Wasted shelf space and organising shelves issue

[ThalionGrey]

Many items are far too spaced out. You could pack them in and stock double the amount of some of them on one shelf. Others should be stacked but aren't. Everything should be stacked if it's not too large to maximise stock on shelves.

Some items are way too big, such as toilet paper. These need to be limited to one per customer or something or you end up needing entire racks full of them because people buy up to three packs at a time. You can't stock enough of these to keep on top of them as they take up too much space on the floor and in storage.

Good item placement are things like tea and eggs. They stack on top of each other and use the space relatively well because of this. This means you won't run out before the stockers get to restocking them. Items such as pasta and coffee that only have 8 items on the shelf run out way too quickly meaning you're constantly scrambling to get them stocked back up on the floor.

Maximising shelf space would alleviate restocking issues, especially early game when you're either stocking yourself or have only one stocker. This wouldn't help with large bulk items such as toilet paper, which is why these would need to be limited to one per customer. You would have to offset that by letting them pick up other items instead.

Another issue I have is reorganising shelves - basically you try to move items from a shelf with a spare empty box and often before you can remove the label from the shelf a restocker is already filling the shelf back up. The only way around this time limited issue would be to fire the restockers, reorganise, and then rehire them. Not ideal. It would be nice to be able to remove a sticker from a shelf when items are still on the shelf which will stop them from restocking if you start removing. Obviously the having to keep empty boxes to be able to reorganise isn't ideal either. Hopefully a dolly or something will be implemented to allow you to easily rearrange items.

Enjoying the game so far. Looking forward to more updates.

[Knottypine]

Originally posted by ThalionGrey:

These need to be limited to one per customer or something or you end up needing entire racks full of them because people buy up to three packs at a time.

Certain larger items do require more shelf space. Limits suck. The last thing I'd want is limiting what customers could buy. I want to sell sell sell. It's a grind to expand the store and purchase licenses as the prices increase rapidly, and net profits typically don't exceed a daily average of 2-2.5K.

[ThalionGrey]

I get that, but large bulk items take up so much shelf space that limiting the amount people can buy is the only feasible way to address the issue. As I already mentioned in my post, you would offset it by making the customers buy more of other items so you're not losing out on sales. There's no real downside to doing it this way as smaller items that can stack on shelves better have way less restock pressure. Putting a little more restock pressure on these smaller items is nothing compared to the huge restock pressure on large items.

At the very least an option to limit customers to a specified amount of certain items would be a good feature.

[Knottypine]

Originally posted by ThalionGrey:

At the very least an option to limit customers to a specified amount of certain items would be a good feature.

I respectfully disagree with you. There are variations to their purchases daily. Some days I will sell zero of one type of toilet paper, while other days some customers will throw 3 of them on the checkout.

In my current store, I have two entire shelves dedicated to one brand, and two entire shelves to another. It makes for a nice toilet paper section in my store and looks logical. I've never sold out of either in a single day.

I think what you're potentially experiencing is perhaps you have less products available to you than I do. In a situation like that, you may sell more toilet paper. I feel that the more products your customers have to choose from, the more variety they have at the checkout instead of a lot of one thing. I could be wrong, just something I've observed.

eg: I used to constantly run out of certain types of flour. Now, two sections (16 pieces), typically lasts an entire day without running out.

*If anything, I would like to see something done with those turkey sized chickens and those 5 Kg bags of potatoes that are marked as 2.5 Kgs.

[ThalionGrey]

I updated my store to have two full shelves of each item for this exact reason. This does not fix the fact that huge items take up so much space on the shelf you can only fit two items on a shelf meaning you need to dedicate an entire rack to just one brand of item.

This goes the other way too. Items that are too small, even though they stack very well, such as single pots of yoghurt. Why are these not in 4-packs or 6-packs? They would still stack well, just like eggs. Nobody buys single small pots of yoghurts, and nobody sells them.

So another way to fix this is to reduce the toilet paper pack to a more manageable size. Maybe a 4-roll pack. Maybe the toilet rolls are oversized and need shrinking. This might be enough to fit more on the shelf, but also might not be. Either way, mega bulk packs of toilet paper belong in megastores like Costco, not grocery stores. If we eventually end up having actual supermarket size stores with larger shelves to match then this kind of bulk item would make sense but as it stands now it is absurd.

I think something needs to be done regardless if my suggestions are any good or not because the current system is unnecessarily annoying. I'm sure balance changes are coming, I just wanted to talk about these problems specifically because I don't see many people talking about them, especially the wasted shelf space issue which I couldn't find any thread on.

[Bean]

I agree that toilet paper takes up way too much space honestly its the only annoying item.