1. Redefining Delivery
Food retailers are rethinking ways to get food to time-pressed consumers without a wait. In August 2011, Publix Super Markets rolled out an online-order and curbside-delivery program at three stores in Tampa, Fla., and Atlanta.
The program is designed to reach out to customers in a hurry. “Curbside assists in getting some of that time back for the customer,” explains Maria Brous, director of media and community relations at Publix.
Shoppers can visit publix.com/curbside, select their desired pickup location, a 30-minute pickup window and then choose items to order. The customer will see an estimated total, as weights for produce, meat and deli will vary slightly. Publix honors the sale prices for the store that are effective on the day of pickup. There is no minimum order requirement, and a $7.99 fee is added to the total. The site allows for multiple grocery lists to be saved in the customer’s website account. In the store, a sales associate prepares the order and then meets the shopper in the parking lot, collects payment (online payment options are not available currently, but shoppers may pay by cash, check or credit on-site) and hands over the groceries.
The added service has been an exercise in relationship building. “Customers are not guaranteed that they will have the same associate pulling their orders, but if a staff person sees an order for his regular customer, he will often select that order to fulfill. It’s similar to always checking out with the same cashier in-store,” Brous explains.
In partnership with 7-Eleven, amazon.com is also testing an innovative delivery service in New York City, Seattle and London. Instead of sending a parcel to a home or business address, the online retailer is offering customers the option of picking up packages from a self-service locker system, located at or near 7-Elevens in the participating cities. The locker system resolves the stress and inconvenience of missing deliveries at home or having packages delayed in the office mailroom. Customers can select a location at checkout; once the parcel is delivered to the Amazon Locker location, the customer receives an email with a unique pick-up code, which can be entered at the locker.
2. Tapping in to the Growing Food Truck Frenzy
These gourmet kitchens-on-wheels have swept the nation, and independent food stores are jumping on the bandwagon, in hopes of finding a new way to interact with consumers, build a brand and offer a selection of foods beyond the store shelves.
Houston’s Central Market chain recently hit the road—or rather, the parking lot—with its CMRoadie food truck. Up and running since the end of October 2011, the truck makes its appearance in the parking lot of Houston’s Central Market Wednesdays through Sundays. With prices ranging from $2 to $7, menu items include Maxed Out Thai Curry-Braised Pork Sandwich, the Which Came First? Chicken and Waffles—a grilled chicken breast waffle sandwich—and the Roadie Cookie, a marshmallow, peanut butter and chocolate cookie. The truck is proving an effective way to serve the lunch crowd while promoting products they can buy at Central Market. Joining CMRoadie in the store parking lot are two other Houston food trucks, the Vietnamese-focused Phamily Bites and Eatsie Boys, which touts American classics.
Another store-to-truck entrant is Avedano’s Meat Wagon, an all-in-one mobile meat market that is an offshoot of Avedano’s Holly Park Market, a four-year-old butcher shop located in the Bernal Heights district of San Francisco. “The Meat Wagon is a way to serve more customers who may not be able to make it to our neighborhood,” says Melanie Eisemann, co-owner of Avedano’s.
In its fifth week of operation at presstime, the fire engine red ’67 Ford that once served as an ambulance—complete with a siren—has no trouble garnering attention. The truck rolls into the Hayes Valley Proxy space six days a week around 4:30 p.m., joining other food trucks and retailers in a makeshift market and event center. Avedano’s serves customers fresh meat, produce, fish and even frozen stocks and bones. “We’re like a mobile farmers market,” Eisemann says. “Customers buy from our meat wagon, then head home to cook a meal.”
The meat wagon selections are pared-down versions of what customers can find in the retail store. “Our truck is focused on meeting the needs of the everyday food shopper in the city,” Eisemann explains. The meat wagon’s initial success has prompted Eisemann to begin scouting for additional locations around the city to sell.
North of San Francisco in wine country, Sebastiani Vineyards has taken a slightly different approach to the food truck craze. In the summer months, the winery hosts a pod of food trucks in its parking lot as a way to build community. Calling the event Food Truck Friday, the winery welcomed six area food trucks last summer along with a bit of live music provided by a local band for an evening of fun. “It was a great way to promote and build community relations while offering locals from as far away as San Francisco a great place to hang out [and] enjoy music and great food,” says Christopher Johnson, company spokesperson.
