Supermarkets: They're big business;

              Supermarkets:
they're big
business
o UR SUBJECT RECALLS TO MIND a TV skit of several
seasons ago.
The scene is a supermarket: The time—Saturday
afternoon. We see a couple dozen men scurrying about
with those silly go-carts, with which I'm sure we are
all familiar—their arms in a continuous up and down
piston-like motion in an attempt to satisfy what appear
to be gaping basket mouths.
Suddenly our protagonist breaks out of the crowd,
rallies it around him, and exhorts it to unite and sup­port
the radical movement to "get wives back into
supermarkets!"
Today I'd like to ask the married male readers to
linger a while longer . . . while I try to portray, pro­fessionally
speaking, a somewhat different picture of
this new national phenomenon.
Vastness of the field
To give an idea of the vastness of the industry,
perhaps we should start out with some definitions:
1. A store having an annual volume of $375,000 or
more in food, grocery, produce and/or meat sales is
considered by the industry to be a supermarket.
2. Where the annual volume rests between $75,000
and $375,000, it is referred to as a superette.
3. A small store would be one with an annual volume
of less than $75,000.
Operators of 10 or more units (be they supermarkets,
superettes, and/or small stores) are referred to by the
MARCH, 1 9 63
B e r n a r d Cianca
A partner in the New York Office, Mr. Cianca is a
native New Yorker who joined our firm on leaving
the service. He has a Bachelor's Degree in business
administration from the College of the City of New
York, where he majored in accounting. Mr. Cianca
lives in Jersey City with his wife and daughter and
is active in the AICPA, New York State Society of
CPAs, and the American Accounting Association.
industry as chains; those operating less than 10 units
are considered independent operators.
At present independent operators control 240,000
units, of which i68,000 are in the small store category.
The chains account for some 20,000 units, of which
17,000 are of the supermarket variety.
The sales volume of the industry as a whole in 1961
is estimated at $52,600,000,000, with the chains doing
39% of this or $20,450,000,000. Of this $20 billion, $19
billion represented supermarkets. In passing it is inter­esting
to note that of the $32 billion which the inde­pendents
rang u p in sales last year, more than half came
through the operations of their supermarkets although
in number these accounted for only 16,000 out of their
total 240,000 units.
There are some 57 companies in the industry which
are publicy owned, with stock selling on either the New
York Stock Exchange, the American Stock Exchange
or over-the-counter. These 57 companies account for
$18.7 billion in sales volume—or more than one-third
of the total industry.
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