Sure looks like a regular supermarket: Boxes of Lucky Charms and Cocoa Puffs are stacked high at the end of an aisle, priced to sell.
Except nobody will be buying these boxes. The display is a mock-up, located inside of an experimental supermarket in Eden Prairie. Yet, what happens inside this ghost grocery has unusual reach.
Soon, real supermarkets coast to coast could be showcasing identical displays, as many as 4,200 grocery stores in all. So here at Supervalu’s East View Innovation Center, teams fuss over a hundred tiny details before launching a promotion nationwide.
In the past, decisions like the cereal special were made locally. Now, for better or worse, decision making in the grocery industry increasingly is being centralized. That has turned a handful of communities into supermarket superpowers including the Twin Cities. Here in Eden Prairie, you’ll find not just the headquarters of Supervalu, the nation’s No. 4 grocer with $42 billion in annual sales. You’ll also find a growing constellation of food-industry suppliers who’ve set up satellite offices nearby.
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Caption: Supervalu’s East View Innovation Center