It's not a grocery store anymore

[Toliver]

Here's the article:

"Two Vons stores to take health-conscious turn"

Later this month, Bakersfield shoppers will get their first glimpse of Vons’ new grocery store concept targeting health-conscious, time-starved consumers.

The company is currently remodeling two of its six Bakersfield stores, adding elements such as “more subdued” lighting, hardwood floors in the produce section and expanded offerings of prepackaged foods, Rice said.

The emphasis in both quotes is mine.

I have a friend who currently works for Vons. I was surprised to hear from her that the highest grossing Von's in the state of California is here in Bakersfield. This store has become their "flagship" where new ideas are tested and key personnel from other stores throughout the state are trained.

She said the newly overhauled "lifestyle" stores are dedicating a larger portion of the interior towards the pre-made, pre-packaged meals for those consumers who don't have time to cook.

This trend (I will calll it a "disturbing" trend) towards already-made-meals has been discussed in many other eGullet threads, especially in regards to new generations of young people who not only don't have the slightest inclination for preparing and cooking their own meals, they don't even know how to do so in the first place.

Here we have a grocery chain altering it's very structure and business model, moving away from supplying ingredients (produce, meat, staples, etc) to offering a wide variety of pre-made meals with expanded offerings coming in the future. Click here for the Von's web site, click on "Shop Stores' and then on "Signature Series".

Is the grocery store as we know it on the way out? There's already a Starbuck's in just about every grocery store I visit. So now will there be a "Katz' Deli" in every grocery store, as well?

We know the frozen foods market has been growing in leaps and bounds over the years but this new trend is towards fresh, not frozen, pre-made meals. Of course, this raises entirely new questions about food handling, proper storage of pre-made food (are they really going to throw it out after it's sell-by-date, or will it become tomorrow's pre-made "Hash Special" a la the restaurant trick mentioned in Tony Bourdain's "Kitchen Confidential"?) and what about the possibility of an increase in food borne illness since there will be more people handling your pre-made meals?

Are those consumers who know how to cook their own meals and more importantly, dedicate their precious free time to doing so, becoming a quickly shrinking minority and so the grocery chains are just following a trend? And does this become a vicious cycle where no one needs to learn how to cook since you can find pre-made food at the grocery store so why bother?

Is this just the tip of the proverbial pre-made iceberg?

What's happening in your neighborhood grocery store and is it a good thing?

[Megan Blocker]

You have Starbucks in the grocery store?

In New York, there just isn't space for that kind of thing...pre-made stuff is pretty rare, and the pickings rather slim, at my local Gristedes, but much more available at more upscale spots like Zabar's, Eli's, Agata and Valentina, and so on.

In my mom's grocery store in Fresno (not the Von's, though I can't remember which...), they have a whole section over by the bakery that is devoted to take-away, pre-prepared foods. They have the usual (rotisserie chicken, sandwiches), plus a whole Chinese food counter. It might even be Manchu Wok or one of those other chains...it struck me as really odd to have all that in the grocery store.

[melkor]

You have Starbucks in the grocery store? 

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There is a starbucks 100 yards away from the nearest safeway and another starbucks inside the safeway, they share a parking lot. Apparently there can never be too many starbuckses.

[Gifted Gourmet]

When time is of the essence to many a household between jobs, activities for their offspring, and a million other time-involved situations, these multi-purpose centers will become increasingly essential.

When "wants" become "needs" ...

What no mammogram and healthcare, beauty shop, pet grooming, bank, and laudromat on site? Harrumpf, I'll go elsewhere ... but where?

So long, mom-and-pop grocery ...

[MarketStEl]

You have Starbucks in the grocery store? 

In New York, there just isn't space for that kind of thing...pre-made stuff is pretty rare, and the pickings rather slim, at my local Gristedes, but much more available at more upscale spots like Zabar's, Eli's, Agata and Valentina, and so on.

