Produce Is Key Ingredient To Fresh-Food Department Vibe

By Jim Prevor, Editor-in-Chief, Produce Business

The problem with the discussion of deli departments at retail is that there is less of a continuum of quality and assortment ranges than there is a bifurcation of departments. On one side of the bifurcation are the deli departments that focus on sliced meats and cheeses, typically have a service or self-service option for wet salads and, if they are ambitious, a rotisserie and/or chicken program — perhaps an olive bar, and maybe a sub sandwich program. This is the deli offering in the vast majority of supermarkets today.

On the other side of the bifurcation is a panoply of service options: wok stations, soup bars, pasta stations and pizza programs, massive salad bars, wing bars and much more — all with substantial seating areas.

Walk into a large Wegmans or Whole Foods Market, immerse yourself in their prepared foods sections, and one instantly realizes whatever these people are doing, they are not in the same business as a retailer with meat and cheese behind a glass case with a paper plate sign indicating that ham is on special this week.

I question the statistic that deli is only No. 15 in terms of driving consumer store choice. When the store offers an incredibly differentiated foodservice and deli offering, our assessment would be that it is No. 1, ahead of meat and produce; and when the retailer offers a basic sliced meat and cheese selection, it is probably near the bottom.

The statistic that only 12 percent of consumers think of delis when deciding what to do instead of cooking may just correspond to the percentage of delis that really do a great job with foodservice. We would really love to see if this statistic holds up in areas with, say, large Wegmans stores. We doubt it. So we would be inclined to say it is a mistake to think meat, produce or dairy can rescue deli. The deli needs to offer a unique array of cooked foods that make it a desirable place to buy dinner — or even eat dinner at the store.

But produce helps the store in important ways beyond direct sales and profits. When Dick Spezzano — now president of Spezzano Consulting Services and then the vice president of produce and floral for the Vons Companies — was describing Vons’ Pavilions concept back in the late 1980s, he explained the “12 types of tomatoes, 15 varieties of apples, 14 types of melons and the purest organic fruits and vegetables” were on display not just because Vons hoped to sell these items, but because the halo effect of this cornucopia would attract consumers to the store — even if they never bought any of these extra items.

Another thing Spezzano used to do was urge producers to find places in salad bars for their products. Back when Sizzler and its salad bars were a force to be reckoned with, I remember Spezzano telling a convention of pistachio growers that, if need be, they should give their pistachio nuts away to Sizzler to get the consumer trial that would come from having placement on the salad bar.

This makes us think that it is not so much that trial in the produce department will lead consumers to buy at the deli but vice versa. Consumers, who never thought of putting pomegranate arils on a salad, could buy a “health salad” in the deli, find they like the taste and start buying packages of arils in produce.

One well-recognized problem is consumers do not eat departmentally — they eat meals. So, many a consumer who is buying fried chicken in the deli department might also buy a green salad, a vegetable side dish, and a juice — if we didn’t make them run back to produce to get these things.

Many prepared food offerings at even the best deli counters are out of sync with the organic and local showcase that goes on in produce. Many retailers promote these concepts and promise things such as, “organic, when possible,” but this turns out to be almost never in prepared foods.

The reason: cost. We could make fresh organic lasagna, but the cost would be such that retailers wouldn’t buy it. So for those store executives who think organic and local is a marketing win, turning to fresh produce to carry this flag makes a lot of sense. They can have a sign that details loads of organic or local items in produce, and by maintaining the look and feel of the produce department throughout the fresh-food departments, the retailers can hope consumers buy into the vibe for all fresh foods.

This works best when stores have integrated fresh areas that include produce, foodservice and prepared food options, meat, seafood, and bakery. These integrated areas, which Wegmans has really pioneered, serve to create the kind of offer that makes consumers think of a supermarket when they are not sure what is for dinner tonight.