Vermont Legislature SmartTranscripts:

[Mark (VT Agency of Agriculture, Weights & Measures Program)]: To unit pricing and some of these pricing issues and why we we've spent a lot of time with this. And we've we've got, Scott, we need, couple years, if not two and a half, invested in trying to update specifically update unit pricing laws in the state of Vermont. And I will just say that the current laws under Title VI are over 50 years old. They're antiquated. They were put in place before the internet even existed or was common. The buying experience was different. And what they came up with for the law was difficult to comply with and it was difficult to enforce. So what we've done is we've tried to streamline the law to make it simpler and easier for people and retailers to comply with and also for our enforcement program to enforce at the same time. Nowadays we have issues regarding AI issues or dynamic pricing issues and electronic shelf tags and all of this. And we've taken, made an attempt to try to address some of those concerns from the consumer point of view while understanding the need and the potential benefits of those electronic shelf bags at the same time. And I'm gonna just, a little more background also. We work with our federal partners at the National Institute of Standards and Technology out of Washington, DC. They have no regulatory authority, but they work on educating, promoting weights and measures issues in the state throughout the states and the country. And Scott I've got Scott here. He's the technical adviser in regard to unit pricing. He's done a significant amount of work on that. And I was very pleased to see him partner with NIST out of DC. And they see saw the need to update the regulation in this handbook one thirty, which we adopt by reference already, and to update their, for example, their unit pricing special guide, which we give to retailers and give guidance and training and so on and so forth. And usually this very seldom happens, but usually they have the technical advisors out of the Office of Weights and Measures from the Physical Measurement Laboratory, and they have four authors here listed. And I'm really pleased to have Scott, the only person from a state jurisdiction also listed on that. It very seldom happens that they give authorship to someone outside of the group. And this is a wonderful publication, it's online, and it's something that the program and the state of Vermont can take some pride in. So when it comes to the technical aspects, we literally have someone in the room who literally helped write the book on unit pricing. And I know Scott spent a lot of time doing doing a lot of pictures and and the the tags and a lot of the language in that, in the partnership. So why don't you go to the next slide, Scott? And one of the things that this update does do in the prior unit pricing law or pricing law, there was no requirement for retailers if they did not come under unit pricing, there's no requirement for them to even put a price on an item that's offered for retail sale. So if you had an individual store owner, they had one location and they had 7,000 square feet of selling space, there was no lobby required to have them have an associated price with any item. So you could go in that store and there wouldn't be a single price, and there'd be no violation and nothing that we could do with that. And we would periodically get some concerns or complaints on that. Why did I go into this general store and half the items have no prices on them? And so we have a very basic statement in here in the update that would require a price and associated price to be with that item if it's offered for sale at retail. So some price disclosures item on that. And we think that that's a really beneficial thing for customers and consumers and equity in the marketplace between the stores. You wanna hear the next one, Scott? And it modernizes some of the pricing requirements. It follows the guide and it also follows the national standards. So it's very clear. It removes the outdated regulations. We adopt the national standards and it clarifies some of the exemptions that were many in the unit pricing law for the state of Vermont. Having national standards is a great benefit to retailers. You have 50 different states. I speak with a lot of them and they go into Massachusetts. Massachusetts has their own law and regulations. They go into Connecticut. They have theirs. They go into New York and they have theirs. By having uniform standards, a large company knows what's to be expected, and they can come in and price accurately in the best interest of both the store and the consumers. Scott, you got the next slide.

[Rep. David Durfee (Chair)]: Representative O'Brien, questions?

[Rep. John O'Brien]: If we just go back, because I'm curious. What are some of the numbers mean up there, say, beneath the 49.6?

[Mark (VT Agency of Agriculture, Weights & Measures Program)]: And I'm going to quickly let Scott jump in. Okay, so this is just

[Scott (VT Weights & Measures Technical Advisor; NIST collaborator)]: an example tag from a It actually is one of the examples from that best practice guide. So we were trying to do We took real examples from the field from a pet store brand. It's a national brand. The big white price and white is the item price, the total selling price of that item. The orange price, as I said, is the unit price per unit of measure in those cakes that shows food per ounce, which again by the national standards that's allowed. And then on the tags have lots of other things that mean something to the store or to stockings and just that. So that's why when we try to put these examples out, we try to include actual things that would be on a price like on a normal tag in store. Again, showing examples that just show your price and the stuff the consumer is looking at, don't do a store or a chain any good because it's missing the information they need to have it to make sure those tags get put up correctly, the items get stocked correctly, all of those other things. So that's what the other stuff is in

[Rep. John O'Brien]: every brand. So those are all, it makes sense to hand the first or something, but Yeah, and I'm consumer.

[Scott (VT Weights & Measures Technical Advisor; NIST collaborator)]: Yeah, no, they don't make any sense to me, and I've got a thousand stuff.

[Mark (VT Agency of Agriculture, Weights & Measures Program)]: And this tag, it identifies the product, pet food, it has the unit there, and it establishes how it's sold. I put a little glare there, I can't see very well. By the ounce stock, right? Yes. By the ounce? Per ounce. And then it has your total selling price there also. So the customer can see that. And the requirement is, for example, if you have a lot of different types of dog food all on the shelf, for them, if they're gonna unit price by the ounce, they all have to be unit priced by the ounce. One can't do it by the pound and the other by the ounce. And someone buys some other strange unit, a measure that they come up with arbitrarily. So it gives a customer the opportunity to make a value dollar comparison when they're buying items that are similar. So it benefits the household and households that are trying to watch their budgets If they're really looking for what the most cost effective item is to purchase, they can quickly zero in on that unit price tag. And regardless of the size of the package, they can determine if it truly is the better buy or not. And there's been issues regarding shrinkflation and other issues where, you you used to buy a pound of coffee. It's hard to buy a pound of coffee, you can, but, know, now it's three quarters of a pound and so on and so forth. If coffee is out there, regardless of the size of the package and you have the unit price, it's gonna tell you how much you're paying per pound or per ounce. So that's the benefit to the customer and the consumer on unit pricing.

