Interesting classification scheme spotted at Safeway.

They've choosen meals as the main organizing principal, which leads to funny labels like "bake time." And would you look for "paper napkins" in the "lunch time" isle?

The shop.safeway.com site has a somewhat different classification scheme (unfortunately you will have to register to explore it. all you need for that is name, email and an appropriate zip. mine worked, 94306)

I wonder how they came to these different choices? (navigating the shop.safeway.com is a nightmare for very different reasons that I'm sure I'll write about later.)

The store organization is a classic failure, really. Samantha Baily & Peter Morville used something like this as an example of what NOT to do in a physical space during their Taxonomies & Thesauri workshop last year. Organizing by meals can work if you have a way to organize by another classification. As you pointed out, where do paper napkins go? What mel time does Tide go under? Where do you put milk--breakfast, dinner, bake time...?

Sheesh....

Man, I can't stand the way supermarkets are organized... can't think of one place that gets it right. I wonder how much easier they would be to navigate if they hired an IA?

Anyway, my biggest pet peeve is that ice cream fixins (like caramel sauce, Hershey's syrup, cones, etc) are never anywhere *near* the ice cream. It's always kept in some odd place. In various stores, I've seen it next to the instant oatmeal, coffee, or spices. Why?

I hate having to hunt things down in supermarkets. It's such a waste of my time, not to mention theirs... because when you think about it, it also affects the supermarket clerks' productivity. I mean, how many times in a given day does a clerk have to stop what they're doing to help a customer find this item or that item?

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