Dear Customers,
Now that the first of three patriotic holidays of the summer is behind us, it seems like a good time to do a little spring housecleaning. I know I’ve raised this issue before, several times in fact, but just like spring housecleaning it has to be done – at least annually.
Many decades ago, some genius, in the hopes of increasing sales, invented the term, “buy one get one free”! What it was designed to do was to make customers purchase two of something – even if they could only use or only wanted one! Thanks to scanning register technology, the first item of a BOGO sale would ring up FULL PRICE! Then, when the register identified the second item, it would ring up ABSOLUTELY FREE!
Here at Costa’s Supermarket, we always thought the practice discriminated against small families or worse, single households. If you’re living alone do you really want two 5lb bags of flour in the pantry? Besides tying up needed cash, you run the risk of your surplus going out of date, or your storage are becoming over-stocked!
It wasn’t a hard fix, but here at Costa’s Supermarket we decided to instruct the cash register to divide the regular price by 2, effectively giving each and every customer the same great price while at the same time not requiring them to buy more than they need!
In much the same way, several weeks ago, the advertisers decided to use the price 4/$14.00 on Perry’s Ice Cream. Now how many people can afford to keep 4 containers of ice cream in the freezer? They take up a lot of room and would most likely deteriorate in quality before you finished them. I overheard several people bemoaning the fact that they couldn’t even find room for that many tubs of ice cream – no matter how delicious!
At Costa’s you didn’t have to buy 4 tubs because the cash register knew to divide $14.00 by 4 and only charge $3.50 per tub! Just one more way that it pays to shop with your local home-town owned and operated grocery store!