[Rep. John O'Brien]: Just one more thing, is any of this affect what a given retailer can sell something for? It's interesting, like pool and cheap grain at OvaShot, it went from like an $18 for a 50 pound bag to 22, which was really no, I don't

[Scott (VT Weights & Measures Technical Advisor; NIST collaborator)]: know what happened, but, and then

[Rep. John O'Brien]: it went back to 20, all within about a month.

[Scott (VT Weights & Measures Technical Advisor; NIST collaborator)]: Yeah, yeah.

[Rep. John O'Brien]: So would that unit price have to be changing on say that bag of grain, if it's changing, right?

[Mark (VT Agency of Agriculture, Weights & Measures Program)]: Yeah, these are for consumable commodities, ideally in a grocery store, but they can have overlaps in other areas. And when the price changes, they would have to change the unit price. Yes, they

[Scott (VT Weights & Measures Technical Advisor; NIST collaborator)]: would. Yeah.

[Mark (VT Agency of Agriculture, Weights & Measures Program)]: And we talked about electronic shelf packs. And we've had some conversations this year with some other elected representatives regarding AI and dynamic pricing and this and that. It's a very complicated issue. And our program can can do a certain amount with this. But a lot of the stores have electronic shelf packs that can make changes very quickly and efficiently. Scott and I, are big proponents of electronic shelf tags, and some of the capability we feel has the chance to increase accuracy and quick price changes when there are errors and so on and so forth. But it does have some guardrails for dynamic pricing, specifically restricting when those prices can be changed. We want to avoid customers going in and doing shopping at three in the afternoon, and they pick up the item at three and they're doing shopping and it's 03:20. And by the time they get to the checkout, now it's a higher price. So we want some guardrails on that. That was a very short slide presentation. I've got Scott here. We've worked several years on this. The old unit pricing law is very, very difficult to understand at times and to enforce. And it's also referenced in here that this recognizes and adopts the national standard on unit pricing, the regulation in this handbook 01/2030, which we've already done by reference in Title IX, Chapter 73, Weights and Measures Law. So we've had a few retailers make the comment that you folks are adopting national standards and going ahead and doing this. A few concerns, not many. And we did that over three years ago in Title IX, Chapter 73, and it's what we use for the actual inspections and compliance. And we find it to be much easier to use and easier for the retailers to comply with also. Mark,

[Rep. David Durfee (Chair)]: you Was Scott gonna add anything else?

[Mark (VT Agency of Agriculture, Weights & Measures Program)]: Scott is free to add anything he would like. And Scott, I know you've worked exhaustively with this, and he's been the lead in many areas on this. And the agency and myself has appreciated so much the work he's done with this.

[Rep. David Durfee (Chair)]: We're happy to have you if you want to add anything. And I don't see any questions from the committee. So if there's something you wanted to add, Scott? No, those are kind

[Scott (VT Weights & Measures Technical Advisor; NIST collaborator)]: of the big things we're trying to do with this. There's lots of little technical things inside of the language. So we're completely prepared to answer any questions people have about that, contextual details of that, and I can bring up language up to people who

[Rep. David Durfee (Chair)]: Well, would like to if you've got it handy, I was going to ask

[Mark (VT Agency of Agriculture, Weights & Measures Program)]: I can bring it up to if you could

[Rep. David Durfee (Chair)]: do that. Yeah. And Patricia, if you could post, this is seven seventy, the housekeeping committee bill. If you would post that on our page two today, that would be good. Yeah, John.

[Patricia (Committee Assistant)]: Will do.

[Rep. John O'Brien]: Mark and Scott, you also oversee gas? Yes. It's been like the last couple of weeks, because of fluctuations. We'll see the complaints come in.

[Mark (VT Agency of Agriculture, Weights & Measures Program)]: We'll see when we had, was it two or three years ago, the prices went through the roof. Remember that? Years ago. Oh, we had we had complaints coming in. Nationally, a lot of jurisdictions were getting hammered with consumer complaints on short short measure and just the pricing. And I took some pictures. I went around and I took some pictures. I sent them to the ins and debits. I said, this is what we're looking at, and we're getting a lot of complaints. So we'll see. We'll see how it sugars off. Right. And fingers crossed, it's not going to be too bad. But you never know. Four years ago, it was pretty bad. The prices got exorbitant.

[Rep. David Durfee (Chair)]: Do we have in Vermont any retailers using the electronic shelf tags?

[Scott (VT Weights & Measures Technical Advisor; NIST collaborator)]: Yes. Yes, we do. Walmart just started using them in '25. Best Buy has been using them for almost a decade. All these, I believe, been using them since they moved to The States. Yeah, so European based companies basically, I went to Switzerland this summer, I did not see a paper shelf peg in any sort whatsoever. In Europe, they basically gone to this because it, one, saves labor, and then two, it allows them, and they're largely using it to discount during the day, made to order food or ready to eat food, right? If you have got a deli and again, their sandwich is left at the end of the day, at 05:00 the price jumps down 10%,

[Rep. Jed Lipsky]: at

[Scott (VT Weights & Measures Technical Advisor; NIST collaborator)]: 08:00 it jumps down a bunch more, so if you want to buy cheap food, you can get food at the end of the day and those are a lot of eye changing things they're pushing through. Yeah, getting back to Walmart, all these, Best Buy, Depot, Lowe's has it in some of their stores as well. So it's here and it is coming. It's getting cheaper and cheaper every year.

