Walk into any grocery store in America and you’re going to be inundated with thousands of items. Everything from chips and cookies to produce and deli meats. If you can dream of eating it, the local grocery store probably carries it. With that said, just how many grocery items does the average store actually carry? Well, the answer might just surprise you.

Believe it or not, the ordinary grocery store in the United States will carry an average of 39,500 items at any given time. You might think that’s excessive, but stores see it as an endless bounty of opportunity. You see, the more items there are to choose from, the more likely you are to splurge on something you didn’t intend to buy. If stores only carried basics and essential items, they would lose out on all of those little splurge purchases that add up fast. Odds are, you didn’t go to the store for a pineapple-mango smoothie, but once you see it on the shelf you might not be able to resist.

That temptation is money out of your pocket and into the hands of the local grocery store.