Rant: Browsing charge?

Would you pay a fee to browse a shop? Alright, I can see the look on your face. But what if the shop was a specialist retailer? Still not so much? Even if the fee was deducted from your purchase?

A news article in the Brisbane Times was brought to my attention recently. In it, a shop owner explains the reasoning behind starting to charge prospective customers to browse. If at first your reaction was one of shock, or outrage, then I invite you to read on. 

Georgina runs a specialist shop in Brisbane supplying coeliac friendly groceries to the city. Her range is, by the looks of things, varied and extensive. Some products in her shop could probably be found at supermarkets, or online retailers, for less than she sells them. However, her shop is unique in the fact that she, who I assume is a coeliac or at least has extensive knowledge of living with the disease, runs it and provides expert guidance and assistance to her customers. She says she often spends half an hour with people who visit her shop. How many of us have had that in a supermarket? 

The browsing fee has been set at just A$5 (£2.75) and is redeemable against any purchase. Additionally, says Georgina, pensioners, children, and regulars will not be charged.

Now here's why I would be more than happy to pay a browsing fee to shop in a place like Celiac Supplies. As a coeliac, it's incredibly time consuming and frustrating to trawl multiple supermarkets looking for the products I need. Each supermarket stocks a slightly different and limited range, and I find myself needing to visit more than one supermarket just to pick up the things I need. For example, only one of the big four supermarkets near where I live stocks tamari (gluten free soy sauce). 

Alternatively, there's the online retailers. These have a much larger range of goods than the supermarkets contain, and I can get everything in one place. The delivery slots are getting more reasonable and arguably the time spent waiting for the delivery to arrive is much more pleasant than the equivalent time spent schlepping around a giant hangar-like supermarket. Except that doesn't quite work out either, because a lot of the most interesting gluten free food comes direct from independent retailers who all have their own separate shopping sites, with minimum purchase quantities and awkward delivery times. Online retailing works for products which you already know and love, but for trying new things it sucks. You can't give those nice fluffy looking bread rolls a good prod to see whether they're actually rock solid, and could very well end up with a product which bears little resemblance to the nice marketing photo on the website.

Most people's disgust at this practice, which some have called "showrooming", seems to be based on their experience of shopping for consumer goods, such as clothing or electronics. In this case, it's understandable that you might want to shop around to find a style or product specification that suits your tastes exactly. However, grocery shopping is not like that. How many times have you gone to the pasta aisle, spend a while deliberating each of the options on offer, and then decided to try a different shop because you didn't like any of the shapes? No; it's a different scenario. When you shop for groceries, you know what you need, and you go and buy it. If you're "just browsing", chances are you're price matching, or you're not in a specialist shop. Why go out of your way if you don't already know what you want?

Let me tell you, if I could go to a place where everything I needed was in one place, which was easily accessible, didn't take half an hour to cross the shop floor and locate the free from section and could be taken home immediately, all with friendly and knowledgeable customer service, you bet I'd pay a browsing fee. Especially if it was redeemed on purchase - because lets face it, us coeliacs don't browse. We go hog wild at the sight of foods which are normally off limits that we can eat without restriction.

If you were anti-browsing charge at the beginning of the article, I'd wager you're not a coeliac. And if you are, and you're still anti-browsing charge after reading this, can you please tell me where you live as I think I'd like to move there?

-Rachel