[Rep. David Durfee (Chair)]: Is it in those stores that you just mentioned here in Vermont, is it supplementing or is it completely replaced paper?

[Scott (VT Weights & Measures Technical Advisor; NIST collaborator)]: Walmart still has some, they have some, when they've had some issues they are going back to paper for a short term fix, but it's a complete fix for them. I believe all these has been completely electronic since they moved to the state. Homekeeper and whichever one of the Homekeeper goes, I'm not sure. I think they still do have some paper signs. Usually there's some sales stuff where they are putting up paper signs. And I guess the other one I should say is Coles. Coles has electronic, they're not really shelf tags, but they're little units that are like, okay, this island and then the prices are all on one screen in the middle of that island.

[Rep. John L. Bartholomew (Vice Chair)]: This may not be important for the discussion, but I'm curious how do they work? They're not wired, right?

[Scott (VT Weights & Measures Technical Advisor; NIST collaborator)]: No, they're all wireless communication, so basically the way the industry has explained to me, somebody at the home office controls the pricing. They can set a time to change, but if you want something to change live, somebody in the home office of Walmart in Arkansas can literally say, okay, we want the prices in this store in Vermont to change and we're going to drop them all by 10%. Can click a button and it takes about five minutes for all those prices to change.

[Rep. David Durfee (Chair)]: Addisonville? Yeah, it's all wireless.

[Scott (VT Weights & Measures Technical Advisor; NIST collaborator)]: It's all cloud and wireless based. Hopefully there are some checks. I mean, most stores we've talked to have some checks and balances in the back end and a lot of them have their prices set to push out. Basically what we've been told, the industry right now is following the practices that we're kind of mandating. It's basically just when you're gonna change your prices or especially raise them, do it when you're close to the public. So they're just timing these like, okay, program then during the day, they take effect at midnight or 01:00, all the prices are changed and updated for the morning.

[Rep. David Durfee (Chair)]: We may have heard from when the agency presented the language, when Steve Collier, I think, came in and presented this concept and walked us through the language, we heard possibly a concern that AI, technology advancing in general, but doesn't need to be AI, could lead to situations like the one you just described, where based on what I've got on my phone at the moment when I walk up, the price could I'm wondering whether there are, you'll probably be able to say this when you go through this, and I'm thinking about gas, gasoline and gas. But is there anything in existing law that says a gas station operator can't change their price during the middle of the day or they have do it before they open?

[Scott (VT Weights & Measures Technical Advisor; NIST collaborator)]: No, there are, well, the ones that are using it, and again, just going back to the mechanics of it, the ones that are using electronic pricing, like where the sign is electronic and the pump itself is electronic, those basically have an internal setting that the person inside can change the price. Any transaction that's already been authorized will stay with the old price, but basically the signs all change and as soon as that person hangs up that transaction, that pump will then change over to the new price. So it is kind of a real time thing, But again, should guarantee, and again, we've never received complaints and every time it's happened when I've been out and tested infecting gas stations, if I'm doing one thing, may hang it up. I still see the price computed for what I started that transaction for, the next month I go to will have a new price.

[Rep. David Durfee (Chair)]: Do you want to change and does this change that so that gas stations couldn't change the price?

[Mark (VT Agency of Agriculture, Weights & Measures Program)]: It's getting paid for. It does not. It does not. This is for retail commodities to be sold. The requirements on a gas pump and a gas station is if they change the price, if you've cut your handle on the nozzle and they change the price, it's required to be there right here. So it's in real time. If it's changed, there could theoretically be a second or two difference or you don't notice it, but it's a different buying experience than when you go and buy groceries in a grocery store. You might be in the store at an extended period of time, whereas gasoline, there's a sign I pull in, you look at the price on the pump and you pump and it goes back.

[Scott (VT Weights & Measures Technical Advisor; NIST collaborator)]: We're not

[Rep. David Durfee (Chair)]: trying to measure that.

[Scott (VT Weights & Measures Technical Advisor; NIST collaborator)]: No, because we're pretty certain that in those situations, the consumer is getting what they technically agreed to pay. You want

[Rep. David Durfee (Chair)]: to just quickly, we don't have a lot of time, but if you want to just quickly highlight what the language here says, and the committee, we'll have a chance to look at this again. But if there's things you want to call out.

[Scott (VT Weights & Measures Technical Advisor; NIST collaborator)]: I'm just going to highlight the new things. So electronic shelf labor, we've got a new definition of that, so it's new 1980s. So that is a new definition. I'm not going

[Rep. John O'Brien]: to belabor it by reading it

[Scott (VT Weights & Measures Technical Advisor; NIST collaborator)]: to you guys, but I'll read it up there so you probably read it. Do that. The other things we did, because there's always been exemptions for limited time things, we need to define what limited time means. Basically, you can have a limited time offer for sixty days. If it's longer than that, it's no longer a limited time event. We came up with the definition of made to order. There's a lot of jelly's type of things. We wanted the price to be there, but again, the unit price is made be exact. So we'll be mostly exempt from unit price. So would you go in, I want to get a jelly sandwich? That's just been completely exempt from those things. They don't propose the price for the sandwich, but they don't have any sort of unit pricing and those type of things, whether it's whatever it is, it's made to order. We added a definition for real time dynamic pricing. The reason we went with real time dynamic is because dynamic just means things change. Obviously, but we all know prices change. So they say a dynamic price is just to say a price because it needs to change. So real time basically means like as you said, you can't change it during the day when you're open to the public, people are picking up things. We clarified a little bit what a retail establishment was because the last language was a little bit confusing on those issues. The total selling price just because we're adding another requirement to actually post the total selling price and have it be accessible if the company is checking out. There's no storage of compliance with malware anyway, so when you're writing out, people can actually see that price as it winds up. If something's different, they can then inquire about that difference. And then we've gotten down to means of disclosure. Again, we're adopting the national standards which are out. It's just one small section of

