Supermarket Groups make obscene profits – but they don’t share that little detail !

Of the top ten retailers in the world, 7 are supermarkets. Sam Walton, Walmart’s founder, died in April 1992. If he was alive today he’d be the richest man on the planet. How does a simple supermarket owner amass such a fortune in his lifetime? Especially considering supermarkets supposedly “champion low prices and value and fight for the consumer”!

So how true is that Walmart’s slogan … “everyday low prices”?

It’s not true! And it’s not possible to make that sort of profit or revenue by simply driving down overheads, by economies of scale or through large trading volumes. It can only be achieved by having massive profit margins and by selling perceived quality but using cheap (unhealthy) ingredients as normal. Walmart is the biggest, but it’s not alone. A report commissioned by Deloitte Touché & Tohmatsu (2018), listed the worlds 250 biggest (highest revenue) retailers. Incredibly 112 of them are supermarket groups. That’s not including the likes of Amazon or Target, who do sell food and grocery items, I’ve only listed the pure supermarket operations. Of those 250 retailers, 7 of the top 10 AND the top 4 are all supermarket groups – 1)Walmart; 2)Costco; 3)Kroger; and 4)The Swartz Group – owners of Aldi and Kauffman. Excluding The Swartz Group, which only declares revenue, not…