The Refrigerated Real Estate Boom: Who Is Really Paying the Price of Slotting?

Abstract

In November of 2003, the Federal Trade Commission (“FTC”) released a staff study titled “Slotting Allowances in the Retail Grocery Industry: Selected Case Studies in Five Product Categories.” The result of recent efforts by the legislature to scrutinize the secretive world of retailing slotting fees, the report sought to provide the ongoing debate with much-needed empirical data. Having failed in an attempt to use the Government Accountability Office (“GAO”) to investigate these practices in September of 2000, the U.S. Senate Committee on Small Business & Entrepreneurship requested that the FTC take the helm, authorizing the Commission to spend up to $900,000 on its inquiry. The FTC’s study was narrow in scope. The Commission sent a voluntary access letter to nine retailers in an attempt to obtain “data, documents, and interrogatory responses on slotting allowances and other retailer practices for five product categories.” This Note examines how much light the resulting data sheds on the practice of slotting and suggests that such studies alone will not resolve the issues surrounding the practice of slotting. Regulators and legislators alike must first develop a common language with which to approach the problem and address possible limitations on traditional conceptions of the retailing industry.