[Rep. John O'Brien]: this book here. Standard from

[Scott (VT Weights & Measures Technical Advisor; NIST collaborator)]: thirty years. UUPR, uniform unit price regulation. We did set a minimum font size. This minimum font size of seventhirty two of an inch probably sounds strange to a bunch of you advice it such as to each other. It's this number because

[Rep. John O'Brien]: some stores are

[Scott (VT Weights & Measures Technical Advisor; NIST collaborator)]: still using the other, the old gun type labels to put either shelf labels up. That is the font size that those things print out. So we didn't want to have forced people to change that technique, even though seventhirty two is probably not the best size for actual people listening, but we figured again to make it a difference there. Okay, this technology exists, stores have been using it, some of them are putting out accurate pricing with it, so why are we going to force the change? So that's why we set that as a minimum.

[Rep. John O'Brien]: Does this affect farmers markets or farm stage at all?

[Scott (VT Weights & Measures Technical Advisor; NIST collaborator)]: Well, do they have any retail space? Yeah, I mean, comes down to question, farmers markets have any retail space?

[Mark (VT Agency of Agriculture, Weights & Measures Program)]: And I'm gonna just touch on, this is a great question. I'm just gonna just touch on the issue of compliance and enforcement and how inspections are done and discernment in how the work is carried out. So I would just say that the labels and the orange labels and so on and so forth, I think I can say that the Secretary of Agriculture has some authority to set reasonable adjustments to laws and regulations. And I'm sure that if that ever became an issue, that he would be probably he or she would be more than happy to do so. And that the intent the intent of this is not to go into, you know, a farm stand or a farmer's market, although we do some slight work in, you know, we go to the farmer's market once a while, make sure the scales are Okay. And we want to make sure that when I had some complaints, someone's buying a farm stand or consumer complaint, they're buying a turkey and the range We're going to sell you that turkey by a range. It's going to be between 16 and 17 pounds. And people took exception by that. No, you're going to sell the turkey by what it weighs and so on and so forth in a price per pound. Having said that, that doesn't mean that they have to put up an orange label and this and that. And plus, if there's some exemptions here also that Scott is going to hit on on exemptions if you have two or fewer locations. You

[Scott (VT Weights & Measures Technical Advisor; NIST collaborator)]: guys wanna read

[Mark (VT Agency of Agriculture, Weights & Measures Program)]: it? Less than 6,000 square feet, then those places are exempt from UniPrice. UniPrice. So this

[Scott (VT Weights & Measures Technical Advisor; NIST collaborator)]: is this is really

[Mark (VT Agency of Agriculture, Weights & Measures Program)]: From unit, not from pricing, but from unit price. The old one, you wouldn't didn't have to do any price. This one, you would have to have a price associated with the product, but you would not have to have the orange labels into the unit price and so on. So the farmer's market would be considered the same thing too.

[Scott (VT Weights & Measures Technical Advisor; NIST collaborator)]: And that was where we had somebody brought up this question in the discussion and we figured the farmer's market, I have never seen a farmer's market stand with 6,000 square feet. And so they're exempt by default just by having to, and again, do they have two or more of them at a time? Only a few farms may have two simultaneous, or again, more than that, so again, they'd be double exempt from the price of regulation.

[Mark (VT Agency of Agriculture, Weights & Measures Program)]: And if they did have more than the two, again, there's this discernment when it comes to compliance and enforcement.

[Rep. John O'Brien]: Some of the agritourism, like Yeah. Horse farm or brag farming, the bigger ones. Right? So I make those circles up. Right?

[Rep. David Durfee (Chair)]: Let's see. Just thinking about the Shaw's here in town. It's not a huge supermarket. Maybe a little over 6,000 square feet.

[Scott (VT Weights & Measures Technical Advisor; NIST collaborator)]: They are, but they have so many stores that then it doesn't matter, right? Once you have more than two. Two.

[Mark (VT Agency of Agriculture, Weights & Measures Program)]: More than two. The square foot of this.

[Scott (VT Weights & Measures Technical Advisor; NIST collaborator)]: Is where again, we're trying to find the balance of exempting small, and we actually went up in the number of stores that used to be one So or

[Mark (VT Agency of Agriculture, Weights & Measures Program)]: we expanded that to

[Scott (VT Weights & Measures Technical Advisor; NIST collaborator)]: two. More than one. So we actually increased this. Let me talk an example. There was a lady who bought a convenience store in Central Vermont. She ran that for a few years. She then bought a second. At that point, she's still a fairly small business. Still don't want to put too much onus on them to have to do all this extra pricing, this or that. She has since bought three more and one small grocery store. So now she's hit that point of like, you're not really a small Jane anymore, now you're something bigger. So this is where we try to find that medium of allowing some growth before, and again, I can read it out, the retail establishment that has two or fewer stores, each with less than 6,000 square feet of retail space, either done from unit pricing. And again, this exemption shall not apply to retail establishment of companies having three or more sales locations as part of the company.

