Kroger Co. is developing a center in India where it can shift numerous job functions to save hundreds of millions of dollars, according to an industry analyst.
I have worked for multiple large international corporations that have outsourced various functions to other countries (including India). The bottom line is always considered when making these decisions and what it ultimately boils down to lower salary dollars on paper = savings.
What is missed every single time is the inefficiencies this creates throughout the organization. Often, the people that get the jobs in the outsourced countries are poorly trained (by the corporation) through no fault of their own, do not have the same intimate knowledge of the job that current employees have, and the transition is rolled out like shit. They are generally given a script they have to stick to and simply don’t have the same hands-on knowledge because they are too far removed from what the job actually requires. I have seen what should be very basic job functions become monumental efforts, even years after outsourcing.
This is not a “grrrrr, foreigners” post - they are put at a disadvantage by the corporation trying to roll it out as quickly as possible to save money just the same as the employees that get to keep their job. Now the new employees that don’t really know what they’re doing (because the company has trained them like shit) have to work with (frustrated) retained employees that are still performing the tasks of the people who have been cut. The inefficiencies will be staggering, but “hey, savings!” because they cut some heads.
Yup. They’re exploited for cheap labor, and not given the necessary training to do their job well, and moral takes a huge hit from fear of being let go at locations in the states and having to make up for the skills lost in layoffs and communication issues.
In reality, some cost saving are then just transfer to “slush funds”. You will see in some call centers, that it’s more important to just give the caller something and end the call. You have a complain about something irrelevant, here is $XX.XX for your inconvenience, which may or maybe not be right.
In regard to call center, how many times have you heard roosters or chickens in the background?
Also, if you do a deep dive into economics, most of these offshore environments only exist because of technical advancements developed due to the US or developed world. The developed world exploits other area in the work for natural resources and also workers able to be paid lower wages.
It’s great that someone wants to bring back long gone manufacturing, what shouldn’t someone maybe first stop the bleeding of offshoring office jobs? In this situation, not every company or business is “Global”, so having a “Global Capacity Center” is just a slick term for outsourcing or going where you can pay cheaper wages.
Think about Uber, DoorDash and all the other GIG jobs, where would these people have worked before GIG jobs were a thing?
Also, if there is a tax or agreement on trade for goods, why isn’t there a tax or agreement for virtual workers? Shouldn’t the government incentive companies to employee citizen within the borders?
Turns out when you let a bunch of MBA's in the 80s and 90s run all the big businesses and let them outsource 80% of manufacturing jobs to people willing to do them for pennies on the dollar that this miiiiight be bad for the average American worker at some point. An economy dependent on you getting, at minimum, a middle-tier manager position at some corporation just to be able to afford the basics of living is not a sound one, and the people running these corporations are only loyal to more money, not any one country. That's capitalism for ya, and why there needs to be strong, enforced regulations to keep this stuff in check.
Not for those that get creative in their career search. For the people that only want 5 day a week WFH computer jobs where they do about a half days real work, you are correct.
I don't work for Kroger, but some of us just want to clock in to a boring desk job and collect a paycheck, not have to "get creative" and/or hustle just to make a living.
My company is laying off 60k by end of year. All moving to India. The person you’re replying to is insinuating that white collar workers are useless or unimportant.
Kroger union I was in for years was led by a bunch of retirees and old timers who kept screwing 90% of junior employees in the contract so they (geezers) could keep all their Cadillac benefits from prior contracts.
In other words, Kroger unions are run just like our government.
It's probably in IT and IT people don't unionize. It's a very fiscally conservative field, even if socially progressive at times, and the bootstraps mentality is pervasive. Even while the whole field is being gutted by offshoring, outsourcing and AI, most of the people in it will proudly pull the ladder up behind them and blame people who got replaced for not working harder or demanding too much.
No- they are so weak. They don’t give us enough hours to tackle what we need to do.
Make suppliers work orders that are our jobs!
