Working in a grocery store is a bit different from restaurants.  Besides the fact that I don't get covered in food all day, even though I AM still working with unpackaged foods (in the deli), I was surprised at how much food doesn't actually get made in-house.  At the restaurant, we made almost everything either from scratch or from a mix.  At the grocery store, we get almost everything either precooked and frozen/refrigerated or in a kit.  I really think that most of the people I work with couldn't hang with us at the restaurant.  There would be much crying.

Also, the food is sold explicitly via retail, which still confuses the shit out of me when it comes time to fix the accounting.  I mean, i get it.  You pay for the food at wholesale, you sell it at retail, the difference is the markup, and all that jazz.  Simple.  But you count inventory in retail dollars, not what you actually spent, then you give yourself credit for promotional sales on certain items that are still sold for more than you paid.  I'd like to see that math all the way through just once.

Besides that, there is apparently a lot of money that goes into those little point of purchase displays that are peppered around the cash registers.  Those and all the little floor displays.  At the restaurant, it was just cook the food and serve it.  I'm not sure which is simpler.