is all over the states and the lines are just as long as the manned ones. One question though: do the people behind you send stuff flying into your stuff like the cashiers do with the ultra small conveyor belts at every other shop?

No they dont. There is a separate paypoint in order to make quickly space for the next one..

The Tengelmann stores are also completely refurbished. The nearest new store to munich is Ottobrunn store. There have been several stores in Berlin already being converted into a completely new store design with more emphasis on fresh products, including a take-away counter.

www.kaisers.de - tradition and innovation - there you can find pictures.

Real near Frankfurter Ring has been offering self-service checkout for some time now, at least a year. It's ok...but they always have to have a few "floating" helpers cause many people can't figure it out...

Here are some pictures of simmel store.
Extra by Metrogroup also provides self checkouts and a good shop design.

I hate self-check out as a matter of principle. I ran into it in the states last year at Walmart and some hardware store and it drove me batty. If I wanted to do all the bagging myself I would shop in Germany.

And the self-check in at the airport (when you are tired, and have two young children in tow) more than pissed me off - long lines, no one to answer any questions, etc.

And when it comes down to it - they are saving on employees by making the customer do the work. (And a considerable amount, I've seen the numbers)

Shouldn't you get a discount for that? (rant over)

Didn't want to promote self checkouts- just some new supermarkets, because there has been a lot of discussion about awful stores here. I just want to give you some impressions-sorry! It seems that all the store which are opening from now on can't live without self checkouts...

Here is extra- big supermarket chain -by metrogroup, also running Galeria Kaufhof department stores, Saturn, Media Markt, METRO/Makro and real hypermarkets.

I like the self checkouts mainly because most people are scared to use them so the lines are much shorter..

However it is crap when you are stuck behind someone who thinksthey know what they are doing but does not

I dont know whatever happened to the Simmel self-checkout picture. The one above (obviously ) shows just the veggie- section. Well here it is again. As you can see there is a lot of space. They have also small checkout sections for a handful of things...

OOOOPS- SORRY !!! Here it is now...

Not to make this about self-checkout, but it is a concept that is part of a major change in focus for gocers (and retailers in general). Tesco started the trend of applying value-stream analysis (based on lean-manufacturing principles from the automotive industry) to grocery retailing.

The idea is to concentrate on the customer desire and to eliminate action that does not add value to the product. The customer wants the right product at the right time in the right quantity at the right price. This means focusing resources on ensuring that shelves are full, products are easily found, stocks are optimized and waiting is reduced.

Self-checkout gets the same work done at approximately the same speed as traditional check-out lines with less resources. The person that was checking you out before can now be assigned to labeling, stocking and customer service. You may not like it, but it's mostly a matter of getting used to it.

In a few years you won't even be doing that. You'll have RFID labelled goods that are automatically debited from your account as you leave the store. You'll bag them as you place them in the cart. Then you'll have a smart home that automatically replenishes goods that are staples and orders only the quantities needed for eating based on pre-determined menus (that you probably picked based on suggestions your home made since it knows your eating habits, diet goals, likes and dislikes and kids' allergies already).

There will be no more privacy, but think of the convenience.

RFID is already in the testing stages. I actually have less of a problem with that than with self-check out (as far as shifting the work from employees to consumer goes) since self-check outs save an average of 5 - 7 employees per self-checkout (depending on the store setup), where is the savings for me if I am doing the work of an outsourced employee?
Besides, I like people and like to see them keep their jobs instead of me having to do this.
RFID does not result in extra work for me, so that point is not a personal issue. The privacy thing is something else and a different can of worms altogether..

The point is not to outsource (outsourcing in grocery has more to do with stocking and logistics - you NEVER outsource customer service unless you want to ruin your business). The point is to assign the worker a task to do something that adds value to the customer experience (like helping you pick the right ingredient or making sure that you don't see an empty shelf).

How exactly does self checkout work? Better get the facts before I turn up there with cash and only cards work or vice versa.. How do they make sure you scan everything? How do they make sure people pay etc?

Atleast you don't have to deal with a frumpy Checkout person, or if you do you only have yourself to blame

Kza - I found this on the Real website:


I seem to remember that you could pay with cash as well as cards - it was just like a ticket machine - took both and gave change. According to the above text, there is a cashier responsible for the block of SB machines, but I remember that there were a few people walking around helping when it was needed. You basically have to scan each item through and bag it, and leave the bags in their holders next to the scanning machine until you are completely done. (free bags).

Ah - but the end result is less employees. That's also in the advertising for the technology (don't ask how I know ) They are not taking the 7 (for example) extra employees off the tills and adding them to the shelf-stocking staff. Nor are they taking the saved customer-service personnel in the airline industry and using them to help the customers (especially in the states).

I am all for customer service, low prices, capitalism, etc. and this is the way society and technology is developing, but it is not necessarily with the best customer experience in mind, but more to save costs and increase turnover (as in any business).

