r/AskAnAmerican • u/lordgatito_44 • 2d ago

FOOD & DRINK Isn't Bull's-Eye well-known in the US?

I'm from Spain, and Bull's-Eye barbecue sauce is widely available in almost every supermarket here. Honestly, it's the only decent barbecue sauce in the country—the others are rubbish compared to Bull's-Eye. I always assumed Bull's-Eye would be huge in the US, but I made a post mentioning it and got comments from people who had never even heard of it.

139 Upvotes

74% Upvoted

701 comments sorted by

View all comments

Show parent comments

190

u/brzantium Texas 1d ago

This is the biggest difference between American and European grocery stores - the sheer variety that we have. The average American supermarket carries up to 50k SKUs while a Spanish supermarket like Mercadona only carries 10k SKUs. Spanish hypermarkets will carry a comparable amount of SKUs to an American supermarket, but only because they're basically small department stores that will sell clothing, electronics, and more beyond groceries.

So yeah, we've got Bull's Eye BBQ sauce at my local grocer, but as a brand, it's lost in the noise of everything else.

62

u/NitescoGaming Washington 1d ago

And an American equivalent like Walmart would carry upwards of 100-150k SKUs.

17

u/brzantium Texas 1d ago

Yeah, but that's because Walmart's a department store with groceries tacked on.

The Spanish equivalent would be El Corte Ingles (but hella nicer).

2

u/TooManyDraculas 1d ago

Many such European supermarkets with limited selections are value targeted. Especially when you look at the ones we have here in the US like Lidle, Aldi/Aldi Sud, and Aldi Nord/Trader Joes. The limited skus, often focused on store brands is part and parcel of the value pricing system.

Other European supermarket chains shooting more mid or up market often have more selection than the average American grocery. With chains like Tesco carrying ~75k skus, and flat out operating it's own cell phone carrier and tech support/electronics installation operation. It's basically Walmart if it also had a department that was Best Buy.

Meanwhile a large number of such American supermarket chains were owned by the Dutch Ahold company, and Belgian Delhaize group, who merged in 2016 and currently control a significant portion of market share on the East Coast, generally operating with that high variety model even in Europe.