It’s Wednesday evening, and you’ve just left work to pick up a few groceries for tonight and the coming days. You don’t have a list, just an idea of what you want to feed yourself or your family and the basic nutrition you should be getting. You walk into your local Albert Heijn and join the seemingly chaotic mass of nightly shoppers. You may think your shopping patterns are practically random, but contrary to popular belief, there is a method to the madness.

The food industry devotes countless hours and resources to manufacturing the ideal supermarket structure to maximize shoppers’ purchases. This is the side of shopping that consumers rarely think of, and the one that grocery store employees focus on. 

One of these employees who operates in the unnoticed realm of strategic shopping is Anton Pluis, a 21 year-old team leader at Albert Heijn who is pictured here. He tells me about the different strategies Albert Heijn uses to guide shoppers’ product choices.

“The positioning of products is really important and a lot of money goes to that”, Anton reveals, “Brands can pay for placements, for example Coca-Cola pays a lot of money to be placed between the frozen foods like pizza and bitterballen, stuff for a party. They pay quite a lot of money for that space because it does increase sales.”

While it may seem trivial to shoppers, product positioning in stores is significant to companies like Coca-Cola.

Of course, there is more to the story of supermarket food choices than simple store strategies. Nutrition is essential for a healthy life, and since stores can guide shoppers’ choices, I wanted to hear about how shoppers’ food choices affect their nutrition and health.

To shed some light on the nutritional side of the story, I interviewed Bernadette Keogh, a nutritional therapist, in her local Albert Heijn. Click the audio file below to hear her thoughts on the secret to mindful eating: moderation.

Again, this layout could be perceived as unimportant, but Anton admits that “beginning with fresh products brings shoppers in the mood to buy, especially the smell of the bread, it makes you hungry and makes you want to buy more stuff.”

Anton reveals another measure employed by Albert Heijn to maximize profit: using your eyes against you. Stores know which products are the most popular and “We put those at the bottom”, Anton says, “then you have another point at eye level that you can influence, so you can put a product that is more expensive or something that you have too much stock of.”

Though no harm is meant by this, these simple methods often result in a benefit for the store, at the cost of the wallet of the inattentive customer. Of course this is expected, and Anton states the obvious fact that stores’ “first and foremost priority will always be making money,and I think that’s more than fair.”

Shoppers’ wallets are not the only thing affected by store strategies, their health can also be compromised. Bernadette had some insights as to why food choices are so important, and even how diseases can be prevented by a healthy diet. Listen below to hear her talk about the effects of food choices on health.

Some strategies used by grocery stores are actually helping consumers make more informed choices, like these sugar indicators at Albert Heijn. They use a range of 3 groups (low, middle, and high) to quickly alert shoppers about the amount of sugar in their chosen products.

This is not only helping shoppers make more informed decisions, but also influencing the products companies sell in stores. Anton tells me “Companies, as soon as the indicators came, started offering alternative products in each range of the sugar indicator.”

However, nutritional therapist Bernadette is not convinced that these sugar indicators are enough to inform shoppers of just how healthy their choices are. Hear what she has to say about this Albert Heijn strategy by clicking the audio file below.

Introducing these sugar indicators is a great step forward in helping consumers be more aware of the healthiness of their food choices, but customers can also find this information without the indicators.

Overall, Anton encapsulates it quite succinctly when he says “It’s a tool and its useful and its forcing brands to make less sweet items also, but it’s not an innovation, the information was already there.”

While grocery stores like Albert Heijn may employ the use of strategies like deliberate product positioning and calculated layouts to guide shoppers’ product choices, consumers could always access all the nutritional information by checking the labels themselves.

To get some insight into how the average shopper makes their food choices, I walked into my local Albert Heijn and asked some shoppers to answer a few questions about which influencing factors they notice the most.

The photo series below showcases some quotes shoppers gave me about their food choices along with pictures taken inside Albert Heijn.

So the next time you’re on your way home and rush in to join the evening crowd at your local grocery store, see if you catch yourself being drawn to a flashy label at just the right eye level, or notice when you’re buying chips that, hey that coke right next to it might be nice too.

If it’s too overwhelming to think about all those store strategies and unconscious preferences, click below to hear some simple tips from Bernadette to help keep your food choices in line with your health goals.