There is something I don't understand about why supermarkets are not amazing

Also, is there a rule about size of store? I just realized the supermarket in DK are relatively small compared to other countries. 

Yes. There is a max size. I believe it's 3500m² for supermarkets, with few exceptions.

Within Copenhagen, they'll rarely have a chance to build that large anyway

Also, and this might be a big factor, there’s much more stores per capita in Denmark (Copenhagen?) than in Sweden (Stockholm?). So, for example, in Sweden you have one big shop per 1000 people, and maybe 2-3 shops per 1000 people in Denmark. This can really be seen in Copenhagen where you can have a føtex, Lidl, Netto, meny, rema1000 all within walking distance of each other. Maybe this affects how the stores are stocked and that it’s easier to do so with less stores?

Also, i believe the problem lessens when you consider shopping at Arabic bazaars and East Asian/South East Asian stores. So much variety for ingredients and fresh, cheap produce.

My theory is that the main reason is, that the biggest player on the Danish market - Coop - is run by imbecile monkeys. Meanwhile in Sweden ICA is completely dominant and is run by sensible people. I think that’s the main reason

I’ve lived in Sweden, my wife is from there, and I can guarantee that the average Swedish comsumer is not more quality conscious regarding food compared to the average Dane. For example they have just two qualities for meat - Swedish and not Swedish. Forget about organic and free range etc.

The belief that Irma did exceptionally bad is a myth. All of Coops brands are doing bad, and the one that’s doing the worst is Coop365discount. Or whatever it’s called this week. Coop never lost as much money as last year, after they closed Irma.

Meanwhile Meny has been doping super well and expanding for the past decade.

On top of that i do believe the size regulation also plays a significant role, creating a situation where Danish cities has many small supermarkets while Swedish cities has fewer but larger ones. But it also means Danish cities has far more proper butchers, fish mongers, bakeries and other specialised stores compared to Sweden.

a lot of good points in the thread. another thing people are often missing is that most supermarkets in Copenhagen are discount. on a national level, the ratio is roughly 50-50 but that counts every tiny Brugsen or Spar from every village (they count as premium even though they’re really just normal-price). however, if you zoom in, the real ratio is more like 75% discount. when I lived in Nørrebro, there were 4 premium (one Føtex, Kvickly, Super Brugsen and Meny) and at least 18 discount in what counts as Nørrebro. In the 35k town I live in now there are 4 premium and 11 discount. And this ratio is common in all cities (maybe a bit more premium in affluent areas like Frederiksberg). There is no other country in Europe where you see this kind of discount store %. Discount supermarkets are shitty everywhere- have you been to a Penny in Germany? Irma closing down only made the ratio worse.

Salling and coop are mostly a duopoly and Coop just killed Irma to simplify/shittify their operations. Now I know people have different opinions about Irma but that’s besides the point here: there just isn’t that many different supermarket chains in the city so they don’t try to compete to get you to go a specific one with better selection.

Like where I live there’s 4 nettos and one Føtex Food within 10 minutes. If that was 5 different chains I could go to them for different stuff, as it is now all the Nettos have the same selection.

Mixed bag of reasons:

Planloven (legislation about how big stores are allowed to be - there are ways around it though).

Preference - I know plenty of people that find Bilka overwhelming and tedious and prefer smaller supermarkets.

Taste - most Danes cook and buy the same stuff. Even new stuff. 10 years ago everything had to be liquorice, then there was a pulled pork season, a tapas season etc etc, but after then “tapas season” has died out, people a fine with just a few tapas options.

Culture - pre-made food and snacks are often frowned upon even by people that happily make their own burgers and bake their own cake. In Sweden I see a lot more pre-made dinners and 5 times as many chips for instance. But not necessarily more choices when it comes to fresh tomatoes.

Tradition/values: People still like to go to the local bakery, butcher, candy store etc for certain things. I personally wouldn’t buy a cake in a supermarket, I want it to be freshly baked by someone that cares.

