management may help to create a community atmosphere and shoppers may
socialize freely, the grocery store is first and foremost a business. Meat cutters,
clerks, and cashiers are workers who are directed by store managers to help
customers so that sales and profits are maximized. The hidden politics of the
grocery store are the working relations between store employees and man-
agement. Although these are suppressed so that shoppers feel at ease in a
community atmosphere, these politics periodically erupt Union picketers pa-
rade in front of the store in the hope that potential customers will learn that
employees lack adequate salaries and benefits. Although the local store is the
place of protest, employees are often embattled with company management
residing in a corporate headquarters far from the store. The grocery store
offers a political duality, an image of community life versus the realities of
economic conflicts.

The shopper's daily trips to the local grocery store touch only the surface
of the political and economic conditions that underlie these visits. The modern-
day store is not unlike other forms of business in the American economy.
Like a factory, a supermarket is a plant designed for efficient economic pro-
duction. Employees help to sustain the flow of goods so that profits are
maximized, and they agree to a wage to compensate them for their labor.
Store owners agree to those wage concessions, but they simultaneously en-
sure that their income exceeds their costs. Although profit margins in food
retailing are not high, the volume of sales enables many owners to reap
financial benefits greater than their costs. Through competition, both owners
and employees adjust their economic expectations. To keep their employees
satisfied with their current wages and to cover other overhead costs, store
owners must maintain profits or expand their economic market. If they do
not succeed, they face a variety of constraining alternatives. Store owners
attempt to lower overhead costs by reducing employee positions, wages, and
benefits and inevitably face potential conflicts with their employees. Even
more devastating, store owners may be driven out of business by competitors.
The grocery store is constantly under the economic pressures of competition.

Architectural design can play an important role in business competition.
Grocery management can sustain and expand their markets even under
severe competition when they gain a technical advantage that reduces costs.
Architectural design has historically been one means for store owners to
increase their profits. Through design, they can reduce the number of em-
ployees needed to operate the grocery store space and enhance the aesthetics
of the store to attract shoppers. Introducing new designs can have conse-
quences. Store employees and their unions may resist architectural improve-
ments that increase their work loads or eliminate their jobs. Competitors can
feel compelled to redecorate old stores or to build new stores to sustain their
share of retail business. Architectural design shapes a grocery store, and the
design remains in place as long as it is economically competitive.

Business competition helps to shape the grocery store, and as the historic

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