[Rep. David Durfee (Chair)]: Does it make any difference whether those sales locations are in the state? Okay, so the way this would be read, if you've got two in New York state and one in Vermont, you have to comply in Vermont. So there

[Scott (VT Weights & Measures Technical Advisor; NIST collaborator)]: are lots of large retailers nationally, but only at one store in Vermont. This does not apply to them because they have three or more stores in their.

[Rep. David Durfee (Chair)]: They would have to do the exemption. The exemption does not apply. Would not be exempt. Representative Lipsky.

[Rep. Jed Lipsky]: Yeah, the chairman of the youth triggered something, he talks about sitting moderate five shaws in Montpelier. My community has referred to as a ghetto of shaws. It's really small compared to that. That. That's in Stelvamovic, they're big records. That's right. There's a colloquial notion that that store charges more than if you go up to Morrisville. Does any of this have does any of these multi chains, can they charge more one store than another? That's

[Mark (VT Agency of Agriculture, Weights & Measures Program)]: Yes. What they charge is we don't regulate prices. Don't have the authority Thank to regulate you very much. Customers need the information, know what they're gonna buy and they can charge anything they want and They do. And they do. And they're so so I know why they over you know, they they charge us so well.

[Scott (VT Weights & Measures Technical Advisor; NIST collaborator)]: Higher in wine and cheese in the Stout store than there is in the.

[Rep. David Durfee (Chair)]: You know that or you're just assuming that totally correctly. But whiskey is

[Rep. Jed Lipsky]: the same in every store. And it's price the same.

[Rep. David Durfee (Chair)]: That's what I mean. We I don't wanna go too long here and eat into the next bit of testimony. So I just have one question from representative O'Brien, then if there's anything else you wanna highlight, Scott.

[Rep. John O'Brien]: So medical things, the pharmacies, do they immunoplexes?

[Scott (VT Weights & Measures Technical Advisor; NIST collaborator)]: Like you actually mean the pharmacy pharmacy in the drugstore?

[Rep. John O'Brien]: Right, yeah, no, pharmacy itself. You get a bunch of cassette in and out of how a unit price comes.

[Scott (VT Weights & Measures Technical Advisor; NIST collaborator)]: So again, this is where we go into the definition of retail space. A retail space is where the consumer can be. So anything actually in a store behind the pharmacy desk is not actually a retail space.

[Rep. John O'Brien]: Yeah, so it's not over the counter.

[Scott (VT Weights & Measures Technical Advisor; NIST collaborator)]: Is there an exemption spot also on pharmaceutical and certain There are, yeah, if we just go down to the extent, there's a few different ones here. Well actually this one's at the beginning now that I'm going back to it. Here, so right in the consumer commodity.

[Rep. John L. Bartholomew (Vice Chair)]: Here on the news, around the house.

[Rep. Jed Lipsky]: And back up. Was here.

[Rep. John O'Brien]: Drugs sold by prescription.

[Scott (VT Weights & Measures Technical Advisor; NIST collaborator)]: Other things to highlight, again just going back to what we've already kind of talked about so you can see the actual wording here. This top line is the line with the language we're just trying to put in those guardrails around dynamic pricing and electronic shelf labels. And the reason it's specifically for electronic shelf labels is in practicality now, everybody who's using paper labels is changing, like the labels are being changed during working hours. So if we made this blatant blanket over that, then everybody's got to have people in at night changing prices, which again we felt is not as cost of business but doesn't include the benefit to the consumer that much. And then we have our set of exemptions, and most of these exemptions are for the unit pricing, not for the retail. If you post in retail price, there is only one exemption, you post in the retail price, and that is if everything in your store is the same price. Then it's fair enough, you don't have to. And we do have a set of, again, there's a few seasonal decorations we feel didn't really need unit pricing because it's only seasonally in the decorations, traditionally, revenues subject to the Federal Alcohol Administrations Act have been exempt from unit pricing, so we just figured it'd be easier just to leave that same. It does look funny if you see beer and wine side by side in the store or powder liquor and like beer and wine side by side in the store. One will not have room pricing, the other one will and they will literally be side by side on the shelf. It looks funny to the consumer and it looks just fine to the eye, but it's not required.

[Rep. Jed Lipsky]: And it's not required.

[Rep. David Durfee (Chair)]: All right, well thank you very much for that presentation, and we also invited the Vermont retail grocers in. Thought it would be helpful to hear their perspective.

[Tricia Brown (Vermont Retail Grocers Association; Stewart’s Shops)]: Good afternoon.

[Rep. David Durfee (Chair)]: Good afternoon. Welcome.