I'm going to go out on a limb and speculate that the reasons why this is the case are:

1) At least in Manhattan, most of the main thoroughfares in residential districts are chock-full of restaurants offering reasonably priced food. By and large, these are the places you never read about in the New York Times restaurant reviews.

2) Space being at a premium in Manhattan, and not all that abundant in three of the other four boroughs, most supermarkets do not have enough room to put in a kitchen where meals, soups and the like can be prepared.

In my mom's grocery store in Fresno (not the Von's, though I can't remember which...), they have a whole section over by the bakery that is devoted to take-away, pre-prepared foods.  They have the usual (rotisserie chicken, sandwiches), plus a whole Chinese food counter.  It might even be Manchu Wok or one of those other chains...it struck me as really odd to have all that in the grocery store.

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Whole Foods Market stores have lots of ready-made entrees, soups, dips, sauces, salads and stews--including a decent vegetarian selection. Isn't there now a WFM in New York?

As for Philadelphia:

Most local supermarkets remain purveyors of ingredients first and foremost (though note my comment about Whole Foods above). However, some chains--in particular, Genuardi's (Safeway family) and Wegmans (two stores in the suburbs)--have large selections of prepared foods. (Wegmans might better be thought of as a cross between a supermarket and a restaurant.)

In the city, one independent supermarket operator--The Freshgrocer--has made prepared foods a larger-than-usual part of its business; the reason may have something to do with the location of its first store, right on the edge of the University of Pennsylvania campus. (The company operated regular supermarkets under a different name in Delaware County; these have also been converted to the Freshgrocer format, which proved to be a hit in West Philly--so much so that the company built a new, larger store about 2 miles west of the Penn campus, where the population is blacker and less affluent. It has amenities comparable to the campus location.) I do not see competitors rushing to upgrade their prepared-foods offerings, though: Acme, the region's dominant chain, seems content to offer the usual rotisserie/fried chicken, baked ham, mac and cheese and other traditional comfort foods at its stores.

On the whole:

These developments strike me as of a piece with the phenomenon, noted elsewhere on eG, of dishes made primarily with canned soup and frozen vegetables being classed as "homemade." I certainly hope Toliver is wrong about people who bother to cook from scratch being a dwindling minority, but I fear he may be right.

Edited a day later to get rid of an offending "pre-". I agree with the poster downthread that new words incorporating this prefix are unnecessary; "prepared," "packaged cooked" (to distinguish from packaged foods that need cooking rather than reheating), "ready-made," "reheatable," "heat-and-eat," "ready-to-serve" and similar adjectives that do the same job already exist.

Edited November 17, 2005 by MarketStEl (log)

[Megan Blocker]

Whole Foods Market stores have lots of pre-made entrees, soups, dips, sauces, salads and stews--including a decent vegetarian selection.  Isn't there now a WFM in New York?

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Yes, three. But none is anywhere near my 'hood (the Upper East Side - the locations are Union Square, Time Warner Center and Chelsea), and they are too crowded to enter. Whole Foods, however, does not seem odd to me. We had those when I was still in high school and college - I would put these into the category of upscale markets (like Eli's or Zabar's) which have always done a healthy pre-made business.

Manchu Wok in the grocery store does! Like GG said upthread, though, maybe this is just the further centralization of the shopping center. If so, I plan to get my Jane Jacobs out and beat people senseless with it as they enter the stores...

[BryanZ]

In affluent suburbia there's definitely a push toward the grocery store as a lifestyle center. Wegmans and Whole Foods (at least in the Northeast) are certainly the new-wave of upscale chain grocers. For many a suburban housewife it's the trendy thing to do to pick up a pre-prepared dinner from the hot/cold case along with a half-gallon of organic soy milk and a loaf of artisanal multigrain bread.

On the flipside, there's also surging popularity for Costco-type bulk vendors and grocery options in retailers like WalMart and Super Target. The traditional grocery store seems to be losing ground in the face of these two newish competitors.

