During the Jan.
Findlay, Ohio-based Fresh Encounter operates 100 grocery stores in Ohio, Indiana, Kentucky and Florida under nine retail banners, including Needler’s Fresh Market, Community Markets, Sack ’n Save Supermarket, Germantown Fresh Market, Great Scot Community Markets, Chief, Save A Lot, Remke Markets and King Saver.
Rep.
It’s really a market power issue, right? So we can deliver product, we can serve our communities just as efficiently as they can if I’m buying a truck.
Hakeem Jeffries : You testified, I believe, that grocery store conglomerates have used the pandemic to entrench their market power, and that process has hurt small and independent grocers.
As a result, our costs went up, meaning if four out of every five weeks we pay ‘X,’ then that fifth week we can pay less, we can buy in, we can be more efficient and we can try to flex and compete.
And why did we gain market share? Because I think consumers wanted a smaller, more convenient shopper experience, a cleaner shopping experience, places they could trust a little bit better.
If they can use undo power to influence their supply, undo power then to take that margin, keep it and apply it to smaller markets, they can wipe the small independent out of business.
Needler: The answer is, yes, we feel that we’re very resilient and we can be very agile because we are smaller.
Joe Neguse : Mr. Needler — and I know this has been discussed already during the course of this hearing — but independent grocers, which as you know, are family or employee-owned grocery retailers, often act as an economic anchor in their communities, attracting consumers, generating foot traffic.
I think a lot of us have either started our first careers in a grocery store bagging groceries, or we know somebody in our family who has.
If I’m going to buy as much as my competition, then hopefully that will allow me to have the same price That price is a very, very important determination in where people looks like a cheaper price than something that’s on my shelf.
That statistic that I mentioned — the fact that we’ve gone from 23% of grocery sales in 1993 coming from the four largest grocery chains to 70%, literally almost three-fourths of the entire market — is a sobering statistic and should alarm every American.
Needler: The crux of my position today is that if we could try to — Mr. Manne talks about the short-term impact of Robinson-Patman — but I think you need to look at it almost like a zero-sum game.
So what challenge we would be facing is, as costs go up, throughout the entire chain, from producers to transportation, we can point to a lot of things and the have already done a great job of articulating that — labor, freight, all very real costs that we’re experiencing.
Val Demings : Mr. Needler, over the past several years, Florida has seen a reduction of grocers in many communities, leaving many Floridians in food deserts.
My example would be that we’ve grown over the years because I’ve been able to take on a different type of store — a smaller format, a bigger format — and we’ve been able to be nimble and try to serve the community with what we’ve got.