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Food prices steering more shoppers to discount grocers (1/4ページ)
独系ディスカウント店アルジ（テネシー州ナッシュビル）でスパゲティ･ソースを探す客のロン・グリーンさん。低価格商品やＰＢ商品を買い求める客が増えてきたためディスカウント店は店舗を増やす計画だ（ＵＳＡ ＴＯＤＡＹ）DISCOUNT-GROCERS -- Ron Green shops for spaghetti sauce at an Aldi store in Nashville, Tenn., on Thursday, April 24, 2008. Some discount grocers such as Aldi are expanding their store operations as more consumers come to their stores looking for discounts and private-label brands to save money. (Gannett News Service, Shelley Mays/The Tennessean)Food prices have climbed so much in recent months that Veronica Martin no longer buys her favorite Entenmann's crumb cake.
Now, the retired 63-year-old who lives in the Nashville, Tenn., area shops for items at Aldi, a Germany-based discount grocery store chain where instead of crumb cake, she can stock up on $1.19 private-label cans of fruit cocktail for dessert.
"The prices keep going up," Martin said. "Canned food doesn't go bad, you can have it for hundreds of years."
As food prices have reached historic highs, a growing number of shoppers are flocking to discount grocery stores to buy basic staples such as milk and tomatoes and purchase more private-label items. Stores such as Aldi, known in the industry as limited assortment stores, often sell items at about 40 percent below a traditional grocery store's price because of private labeling and competitive pricing, according to food and retail consulting firm Willard Bishop in Barrington, Ill.
And limited assortment stores are benefiting from the economic downturn, according to Willard Bishop. The nation's 2,789 limited assortment stores accounted for about $16.8 billion in sales in 2006, and that figure is expected to climb 9 percent over the next five years.
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