[da02]

Here in the Houston areas, supermarkets like Kroger/Walmart/HEB/etc always have single floor buildings. Why can't they build multi-floor buildings for storage upstairs and retail walk-in sales on the ground floor? On the above ground floors, they can create an automated or semi-automated system for employees to gather up items for online/delivery orders.

[AngryData]

Probably because you then need pillars throughout the entire building to support the second floor which you are loading down with a ton of weight. The average forklift weighs 3x or more the weight of the average car, and then adding racking and stock on top of that. Yeah if you completely redesign your storage system to not require forklifts you save weight there, but you end up adding the weight back with all the heavy duty track systems and extra heavy duty racks that are required to eliminate the forklifts. Plus there is liability of having that weight up top, a rack failure on a second floor could take down half the building.

It is possible, but you end up spending 10x as much on the building.

[alphabettsy]

Then put the warehouse on the first floor and put the store on top.

Lots of big cities have grocery stores with parking garages under them, doesn’t seem much different.

[tstrimple]

I think this is correct. A lot of these buildings seem to be post frame or poll barn style. Relatively cheap for building large square footage buildings but add some limitations to multiple floors. Even if you put the storage floor under the shopping floor you'll run into tons of issues with buildings of these sizes that don't have a ton of pillars for additional support. I mostly see these stores built on vacant "rural" land on the outskirts of cities rather than in city centers themselves. Which means the single floor square footage is rarely an issue and not something worth designing a building around. If you have all the space you need to go wide, it's almost never worth going tall.

[poguemahoney]

Good construction is not cheap and takes many quarters. Land outside the urban area is far too cheap and probably subsidized (directly or with free oversized infrastructure) because local government always wants jobs, even small numbers of shitty jobs.

[bena]

The vast majority of the inventory is already on the sales floor.

Also, the backstock is minimal. Stores are designed for turnaround.

[DrewADesign]

Right. Not selling things fast enough is a bigger problem than not having enough storage for unsold stock.

[taeric]

Glad someone made this point. I'm curious how long people think most items in a grocery store last? Just consider the trucks you see stocking them on a daily basis. Typically it is bread and other high flow consumables, no?

[mlrtime]

I thought about this a lot with parking spaces, nobody like big, open, tree-less parking lots. Why not just build them up adjacent to the grocery store.

The answer is $. It costs too much and land is cheaper than building up (In most places).

[adolph]

All recent HEBs have dedicated grocery pickup staging space. I chatted with a staffer once. It is like its own little grocery store where they keep selections of hot, cold and room temperature bags of selected groceries temperature controlled until the orderer comes and they put them together and bring them out.

The ones in Bellaire and Meyerland are two level with parking (aka flooding space) below the store and a smaller parking lot on the second level with the store. Bellaire also has a fancy fuel cell setup for some reason. The single level HEB in Montrose(ish) was built into the site of an old complex of charming but nearly abandoned standalone quad/duplexes with many mature oaks. They seem to have retained nearly all of the trees on the grounds in greenspaces within the parking lot and entryway.

Here's some street view of Montrose. They also had a bike air and repair system when it opened. I'm not certain if it stayed in good repair itself. https://maps.app.goo.gl/KxHAvDqKca4E8L8a7

[tacker2000]

I would guess that having everything on one floor optimizes the unloading, restocking and logistics. Also construction is cheaper.