Extra Foods Gives Produce Section a Spring Tune-up

FTLComm - Tisdale - March 29, 2001

This week Tisdale's Extra Foods store and it is most likely other outlets in the chain have upgraded and remodelled their produce departments. This is a regular occurrence as we featured pictures of this department one other time showing the visual complexity that greets the shopper. With a huge marketing chain like this one the designers and specialists who have created these environments have obviously done extensive research into what affects the customer, what will make them feel good about the place and want to come back time after time. Having attempted to talk to local management on several occasions it is clear that little if any local thought goes into this or any other part of running this outlet. If you are shopping in the Tisdale Extra Food outlet there are several things that you need to prepare for and all are remarkably contrary to the really beautiful and exciting visual presentation you see on this page. While the over all look of Nipawin, Melfort and Tisdale's Extra Food outlets are esthetically pleasing and designed to be appealing to the customer those same environments are designed to take extreme advantage of you. The stores maintain abnormally low environmental temperatures throughout the year, so much so that you will notice that all staff dress much as they would were they working outside on a fall day because the temperature in the store is usually in the low 60ºF. Why this is deliberate policy is not known but it is not an accident. Product pricing in this company's stores and that includes "SuperStore" is designed to gouge the customer. Deceptive labels suggest that a product is one price but to get that price you must purchase specified multiples otherwise you will actually pay a price higher than competitors. In order to make this extraordinarily complex, these pricing strategies routinely involve using minimum and maximum in reverse so that the customer will be confused. These strategies are deliberately designed to cause shoppers to make mistakes, mistakes that will produce greater profits for the store. Management and supervisory personnel in the Tisdale outlet consider themselves above and beyond ordinary. Customers are treated by them as of little more importance than something to be trampled This seems like an extremely harsh statement but after months of observation and having to step aside to make way from one of these guys while shopping, it is clear that their attitude fits perfectly with their pricing strategy In every case management and supervisory staff expect customers to make way and step aside when they come down an aisle. You will need to test this one out for yourself but expect to be checked. The fourth caution is that of reject and aging fresh produce. Produce that is showing signs of deterioration is routinely removed from the regular displays, put in different packaging at reduced pricing. This is a fair plan and you can often appreciate some real value with these bargains, but on several occasions I have discovered that products that are not just losing their appeal, but completely unusable products are often put at the bottom of such packages, Since the products are sealed in plastic you have no way of examining what is underneath and if you can't see what's there, expect to be cheated.