Starting Your Grocery Store

A grocery store is a shop where food and other things used in the home are sold.

Is there a difference between a grocery store and a supermarket? Yes there are differences between a grocery store and a supermarket. I will quickly highlight a few points, so you can sure of what you want to establish, before I go into our major topic, which is grocery store.

Difference between a Supermarket and a Grocery Store

A supermarket is large self-service store that offers customers variety of foods, and household supplies. Supermarkets are well organized into formats using shelves to divide items into categories, with number or labels, placing similar goods together. 

 

A grocery store in the other hand is a store that sells food items to customers and nothing else. A grocery store is a small version of a supermarket that allows people to purchase dry food items, canned goods, and exotic foods or spices.

A supermarket is bigger in size, compared to a grocery store. Supermarkets are self-service stores that offer customers a variety of foods and household supplies. Supermarkets have special format for customer’s passage, use of shopping carts or baskets to pick up items purchased. A supermarket stores fresh grocery meat, poultry, bread, dairy products, fresh fruits and vegetables. Other items that can be found in supermarket include canned food, toiletries, baby goods, pet needs, medicine, kitchen appliances, etc.

Supermarkets sell at lower prices because they receive in bulk from either manufacturers or large distributors in order to avail economies of scale.

Some advanced supermarkets have banks, ATMs, bar, eatery and anything else that may attract customers.

A grocery store sells food items to customers and nothing else.

A grocery store normally has a counter behind which the grocer and his assistants would be. They would go around the store and bring whatever customers require.

You can Read: How to Start Your Supermarket Business in Lagos

Now That we have highlighted the major differences between a supermarket and a grocery store, let’s go on to our major discussion for today;

Opening Your Grocery Store

When people are looking for a particular food or ingredients that can’t be found at the corner store or neighborhood supermarkets, they typically go to a small grocer. Such retail stores sell food and items that are uncommon and not sold at bigger stores. Opening a grocery store can be very lucrative, if you know all the important things required to set it up.

1- Choose your niche, a niche is your area of specialty, you can for instance, sell in your store local foods or ingredients. You can specialize in selling perhaps frozen foods alone, you will have to ensure that all kinds of frozen food that people need are always in your store. You can also include food ingredients in your store

2- Rent a small store for your grocery. Rent in a location near a shopping center, restaurant, bakery or other stores in a good location.

3- Have in your store, nylons, or any other packaging items for your customers to carry their items after purchase. Most customers are not pleased when their purchased goods are not properly packed and are exposed. Remember only a satisfied customer would return to your store.

4- Source for food to sell in your store. Look for wholesalers and distributors of foods in your niche. Try to buy as many items needed for your store as possible to reduce transportation costs.

5- Organize your items in your store in such a manner that you can easily reach out for items requested by customer, without having to keep your customer waiting for too long. Remember customers hate to be kept waiting. Use shelves to arrange your goods, instead of littering them on the floor. You can arrange ingredients, oil, etc in a place and things like Garri, Beans, Rice etc in another place.

6- Don’t limit your sales to your localized environment, reach out to bigger store and they can direct their customers in need of local items to your store.

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