[Tricia Brown (Vermont Retail Grocers Association; Stewart’s Shops)]: My name is Tricia Brown. I want to thank Chair Durfee and members of the committee for having me. I am a board member of Vermont Retail Grocers Association and also the secretary, And I also work for Stewart's shops. I'm a performance improvement specialist and I oversee regulations. But today I'm really here to discuss kind of the perspective from the associations. Regarding the proposal under review, regarding unit pricing, the association does not oppose it. But what we would request is, and it kind of gets to the exemption that they shared, we would request an exemption for convenience stores. And I'm going to talk for convenience stores, small retailers. I'm going to talk a little bit about that rationale, both from the customer perspective, and also from a business perspective. Obviously, and we all know, unit pricing has a purpose. I mean, it has meaning, I use it all the time in grocery, when I'm grocery shopping. It's a godsend. It's a different animal with convenience stores. And I'm just going to share a little bit about some of the scenarios. I think you're probably well aware, you've all been to convenience stores. We have a customer who is stopping for gas running in for milk and bread. We have a customer who's realized they don't have any peanut butter, quick running out to the corner store. We have that customer who's middle of the evening, child is sick, not going to go to the grocery store, go into the convenience store grabbing Tylenol. Our customer base is grab and go. That's what they're there for. Single purpose, get out. On average customers in convenience stores are there between three and five minutes. They spend about a minute looking for their items, one or two items, usually don't even fill a basket. They spend about a minute waiting in line and the register checking out. And maybe about forty five seconds walking in and walking out. That's it. They're there very quickly. Their purpose isn't to comparison shop, they have a purpose. We actually, I will share one thing regarding Stewart's is we went back fifteen years of customer service data, complaints, positives, negatives, whatever. We had only fifteen years, but there's never been a complaint or a customer calling us regarding the need or the want for unit pricing. It just hasn't been something that from a convenience store perspective is an issue. Now, that's the customer perspective, we just don't see the value from a customer perspective in a convenience store. But let me talk to you a little more about the business side of it. I know you have the exemption for those with less than two or two or less, but overall for our businesses, our members across VRGA, this is a lift. If you go into any, even the chains, you go into the Maple Fields or the Cumberlands, they're not using unit pricing. It's a big lift, it will involve So we'll just kind of go through that process with you. Obviously, tag changes. Could be a manual tag change, could be a change to a computer system reconfiguring it for unit pricing, could be a purchase of a new software system. Whatever it is, that's the initial kind of hurdle to get over. Retagging a shop, again, one time retagging a shop, take hours and hours. We have about 3,500 products in our shops. But probably the biggest lift is not that initial execution because you can say, oh, well, those companies have money to do that. The biggest lift for stores and convenience shops is the ongoing maintenance. It's the ability to keep those tags up to date. And I I will be honest, it's a lift for us to keep pricing tags up to date. And I think the agency could attest to that. We, you know, we struggle with that. Whether you're a chain or whether you're a single store, you know, you might have two people on working. I know you know all the other things they do. We expect a lot out of our partners, you know, everything from the coffee to the food to go, you know, restocking, tobacco audits, you name it, cleaning the bathroom. Keeping up to date pricing tags is an expectation of our partners, our employees, it's a given for our customers. To add the lift associated with the complexity of a unit price, and whether we did it with signage or individual shelf tags, I don't think people realize how much the price tagging gets into play. Our suppliers, even especially since COVID, they're changing prices up one, two times a week for our members of our association. We're changing packaging size. We're changing we're having substitutions. Products are changing almost dynamically each week. And to keep up with it is a lift, it's something that we have to do for pricing, but to add this level of complexity, which means you have to really be looking at the metric, the unit of measure, the whole formulation, it's a big lift. But more importantly, I would ask, for what reason with a convenience store, because I just don't see our customers using comparison shopping, whether they're really for a purpose to go grab and go. And with that, I would open it up for questions, but I'd like to say a couple of things. First off, I do want to thank you, Chair Durfee and the committee members for allowing me to share that information. I want to thank the association of the agency. We've worked with them very collaboratively over the years. We've brought this carving out convenience stores from unit pricing. Three years ago, we met and talked about that. I want to say that the agency is always fair with our members of our association, whether it be regarding fines, whether it regard issues, legislation, they're the first to be contacting us to have the open and allow a conversation. And so we appreciate that. So it's nothing about that. It's more the rationale of does this really make sense for customers and convenience stores. Thank you.

[Rep. David Durfee (Chair)]: Thank you for testimony. Representative O'Brien. Yeah.

[Rep. John O'Brien]: I just wondered, we talked about definitions in here a lot. So what is the universal convenience stores? I can see Stewart's, Maple Fields, Cumberland Farms, Vermont, and then in general stores also.

[Tricia Brown (Vermont Retail Grocers Association; Stewart’s Shops)]: Well, I would tag onto what I just saw regarding your exemption, but I would take away the two. I would say anyone under that 6,000 square feet would be exempt.

[Rep. John O'Brien]: And then Dollar General, where people definitely comparison shop to some extent.

[Tricia Brown (Vermont Retail Grocers Association; Stewart’s Shops)]: Yeah. I mean, on my paperwork, if you were to look, I had 3,000 square feet retail space. That's what we would consider. But you had the 6,000 maybe for another reason.

[Rep. David Durfee (Chair)]: The language is retail space, not total footprint?

[Rep. Michelle Bos-Lun]: Retail space. Yeah. Okay. Thank you.

[Tricia Brown (Vermont Retail Grocers Association; Stewart’s Shops)]: Right. Thank you.

[Rep. David Durfee (Chair)]: Representative Bos- Yeah.

[Tricia Brown (Vermont Retail Grocers Association; Stewart’s Shops)]: So what kind

[Rep. Michelle Bos-Lun]: of weight blame do your stores do already? I mean, I'm not sure I know the difference per unit versus what you had Yes, already

[Tricia Brown (Vermont Retail Grocers Association; Stewart’s Shops)]: okay. So when you saw that tag up there, you saw two prices, a dollar to pay when I go to the register, or 50¢ a pound and buying two pounds. That 50¢ a pound, that unit price is not there. Today, our tags simply say product, size, and they have what you're gonna pay at the register.

[Rep. Michelle Bos-Lun]: But you have a price tag on it.

[Tricia Brown (Vermont Retail Grocers Association; Stewart’s Shops)]: I do have a shelf tag.

