← Back to context

Comment by carlosjobim

3 days ago

Brands pay stores for shelf space. How would you stop that in practice?

Impossible to solve I’m sure. Probably lower priority than stopping them from putting lead in bread and selling cocaine snake-oil elixirs, or forcing them to list basic nutritional information on food packaging. Alas, we lack the tools to make businesses do or not do things.

By making it illegal? Brands can still compete on price and quality.

  • Grocery stores are a low margin business. If you make selling shelf space illegal, they lose that revenue and will have to raise food prices to stay in business. This isn’t a good outcome. I also question if the shelves would even changes much. They will probably prioritize their high margin products, which doesn’t sound any better.