Why do we keep driving to far away stores that are understocked, understaffed and don't care?

[sixdogs]

They're following what I call the Grandy's Bankruptcy Model(tm). It goes like this:

Restaurant (or store) A has a decent business going and things are good. One day Restaurant B opens up across the street, taking half their customers. Restaurant A, which is now making half as much as before, panics and tries to figure out how to restore their margins. Their thinking is always the same - "let's use cheaper ingredients and employ less staff, that'll surely bring our customers and our profit back." Surprisingly to them, their now worse experience drives away even more customers, causing the owners to double down on their cheapness, resulting in a death spiral that inevitably leads to bankruptcy.

Rarely do they realize that their only chance to win that war is to get better, not worse, even if it means increasing costs and charging more. It doesn't always work out as some businesses are destined for failure, but offering a worse product with a worse experience is just asking to be put out of business.

That is very true. Right now out here is a major chain that was recently purchased by another group and the first thing they did to try to increase margins was to downgrade food quality. I drove by recently and at peak Sunday breakfast time there were only a few car in the lot. Another chain across the street--with great food--was packed. But, what do I know? I'm just a customer.

 

[ultrarunner]

I remember when a company I was working for gave us the lecture on how Just In Time inventory would save so much money and be so much easier as they transitioned to a Kaizen Toyota based system. Some idiot thought this would work in the United States: a vastly larger geographic area to deal with than Japan. They filed for bankruptcy two years later, cause the parts could not get on site on time. We all lost our accumulated C stock in the company that then, over night, went to zero. That's how it works.

That was the direction of Corp America... Just In Time except when it wasn't.

Toured Toyota NUMMI now Tesla plant....

It was like a ballet with steady stream of rail and trucks delivering parts Just In Time.

 

[PILOON]

Here our chamber of commerce is always promoting 'buy local', problem is you can't find anything you need locally.
Forget fuel costs and time, even those higher on line prices often sound good.
Best yet is on line from offshore but be prepared to wait.
But then plan ahead.

 

[Larry Caldwell]

My town shopping is for staples.

Car and tractor parts, oil and filters, diesel and gasoline, tires, groceries, prescriptions, building materials, feed and seed, veterinary services, clothes, iron/brass/copper, ammunition, and the occasional meal out. All these things would be in stock in any small town, except for ammo. I'm fortunate that I have a local manufacturer who buys components by the truckload.

My online shopping is for stuff not in stock locally. In the last year, these have been purchased online:

An oscilloscope and test probes.
Signal generator.
Transistor/capacitor/resistor tester
A small propane forge.
A lab quality microscope with video capability.
Specialty metals and chemicals in small quantities.

None of these are typically available in a small town, though the local compounding pharmacy is a good chemical supply, albeit expensive. I buy most microscope reagents online.