[Rep. Michelle Bos-Lun]: Yeah, because just my concern would be somebody goes in to buy the jar of peanut butter, they're not thinking about it, and they hand their credit card over, then it's like,

[Tricia Brown (Vermont Retail Grocers Association; Stewart’s Shops)]: Oh, it costs $12 or something. We are Yes, and that's what the agency comes and inspects us for. And that, to be honest, is a lift for, and I wouldn't say just us, for all members of the association in terms of just keeping accurate pricing. And again, it's nothing We have to do it. It's a given. I'm a customer. I want to make sure I have accurate pricing. So that we take very seriously at Stewart's particularly. I know that, well, you know our plans and things that we do because it's a given. It's something we have to make. Our president has said it's a given for our customers. The unit pricing, is just another question.

[Rep. David Durfee (Chair)]: Really nothing. Well, we're we're blessed

[Rep. John O'Brien]: with you with that policy.

[Scott (VT Weights & Measures Technical Advisor; NIST collaborator)]: What would professionals over there think if we made to you left it at 2 or over 6,000, but under 3,000, you don't have to do unit pricing for these convenient type stores, it needs little.

[Mark (VT Agency of Agriculture, Weights & Measures Program)]: And I'm gonna let Scott. Enter in a moment, I'll share just a couple of thoughts that You I know, I appreciate and again, I appreciate the comments, we work closely with retailers, very happy to have the Retail Brocers Association here today to be represented. Scott personally reached out to them and some of their members and shared this proposal and we've had some conversations and we greatly appreciate this dialogue. We've talked about this internally a lot. It's not to me, it's not as it's not simple but it may be something to Scott but I'm a little more complicated. There are just some issues speaking with a customer and I'm not gonna say yes or no or take any side per se but it gets a little bit confusing in a retail store, there's some C stores that you know, quite, they're confused, people don't often utilize you know pricing, but then you have some that are located in certain areas and you're in a food desert, some people do go and buy some things and some of them grow over time and then they become really an enhanced convenience store and they offer more and more things. So I'm just saying it's a little, there's more, there's a lot to it, a little confusing in fact and just things to think about and consider. So I'm not going to speak one way or the other in regard to that. I think that the Grocers Association certainly makes a valid point and I'm going to turn it over to Scott previously.

[Scott (VT Weights & Measures Technical Advisor; NIST collaborator)]: Yeah, so we had considered some of this given feedback and again, the problem is how do we do this and how do we do it so it's clear, not just for us right now, but for clear for the people that are going be doing this in the future, the people that have to comply with it in the future. If we settle on a square footage number, if stores get bigger or if there's one convenience store that's larger than say 3,000 square feet, again, I don't know how Maplewood, the travel center up in Berlin, but that is a large store. So again, you get into these little things of like, okay, and you're like, how big is this store? So now all of a sudden you have one store, one convenience store that's bigger than that, that now needs to comply. Whereas all the other ones that we really meant to exempt. Again, if the intent would be to exempt convenience stores, we just have to do it properly so we've got a good definition. I don't think square footage is the way

[Rep. Jed Lipsky]: to go, but again, if

[Scott (VT Weights & Measures Technical Advisor; NIST collaborator)]: we could find a definition somewhere that, again, if that's what the body wants to move, that would be, again, that would be fine. That is your prerogative as the blood insulated body. We just need to make sure we do it in the correct way so we know exactly what's exempt. The people that have to comply also know that they're exempt because when it gets confusing, that's where I don't need 100 companies calling me saying, Hey, do I beat this? I've got to go out with the team management and say, you're really close to 3,000 square feet. So we just like, if that's the decision we're more than welcome to work on finding that definition that works beautifully.

[Mark (VT Agency of Agriculture, Weights & Measures Program)]: And I'll just make a comment currently all the convenience stores come under unit pricing law and they all come out of the unit price. And it's good to have this conversation.

[Tricia Brown (Vermont Retail Grocers Association; Stewart’s Shops)]: Yeah, it's just never been enforced. Thank

[Rep. David Durfee (Chair)]: you. Oh, okay. Thank you for both of those comments. I wasn't quite clear based on what you had said at the start. So the existing statute does require uniform pricing for any retailer.

[Mark (VT Agency of Agriculture, Weights & Measures Program)]: Once they're over, once it has to store in their region. Yeah. And I spoke about compliance and enforcement, discernment and prioritization. And that is highly likely why some of the convenience stores have not been intentionally inspected regarding unit pricing because the sermons have already been used however again, the retailing is changing and what they offer as a convenience store is changing, but I'm just

[Tricia Brown (Vermont Retail Grocers Association; Stewart’s Shops)]: In early twenty twenty, actually the agency came out and sat with the association and many members of the association, and did an education on unit pricing for us, because you were looking to try to start to make that a The next month COVID hit, everything went But I will say at that time, we did propose language for carve out of community stories. So it's something that's been on our radar because we know we don't comply and we don't feel there's a rationale for it. But now that we see maybe this will become a priority with enforcing, wanna bring that to the table again.

[Rep. David Durfee (Chair)]: Living in Southern Vermont, I know that Stuart's has been over the years moving to larger locations or knocking down its older stores and expanding. What's the typical footprint of a newer Stewart store?

[Tricia Brown (Vermont Retail Grocers Association; Stewart’s Shops)]: We're still, for retail space, under 1,500.

[Rep. Jed Lipsky]: Okay.

[Rep. David Durfee (Chair)]: I know you're representing the association, but I wanted to ask too, because I'm a little confused, I think, about the burden that this might place on retailer that is changing prices from time to time. Why, if talking about the price changes, I've got to put a new tag on, why it matters that that tag would also have a unit price in addition to the shelf price.

