Challenge: Design A Grocery Store For Men

Grocery stores discriminate against men.  If you doubt that, you obviously are a woman.  No man would design a store with cramped aisles, indecipherable organization and illogical product placement. Grocery big wigs have rigged the system to favor the way women shop.

Before men of the world join together in a class action lawsuit, your author has a solution.  Let a man design the store layout, organize products into meaningful categories and place items in strategic locations to make shopping intuitive.  Are you listening HEB, Kroger, Whole Foods?

In this man's vision of the ideal grocery store, products would be organized by meals.  For example, there would be a Breakfast Bar in the store, where eggs, cereal, bacon, yogurt and bread would be displayed. Today's designs force men to walk the entire store just to choose food for breakfast.

Push the cart to the meat section for bacon.  Then trudge another five city blocks to the cereal aisle. Next stop is yogurt hidden next to butter and milk.  Bread is crammed into a lower shelf in another zip code.  By this time your average male is filled with rage and bereft of patience.

And you haven't even thought about food items for lunch.  Bread, lunch meat, fruit, mustard, mayonnaise, pickles, potato chips and paper plates ought to be in one section.  There should be a dinner aisle, too. Toilet paper should be at the store entrance in case you are in a hurry.

Another male complaint involves the tiny aisles built for small children under the age of 10.  Two people with grocery carts cannot pass each other in the aisle without risking injury.  And God help you if someone in one of those motorized carts in ahead of you.  Plan on skipping dinner.

While we are imagining a new concept, how about redesigning the aisles with striped, divided lanes like a freeway?  You stay on your side and I will remain out of your way.  Nothing irks a man more than to wait while some person straddles the aisle aimlessly sniffing for a bargain on coconut chips.

There should also be Store Cops patrolling each aisle, shooing along slow customers.  Minimum speed limits should be posted in each aisle.  The candy aisle might by 5 miles an hour, while the craft beer aisle would have no posted limit.  If you crave candy, it shouldn't take long to make a decision.

Signage at the front of each aisle would be changed to be more descriptive.  Too many stores use generic terms like "Dried Fruit."  When searching for prunes, you don't want to waste too many brain cells to decide if a prune is a dried fruit.  Just erect a sign that reads:  Old People, Prunes Ahead.

We haven't even discussed product placement.  Beer and wine should be at the cash register up front. If you rush into the grocery store to pick up an adult beverage for dinner, why should you have to walk right past the check out lane and then retrace your steps?  It's a time waster.

Next to the beer and wine, there should be a display marked: Last Minute Items We Anticipated You Would Need. There you would find shoelaces, feminine products, razor blades, boxed dinners, lipstick and adult diapers.  Think of the time shoppers would save.

Without sounding sexist, women don't seem to have as many issues with grocery stores. Many, but not all, appear to like the idea of casually sauntering down each aisle casually checking out every product.  We men get that. Women are from Venus and Men are from Hurry The Hell Up.

Grocery store brass reading this are giggling to themselves. They secretly delight in torturing men. There goal is too discourage men from setting foot in their stores.  They know the typical male vaults through the store and spends less money.  That's bad for business.

Perhaps, this diatribe will encourage some young entrepreneur to start a new grocery chain called For Men Only.  Sure, it sounds like the name of a gentleman's club.  All the more reason it will entice males to spend more time in a grocery store.  That might be good for business.