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Nominal profits have no place in this discussion. Only profit margin, and grocery businesses have profit margins of 2% or maybe 4%. Tesco has a less than 4% profit margin (they only list operating margin, I didn’t bother to calculate profit margin, but it must be lower), and the margins have not been increasing. Which means Tesco’s costs are increasing, necessitating Tesco’s price increases. Otherwise Tesco loses money.

https://www.tescoplc.com/investors/reports-results-and-prese...

If you think you can run a better business on sub 4% profit margin, you are welcome to throw your hat in the ring. But it really is an achievement of modern technology, logistics, and management to enable to get the amount of food, from all over the world, in consumer’s hands, all year round, at such low profit margin.




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