By Joel Albrizio
Entering A Retail Supermarkets New Normal!
While we recognize we are nowhere near the end of Covid-19 as a virus and how it can affect each of us and our families. We realize state by state, U.S. consumers are moving away from shelter in place status. What will this mean for retail food?
State by state the country is beginning to reopen. As the country reopens so will all forms of casual dining, the retailers greatest single competition. If there is one takeaway we all now accept is how large a percentage of our daily food intake originates from casual dining offers.
How Can Retailers Retain Some Of This New Found Volume?
It might be easy to sit back and say WOW, what a run this has been financially. That's great, however, two issues quickly surface that must be recognized.
First, our employees have done one heck of a job. They have overlooked their own personal safety to keep customers well fed. These employees need to be well taken care of. How is it we can reward all of these employees for their dedication?
Remember, these are the same employees as an industry every state run supermarket organization fought so hard to keep down wages. Specifically and especially the minimum wage!
Next, we really need to address how best to re-enter the reality of the always competitive grocery industry. Once again, everyone will sell food. Our competition will be everywhere. We will need to reintroduce ourselves to the supermarket customer.
As Retailers We Must begin Again & Reintroduce Ourselves Today!
We need to pick ourselves up, dust ourselves off and get back into retail, competitive retail! Job #1, let's be certain the retail customer understands we need them if we are to succeed.
We taught the customer to shop the store, we achieved a retail mix like never before, now let's see how high a percentage of that retail mix we can hold on to.
Drive Retail Sales Through Timely Digital Offers!
Begin to serve the customer specials again. We always suggest a "7" day center store marketing ideology overlapped by a "3" & "4" day perishable marketing program every week. Slant perishable offers to the weekend or weekdays unless dealing with the occasional holiday.
Survey the competition and serve up regular offers digitally in easy to digest sizes. The base ad with 3-6 eMail item sensitive offers. Get out there again and touch those customers.
For the last "8-10" weeks the supermarket has been the customer. Guess what, the real customer will now emerge and casual dining will come back hard. Don't get taken by surprise.....Be prepared & get those items back out there....Good Luck!
Many have asked why I choose to write about what I see in the supermarket industry today and my ideas. At Bad-Adz Digital, PreparedFoodPhotos.com & Adlife we believe great ideas and the resulting branding will give new life and direction to any company. So for that reason we chose to open the discussion.
Yes, I understand I probably misspelled something or butchered the English language in a few places, the goal however was to open your minds to new ideas.
Joel Albrizio - Bad-Adz Digital, Bad-AdzVideos.com, PreparedFoodPhotos.com