Different view on what “quality” is. Some things are easier to find in Denmark. Organic and even bio-dynamic options certainly are.

The thing is many locals are not even aware of this. Whenever I mention that supermarkets have a tiny selection of items compared to most countries locals tend to go like “I never thought about it”. So I guess it’s what they’re used to, and therefore there is no real need for the supermarket chains to offer more variety.

This article (Danish) explains it. Disclaimer: the article is from 2017 though I think a lot of it is still valid)

Here are the main points:

1. Danes love discount.
2. Danes like to walk to the supermarket, which means many are located side by side in the cities where there is limited space.
3. Danes are creatures of habit, Danes like to buy the same product from the same brand that looks the same as always. The Danes like the idea of having more choices but do not act on it. So it is very hard for new products to survive.

I would guess it’s culture?

I recently went to Sarajevo in Bosnia and went to a Mercator store. It was chocked by the huge variety compared to basically any store in Copenhagen.

It’s baffling to me because Sarajevo and Bosnia is smaller respectively than Copenhagen and Denmark population wise. When you compare salaries and prices it’s even worse..

Maybe us Danes are just happy with limited choices??

A point I haven’t seen mentioned in this thread, but I’ve seen some statistics on before, is that Danes spend the lowest percent of our salary on food in Europe (not surprisingly, Italians spend the highest). Yes we have high salaries, but I’d also argue that with high salaries we should have more “surplus” for stuff like quality food.

My personal opinion having grown up here is that Danes care significantly more about the price of food than the quality, so not much point in the supermarkets stocking niche higher quality alternatives, if they’ll just be rotting on the shelf because the discount options are the ones being sold. I think Irma closing down is a good example of that. Even with the salaries in Copenhagen, it appears it wasn’t profitable.

Whilst we’re on the subject, can I just say that Lidl here is surprisingly boring and uncompetitive - at least a few I’ve been to and compared to UK.

Danish supermarkets are wastelands, even Meny.

Only Torvehallerne has the stuff you can find in very ordinary French and Italian supermarkets.

I can’t tell you exactly why, but it has something to do with our food culture. Only a few of us spend time on finding as fresh as possible vegetables and high quality cuts of meat.

Even working class Frenchmen spend more of their salary on food than middle class Danes.

I have noticed this too, even Iceland ( 370k people) has much better supermarkets. The issue with netto here is they prefer to have rotating products, likely due to size issues as people mentioned. Sometimes the spotvarer section has items you would always want to have. Føtex has a better selection but they mostly have their own branding of all the stuff.

At first I thought it is because they filter the bad suggary stuff and want only healthy options. But then I realized 90% of stuff is unhealthy and full of sugar and chemicals. It is crazy the lack of variety. When you take your danish friends outside DK and they see the variety of stuff in shops, they are MINDBLOWN

Danes are pretty lazy and convenient when it comes to groceries (amongst other things I'm sure).

The majority shops at whatever store is closest to their home, or on the way from work, so chains have built stores everywhere to be the nearest one (we're one of the countries with the most stores either per Capita or by area, can't remember which, maybe both?), at the tradeoff of size. Since the stores are smaller, the variety is slimmer.

Danes also favors cheap groceries (which is why Irma did horribly) and well discount stores are gonna have discount quality products.

I lived in DK for a while with my family, the stores do have a limit on size, but I found that engendered a more community like atmosphere compared to the superstores we get elsewhere. We also noted the quality of vegetables was much higher, having food flavour and colours compared to the force grown veg we find in large chains like Tesco. So whilst it was a bit pricier, quality and health is worth it, and We always had a decent selection (sem to recall you still had small grocers too next to the Irma)

I eat a lot of fresh organic vegetables, I almost only shop in Rema 1000 because the quality is vastly superior to other stores, beyond the more high end places like Føtex and Super Brugsen. But even then, for what I buy they are at least as good.

I suppose what you eat plays a big role in what you would consider a “good store”. I don’t need the crazy variety of stores other countries have, because I make my own food, so I just need good quality ingredients 👌

The country with the best restaurants in the World has the worst supermarkets. I never understood this paradox.

