Industry relations have moved up, down and around over the last 50 years.
In 1973, SN quoted James Cooke, chairman of Penn Fruit Co., Philadelphia, who attacked one of the time-honored cliches of the industry -- that retailers and manufacturers were always happy partners. According to Cooke, more often they are adversaries. "Anybody who doesn't think business is a form of warfare is deluding himself," he said.
In the last decade or so, the attitude toward industry relations has moved beyond Cooke's war metaphor. Speaking to SN in 1993, Robert O. Aders, president, Food Marketing Institute, said in SN: "This is a very different kind of industry. I'm constantly amazed at the industry's cohesiveness and willingness to share, the feeling that everyone's in the same boat. There's a glue in the supermarket industry that doesn't exist in most places, and I think it will continue."
Still, there are divisive issues between buyers and sellers that persist.
One of those involves equitable treatment of all retail customers -- an issue that was debated as far back as the 1950s when it involved chains vs. independents, and debated again beginning in the late 1980s, when it was recast as a class-of-trade issue that involved supermarkets vs. alternate retail formats.