[srhcb]

I wonder if the trend towards "lifestyle" stores .... for those consumers who don't have time to cook might not peak soon, and then begin to slowly decline over the next generation?

After all, I would think people too busy to cook would have difficulty finding the time to reproduce?

SB (maybe I'm just getting old?)

[SuzySushi]

In my professional capacity (and I'm still going to post under my pseudonym), I can tell you that the reason supermarkets like Safeway (which owns Vons) are turning to "lifestyle stores" is that they're losing market share to value retailers like Wal-Mart on the one side and natural and specialty food chains like Whole Foods and Trader Joe's on the other. They're looking for a magic formula that will attract and keep more shoppers.

Will the magic formula be more prepared food? I don't know. It's too early to tell. They've tried the new formula in only a small percentage of their stores so far, spent a small fortune remodeling, and I haven't seen store-comp sales.

Taking off my professional hat and speaking personally, I'm watching this trend with great interest. One of the Safeway stores on Oahu (at the other end of the island from me, unfortunately) has been remodeled into a "lifestyle" store, as has a branch of an independent supermarket chain near my home. Personally, I like the new format because it emphasizes a wider selection of fresh produce and fresh breads. There's also a much better selection of fancy cheeses and other "exotic" foods that used to be hard to get here (a small Indian foods section, for instance). In adding more service, the stores will also special-order products for consumers, the cashiers thank you by name (always last name), and they offer carry-out service to your car.

On the other hand, I wonder whether the lifestyle format is just an excuse to upscale the stores, and whether they're risking losing their core shoppers by going too upscale. (Safeway has one foot on either side, however, in still running its weekly 10/$10 specials.)

Your thoughts?

[ghostrider]

All I know is that, on nights when I'm too tired too cook, I can feed the two of us with prepared foods from my local Whole Foods (Montclair NJ) for the same price as a meal from my local Chinese takeout eatery. Each has its own set of nutritional drawbacks, but the variety is nice. I think that WF is onto something if they can continue to compete economically in this vein. (Assuming that this isn't part of a Walmart-like strategy to kill off the competition.)

[Megan Blocker]

After all, I would think people too busy to cook would have difficulty finding the time to reproduce? 

SB (maybe I'm just getting old?)

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Hee hee! Or maybe they're too busy dealing with their offspring to cook!

[Busboy]

After all, I would think people too busy to cook would have difficulty finding the time to reproduce? 

SB (maybe I'm just getting old?)

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Hee hee! Or maybe they're too busy dealing with their offspring to cook!

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Priorities.

[srhcb]

After all, I would think people too busy to cook would have difficulty finding the time to reproduce? 

SB (maybe I'm just getting old?)

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Hee hee! Or maybe they're too busy dealing with their offspring to cook!

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Touche!

As a matter of fact, GF's two-year old grandson has been staying with us lately, but will spend tonite with his other grandparents, so I thougt I'd take advantage of the circumstances to bake bread since I won't be interupted by his plaintive pleas of "Poppa, Poppa. Up!"

Although it's nice he likes to "help" in the kitchen.

SB (may even have time for some .....

[ghostrider]

The company is currently remodeling two of its six Bakersfield stores, adding elements such as “more subdued” lighting, hardwood floors in the produce section and expanded offerings of prepackaged foods, Rice said.

I have a friend who currently works for Vons....She said the newly overhauled "lifestyle" stores are dedicating a larger portion of the interior towards the pre-made, pre-packaged meals for those consumers who don't have time to cook.

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Sorry, tangential to the main topic, but the language here raises an issue for me:

Have "pre-made" and "pre-packaged" now made it into the lexicon? These terms still make me grate what's left of my teeth. What's wrong with "prepared" and "packaged"?

I'm somewhat heartened to see that the Safeway website is "pre-free," as far as I can find, but the easy journalistic usage is depressing.

