Solutions Go Beyond Staffing

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

It has been said the difference between elections and capitalism is that while elections will tell you what most people want, capitalism will tell you what people want most. Thus we confront a limitation on the power of consumer surveys that, roughly speaking, translates into this: The answer you get depends on the question you ask.

If we ask consumers whether they like uniformed gas station attendants who pump gas upon arrival, people may say yes. Whether they would patronize gas stations with that service — and a correspondingly higher price — is another matter entirely.

Questions about consumer satisfaction produce results that are as indicative of how low we have set the bar of consumer expectations as of how good a job we are doing.

The past 15 years have seen an explosion in the growth of low-service retail concepts such as warehouse clubs and supercenters. Most conventional supermarkets have cut back on produce department man-hours, even as departments have expanded in both square footage and number of items carried.

This didn’t happen by mistake; the logical conclusion is that when confronted with real-life choices, the great mass of consumers, whatever their abstract preferences, prefer low prices to more manpower in the department.

There are exceptions, of course. An explosion of high-end concepts, natural- and organic-based concepts, specialized ethnic concepts, new convenience-oriented concepts and more indicates a substantial market for high-service concepts — but we shouldn’t kid ourselves. Fifteen years ago, there weren’t 200 stores in the whole country we would recognize as a supercenter; today there are over 3,000. The tens of millions of people voting with their dollars in those stores every week are telling us something.

It is often easy to forget about these stores as their basic approaches are boring. They don’t get cover stories in trade magazines and seminars and workshops at conventions and industry functions. How much more interesting to profile the retailer growing his own herbs hydroponically in the window and featuring a juice bar with 200 produce items grown on the roof!

Now the research reminds us of something important as well — that people react to being “touched.” The mistake all too often made in the industry is to think that the only solution is more staff, and since they rarely get the budget for that, the retailers do nothing.

For 19 years, Produce Business has produced an annual special report entitled The Mystery Shopper Report. We send undercover sleuths into departments across the land and ferret out what actual consumers experience.

Some stores do an excellent job, yet, by and large, 19 years of experience studying these reports teaches us staffing has severe limitations as an answer to this problem:

First, very often staff is not there. Many stores are now open 24 hours, and during many hours, the stores operate with a skeleton staff or no dedicated produce staff at all.

Second, even if the staff is there, the number of hours in the department is so low it is all they can do to keep the shelves stocked. Managers increasingly complain they have no time to train or manage because they, themselves, have to replenish all day long.

Third, there can be a language barrier. If the clerks don’t speak the language of the customers, it is hard to get quality interaction.

Fourth, the quality of interaction is irregular. Over the 19 years of the report, we have received wonderful spot-on information and horrible, incorrect advice that could even damage people’s health if it were followed.

It is wonderful PMA will offer new training tools. Of course, we need to train our people better. Yet we also need to look at alternative means of interacting with customers.

In the age of the Internet, why rely on an associate’s memory of a particular product or the best advice for someone looking for something specific? There is something almost bizarre that every supermarket does not have available for customer use, both in store and at home, all this information, plus recipes, nutritional data and more.

Getting the customer to taste the product shouldn’t depend on the happenstance of a consumer interacting with an associate and asking for or being offered a taste.

Sampling and demos have always been hindered by the commodity nature of produce. Retailers have tended to rely on vendors to offer free product for sampling and demo and often to pay for the staffing, insurance and other expenses. Some retailers have even made doing demos a kind of profit center.

Many of these in produce have been paid for by ancillary product vendors. Why? Simple — a salad dressing is a unique product and consumers are likely to look for the brand if they really liked that particular dressing.

On the other hand, apple shippers were hesitant to pay for demos because they have no way of knowing if the store will carry their product next week, and consumers are unlikely to seek out a particular trade brand.

We are at the threshold of a new day in marketing produce. Retailers need new varieties and packs to distinguish their stores from competitors; shippers are producing proprietary items to prevent being caught up in an oversupply of commodity produce and to capture the value of promotional expenditures.

Together, retailers and vendors now have interests congruent enough to join together in an aligned supply chain to provide consumers with intriguing and exceptional product. Add a little technology to the store, upgrade training to capitalize on this plethora of product, and we will touch enough to get them reaching for their wallets.