Creates awareness of the "total supermarket" and its effect on the environment. Also suggests future changes to make the supermarket a better neighbor.Community/Rural/Urban Development, Marketing,

Tanaka, Joseph K.

English

Research Papers in Economics

Role of the Food Industry
in Advanced Supermarket Design and Refrigeration
The Supermarket - Friend or Foe of the Community?
Creates awareness of the “total
supermarket” and its effect on
the environment. Also suggests
future changes to make the
supermarket a better neighbor
. The area a supermarket occupies in a
community is considerable. It is more
than the number of square feet within
the four walls, it is the parking lot,
and it must include the access drives,
When you replace an acre or more of
green ground with an acre or more of
black tar and gravel for the top of
the building and the blacktop for the
parking lot, then the supermarket is
guilty of destroying the habitate of
countless living things. The
destruction of plant and trees is the
destruction of a source of life
sustaining oxygen.
I shouldn’t be too harsh ... because
the poor housekeeping of the supermarket
does sustain life. The roaches and rats
love the supermarket. The dirty
supermarket keeps them alive. These
forms of life are not ones that will
endear the supermarket to the heart of
the community.
The building and grounds must shed rain
and snow. The runoff adds to the
erosion and to the problems of
controlling our swollen streams.
The parking lot is a breeding ground
for air pollution. The automatic choke
may be the motorist answer to easy
starting of his automobile engine - he
is not bothered with the troublesome
adjusting of air to gas ratio but the
too rich mixture contributes to air
polution. The number of cars can in
time contribute sufficient contaminants
that will be injurious to health,
It can become so bad that a sniffing
monitor may some day be placed on the
112
Joseph K. Tanaka
Hussman Refrigeration Co.
St. Louis, Missouri
parking lot to determine the safe ledel.
Beyond that level the parking lot may
be placed off limits.
Some communities by law require
greenery on parking lots. I don’t
believe in legislative beauty.
Landscaping by law is stiff and staid
and standard. Voluntary planting is
the answer. Why not a planter box at
the base of your sian on the roadside?
Or why not a planter on the pole or on
the sign itself. Why not a potted
sign?
I have just submitted a master plan for
a shopping center with high rise
apartments, restaurant, shops and a
pier onto a lake. The lake must be
improved, dredged to provide marine
shopping. It is a total concept - you
live in the center, you shop there,
you entertain, you relax. This concept
was initiated by the owner of the
supermarket.
Why not a self-contained super
supermarket? Why not place it in a
glass bubble? A national chain of
supermarkets was contemplating a
market in a 200 ft. diameter Dymaxion
Geodesic Dome. The center of the dome
would have been 100 ft. above the floor.
Why not a bubble?
Drive up to the entering opening. cut
your automobile engine. Mechanical
fingers grab the car. Direct it to the
start of your shopping. You get out -
the car proceeds to a parking stall,Under the bubble is a controlled
climate. Why not - we have climatized
malls. It is one small steD to total
shopping. One will not have to worry
that rain of snow or hail will keep
your customer from your door.
I have found this to be true with a
St. Louis shopping center. I drive the
car from my garage into the sheltered
parking level of the department store
garage.
Snow is a problem. In one of the
Scandinavian countries, deep wells are
a part of the parking lot. Into these
grate covered openings, the snow is
bull-dozed.
Why not use the heat of the engine room
and pipe it to the parking lot and melt
the snow and ice.
Why not cover the parking lot with
colored asphalt??
Why not with astroturf?
The spillage of light onto near-by homes
must be controlled.
We must avoid the luminous polution of
our communities.
I quote from ECONOMICS OF POLLUTION -
Ed Dale ................... ’’For more than
a century, the average output of each
worker for each hour worked has risen
between 2% and 3% a year, This is due
nOt only to new machines, hut also to
better managerial methods and a more
skilled labor force. This is
PRODUCTIVITY.
We are not about to give UP
Productivity ..... and every increase
productivity adds to output.
This means electric power ... power to
heat and cool your store ....and heat
produced means smoke pollution by the
utilities.
It means cans and bottles -
It means steel with its air and water
pollution.
It means paper, etc and etc.
In 1957 - only 13 years ago - our gross
national product was 453 billion. In
1969, it was $728 billion, that is an
increase of nearly f30fl billion in tin
cans, auto exhaust, paper --- it is an
increase of 60%
The 13 years preceding the growth,
increase was only $100 billion --- and
in the second 13, it rose $300 billion.
In the next 13, it will rise more than
$500 billion” End of Quotation.
With our population and our rate of
productivity increasing, the problem of
solid waste disposal is reaching
monumental proportions.
The supermarket solved the problem with
the incinerator and ash disposal. In
increasing numbers local ordinances
prohibit the use of incinerators,
The reasons were obvious. Smoke was
polluting the atmosphere and ashes
were dirtying the clothes on the line
and the cars parked in the driveways.
You have turned to the compactor. It
makes big trash into little trash. In
time, what will we do with mountains
of little trash. We have been filling
mines, dumping it on deserts and
sinking it in the ocean and even
leaving it on the moon.
The compactor is a noise polluter. In
some areas it cannot be used during
certain hours,
You thought you had it made with non-
returnables. 1 was with a market on the
west coast recently. The market had
been in the planning stages for a year.
I asked the owner what are you doing
about glass and cans. His mouth dropped.
Yes, he is now considering what to do
with the returned non-returnables.
We need compactors for bottles. A
friend of mine is in the rock crushing
