When the nearest supermarket is behind the seven mountains

Posted by johny on January 6th, 2018

In every second German community, there is no single grocery store today. In their distress, many citizens cover themselves at petrol stations. They become the right supply stations.

 Entire regions where there is no shop, doctor or young people - that would be a nightmare for Iris Gleicke. It has long been a reality in Teupitz, Brandenburg, that the sleeper of the Federal Government's East Commissioner is having sleepless nights. 1800 inhabitants, paved roads, listed houses.

40 kilometers south of Berlin, right on Lake Teupitz, is the supermarket - or what is left of it. Weeds grow on the porch, cobwebs pull from the railing to the door, an empty paper cup is blown by the wind over the forecourt. The "Kaufhalle" closed two years ago. Since then, the building is empty, the grids in front of the front door are lowered.

A discounter is still in place, but it is a bit away, and not even the bus, which runs once an hour, stops there. If you do not have a car, you have to walk: "The older people need half an hour to get there, especially because it's still up the mountain," says Guido Kohlhase.

East Germany is particularly affected

With his complaints, the 55-year-old coal-hare is not alone. Daily shopping becomes a small expedition in many regions of Germany. In the years up to 2015, an average of ten small grocery stores, seven bakeries and seven butcheries per week closed in the structurally weak areas of Germany between Eifel and Uckermark. "In the meantime, the trend has become even more dramatic," says municipal and trade consultant Malte Obal.

Particularly affected: East Germany. In many parts of Mecklenburg-Vorpommern, Brandenburg, Thuringia and Saxony-Anhalt, natural beauties, avenues and idyllic spots alternate - but there is no shop counter far and wide.

The lack of shopping opportunities are developing into a further serious disadvantage for the already very disadvantaged areas. "We must not allow entire regions to be permanently relinquished," appealed the East Commissioner Gleicke, which is to represent the issues of the East German Länder in the Federal Government. It probably will not help.

If you live in sparsely populated corners of the country, you often have only two options when shopping: Either he accepts long distances or he makes use of comparatively expensive shopping facilities such as petrol station shops.

Rewe mixes with petrol stations

Some of them have become really small supply stations. With "Rewe To Go", for example, the Cologne supermarket operator has set up small shops at around 230 Aral petrol stations, which offer not only the usual assortment - sweets, chips and motor oil - but also nutritious items such as fresh fruit, vegetable pans, sushi and muesli.

This has nothing to do with real local supply, it is about the need for urgent travelers, emphasizes a Rewe spokesman and thus justifies the relatively high prices in the shops. In practice, however, Rewe To Go also woos "professionals and hobby cooks" who will hardly pursue their passion on the steering wheel.

For petrol station tenants, a shop with a wide range of products has become one of the most important sources of income. "Even if the price level is high, many customers accept the price disadvantage due to the flexible opening hours and the practical accessibility," says a study by consulting company Scope. On average, shop sales per petrol station reached almost 950,000 euros last year.

But in the deep province, even the shops next to the dispensers are not available for emergency shopping. In 53 percent of the nationwide municipalities, there is not a single store, as emerges from a study by the Brunswick Thünen Institute for Rural Areas on the accessibility of supermarkets and discounters.

Halving the business within 18 years

The total number of stores has narrowed nationwide to a good 41,000 between 1990 and 2008 - a smooth halving. Since then, shrinkage continues at a reduced pace. At the end of last year, the Cologne-based retail research institute EHI still had 37,682 sales outlets.

Despite the dying out shops surveys regularly result in a high satisfaction of the consumers with the accessibility of shops. According to figures from the market observation company Nielsen, the sales area has even increased recently.

But these are average numbers. They say little about the reality of shopping where wild boars roam the meadows and the she-wolf suckles their puppies. While new, modern supermarkets keep opening up in growing urban centers, the population decline in the area deprives small traders of their livelihood.

Between 2008 and 2012 alone, the number of shops with less than 400 square meters of retail space, as they were previously typical of the province, plummeted by almost 4,000 to just over 10,000. Especially East Germany is affected.

 First, the young people go

A vicious circle. Graduates and career entrants orients themselves to the centers, where jobs and the cool life lure. Where young families are missing, first the kindergartens and then the schools close, followed by post offices, banks and pubs - as in Teupitz.

It is foreseeable that the restaurant on the corner will close soon, because the aged landlord does not find a successor, says Kohlhase: "Then we will probably soon be the only city in Germany without a pub." It used to be 13 times. In the end, then in many places often stuck on the last remaining shop a sign with the words "We close".

The effect not only hits the East. "Striking is the comparatively poor coverage of communities with supermarkets and discounters in Schleswig-Holstein, Mecklenburg-Vorpommern and Rhineland-Palatinate as well as in large parts of Brandenburg, Thuringia and Bavaria," says an analysis by the Thünen Institute.

But for the so-called new countries, the forecasts are particularly distressing. In a Bertelsmann study, 70 percent of the eastern German cities and municipalities - 332 out of a total of 473 - are attributed to a group of structurally weak municipalities, which the authors classify as "rather remote". In the west just 20 municipalities fall into this category. Characteristic of such villages is a strongly declining and aging population.

A supermarket needs 5000 customers

For retail chains and retail merchants who are considering taking over or opening a store, population decline is an alarm signal. Grocery stores need enough potential customers - the more modern the concepts, the more so.

A supermarket offers more than 10,000 items, and even discount stores are putting more and more fresh produce and branded items on the shelves. If they used to have a few hundred square meters of retail space, today it is often 1000.

"You can not say that the grocery trade is completely out of the area, but traders need certain turnovers to pay their costs. Accordingly, the formats are changing, "explains Kristina Pors, project manager of the EHI research area retail real estate. Just a few years ago, a supermarket with a population of 3,500 was enough for a supermarket, so today it must be more than 5,000.

In eastern Germany, an aggravating effect is added. In times of the GDR existed with shops of the trade organization (HO) a dense supply network. Some were able to save themselves beyond the turn and lived on as cooperative consumption stores, often with a connection to the Hamburg Edeka Group.

"At present, there is a generational change in many consumer stores," observes Patrick Küpper from the Thünen Institute. But a successor was hard to find because of the gloomy business prospects. "Often it does not go on," said Küpper laconically.

A place to laugh

Where the last shop closes, residents are losing not only the source of fresh potatoes, bananas and toilet paper, but also a place of casual exchange. To change this, there are countless more or less successful attempts, including commercial small-scale concepts such as Edeka's "nah & gut", "Nahkauf" by Rewe or "Lädchen für alles" by Tegut from Fulda, but also ideas based on civic engagement set, such as the format DORV (service and local all-round supply).

But the honorary led village shops often start with high expectations and land hard. "In the majority of projects, the initiators must realize after a few weeks or months that they have failed," observes trade adviser Obal. In the end, well-intentioned attempts to keep Aunt Emma out in the country have similar economic constraints as commercial chains. click here to know more