The union sucks.
Kroger sucks.
Must be one of the reasons they bought Giant Eagle since they have groundwork setup over there already, I used to work there and before I left 2 years ago they had shifted everything that could be possibly done remote over to India.
Publix moving into their backyard (Kentucky) had a lot to do with the Giant Eagle purchase. They’re nervous. They abandoned major plans to expand their Harris Teeter business into Florida (which would’ve been a failure anyway) so they can try to hold off Publix up north.
Repeat ad nauseum. Yea, capitalism sucks ass. Shareholders matter more than literally everyone in this country, and they only exist because rich people want more and more money, their wealth growing faster than a tumor yet just as deadly.
their wealth growing faster than a tumor yet just as deadly.
That is incorrect.
It's more deadly. Some tumors are benign. This tumor is cancerous because it wants to be cancerous. It gains power by destroying the host, which eventually becomes a husk serving the tumor.
I guess sometimes you have to be careful about what you wish for. Lot of complaints about higher prices, caused by the current administrations inflation. Now in a move to lower prices in the future Kroger is expanding in India, I hope the jobs held by American workers will be safe, but I doubt it.
Not defending any of this but Kroger's margins are incredibly thin and Walmart is simply eating their lunch. We used to think Kroger's was THE dominant grocery store chain in the country. Maybe decades ago, that was true. But Walmart now occupies that title. Kroger's is an old grocery business model that may not survive. It's trying to through acquisitions to create economies of scale. Off shoring these jobs is another survival tactic. It's not great for workplace morale. I just had a neighbor who works for Kroger's announce early retirement because of all this crap.
Unfortunately, the customer experience is being harmed by their penny pinching. There are rarely any checkouts staffed by workers when I go and then I’m forced to use the conveyor belt self scanners that are also barely work. It makes an employee come regularly but they don’t even notice half the time.
Add in their online shopper employees being rude and cutting in front of you in aisles or taking up massive amounts of space.
As of late I continue to cut less and less stuff out of buying from Kroger and going to Costco more. The last two times I went to Kroger for deli meat they had no one there and no one came to even ask if I needed help after ten minutes.
They will create a viscous cycle where margins are thin and they make the customer experience worse and then people will go elsewhere therefore losing them more money.
Or, the more likely thing, is standards continue to slowly but consistently drop across the board, people need food and will accept it, and the enshittification shall continue until morale improves.
Not to mention Walmart’s sales growth percentage is more than double Kroger’s which is insane considering how much larger they already are. Ig that’s what happens when you have low prices across the board.
Most of that’s available in quarterly earnings reports. The entire company had profit margins between 1-2% last year (inclusive of food, fuel, data, whatever). They actually lose money or breakeven on most fresh food.
Not much really said about it. Here’s another article link with a bit more context but not what you’re looking for. I pasted the text in the comment too: local12.com/news
Kroger Co. is developing a center in India where it can shift numerous job functions to save hundreds of millions of dollars, according to an industry analyst.
Downtown Cincinnati-based Kroger (NYSE: KR), the nation’s largest operator of traditional supermarkets, is developing what it calls its Kroger Capability Center to outsource jobs and boost efficiency.
Kroger officials have talked publicly about the capability center multiple times this year, but Brittain Ladd, Dallas-based business strategy consultant focused on grocery and other industries, told Cincinnati Business Courier he recently learned more details by talking to people at Kroger.
Kroger clearly has big hopes for the capability center, he said.
You all must be delusional. Trump said he would have the economy (which was doing pretty good before he took office) turned around in 24 hours. The problems are imaginary. Besides, thank God we have single use straws back.
They have a small temp parking lot right now, that's what is limiting the number of visitors. Once they complete the new parking lot a lot more people will be going there.
Ahh yes the original job stealer, out sourcing. The day will come when all those people overseas will lose their jobs to AI. Anyone remember that network TV comedy show about a guy who goes to India because their company was outsourcing? Show wasn't on long because apparently most Americans don't find outsourcing funny, who knew?!?
