No frills: Encyclopedia II - No frills - No-frills supermarkets

No frills - No-frills supermarkets

No-frills supermarkets are recognisable by their store design and business model.

• They do not decorate aisles or even fill shelves. Instead, pallets of the products on offer are simply parked alongside the aisles, and customers picking up products will gradually empty them. When all items on a pallet have been sold, they are replaced. Prices are given on plain labels.
• Queueing at the checkout is relatively common, as staffing levels reflect average demand rather than peak demand. At actual peak times, customers often have to wait.
• Shopping bags are charged for, as they are seen as a frill. Thus many shoppers put their shopping in the old cardboard boxes that the products came in, put it directly in their trolleys, or buy shopping bags at a low fee e.g. 3p/5c.
• They work on the principle that in most supermarkets, 20% of products on sale account for 80% of what people buy. So they only stock the most commonly sold products.
• They only take cash and debit cards.
• They only open at peak times i.e. 0900-1800 Monday to Saturday.
• They often do not serve branded items.
• The trolleys have a coin-operated slot, to ensure that the trolleys are kept on site.
• They usually lack butcher, bakery and deli counters.
• Staff (even the managers!) sometimes do the cleaning.

Examples of no-frills supermarkets are:

• Sav-A-Lot (United States).
• Lidl (Austria, Belgium, Czech Republic, Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, Greece, Ireland, Italy, Norway, Poland, Portugal, Slovakia, Spain, Sweden, The Netherlands & United Kingdom).
• Aldi (Australia, Austria, Belgium, Denmark, France, Germany, Ireland, Luxembourg, Spain, Switzerland, The Netherlands, USA, & United Kingdom).
• No-Frills (Canada).
• Norma (Germany).
• Bónus (Iceland).
• Netto (Denmark, Germany, United Kingdom, Sweden, Poland).
• Cassa (part of the K-Kauppa chain) (Finland).
• Alepa (part of the S-market chain) (Finland).
• Denner (Switzerland) used to be a no-frills retailer, but has started polishing its image.

Adapted from the Wikipedia article "No-frills supermarkets", under the G.N U Free Docmentation License. Please also see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki