The week to Sunday 2 August 2026
Which departments does Monday’s meeting actually spend its time on, and which ones does it leave alone?
Hands-on · Every tool here prints the rule it sorts by so it can be argued with. This is the one where you can argue: drag the discussion line and watch who walks into the meeting. Then tick each department off as somebody accounts for it. Kept for this browser tab.
Sales came in $250 below last week — noise, on $214,250. Gross margin fell $1,816. It was not a flat week.
Cheese & Deli, Beer & Wine and Produce account for $3,521 of movement between them, in opposite directions. Everything else moved less than $750 and does not need the room.
- Sales
- $214,250
- −$250 on last week · +$1,850 on the same week last year
- Gross margin
- $70,467
- −$1,816 on last week — which is where the week actually happened
- Margin rate
- 32.9%
- 33.7% last week · −0.8 pts
Eight weeks, department by department
Sales. Each panel scaled to its own range · hairline is the eight-week mean
17.6k–21.6k
12.8k–15.6k
37.6k–42.3k
45.2k–48.2k
8.3k–9.4k
15.9k–17.2k
8.9k–9.9k
11.4k–12.3k
11.2k–12.8k
6.4k–6.9k
26.1k–27.3k
Departments, by what they did to margin
11 departments · flagged above $750 of movement
| Department | Sales | vs last week | vs last year | Margin | Margin $ | Change in margin $ |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Cheese & DeliFor the meeting | $18,400 | −$3,200 | −$1,400 | 38.5%−2.7 pts | $7,084 | −$1,815 |
| Beer & WineFor the meeting | $15,600 | +$2,500 | +$1,400 | 33.2%+0.6 pts | $5,179 | +$908 |
| ProduceFor the meeting | $41,200 | +$1,400 | +$2,300 | 34.0%−3.2 pts | $14,008 | −$798 |
| Grocery | $46,500 | −$1,400 | +$1,400 | 28.5%+0.1 pts | $13,252 | −$352 |
| Wellness | $8,300 | −$600 | −$1,300 | 41.0%−0.5 pts | $3,403 | −$291 |
| Meat & Fish | $16,700 | +$500 | −$700 | 31.0%+0.8 pts | $5,177 | +$285 |
| Bread | $9,850 | +$450 | +$950 | 44.0%+0.4 pts | $4,334 | +$236 |
| Bulk | $12,100 | +$400 | −$1,800 | 39.5%+0.4 pts | $4,780 | +$205 |
| Frozen | $11,900 | −$500 | +$300 | 30.5%−0.3 pts | $3,630 | −$189 |
| Household | $6,400 | −$200 | −$400 | 36.0%−0.2 pts | $2,304 | −$85 |
| Chill & Dairy | $27,300 | +$400 | +$1,100 | 26.8%−0.1 pts | $7,316 | +$80 |
$750 · 3 of 11 departments in the room
It is a number somebody chose, not a law of retail. It is a figure rather than a top-five because a top-five always finds five departments, including in a week where genuinely nothing happened.
Still to get through · 3 of 3
What we already know
Cheese & Deli −$1,815
Two things at once, and they are easy to mistake for each other. The three-week sampling run finished on the 26th, so sales fell back to roughly where they sat before it. Separately, the markdown on the cut-to-order case ran all week rather than on Sunday only, which is the 2.7 points.
Beer & Wine +$908
The Indiana wine feature landed the same weekend as the craft festival on the 1st. Worth saying out loud: sales rose $2,500 and margin rose with them. Every previous feature in this department was bought with a discount and this one was not.
Produce −$798
A wet July. Local supply was thin all week, so more of the shelf was bought in at conventional cost while the shelf price held. Sales up, margin down — which is what buying in always looks like.
Wellness −$291
Eighth week down against last year. This is not a week-shaped problem and the meeting should stop treating it as one.
Six departments have no note against them because nobody has offered one yet. That blank is deliberate — a guess written here would end the conversation the meeting exists to have.