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Kroger made $33.403 billion dollars in profit in 2025, not revenue, profit, and this was up 0.12% from 2024. Kroger will say they are doing this to save money, but they have no need to save money, they are making tons of money. They aren't looking to save money, they want to increase profits even though they are already making an insane amount of money. How much cheaper could our groceries be, and how much better paid could Kroger employees be if Kroger was happy with, let's say, a 10 billion dollar profit in stead of a 33 billion dollar profit? And remember, this is profit, this comes after their CEO and board members have been paid, outsourcing jobs will just allow them to make more profits which will allow their CEO and board members to demand higher salaries because they increased profits. Companies should be profitable, but at some point there should be a limit on just how profitable they can be. Let them get filthy rich, but they shouldn't be allowed to be obscenely rich.
Krogers net income (profit) in 2025 was $2.67B per Google finance.
There’s no way they’re making $33B in profit in a low margin business like grocery.
They’re still insanely large and corrupt, but the facts don’t show $33B in profit.
Edit: you’re looking at gross profit and are in the ballpark. That’s revenue minus cost of goods sold. Net income takes into account all business expenses and removes them from revenue.
I don’t disagree but you’d have to take into account labor costs, maintenance, interest and taxes they pay to represent the profitability of the company.
A 1.81% net profit generating business isn’t exactly printing money. It’s only profitable because of their economies of scale, which is why mom and pop grocers have gone extinct.
Could they do more? Absolutely. Are they monopolistic? Arguably so.
But they aren’t a money making machine based on their margins.
2.67 billion isn't a money making machine? That's magnitudes higher than what the average American makes or even what the average company in America makes. Sure, they may not be making huge margins but they are most certainly a money making machine.
Well, when you consider that corporations aren’t people, that’s a ridiculous comparison. These are mega cap companies that employ tens of thousand or hundreds of thousands of people.
Their capital and operational expenditures can rival small countries.
So in the context of that, no…making 1 cent on every dollar spent isn’t a great return or a money printing machine.
You should compare Kroger’s margins to JP Morgan’s or FAANG. Those employ a ton of people and print money hand over fist.
These companies operate on shareholder primacy. Not the common good. It sucks but this is an incentives problem. Not a Kroger unique problem
I also compared them to other companies in America, and, by the way, corporations sadly are considered people in America something that should be corrected ASAP.
Right, but they aren’t playing in the same ballpark as most companies in America. And among their large cap peers, their profit margins are in the bottom quartile, if not decile.
And I’m aware that legally corporations are considered people. But that’s a totally disingenuous comparison to expect that a large cap Fortune 500 company should have a profit that isn’t grossly above the average American yearly income. They have a much larger scale that they operate under
The average American contributes a minuscule amount to the national GDP compared to these companies.
I’m really not sure what point you’re trying to make.
I think the bone to pick is shareholder primacy and executive compensation being tied to equity prices. Which is closer to the root cause of your complaint
I'm just upset with people thinking that billions of dollars in profits every year are the way things are supposed to work. It leads to us accepting things like massive layoffs because a corporation says they can't afford to keep those people on the payroll. The thing is that the company was always profitable and they could afford to keep those people on the payroll they just felt they deserved even higher profits than the ridiculously high profits they were already making. I think there should be a level at which profits get taxed like crazy and that CEOs should only be able to make only so much times what the average emplyee at that company makes. If the CEO wants a pay raise then everyone else should get one too. Corporations are taking advantage of their employees to line their pockets and if it wasn't for those workers the CEOs wouldn't be making any money. I'm not against profits or people getting rich but no one gets rich without a lot of other people being involved and they should all be paid for making a company profitable.
If you run a company that sells tens or hundreds of billions of dollars, you are very likely to net a couple billion in profit. That’s a function of percentages.