[Tricia Brown (Vermont Retail Grocers Association; Stewart’s Shops)]: So for an example, I know the agency asked us to estimate what it would cost us to put this in play. And when we looked at our 3,500 products, we have to go in individually. We have to look at what we're out there using in terms of size, the metric, all that. We have to be able to basically incorporate that into our database. Now, see what you're saying, you're putting a tag up, unit prices on the tag. But every time a product changes, literally weekly, packaging size, substitutions. We have to go back to that database and ensure that we're calculating all that. We're nervous about being able to accurately do it and keep up with it. It's not The first part, doing it initially, huge amount of time and effort. But the maintaining week to week, honestly, it's not just as simple as this formula doing it. You have to make sure that that new and our vendors, our suppliers, we have our own warehouse, everything changes all the time. I mean, I know that may be hard to believe, but they are. They're literally changing packaging size and substitutions all the time.

[Rep. David Durfee (Chair)]: Inflation. Representative thank you. Representative Bartholomew.

[Rep. John L. Bartholomew (Vice Chair)]: Said I I if I understood correctly that you're representing the grocers. Right?

[Tricia Brown (Vermont Retail Grocers Association; Stewart’s Shops)]: Yes. I've been on the board

[Rep. John L. Bartholomew (Vice Chair)]: for almost five years. Testimony sounded a lot like you were representing stewards. Just wanna be clear, who?

[Tricia Brown (Vermont Retail Grocers Association; Stewart’s Shops)]: Representing both. I think both titles were given. I was asked by our association to come and speak as an association for our members. As we've said, for the convenience store chain, Stuart's is one of them. I guess I'm just speaking from experience and peppering it in there, but I am representing the association.

[Rep. John L. Bartholomew (Vice Chair)]: The position you're putting forward is for both then?

[Tricia Brown (Vermont Retail Grocers Association; Stewart’s Shops)]: Well, the association asked if I would speak for convenience store chains. I'm just one of those. Okay.

[Mark (VT Agency of Agriculture, Weights & Measures Program)]: Thank you.

[Scott (VT Weights & Measures Technical Advisor; NIST collaborator)]: Other questions, representative O'Brien. I just wondered, are Stuart's franchises,

[Rep. John O'Brien]: I mean, are they independent

[Tricia Brown (Vermont Retail Grocers Association; Stewart’s Shops)]: of We're a all of family owned business, the Dakes. And myself as an employee, we own 40% of the company, and we're moving to hopefully be over 50%. So it's all everyone in our shops, our partners. And again, we put a lot of expectations on our partners, as I said, in terms of their roles, you may only have one or two in the shop, just like other convenience store chains, you don't see many people there. So again, this is just a lift. It's a big lift. One last thing I would say as a partner in that firm, I've always been very impressed by how they look at taking on new ventures and cost. It's, would I do this at home personally? I own this company. Would I do this? And if it makes sense, yes, but it's kind of that reasons versus rules. And in this case, we're struggling with the reasons.

[Rep. John O'Brien]: I was just wondering, because what was mentioned earlier, say a gallon of milk, your type of Stewart's and Rottling, is it gonna be the same price as something?

[Tricia Brown (Vermont Retail Grocers Association; Stewart’s Shops)]: No, not always. Sometimes we do have tiers depending on geography.

[Rep. John O'Brien]: Different unit price, you can't just pick.

[Tricia Brown (Vermont Retail Grocers Association; Stewart’s Shops)]: Yeah, we would have to be looking across, sure. But I mean, that's again, back to the conversation earlier, depending on, we do have a lot of vacation towns up in Northern New York, in the summers. And yes, it depends on geography.

[Rep. David Durfee (Chair)]: Based on what you know about other states, thinking New York State, but any other states that you might be aware of, are there unit pricing laws either followed or not followed in other states?

[Tricia Brown (Vermont Retail Grocers Association; Stewart’s Shops)]: We read the legal wording for unit pricing in New York State is that the convenience stores are exempt. We're also in New Hampshire. That's pretty new to us. We only have two shops. So we don't our tags today are just item pricing. I think unit pricing is required there too. So we may get dinged for that. But across our company, we've had the same tags.

[Scott (VT Weights & Measures Technical Advisor; NIST collaborator)]: Thank you, Patricia.

[Rep. John L. Bartholomew (Vice Chair)]: I'm a little confused because I kept hearing references to 2,000 or 3,000 square feet, and I only see 6,000 in the bill. I'm confused about where those others numbers come in.

[Scott (VT Weights & Measures Technical Advisor; NIST collaborator)]: 3,000 what she was proposing as an exemption for, they were proposing that as a change to Wafar language. And as I said, square footage numbers are higher because stores are getting bigger and changing sizes. If the intent is to exempt convenience stores even that is what we decided, we just need to come up with the right way to do that. And again, square footage I think becomes a little bit strange because square footage is smaller. You don't want to leave one out when you guys meant to be sent to it. So

[Rep. John L. Bartholomew (Vice Chair)]: I'm still not understanding the bill says 6,000, 3,000 is smaller, it would mean more stores had to comply. What am I missing?

[Tricia Brown (Vermont Retail Grocers Association; Stewart’s Shops)]: I think it was related to the owning two or more

[Scott (VT Weights & Measures Technical Advisor; NIST collaborator)]: If a store is smaller than 3,000 square feet, it would not be unit price.

[Rep. John L. Bartholomew (Vice Chair)]: Regardless of how Okay,

[Tricia Brown (Vermont Retail Grocers Association; Stewart’s Shops)]: 3,000 retails, yeah.

[Rep. David Durfee (Chair)]: Thank you.

[Tricia Brown (Vermont Retail Grocers Association; Stewart’s Shops)]: Thank you.

[Rep. David Durfee (Chair)]: Right, oh, we're gonna take a little break while we have three minutes for our next

[Mark (VT Agency of Agriculture, Weights & Measures Program)]: witness