Sure, we'll just pull a second level out of the back room for ya...

[Dreamstalker]

Emailed suggestion I caught a glimpse of the other day:

"Cust thinks store is too small and needs a second floor." Bwuh? I've never heard of a two-story grocery store unless the 'first level' was a parking garage (and it was a newer structure; this building is from the mid-70s and the ceiling already has issues).

Reminds me of the Yelp review the store got awhile ago where we suspected the guy was a developer, with all his 'helpful' suggestions about how the store could be better, most of which included major construction...

[Setsunaela]

I've seen a couple of Wegmans with two stories. The one near where I used to live in VA had a partial second story, only over about 1/3 the store, with cafe tables, and chairs and couches and stuff so people could hang out and drink coffee from the coffee bar and use the free wifi, a kids' play area thing with little kiddy tables and a TV on like Sprout or Disney, and the administrative offices and employee break room/lockers.
However if your store doesn't already HAVE a second story.. I fail to see how that is at all a helpful suggestion

[Dreamstalker]

It doesn't. None of the stores do as far as I'm aware. Construction of that caliber would close down the store for who knows how long (basically the entire building would need to be re-engineered), and the town doesn't like it when we do anything to 'inconvenience' customers (like fixing the door when it's 10 degrees out..oh noez there's only one door and it says OUT, how are people supposed to get in?!).

[Setsunaela]

Tape a piece of paper over the "out" part and write "Door" on it. ^_^

[Dreamstalker]

But...that doesn't say it goes in or out

When the door was broken, only the motor had failed and you could still open it by pulling; not good for the door long-term but it was what we had to work with. After a few days of being treated like a doorman (and screwing up my shoulder for a few days by doing so), I moved far away from the heated corner to the other side of the registers just to see what people would do. Quite a few customers just stood there dumbly (even after watching someone leave) and would scream and yell for an employee to open the door for them

For a college town, we sure do have some dim bulbs living here...

[rvdammit]

Tape a piece of paper over the "out" part and write "Door" on it. ^_^

Since when do customers read signs?

[Ironclad Alibi]

Since when do customers read signs?

When they want to misquote them.

[Ben_Who]

The (two or three) supermarkets I saw in Manhattan (in 2002) were multi-story; full-sized supermarkets with the footprint of a 7-11 - and a number of engineering MIRACLES in place to make it work. Like escalators that could carry both a full shopping trolley and a passenger. Or ridiculously long ramps spiraling all over the place. Or gigantic hospital-sized glass elevators. They probably had to add two floors to make room for the equipment required to move from floor to floor. I can't imagine any of those solutions being cheap or simple to implement.

Anyone here live in a crowded city can attest to how surreal a multi-story supermarket can be? I grew up in the willywags where the supermarket was a one-story warehouse 15 miles away, and I thought, at the time, that a shopping trolley escalator was SOOO COOOOL.

[fireheart]

There's one place I know of in Adelaide which involves a 2-story setup for a supermarket and another two-story setup that involves a department store (formerly a toy store).

The bottom floor in the supermarket had the deli goods, the wet goods and most of the dry goods. The top floor had the health and beauty crap, the baby crap and the "impulse buy" stuff, including lollies and stationery. A good chunk of the "top" floor also had their liquor store which is self-contained, but has a register.

The "bottom floor" is more like a basement level really. The top level has the registers as well. Originally they had something like 5-10 larger registers and 15-20 express lanes. Now they have about 15 self-serve lanes and 5-10 express lanes, along with 2-3 "big" lanes for those who do a giant shop there. (this is a city store)

The department store has a slightly similar layout. The bottom floor has clothing, promotional crap, lingerie, cosmetics and some lollies. The top floor has manchester, music, books, stationery, toys etc.

[Draper Mel]

I've been in several two story supermarkets or Target stores now. Some just have parking under them, others have various departments on two stories.

I think the cart thing is actually called a Vermaport, but I prefer to call it a cart-scalator. :-)

[PepperElf]

hmm… wegman's second floor. yeah one of the nicer ones by my apt had that. The one closest to me didn't though ;(

but indeed… what do they expect you do to, pull one out of your buttocks for them? do they even understand how much time, effort, and money that would cost your company? … oh and let me guess, they expect to get this overnight without any price increases too, right?

[Chromatix]

Helsinki is at least an order of magnitude less dense than Manhattan. We don't have such extreme examples as you describe, but we do sometimes use more than one floor for a single shop.

I've just been to my friendly local megasuperhypermarket. It's only about a kilometre away - easy enough to walk both ways if you have to. We don't tend to shove everything useful out to the nearest major motorway interchange - that's reserved for stuff like IKEA which you don't need to go to very often.

The megasuperhypermarket itself is all on one, very large floor. If you want anything that it sells, from bread to Barbie dolls, you might be in for a bit of a walk, but you don't have to go up or down in the slightest. It's not Costco sized, fortunately, and all of the actual food stuff is fairly near the entrance.

However, there's a decent number of smaller stores, affiliated with the same cooperative society, on the upper floor - an optician, an estate agent, a pet shop, a café, things like that. To get there, you can use the escalator (standard, with bollards to prevent you taking your trolley on it), the lifts (big enough for a trolley, a wheelchair and a pushchair all at once), or the travelator - a sort of moving ramp which you can take your trolley on. Even if the travelator is stopped, you can still use it as a standard ramp.

Likewise to get to the underground car park, there are two travelators as well as the lifts.

In the city centre, there are a few more conventional supermarkets built on two floors - but not more than that. Perhaps there are some clothing stores on three floors - one for ladies, one for gents, one for children. The only thoroughly multi-floor stores are the department stores, for which this is par for the course.

Then of course there are the shops built into the central railway station's tunnel complex. The shops themselves are smallish and single-floor. The tunnel complex is not. Easy to get lost in them if you don't take care.