The Germans divide their food stores into 5 categories:
At first the locals (very small, around the corner) are called Nachbarschaftsgeschäft-"neighbourhoodshop". The bigger ones up to 1700 qm are called supermarkets, until 2400 qm they are called Verbrauchermärkte (Consumerstores)Tengelmann, Minimal, Hit... Everything above is more or less a SB-Warenhaus (Hypermarket) real, Wal Mart...
Apart from these there are Discounters- Plus/Penny/Lidl and the famous Aldi.

Germanys best hypermarket chain (due to what consumers stated to a consulting company) is GLOBUS. They only got nearly 40 stores (most of them in Southern Germany) but seem to convince with a massive choice and a lot of services and reasonable prices. (www.globus.net). They do not seem to force expansion- only two stores have been opened last year (Ludwigshafen and one in Chech Republic). The next one to Munich is Mühldorf am Inn.
In contrast to this, Rewes (minimal, penny) hypermarket chain "toom" openened about 20 stores , because they bought another chain and now run more than 80 stores all around Germany (www.toom.de). In early autumn 2006 Rewe will call all their supermarkets just "REWE" (except Penny) to underline and force their brand!!
Metros "real" (www.real.de) runs about 250 stores nationwide and Schwarzgroups (Lidl !) hypermarket chain "Kaufland" seems to be successful with more than 300 stores selling a massive range of products to nearly discount prices (www.kaufland.de).
More upmarket is "famila" (www.famila.de), divided into three regions (South-BadenWürttemberg/NorthWest-Lower Saxony and NorthEast-Schleswig Holstein and Mecklenburg). All in all they run about 110 stores.
Very popular is also MARKTKAUF- another hypermarket chain (www.marktkauf.de).
Widespread and popular is Edekas "E-CENTER" (Riemarkaden for example) www.edeka.de.
And of course WAL MART --not to forget (www.walmart.de).

There is a massive amount of supermarkets /verbrauchermärkte in Germany. It's a very local business.
REICHELT- Berlins famous food stores www.reichelt-berlin.de
EXTRA www.extra.de
EDEKA neukauf www.edeka.de
EDEKA aktiv markt www.edeka.de
EDEKA center www.edeka.de
(loads of other EDEKA stores www.hieber.de/www.scheckincenter.de/www.simmel.de...)
TEGUT www.tegut.de
COMBI www.combi.de
MINIMAL www.minimal.de(rewe)
HL www.minimal.de (rewe)
STÜSSGEN www.minimal.de (rewe)
KAISERS www.kaisers.de (kaisers/tengelmann
Tengelmann www.kaisers.de (kaisers/tengelmann)
ACCORD www.accord.de
PETZ www.petz.de (rewe)
SKY www.sky.de (coop)
WANDMAKER www.wandmaker.de (coop)
KONSUM www.konsum.de
AKZENTA www.akzenta.de
WASGAU www.wasgau-ag.de
DELHAIZE www.delhaize.de
PLAZA www.plaza.de (hypermarket by coop)
CITTI www.citti.de (hypermarket)
FENEBERG www.feneberg.de (Allgäu-region)
MIGROS www.migros.ch
MARKANT www.markant-nordost.de
MARKANT www.markant-nordwest.de
BASIC www.basic-ag.de (bio)
ALNATURA www.alnatura.de (bio)

The pictures below are from GLOBUS HYPERMARKET

Those pics look AWFUL! It's a SUPERMARKET, not a gallery where they can make a pile of fruit into a sculpture. Give me PennerMarkt anyday!

It may very well be the case that the end result is fewer employees. I am also certain that the manufacturers advertise this as a benefit of their systems. It is an easy way to sell the ROI of the system, even if that is not the true benefit of automation.

However, this has nothing to do with outsourcing. Outsourcing is shifting the process group to an external service provider. Outsourcing would be, for example, hiring an external company to provide the staff for your store. Some stores do not do carry out exercises like this while holding the best customer experience in mind as the ultimate goal. But those stores will suffer as a result.

The lean philosophy also has nothing to do with capitalism itself per se. It is directed at reduction of waste. That would equally work under another economic system. In fact, it is somewhat more compatible with marxist (and other classical) economic theory than modern economic theory because it assumes labour is what adds value to product (and product has intrinsic value), whereas modern economics theory assumes a subjective theory of value (where desire determines value and things have no intrinsic value).

In any case, am not sure any really well-run business has turnover as an ultimate goal. The point is not volume, but profit. By reducing waste, you can increase profit while maintaining the same turnover. You don't want to save costs, you want to avoid spending unnecessarily. There's a difference. Outsourcing, laying off your workforce and moving production to low-cost countries will save costs, but could cripple your business by increasing hidden costs (like storing and transportation of goods). Avoiding obsolete stock, extra packaging, unneeded space and other waste can increase profit (by saving cost) without having any net impact on workforce. Reducing a non-value add activity like scanning barcodes and making change reduces unnecessary cost that adds nothing of value to the product. Why should you, as a customer, pay extra for something that you could do yourself? Just to hear a heartfelt "thank you for shopping at Wal-Mart" when you get your change?