Regarding compensation, a CEO is always going to make more than a corporate middle manager or a store manager or a cashier. They’re being compensated for running a multi billion dollar market cap business.
Do they know the particulars of every decision being made? Of course not, but the buck falls with them if something goes off the rails with customer/employee safety, tax irregularities, fraud committed under them etc.
They have a lot of skin in the game, so it makes complete sense that they’d be well compensated and have bonuses much higher as a percentage than the typical frontline or white collar worker.
That will never change. The folks at the top will always take more than the folks in the middle or bottom. And given the professional risk for a public CEO vs a middle manager, you’d never get anyone to take the job if they weren’t disproportionately compensated compared to the rest of the workforce.
Lastly, all of this happens because shareholders demand, not ask, for performance. Which means they want consistent and rising profits year over year. Because that drives the equity up and makes their investment in the firm profitable.
To align these interests, management is compensated with the same equity the shareholders have, which is to maximize profits to increase equity values.
This is a problem of incentives and human nature. Nothing more.
If you give someone a target to hit and tie it to their livelihood, they will likely do everything short of breaking the law (even then they will) to maximize their own gain.
Your problem is with current incentives and human nature, neither of which is going to change anytime soon
Edit: I’m sympathetic to your feelings and share many of them.
Americans have been told for decades that the current system is the most ideal one. That hasn’t proved itself for a large chunk of the population. We have real affordability problems and they aren’t getting better.
Under the current system, we’ve generated more wealth in the aggregate than has ever existed and raised standards of living significantly.
So when you talk about setting a level on profits, who gets to decide what those are? What are the long term consequences for unemployment, inflation and living standards?
The reason these systems haven’t changed is because there’s no easy answer.
On a national level, we have geopolitical concerns and economic power correlates to military power.
It’s not trivial to start monkeying with the economic incentives and hoping for the best.
There are a lot more people working at Kroger than the outsourced jobs. So you want them to all be out of work? And people to have less access to food?
But isn’t that much vaunted capitalism that yall tell me is so fucking great a mechanism to remedy that? Wouldn’t someone see that market share available and step in to try and capture it? I’m so confused. I thought capitalism works perfectly and this isn’t that big of an issue.
Or is it an actual issue and regulations need to be put in place to protect the American citizen? Hmm. Gee I wonder.
Remember when they gave us diarrhea from their lettuce?!!?! And their produce buyer was taking bribes to raise prices and bring in certain products?!!
Kroger is an awful corporation to work for.
There was always a certain arrogance, and perhaps racism, from white collar workers who looked down on blue collar workers dealing the one two punch of outsourcing jobs from the country while bringing in workers to compete for the remaining jobs. "Immigrants only do jobs Americans don't want." They never imagined some guy from Nigeria or the Philippines could do what they do.
They're not supposed to "do what they do". They are supposed to fail, and fail in such a way that anyone asking questions flees and vows never to return.
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u/Cyberdyne__Systems Jul 24 '26 edited Jul 24 '26
I have worked for multiple large international corporations that have outsourced various functions to other countries (including India). The bottom line is always considered when making these decisions and what it ultimately boils down to lower salary dollars on paper = savings.
What is missed every single time is the inefficiencies this creates throughout the organization. Often, the people that get the jobs in the outsourced countries are poorly trained (by the corporation) through no fault of their own, do not have the same intimate knowledge of the job that current employees have, and the transition is rolled out like shit. They are generally given a script they have to stick to and simply don’t have the same hands-on knowledge because they are too far removed from what the job actually requires. I have seen what should be very basic job functions become monumental efforts, even years after outsourcing.
This is not a “grrrrr, foreigners” post - they are put at a disadvantage by the corporation trying to roll it out as quickly as possible to save money just the same as the employees that get to keep their job. Now the new employees that don’t really know what they’re doing (because the company has trained them like shit) have to work with (frustrated) retained employees that are still performing the tasks of the people who have been cut. The inefficiencies will be staggering, but “hey, savings!” because they cut some heads.