[kiliki]

It's really not a new business model-more prepared foods has been the trend in groceries for quite a while now (I remember all the talk about this almost 20 years ago when one of my first jobs was in a grocery store deli). The profit margin on your grocery items-dairy, meat, etc-is very slim. The way that groceries make their money is through prepared foods-the deil case, the sandwich bar, the wood fired pizzas, and the roast chickens, and the peeled cut-up fruit in produce, as well as the ready-to-prepare foods you might find in other departments, like chicken kabobs or stuffed pork chops.

And as for the wood floors and other upscale features, Suzysushi is exactly right. I remember hearing an NPR story about this in which they interviewed the owner of Andronico's, a small chain of upscale stores in the SF Bay area-this was how they found their niche between the big chains and Whole Foods.

[MomOfLittleFoodies]

The Safeways in my area did the same thing about 2 years ago in order to compete with places like Andronicos and Whole Foods. It worked out pretty well as far as I can tell.

[MarketStEl]

Taking off my professional hat and speaking personally, I'm watching this trend with great interest. One of the Safeway stores on Oahu (at the other end of the island from me, unfortunately) has been remodeled into a "lifestyle" store, as has a branch of an independent supermarket chain near my home. Personally, I like the new format because it emphasizes a wider selection of fresh produce and fresh breads. There's also a much better selection of fancy cheeses and other "exotic" foods that used to be hard to get here (a small Indian foods section, for instance). In adding more service, the stores will also special-order products for consumers, the cashiers thank you by name (always last name), and they offer carry-out service to your car.

On the other hand, I wonder whether the lifestyle format is just an excuse to upscale the stores, and whether they're risking losing their core shoppers by going too upscale. (Safeway has one foot on either side, however, in still running its weekly 10/$10 specials.)

Your thoughts?

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Before I offer them: Has Wal-Mart planted its flag in Hawai'i yet?

Now on to my response.

Supermarkets as we know them cannot afford to compete solely at the upper end of the scale. There are simply too many people who want to keep their food costs down for the stores to ignore them completely, and many of these are often the same people who like to indulge in higher-quality ingredients and timesaving prepared foods. Most of these people are also looking to complete their food shopping in a single stop--people like me who visit more than one supermarket to skim their respective sale items are in the minority--and will in all likelihood choose the one that offers the closest fit with their desires.

I know of no supermarket chain that completely avoids competing on price, or at least feels no need to make a nod in that direction. (As a witty ad for Fresh Fields, a natural-foods supermarket chain in the Mid-Atlantic region that was acquired by Whole Foods, once put it, "We realized you wanted to eat our food, not invest in it.") In this region, even the chains that are generally perceived as emphasizing high quality over low prices--Clemens Family Markets and Genuardi's (Safeway)--run ads reminding patrons that shopping at their stores costs no more than the competition.

The day your nearby Safeway gets rid of its 10-for-$10 specials is the day its slow death spiral starts.

BTW, I also believe that the nation as a whole risks trashing a valuable myth that aids social cohesion by "going too upscale" on a number of fronts, but that's really a discussion for another forum.

Edited November 17, 2005 by MarketStEl (log)

[Pontormo]

Sandy:

I for one save a bundle when I shop at Safeway, admittedly taking pride in being a Coupon Queen and going almost exclusively for sales & pantry items. (Around 32% this week, or $26.)

The "lifestyle" [grrr, that's the word I HATE, though it's useful in contexts such as this one] store (Whole Foods), farmer's market, and so forth are for other things. I know plenty of people, including parents of young children who divide their loyalties between stores, so you may not be alone.

My neighborhood has smaller establishments close to Metro train and bus stops where people hurry on their way home. A friend up in Maine who wishes she lived in Paris keeps an African basket in the back seat of her Volvo for the daily rite of food gathering. The European tradition seems to be creeping into some of our lives. Whole Foods certainly caters to the tradition best, hoping that the habit of a daily coffee at Starbuck's will encourage its own shoppers to drop in and sit in booths, spear pineapple on a toothpick and come back on Monday for the item that wasn't in yet on Saturday morning.

