And even if they are actually a good analyst of their specialty realistically, they'll be brought on to analyze lots of things outside their expertise & with limited time/information.

Finally, it seems like given their very tight profit margins, "making it up in volume" does for more to explain grocers focus on scale than the change in price enforcement.

If I recall, the biggest stores are like 12%, though? So, being 1/12th the size of the big guys is nothing to sneeze at.

Plus, the big stores are trying to imitate them in various ways.

Or for poor areas of major cities - the 80s was the era of the crack epidemic and I can see a lot of folks who live in those areas being eager to gtfo, making it less appealing to grocers for the same reason.

Eg if it tracks with increased farm consolidation that probably made a given town a poorer place to be as a grocer.

Or if there was less work to be done b/c of machines.

Town of 3k can support what a town of 1k cannot.

It's possible this is the source of the death of local grocery stores (who competed on convenience and when no longer offering the same price/selection list out).

But I wonder how change in population size & make up happened in those areas.

America has many flaws but we are not a passive people.

Wework and Uber have both been hit hard for not being profitable. And ftx was doing fraud in part to be profitable....

That said, I think this is a bad example. Basically everyone trying to make journalism profitable is struggling these days. Idk how much the VCs would differ from anyone else who'd want to make money.

VCs and their growth mindset are (probably) net good for creative efforts. But certainly net bad for long term maintenance.