The Inevitability of Publix

If you want to buy groceries in South Florida, you’re pretty much stuck with the Publix supermarket chain.  It’s not technically a monopoly, but it comes pretty close.  Publix’s only real competitor is Winn-Dixie, but even though there are a couple of dozen W-D outlets in South Florida, somehow I never seem to see them, while Publix is literally everywhere.

The thing about Publix is:  It’s not really good, it’s not really bad, it’s just meh.  I’d love to know the story on how they came to dominate the grocery market, because it can’t be because of the quality of the stores—unless maybe the competition was worse.  Of course, some Publix stores are better than others.  As is so often the case, the more affluent the neighborhood, the better the quality in the local supermarket—at least up to a point.

I tend to judge supermarkets by the produce department, and this is where I really think Publix falls short.  Again, it’s not that it’s really lousy.  It’s just so damn mediocre.

You would think that this is an area where the dominant grocery chain in Florida would shine, since this is where so much of the vegetables for the entire US eastern seaboard are grown, especially in the winter.  But the produce in Publix looks no better and often worse that what you would find in a typical supermarket in the northeast, and the prices are just as high if not higher.

You don’t see locally-grown produce on the shelves, and apparently it’s a company policy not to allow individual stores to purchase produce from local farmers.  And what’s up with bundling certain  vegetables in packages so that you have to buy a pound of red chili peppers or a half dozen zucchini when you only want a couple of them?  (This practice may be more prevalent in some Publix stores than others.)

Compare Publix to any decent supermarket in California, and you would see the difference.  Or even Texas, for that matter, where the local HEB chain has really raised the quality bar for groceries. When I was in San Antonio recently I was amazed by the quality of the produce in the HEB stores as well as the low prices, which were often half of what I was used to paying in Florida or DC.   HEB’s gourmet stores called “Central Market” are incredibly good; they make Whole Foods (another Texas-based company) look like, well…, Publix by comparison.

Since there’s essentially no competition, Publix can get by with a gentleman’s C, and the public has nowhere else to go.  Well, that’s not entirely true, since there are a handful of Whole Foods markets in Broward and Miami-Dade, but chances are you’ll have to drive quite some distance to get to them.  There are also a few Fresh Markets scattered about that cater to customers who care about better food. Even Publix is trying to get into the high-end grocery market with its GreenWise Market stores, but so far there are only three of them, and the closest is in Boca Raton.

You can also try farmers’ markets for locally-grown food—though the season for them is coming to an end.  And there are the mass-market megachains like Walmart, Target, and Costco that offer limited selections of vegetables and meat in addition to packaged food with long shelf lives.

But when you just need to run to the grocery store, you’ll probably wind up in a Publix because it’s there.

Maybe they should change their motto from “Where shopping’s a pleasure” to “Resistance is futile”.