I have lived here now for 17 years, and it has always been boring. I mean yeah, DK is a big meat producer, but you can only get plastic vacuum packed sausages. Just one example.

Soo boring!

It's not the only explanation but we have far too many stores per capita.

Part of it is laws limiting how large daily goods stores can be. Basically those huge Bilkas you see are all (or almost all?) from an era before those laws, or are reduced-selection mini-Bilkas like the one at the Field's shopping centre.

Then, as others have pointed out, it's often hard or impossible to even get a sufficiently large building lot to actually go to the limit of the law, in a densely built up city like Copenhagen.

But I think there's something else too, because while one would expect the Nemlig.com online supermarket to be able to have a larger selection of goods, that's not actually the case.

It appears as if there's a nation-wide obsession with cheap that has driven Nemlig.com so opt to slim down its range of goods.

Meny’s in Frederiksberg and Central copenhagen are world class. If you got the money.

There's four different supermarkets within walking distance of my home: LIDL, Netto, Coop 365, Rema 1000 (and there used to also be an Irma.) That's not counting the traditional grocers, and the Føtex that I often bike to.

I don't need variety in one supermarket when there's another supermarket literally across the street.

I didn't know this was an issue until I started seeing these kinds of posts on Reddit 😅 I guess decision fatigue could be a factor? Having too many choices makes it harder to choose and we're busy (stress is on the rise), so we prefer to buy the same products over and over again. Maybe we have a tendency to not trust new brands? Idk.

Well, I believe you are part of the problem you just presented yourself. Complaining about not being amazed by supermarkets at the same time you looking for a chocolate of bulk cocoa that is over roasted and topped up with vanilla scent to not taste like total garbage… with a little scent of child labor :)

I think it’s to do with local tastes. Maybe people are less open to choice and trying new things. If you think things are bad now, you should’ve tried grocery shopping ten years ago. The stores had bread, salt, sugar, eggs, meat and veg. No variety, nothing. It’s only in recent years that variety has started coming to Denmark. I noticed ikea in Sweden also has more variety

You can always find Lindt chocolate in Bilka. Copenhagen have more supermarkets and they are usually close by wherever you live.

In Malmo for example I struggle to find close by supermarkets and I hate the small ICAs as they are so expensive.

Expensive labour so the staffing is low (so you will see rotten things on shelves). Not much competition so no need to differentiate on quality or the prices

Most of the bigger super markets are outside of Copenhagen. There isn't really room for big ones anywhere in the city itself. Maybe Danes use fewer products? If there was a market for a wider selection, then I don't see why stores wouldn't have it. But I don't know. I rarely miss anything I need tbh.

Impressive how often this subject is discussed in this sub.

Sometimes people complain about the quality of produce, but I think that is not the case, its a matter of what people (think they) see. Compared to, I guess most other countries, labour costs in supermarkets relatively high, so there is less staff to sort and niceify the produce section.

A larger percentage of produce here is organic than in most places. So it will spoil faster, and also be of smaller "stature" and perhaps less nice looking, than other stuff produced with more fertilizer and use of pesticides. Especially visually true for things like apples, for example. Many people would probably argue that the organic stuff is objectively better quality, even though it might not look like that at a cursory glance.

Regarding your point about variety, its very true, and probably mostly due to the over-abundance of smaller sized shops here. Somewhat due to legislation, and somewhat to what people have been accustomed to.

Nemlig.com may be a help here.

https://blog.ted.com/does-having-choice-make-us-happy-6-studies-that-suggest-it-doesnt-always/

Denmark is bad, but Norway is worse, or at least it was last time I was there.

Working with the global brands; it’s also about those. If local brands are not spending their resources on establishing themselves in the different countries markets and how they do it.

So, just as you say - some brands don’t see the value in getting on the market if there’s not enough opportunity due to strong local brands or they have not yet built up their sales organisation (themselves or via agencies) to compete.

