The Cut-Rate Cornucopia

At 6 o'clock every morning last week, the queues began to build up in front of Buenos Aires' two sparkling new Minimax supermarkets. When the glass doors opened at 7:30, hundreds of bargain hunters rushed in to buy Argentine beef for 15-c- a pound (most B.A. groceries sell it for 30-c-) and other foods at 25% to 35% less than standard Argentine prices. Though the second store has been open only three weeks, the success of the two Minimaxes is so certain that their backers--the Rockefeller brothers, plus a group of Argentine financiers--are already building three more.

Daily mob scenes in Buenos Aires are part of a revolution in food retailing that is lowering prices and raising living standards around the world. From Singapore to Sao Paulo, the old corner grocery tradition of small volume and high markups is being washed out by the made-in-U.S.A. idea of mass marketing.

Slice the Pasta. The supermarkets have grown fastest in Europe's rich soil. In Florence and Milan, the Rockefellers' International Basic Economy Corp. has opened eight supermarkets that the Italians fondly call "the Americano stores"; the Americanos have brought down the price of pasta as much as 40%. In Belgium, Chicago's Jewel Tea and Antwerp's Grand Bazar company have combined to open eleven supermarkets in the past two years, and last fortnight announced plans to open four more. Not only do these Belgian markets dramatically undersell corner grocers (examples: 5-c- v. 8-c- for a cake of soap. 52-c- v. 70-c- for a pound of cheese), but they have added a new verb to the Flemish language. It is superen, and it means to take a social hour in the supermarket, usually at night and with the family, piloting a pushcart among mountains of cans and valleys of prepacked meats.

Undoubtedly the most successful supermarketeer in Europe is Toronto-born Willard Garfield Weston, 64, a philanthropic, publicity-shy millionaire who controls the U.S.'s National Tea Co. and Britain's huge Allied Bakeries. In the last five years, Weston has built a chain of 236 supermarkets in Britain, is adding to it at the rate of three new stores a week, and intends soon to absorb two grocery chains in France.

Besides all this, Bakery King Weston has gone from batter to wurst by opening 93 supermarkets in West Germany. This chain, manned largely by Germans who learned their trade running G.I. commissaries for the U.S. occupation forces, now grosses some $60 million a year. Unlike supermarketeers elsewhere, Weston does not try to undersell the German corner grocers. Instead, he outsells them by offering a far wider variety of goods, including such recently adopted Teutonic favorites as Wicks Vaporub and Reis Knusperle--which are Rice Krispies that do not go snap, crackle, pop but "knisper, knasper, knusper."

Bumps in the Aisle. The supermarketeers have run into some initial opposition in Europe. In Italy, Communists damn the supermarket as "American monopolies," and local chambers of commerce have a way of stalling licenses for new ones. In France big stores are taxed more heavily than small shops.

But these last-ditch measures probably will not stop the decline of Europe's belovedly inefficient charcuteries and delicatessens. As affluence spreads and more and more Europeans get autos and refrigerators in which to pack bigger bundles of groceries, the swing to supermarkets is bound to grow. According to Herr Doktor K. H. Henksmeier, director of Cologne's Institute for Self-Service, booming Europe still needs no fewer than 100,000 more supermarkets.

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