3. Engaging the New Brand Ambassadors: Mom Bloggers
The mom-blogger community is active and massive. Analysis firm eMarketer estimates that in 2010, more than 3.9 million women with children were blogging. And a recent report found that moms were more likely to visit other blogs to seek advice on both products and parenting issues.
Retailers, from big-box giant Walmart to mid-size chains such as Raley’s Family of Fine Stores, are harnessing this power by creating a community of mom “ambassadors” to blog about their stores and the products they sell.
Ambassador programs are “a directed reach that can be more powerful, and much less expensive, than traditional advertising,” explains Stacy DeBroff, founder and CEO of Mom Central Consulting. “The mom bloggers have a built-in audience that is looking for recommendations from other like-minded women.”
The Walmart Moms program, which includes 20 mom bloggers, was created as a way to represent the voice of all moms, and to have them share with readers the same challenges moms across the country face—from juggling work and family to getting meals on the table and saving money. Bloggers are free to write about their experiences and challenges, and occasionally receive a product from Walmart to spread the word.
Raley’s Mom’s World Panel engages nearly 800 moms to glean what the community wants most from its grocery stores. Moms on the panel are asked for their opinions about products, ideas or advertising; they provide feedback on new products that are tested at home and offer thoughts on how shopping can be made more mom-friendly. They also can participate in a Mom Along, where moms walk through a store with a Raley’s executive to tell them what they think. The company uses social media such as Twitter (@RaleysMomsPanel) to send daily messages to the mom community.
“Blogging provides a robust review of products that will stay online indefinitely,” DeBroff says. “What we have seen is that moms have hijacked the conversation away from the brand, and have taken it into their own hands. Word of mouth from a trusted source goes a long way.”
Whether tapping into the mommy blogging network, offering food trucks for easy access or creating new delivery options, what all of these innovations and trends have in common is that they are addressing consumers’ needs for convenience, value and foods they can trust. |SFM|
Laura Everage is a freelance writer specializing in food.
The New Retail Landscape
Bigger is not always the next big thing. Large retail chains and mass merchants are scaling down to fit into urban areas or to have a presence in locations that don’t warrant a giant store. Fresh foods and higher-end selections are very much a part of the offerings in these smaller formats. Likewise, some national and regional drugstore chains are morphing into one-stop convenience stores with deli items, fresh to-go options, cheese platters and even beer counters.
“Urbanization in America is a megatrend,” says Ben Ball, senior vice president of Dechert-Hampe Consulting, a sales and marketing management consulting firm focusing on the consumer products and services industry, with offices in California, Chicago and Connecticut. “With more consumers moving to urban centers, retailers including drugstores, and big-box stores are looking to capture the business of that consumer,” Ball explains, adding, “and the independent finds new competition.”
Smaller Offshoots
Recent months have brought a slew of large chains and mass merchants developing smaller formats.
At presstime, Tesco was about to open its first Fresh & Easy Express store concept, a smaller version of its Fresh & Easy Markets, a chain of 184 stores in California, Arizona and Nevada that launched in 2007. “In order to open stores in even more communities, we are trialing a handful of 3,000-square-foot stores,” explains Brendan Wonnacott, spokesman for the company. The new format will debut in select southern California neighborhoods that currently are unable to accommodate the company’s standard 10,000-square-foot markets.
Fresh & Easy Express will offer the same amenities found at Fresh & Easy, just in a smaller footprint. Focusing on convenience and value, the mix will include an edited range of fresh fish, prepared meals, produce, meat and poultry, frozen foods, and daily staples.
Walmart, too, is embracing an Express concept, launching convenience stores of about 5,000 to 10,000 square feet that feature fresh foods alongside health-and-beauty items and general merchandise. The first location opened in Chicago in July 2011; the company is currently testing markets with additional stores in Arkansas and Richfield, N.C. The deli offers hot rotisserie chicken and a variety of meats, cheeses and freshly prepared foods. Customers can even pick up cakes and fresh-baked bread in the bakery.