You're right to point out that that long-established supermarkets have to keep looking like bargains if they are to remain profitable. Safeway can't just compete with up-scale places. It USED to be THE upscale place until Whole Foods came to town. Here, the Georgetown Safeway was the place to go to run into Powerful Politicos wheeling around shopping carts and those with worn-out heels went to Giant for better prices.

[Toliver]

You have Starbucks in the grocery store? 

In New York, there just isn't space for that kind of thing...pre-made stuff is pretty rare, and the pickings rather slim, at my local Gristedes, but much more available at more upscale spots like Zabar's, Eli's, Agata and Valentina, and so on.

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Regarding Starbucks, yes, I've seen them in both Von's and Albertson's grocery stores here in California.

Megan and others, you make a good point. In an urban setting where there's a restaurant on every corner, this new kind of grocery store wouldn't seem to have much of a chance for success unless they pursue a niche market.

However, in sprawling Suburbia (which includes almost every California city and town with the exception of San Francisco), you don't have the same number of choices. I think that's why this new business model has come into being. This new fangled grocery store is becoming the last stop on the way home from work which will also impact surrounding eateries, fast food especially.

Bye-bye, McDonald's...hello Von's?

With grocery prices expected to rise next year (as just announced by Kraft and others) thanks to increased energy costs, it will be interesting to see if the success these new "lifestyle" stores will continue. There may come a point at which the financial outlay for pre-made meals will be too high to justify given the soon-to-be-shrinking household budgets.

[MarketStEl]

Sandy: 

I for one save a bundle when I shop at Safeway, admittedly taking pride in being a Coupon Queen and going almost exclusively for sales & pantry items.  (Around 32% this week, or $26.) 

Girlfriend!

That sounds like my shopping style.

There used to be a maintenance guy in my apartment building--a huge fellow named "Tiny," natch--who summed up this attitude better than anyone else I've run across:

"I see grocery shopping as me vs. the supermarket: Who's going to walk away with more of my money?"

He had a savings target of 40% that he shot for. If he surpassed it, he bought himself a drink afterwards.

I also clip coupons relentlessly and use my kitchen pantry as an extension of the supermarket, filling it with nonperishables when they're on sale. I've even managed to exceed 40% savings on more than a few occasions at Acme (never at Super Fresh), though my performance on average fluctuates between 25% and 33%. (I consider it a good day at the Super Fresh if I hit 33%--for some reason, it puts fewer of the items I buy regularly on sale.)

My neighborhood has smaller establishments close to Metro train and bus stops where people hurry on their way home.  A friend up in Maine who wishes she lived in Paris keeps an African basket in the back seat of her Volvo for the daily rite of food gathering.  The European tradition seems to be creeping into some of our lives.  Whole Foods certainly caters to the tradition best, hoping that the habit of a daily coffee at Starbuck's will encourage its own shoppers to drop in and sit in booths, spear pineapple on a toothpick and come back on Monday for the item that wasn't in yet on Saturday morning.

I even notice this phenomenon--daily food shopping, that is--at the Super Fresh, where the 5 to 6:30 p.m. time period can get almost as busy as Saturday afternoon, only the shoppers have smaller orders.

You're right to point out that that long-established supermarkets have to keep looking like bargains if they are to remain profitable.  Safeway can't just compete with up-scale places.  It USED to be THE upscale place until Whole Foods came to town.  Here, the Georgetown Safeway was the place to go to run into Powerful Politicos wheeling around shopping carts and those with worn-out heels went to Giant for better prices.

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Those stores are found on the Main Line and in Chestnut Hill around here. The Center City supermarkets are left to the urban sophisticates and art/medical-school students.