machinery business. He tossed a soda
bottle into his machinery and crushed
it into a fine powder. You could find
a bottle crusher in your back room.
You will have to seoarate bottles by
color into four separate bins. One for
clear glass, one for light green and
one for dark green and one for amber.
Many years ago I designed an oil can
crusher for filling stations. It
compacted the can and squeezed a few
drops of oil into drum, You may find
a can crusher in your back room.
A few days ago I was in a supermarket
checking on some Pecor items. Standing
in opened cases were frozen food items.
The cases were on the floor outside the
frozen food case, It was evident from
the frost accumulating on the packages
that they had been there for some time.
113If by chance, the ourchaser complains
about the thawed product, that the
taste had deteriorated or that the
nutrient value had been affected or that
the quality has changed the supermarket
will say that the case manufacturer is
at fault. The case is not holding
temperature or that the food
manufacturer is ship~ing inferior
products (you know how it is these
days!).
The fault is the manaqer. The chain
that started when that product, ~erhaps
string beans started to grow, was
nourished, ~icked and packed, ~repared
and uackaged to bring the best possible
product to the customer. The weak link
was the manager. He needs a stronger
moral responsibility of delivering the
best ~ossible food to his customer. If
he doesn’t, he is a foe of the customer
- he is a foe of the community.
Yes, there will be a tiqhter control.
This can mean tighter managerial
inspection, customer surveillance,
legislative action, etc.
I have an idea. The customer should
require a time temperature tape on
each box of refrigerated food products.
If the product sets in a higher
temperature than desirable, the tape
turns red. The longer it stays out, the
longer the red stripe or greater the
area. The customer would then be safe
guarded with a tell-tale indicator.
Wastes are the inevitable hy-~roduct of
our standard of living. The
manufacturer constantly strives to
reduce waste, use offal or scrap. A
classic example is the manufacturer of
bottle caps. He stamps hundreds of
discs out of sheet metal - what to do
with a sheet of metal with holes - a
smart manufacturer uses the sheets with
its holes to sandwich dust collecting
material and thus we have filters for
heat and air conditioning systems.
The manufacturer seeks to reduce the
cost of his product by reducing waste.
It is not the manufacturer that we must
worry about. ..it is us. As Pocjo sez,
“We have met the enemy and it is us.”
The amount of trash we discard is
mountainous. It affects the community,
the planet. You have heard over and
over again, we will suffocate in our
own trash.
Our rivers and streams are sewers. In
our time, you can remember seeing the
bottom of creeks. .yes, an occasional
tin can that will have rusted and
disao~eared by the time you re-visited
the area, not so with aluminum cans.
The air is polluted. Now we cannot see
to the bottom of our rivers. Soon in
our jets as we look to the bottom of our
ocean of air we will not see the bottom.
George Wald, Nobel Prize winning
biologist has said that “life on earth
is threatened with extinction within
the next 1!5 to 3fi years.”
Salvage is one way of re-usinq things.
Rut unfortunately, trends are toward
l-, not more salvage. Prices for ——
salvaqe, paper and rags have declined.
only the boy scouts seem to find it
worth collecting newspaper and
magazines. Even the trash collector
does not find it profitable to collect
paper.
The LIniversit,y of California says “each
American household of four throws away
enough heat energ,y in trash to run the
family car for a year”.
Imagine the energy that the supermarket
discards in trash, incinerators, etc.
The one place you are throwing money
away is overhead ...not the obvious
fixed costs but in the heat enerqy of
the fluorescent lames and ballasts.
There is sizeahle heat loss in 150 f.c.
...why not use this heat.
There is another area of community
concern. The supermarket is the target
of robbers and burglars.
I know one shopper who will turn around
and will not enter a store if an
armored money truck is stationed nearby.
She feels the store is enticing enough
to robbers without encouraging them
with additional attractions.
What can we do? The complete credit
card store is one answer, but it will
not be the universal answer. Less cash
on the premise is not the answer. The
hold-u~ murders of Convenience Stores
in the southeast this summer are
factual evidence that a few dollars is
reward enough for acts of violence.
The answers are not forthcoming.
Partial answers such as keeping small
cash on hand, safe box, armed guards,
etc.
As attractive targets for burglars and
robbers, you are not friends of the
community.
114I am not organizing a group to “StaInP
out Supermarkets, Eat Out.”
I believe our economy must continue in
productivity and population.
The waste that is the result of this
productivity must receive the same
creative know-how for its reduction or
elimination.
The supermarket must be more than a
supplier of demands - it must always be
aware of its place in the community.
It must continue to be a friend of the
community. l
EDITOR’S NOTE: The discussion which
followed these three presentations
centered around the following major
issues:
1. Legal and social Pressures u~on the
supermarket to become more aware of
its environment in terms of
esthetics, waste removal , traffic
and pollution; as well as the cost
of respondin~ the other pressures.
2. Differences in design concepts
between inter-city and suburban
stores.
3. Research in the whole area of
refrigeration, how are priorities
set? Who will take the lead, etc.?
The Food Distribution Research Society
is deeply indebted to the Hussman
Refrigeration Company for conducting an
excellent tour of their research
facilities. The Society also wishes to
express its thanks to Vr. Edward J.
Schnuck for providing the opportunity
for the group to tour one of his firms
supermarkets.
115

THE SUPERMARKET - FRIEND OR FOE OF THE COMMUNITY

Abstract

Similar works

Full text

Available Versions

Research Papers in Economics