Posted on 09/20/2019 2:11:35 AM PDT by 2ndDivisionVet
Walmart's growing grocery business throughout New York state is prompting the retailer to add 80 jobs at its Johnstown distribution center this fall.
"The throughput at this building has nearly doubled [since it opened 20 years ago]," said general manager Andy Walton. "We have been growing by 10% to 15% over the past three years."
The nearly 1 million-square-foot distribution center employs 750 forklift operators, order fillers and support staff who supply food and nonperishable goods to 117 Walmart Supercenters between Rochester, eastern Long Island and northern New York state. The warehouse also supplies perishable food to 21 Sam's Club stores.
"Food sales have grown throughout the Northeast," Walton said.
The company is searching for at least 80 drivers, order fillers and loaders. But Walton said the Johnstown facility could use up to 90 or 100 additional employees to keep up with the volume of orders that are coming in. The peak season for Walmart used to be around Thanksgiving. That has changed with a growing demand for groceries and other merchandise at stores in places like the Adirondacks, Walton said.
(Excerpt) Read more at bizjournals.com ...
That was just a blip.
I was in the area and I got hungry :)
WalMart is worth keeping an eye on. Seems to me they made a fairly rational business decision IF they get one thing. They seem to be hoping to add urban hipsters who previously wouldn’t darken a door of WalMart and have a history of keeping them out of urban areas. Which works AS LONG AS they can keep their rural customers. The calculation they are making is that now WalMart density in rural areas is overwhelming and rural customers now have no choice. IF rural customers resent being abused and retaliate they could have screwed up big time. If WalMart just trades urban customers for rural customers they just “break even”.
That’s a good observation.
While not an urban hipster, I wouldn’t shop at Walmart for clothes and furniture and some other items.
Call me a NYC snob :)
Though I buy computers there and food there and many other odds and ends.
Maybe a little advertising campaign to show they should be considered for higher end items wouldn’t hurt.
Or perhaps that’s not their biggest concern, those items.
WalMart’s profits are mostly in the cheap, plastic, Chinese stuff, IMHO.
The DC employees better set aside $5,000 - $10,000 for their eventual carpal tunnel surgeries.
Call me a NYC suburbian snob:) I no longer shop at Walmart: I hate the logo, color scheme, store layout, and cheaply made products, and many of the people who I have seen shopping there are hygienically challenged, walking petri dishes. No thanks.
I don’t think it’s the “hipsters” who have kept WalMart out of urban areas as much as the difficulty in finding land parcels large enough to build a prototypical WalMart store.
http://www.columbia.edu/~pi17/walmartajs.pdf
Pretty much explains how WalMart got to be a “rural” business.
In my town they built a Walmart between Newark and Jersey City, and it is packed all the time - with a lot of the sales related to groceries. Their prices for those items are noticeably lower than regular supermarkets, but I don’t go because it is a zoo. It is fine early in the morning, but is Third Worldish once the permanent underclass wakes up - and cops are there constantly dealing with shoplifters.
Property taxes likely have something to do with it, too. In more ways than one.
And shrinkage.
And labor.
Walmart has test stores that get new features before a nationwide rollout. Some stay. Some go. What impresses me is the rate of test and implementation.
The CAP team (inventory stocking) innovation was a big labor savings. By storing excess inventory above the product shelves it eliminated the labor needed to label and return the excess to the backroom. That was a PITA at the end of the shift.
Walmart’s clothing is much better quality than Target and other discount centers.
I do buy some clothing at Walmart....I won’t buy furniture there, OR at IKEA for that matter...I like real wood. And, rarely do I buy food there...mostly just supplies for the MIL (Depends, tea, chocolates).
Don’t plan on ever stepping foot in one again if I can’t buy my ammo there anymore.
Walmart is also going into the healthcare business
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