Here is one of the hardest places in America to run a grocery store.
The suburbs north of New York City.
Rent is brutal. Labor is expensive. Property taxes are among the highest in the country. And your customers can drive fifteen minutes in any direction to a national chain, a warehouse club, a high end organic grocer, or an actual New York City specialty market.
Every advantage belongs to somebody bigger.
Now here is a family run Italian grocery in Westchester County that has not just survived there. It has expanded, and it has done it by making its stores into places people visit on purpose rather than out of necessity.
There is a bar inside. With beer on tap. In the grocery store.
That sounds gimmicky. It is not. It is the single sharpest piece of retail strategy in this entire article, and once you see the logic, you will notice it everywhere.