The Death of the local Cheese Shop
For a rat who has short legs and no recourse to a driving licence, the proximity of food supply is possibly more critical than to other critters. In my case, if I do not have a close and regular supply of cheese I will starve! No, I will! Really! Cheese is life blood to rats and mices. It defines the reason for our existence, and keeps us close by. All right, I admit it is a bit of a luxury and too much is probably not such a good thing, but the short legs argument still counts. So it is with deepest depression that I witness how local food supply is shutting down in favour of the not-so-local supermarket.
This is course nothing new. The Supermarket has been a leech on our society for many years now, though I believe it is only recently that we have really been starting to sit up and take notice.
The supermarkets are businesses, first and formost. They exist to make money for their owners, just as any other business is. They are not there for the benefit of society, or their employees for that matter. And nor should they be – that is not their roll. But there is also an argument that says that when a business grows so big that it is able to manage society, that it automatically has a duty to protect that society.
From 3 inches up, the idea of protection if formost in a rat’s mind. Like a little business, we can’t battle those that are bigger than ourselves, we can but dodge. And although it is nice to think that if all us rats got together we could stand on each others shoulders and nip someone in the nose, in reality we would be too busy squabling for it ever to happen.
Supermarkets are that big person, but they pay but lipservice to the idea of responsibility – as do all big businesses. Today there is the statistic that the number of petrol stations in the UK has just fallen below the level of 1912. One of the main reasons for this is the growth in supermarket petrol. Now, why, one wonders, would a food store wish to sell petrol? Cheap petrol at that. Is it because it is a good and beneficial service to their customers? Is it another way to make moeny by being in competition with more traditional petrol stations?
Well, no and no. Supermarkets make suprisingly little money from the supply of petrol and it is arguable whether people were desperately short of petrol before the supermarkets came along. So why do they do it?
Supermarkets succeed for two main reasons – convenience and the lack of competition. Food supply is, for obvious reasons, vital to people, and rats. When you are as small as a rat you have trouble with the idea of being any smaller! Supermarkets offer a great convenient way of getting all your food at one hit – and that is very attractive to people, especially if they have a car. However, many people, and this includes carless ones like rats, also like wandering around their local high street. It is a nice thing to do and you get the opportunity of being selective – especially if you have more than one of anything, like two butchers, two greengrocers, etc.
Now, that is a nuisance to a supermarket. Because of thier physical size and need for loads of parking, they dont squeeze into the local high street very well. So, their only recourse is to close the high street down. How do you do that? You compete with services outside of your initial remit so that people have less and less choice but to come to you. And petrol is a perfect target. Undercut the local petrol stations and people have one more reason that they HAVE to come onto your site. Now all you have to do is to reduce the price even further if they spend money in your store and you have them.
So next time a supermarket boss or Kevin Hawkins form The British Retail Consortium tells you that it is a Myth that supermarkets are killing off local retailers and therefor your high street, take a look around and come to your own opinion.
Oh, by the way, the BRC has a section on their website about “Influencing Goverment.” They include this scary image to show how influential they really are. You know, we let them get this powerful!
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