Boro Park Groceries vs. Newspapers-what do you make of this?

cnc

Thu, Jan 26 2017, 6:19 pm

das wrote:

You have no idea what you're talking about. One of my favorite magazine, Mental floss, stopped publishing because they couldn't make the numbers work for them-and they had 100,000 subscribers.

If you crunch the numbers, with office rent and staff, writers, high printing costs, payments to distributors etc nobody's laughing all the way to the bank.

Mental floss ?
Was that really the name of a magazine??

amother

Black

Thu, Jan 26 2017, 11:00 pm

I really resent the claims that some people made that groceries make a fortune. My parents have a grocery. My father works from 6:30am and the store closes late at night. There is no vacation. Every erev yom tov, chol hamoed...It is hard work. Bh they are a busy store but they have lots of expenses. They are living paycheck to paycheck and are barely making it.

They are not a cheap store, but that doesnt mean they are making tons of money. Some of the much larger stores sell products for cheaper than this grocery gets wholesale. A small store just doesn't get amazing deals from the manufacturer. One of the reasons people shop in these small stores is for convenience - they deliver and people write down. You have no idea how much money is owed in the "book". You can't even imagine. Some people pay up slowly. Other people go from grocery to grocery and rack up bills everywhere.

A grocery is not a tzedaka fund. If you dont have money, shop around for deals elsewhere. Borrow money or get tzedaka from the right source. It's not right to have huge bill and not pay it. The wholesalers demand payment on time. Imagine you come to the store and they are out of half of the dairy items because the wholesaler wasn't paid. It can't happen. So guess who ends up taking out loans if necessary!

Im not involved in all details but I heard that the stores make as little as 15 cents per magazine. The magazines dont have to raise the price. They can just make a smaller percent themselves. I promise you that they make more than that. Every inch of space in a store (especially a small store) is valuable. Their time is also valuable. There is no reason they shouldn't cut a fair cut of the profit.