People sign petitions to get a grocery store.
Not a hospital. Not a school. A supermarket.
Towns organize campaigns. Local officials court the company. When a location is announced, it makes the news, and real estate listings nearby start mentioning the proximity as a selling point.
For a grocery store.
Now hold that next to a fact about the industry. Supermarkets operate on some of the thinnest margins in American business. A couple of pennies on a dollar of sales. There is no room for anything fancy.
So how does a chain in that business generate the kind of devotion normally reserved for sports teams, while charging more than the discounter down the road?
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It is not the free samples. It is a specific and unusually patient strategy, and most of it is invisible while you are standing in the store.