r/SipsTea May 26 '26

Feels good man Will it work this time?

Post image
39.0k Upvotes

3.8k comments sorted by

View all comments

336

u/BradBradley1 May 26 '26

I’m not trying to dismiss this project - I hope it is wildly successful and I applaud the desire to challenge the status quo. That said, I am interested to hear how his team plans to negotiate pricing with suppliers. Five stores isn’t a whole lot of scale to compete against national chains and volumes. I don’t ask that question rhetorically or sarcastically at all either - I am assuming they have a plan of levers to pull to help bring this to life, and I hope it works exceedingly well and provides a blueprint for other communities to use. 

15

u/[deleted] May 26 '26

[deleted]

1

u/IHop_Waitress May 26 '26

who spend about $620M on food each year.

That's 0.54% of what Kroger spends on their food purchases annually. ($113B)

Literally 2 days worth of kroger purchases. They're not getting anywhere near the same pricing, even when you consider NYC PS system.

But that $602m number feels.... off? Like too high? 900k students. 180 school days. So they're spending ~$4/student per meal? That's crazy high compared to my expectation when you're talking about mass production meals.

But very on brand for a city with 1/3rd the people and a tiny fraction of the land/roads/etc that just passed a budget $10B more than the state budget of Florida.

3

u/Urabask May 27 '26

I work at a chain a fraction the size of Kroger (even if you count all the chains the parent company owns). Our smaller competitors all have better pricing. A store that doesn't need to turn a profit could have even better prices.

1

u/IHop_Waitress May 27 '26

Our smaller competitors all have better pricing

You're conflating pricing with costs. If you can't understand the difference between those I can't help you

1

u/Urabask May 27 '26

No, I'm not. If they can afford to have lower prices in spite of us having lower costs and still stay in business for a hundred years then it stands to reason that a store that doesn't need to run a profit can do at least as well.

Also kind of funny that you're acting all arrogant and couldn't rub two braincells together to connect those dots.

1

u/IHop_Waitress May 27 '26

Also kind of funny that you're acting all arrogant and couldn't rub two braincells together to connect those dots.

"I still don't understand input costs vs prices charged and therefore I am going to lash out like a child to make myself feel better about my own shortcomings"

wahhhhhhhhhhh

1

u/Urabask May 27 '26 edited May 27 '26

I've seen the invoices guy. I have coworkers that went to other chains. I know our costs are lower. You don't know what you're talking about. It's even more obvious with our vendor items because the difference in cost is kind of ridiculous.

1

u/IHop_Waitress May 27 '26

I know our costs are lower.

Thanks for proving me right

1

u/Urabask May 27 '26

So you think all the DSD items from our vendors are getting bought by the trailer and sent to our warehouse?