Lindt is one example, Mondelez is the same, in Sweden we Mondelez acquired a traditionally strong Swedish brand decades ago, Marabou, and they now have a channel to share the market by developing that brand as well as launching other products in their portfolio. ☺️

Danish consumers are very conservative when it comes to trying new things or even brands. If there was a market for variety in the selection there would be a better selection. In my eyes the biggest factor in this is consumers. As much as you hear duopoly, "stupid" chains and the like, it all boils down to basic market forces. If there was a high enough demand for more variety, we would have it.

I think it's part of a bigger picture. It looks like many people in Denmark like to stick to what they know "works" and is approved by their peers. You can see that in construction/housing for example. Notice how practically ALL houses in Denmark have the same 2-3 different models of light switches/locks/window opening systems/power plugs/etc. The an unspoken common agreement that it's the models that work, so why risk buying something that might not work and become the laughing stock of the community (hello, Jantelov)? In many countries, every new house will have a different set of the aforementioned things, albeit in varying quality. I feel that this applies to many other areas of life in DK, among which supermarkets.

It’s better in the burbs

I think a lot of Danes don't realise how poor the selection is here, or at least not exactly how bad it is. My girlfriend and her family never seemed to understand my point when I mentioned it until we all went to my parents summer house in France and they got to experience a full blown Carrefour hypermarket...now they also complain.

I think a lot of it comes down to which areas of the city you choose to shop in, and which stores. Not every store of the same name has the exact same selection, some of it comes down to local preference.

For example, if i walk into a random netto in a social housing complex, i wont find anything near 90% cocoa chocolate, if i walk into my local netto, ill find a decent 85% but not 90, and not your specific brand, but if i walk to my local meny, ill find a selection of 90%, and theres gonna be dedicated staff in the wine section to suggest a wine suitable for the chocolate i picked.

Denmark is a country where mediocrity is king. This applies to supermarkets, too.

You are right that a lot of things here are of lower quality, and that the selection is poor, in the supermarkets. But I find it funny that you point out chocolate, and then mention Lindt, which is mediocre at best :D

We have extremely good chocolate here, a Danish chocolate has won "worlds best chocolate" on multiple occasions. Good chocolate is available maybe not in super markets, but in lots of specialty stores. You can get it in torvehallerne at multiple shops, in Peter Beier shops etc. etc.

Now tomatoes.... Good tomatoes are hard to find here...!

The actual fact is that the stuff in the supermarkets is what they can actually sell. Go to a supermarket north of Copenhagen and there will be a way better selection.

Also this guy thinking that lindt chocolate is some sort of gourmet shit....

Im not sure that the variety is very poor nor that its common knowledge. I live In Malmö and I would any day choose DK supermarkets for quality and variety. The Swedes have an affinity for candy and sweet stuff - maybe that's why you found your chocolate. That being said, at my workplace in Denmark we have said chocolate every week - bought through nemli.com so it does exist in Denmark. :)

Could you give more examples on the lack of variety? I just don't get it, I feel a little overwhelmed going to the supermarket, so much stuff to buy, why would we need even more stuff to choose from... I'm guessing it can't all be about the lindt chocolate

Taxes kills competition.

I think it's common knowledge, for everyone else than the Danes, that the variety of groceries and product in general is very poor in DK

They get upset if try to infer that they eat trash quality food

Their are primarily two Big supermarket groups with huge centralized warehouses/purchasing, what do i mean?

Dansk supermarket = "føtex, Bilka, Netto, Salling and Wupti."

COOP Group = "Kvickly, SuperBrugsen, Coop, Brugsen, 365discount"

This means its the same stuff in the groups stores coming from the same warehouse, just to be sold at different prices in different stores.

And their is no incentive/opportunity to stock different things if "central/regional" warehouse has only the limited selection and the business group as a whole gets better deals buying 6 million X 3 Type pork, vs 6 million X 4 type Pork. (if anything it disincentives trying un-established products/variations)