MUNDANE MYSTERIES: Why Produce Is Usually At The Front Of Grocery Stores

If you’re anything like me, then you’ve run into a grocery store for just one item, but ultimately walked out with armfuls of stuff you hadn’t intended on picking up. Grocery stores are deviously clever at tricking consumers into dropping more money than planned. Is that why the produce section is almost always near the front of nearly every grocery store?

Grocery store layouts are highly planned & seriously strategic. There’s a psychological reason that stores place the produce section at or near the front. Because when you go into a store, the store knows it’ll be hard for you to not take the opportunity to pick up their vibrantly colorful array of fruits & veggies, U mean, c’mon…they’re practically glowing in color & glistening with water to make them appear so deliciously fresh (though those spray showers do make the veggies weigh more, which also makes them cost more.) The produce section tends to be dramatically lit, to, so that everything looks better in the store than it ever could once you get home with it. Almost every grocery store knows that, if they can get your mouth watering, you’re more likely to buy more stuff (which is why the bakery is also usually pretty close to the door, too).

Grocery stores also have their ways of making you cover as much ground as possible, too, so that you’ll have a better chance to pick up more items than you might’ve gone in for. One way is their placement of the dairy section in the back of the store; with the milk, eggs, butter, or other dairy staples back there, you have to walk past lots of less necessary (but hard to resist) items along your way.

Got a Mundane Mystery you’d like solved? Send me a message via Twitter (@AndyWebbRadio), or shoot me an email at [email protected].