At any rate, I won't hijack the thread anymore with blah blah. I like self-scanning checkouts and the new designs in the stores.

Due to the bad quality of Globus Hypermarket pictures I'll add some of Reichelt in Berlin and some of extra.

Right Iceberg, you got me on the terminology (my bad). Still, I hate self check outs, unless I am getting something in return for doing the work. For the same price I'd rather shop where someone else does that work (and, if possible, the bagging).

Oh no DDBug! NO WAY do I want to have my shopping bagged, I prefer to do it myself, PROPERLY.
Supermarket staff are so shocked in UK/USA/Australia that I get my bags and start to fill it. Squaring and heaviest things at the corners / bottom, eggs on top etc etc rather than their way of doing it.

What are they doing, executing the staff?

They are waiting for you to tell them how to make it right

EDEKA HIEBER

Forgot to say that REWE has also franchise stores called "Rewe-der supermarkt" www.rewe-dersupermarkt.de

Famous minimal with W.Brandenburg meat/cheese/deli counter...

REWE also started to run a Bio-supermarket chain called VIERLINDEN- www.vierlinden-biosupermärkte.de.
There are stores in Düsseldorf, Cologne and other major cities to follow.

They also run Italians supermarket chain "Standa" and opened a first "Standa" store in Cologne with loads of italian food and delicatessen.

www.rewe-standa.de

see picture below

Who exactly do you work for abog ?

I agree with DK, EDEKA in Unterhaching is total shite. There is absolutely no order in where or why they placed their goods. People were walking around with a bewildered look trying to figure out where it was, that, which they wanted to buy. I was looking for salt, had to ask 2 employees who didn´t quite know where it was either, It turned out to be beside one of the shelves with cooking oil which was one of about 3 cooking oil shelves spread over the store. 20 freakin minutes for one box of salt. No fun. I shan´t go there again.
take care,
space

DK???

Well I just tried to show some alternatives (as I stated before). There have been so many here complaining about substandard supermarkets. I thought people might join a discussion- but all I can see is complainig again. Very useful. Keep on moaning strange people.

By the way : I am a teacher- just do this as a "hobby"

but isn't it a shift from low wage staff for the supermarket against high level staff from the company which develops and produces the high-tech equipment involved? How many cash regester jockeys do you trade in for an electrical engineer with CAD experience? Is the trade worth it on a local scale? on a global scale?

you can export a nifty gadget, but it's hard to export (or outsource, or has been mentioned even find, for that matter) a good bagger.

How about an automatic bagging machine?

RFID is the system the münchner Stadtbibliothek is using for its automatic booking / night deposit box (box because there's only one at the moment).

The RFID is still too expensive for use in retail food, the margins (1-3% usually).
Companies who are in the barcode industry are working on it, though.

Grandmother. Eggs. Teaching the sucking thereof.

Not that I think DDBug is old enough to be your grandmother

Noooo. The end result is fewer employees

@abog

An excellent point which everyone ignored.

@almostgerman

You sound like Arnold the angst ridden android. What a crock of shit! Most of the "low wage" staff in supermarkets are just ordinary people and the so called "high" wage staff are not electrical engineers with CAD experience. All the technology facilitating self checkouts has been around for years and the companies producing them do not require additional resource for this. It is programmers that make this possible.

When scanning was introduced in the eighties the unions were up in arms since companies selling these systems took the lazy approach that the total cost of ownership(tco) of these systems would show a return of investment(roi), that is fewer employees, What actually happened was that existing employees were redeployed and extra people had to be employed to manage these systems. Self scanning and RFID will have the same impact, it will end up requiring more resource. And to be honest I would rather interact with a real person than a machine when I go to the supermarket. Good checkout staff add value and my experience in Germany has been that they are for the most part as friendly and efficient as staff in the UK.

There's a lot of useful information there. Thanks for posting.

"Wheel" was talking to abog. Or are you all the same person?

Thanks to abog for the reviews and collection photos. In the last 12 to 24 months there has definitely been a small revolution going on in the world of German supermarkets. Compare and contrast the newly opened miniMal's and the like with the standard offerings from two or three years ago:


The above is not an isolated comment. The TT archives are littered with similar complaints. eg. Rotten food and German supermarkets.

Strange, My local Tengelmann, always has better looking,freasher produce than most of the other stores in the area. All the bad stuff is at places like Aldi and Penny. I usually have to goto Tengelmann to get the good stuff, cause all the others are as described in the quote above.

Why why why???

Why have they developed self check-out when they STILL don't have frickin' EXPRESS check-out??

(That's the check-out reserved for people with, say, 10 items or less. Mind, I would expect that to come to fisticuffs in Germany when somebody tries to get through with 11.)