Target is also paring down for certain communities with the new City Target concept scheduled to debut in Chicago in July 2012, and the company has plans to open other City Targets in Los Angeles, Seattle and San Francisco. The small-format store is a new brand for Target focusing more on urban dwellers’ needs, and will offer an edited assortment with the retailer’s best-selling merchandise. The company anticipates devoting space to grocery, but additional details on the initiative weren’t set at presstime. Target has revealed, however, that upscale sandwich chain Pret A Manger will open a location within the Chicago State Street City Target, offering a selection of its fresh grab-and-go sandwiches, soups, salads, coffee and desserts.
Drugstores Embrace Fresh
Even pharmacies are making moves to capture the consumer with upscale fresh-food options. Duane Reade, which is owned by Walgreens, launched its fresh and prepared foods concept in Manhattan in March 2010 as a way to provide customers with better access to quality foods that include produce, bagged salads and wrap sandwiches. The New York Metro chain is continuing its strategy to add more prepared foods and is targeting local tastes—as evidenced by the debut of a beer bar in the Brooklyn store in January 2011. Duane Reade continued its high-profile launches last July, with a new 22,000-square-foot flagship store in Manhattan, complete with a 24-hour juice bar, sushi chef, fresh bakery counter and expanded offerings of natural and organic foods with produce, sandwiches and salads made daily.
Walgreens began to offer fresh foods in some Chicago and New York stores in fall 2010. By January 2011 the drugstore chain announced plans to expand fresh food offerings to 400 stores, and beef up its presence in the food deserts of Chicago. The most recent test market has been San Francisco, where Walgreens launched fresh foods in 30 store locations, with items including wraps, sushi and fruits. The company has announced plans to convert or open at least 1,000 “food oasis” stores over the next five years as a way to address the need for greater access to healthy foods in underserved communities across the country, building on its successful 12-store pilot in Chicago.
The Outlook for Independents
“I wouldn’t say that the drug stores pose too much competition for the independent food stores,” Ball muses. “The customer shopping for food in the drug store would be different than the customer shopping at an independent grocer.
“However,” he continues, “the move of larger supermarkets with smaller formats into urban centers will pose the stiffest challenge in recent times for the independents. Especially if their entry into the market means competing for the same shopper over the same categories, price will be the way to capture the consumers.”
These developments could make some specialty food retailers cringe at the new competition. But for Tom Reingrover, owner of Gerrards Market in Redlands, Calif., the smaller formats aren’t making him sweat just yet. “I predict that within two years the Fresh & Easy market will head back to Europe,” he said of the larger 23,000-square-foot stores.
As for supermarkets such as Ralphs looking at the smaller store format or Walgreens’ new initiative to offer fresh foods, Reingrover isn’t worried. “They just can’t do perishables the same way we do it,” he says. “We make deli foods from scratch, we have a rotisserie barbecue grill for chicken and ribs, we continue to reinvent ourselves—things the drug stores or large chains just can’t do. We can sell some of the same items, but those stores will never have a selection of wine like we do, or sell more than 200 specialty sodas. It is offerings like these that will keep us alive.”
Ann Quatrano of Star Provisions in Atlanta, agrees with Reingrover that distinct offerings and service are what will continue to keep specialty food retailers successful. “We continue to offer our guests the finest, freshest and most unique items that others cannot provide,” she asserts.
“I won’t say the entry of more competition into the category doesn’t bother us,” Reingrover adds, “But if we expand on what has made us successful, I know we will come out on top. Successful specialty food stores are the ones who excel at their own concepts, and if we continue to reinvent ourselves and improve on what we are already doing so well, we won’t have to worry about these new store formats.”
The Walmart Express format is designed for those on the go. The deli offers hot rotisserie chicken and a wide variety of meats, cheeses and freshly prepared foods. Customers can even pick up cakes and freshly made bread in the bakery.
Raley’s Mom’s World Panel engages nearly 800 moms to glean what the community wants most from its grocery stores. Moms provide feedback on new products that are tested at home and offer thoughts on how to make shopping more mom-friendly. They also can participate in a Mom Along, where moms walk through a store with a Raley’s executive to tell them what they think.
