It takes a lot to win over shoppers. You might say an awful lot.
After many decades of, well, life in general, I’ve found that I frequent several places to shop for food — reluctantly. I suppose more and more shoppers feel the same; in fact, I overhear these statements all the time from friends or family:
“I go to this one store when I absolutely need a great cut of meat or to another store for outstanding seafood. Regular shopping at these places? Oh, no. Too expensive.”
“I like this one story near me, all right. For everything? No. But when I do go it’s for their friendly, reliable pharmacy, for big paper goods and whatever else strikes my fancy. Oh, and I gotta grab a couple rotisserie chickens each trip, but the total always seems to run me at least $300.”
“We love our area farmers market. It’s such a relaxed pace, but it’s so seasonal. Is it our regular shopping point? No. The selection is limited. It’s an irregular stop at best.”
Sound familiar?
So many places to purchase food, so little time in our lives. If a chain wants to maximize sales, like many intend on doing, it must strive to be the go-to grocer. The aim is to not necessarily be the occasional shopping stop as mentioned earlier, but to instead be the store where customers buy 70% or more of what they need.
Naturally, the next question is about what your store should offer to be the primary, go-to shopping destination. I offer these few points, especially regarding fresh produce:
- Be neat and clean — Dirt repels sales. Ensure you have a fresh-looking department by cleaning your displays, table surfaces and refrigerated cases on a regularly scheduled basis. Make cleaning a regular part of every shift, every day; from big projects that you clean quarterly to your ongoing or daily tasks, that includes wiping down scale pans, table edges, chrome and mirrors.
- Be consistently fresh — Every morning, set up fresh and on time for store opening. Fresh means ordering only what you need until your next delivery, rotating every display every day, culling and trimming closely. The produce department should be as fresh for your evening customers as it is for early bird shoppers.
- Don’t run out of product — It’s a fine line: ordering closely but not too much. Nothing is worse than missing sales because you ran out of key items. What about the non-key items? Don’t run out of those, either. Many shoppers will shop elsewhere because they can’t count on you to have lemons for libations or zest or the herbs for a must-have recipe.
- Offer great variety — You may not sell spicy radish sprouts on a regular basis, but “you can’t sell ’em if you don’t stock ’em,” as you’ve no doubt heard before. When you’re the store that stocks almost everything on a regular basis, then you’ll win customers over who can count on finding exactly what they need no matter the time of day or time of year.
- Offer great selection — Yes, this differs from variety in an important way. “Variety” means having eight different kinds of apples to choose from. “Selection,” on the other hand, means that each display has plenty to choose from. Spread out and give each item as many facings as possible.
- Provide service with smile — Talk to your customers. Greet them. Ask if you can help. Offer samples, solutions and cheerfully fix issues with replacements or refunds. When your customers have confidence in you, they’ll have confidence to regularly shop your store.
There’s more, to be sure. However, when you build your produce department’s business like this and offer consistency in sanitation, service, stock levels and outstanding quality, you will build basket size, maximize sales and more by building confidence.
The go-to store doesn’t just happen overnight. It takes months, even years, but it can happen.
Armand Lobato works for the Idaho Potato Commission. His more than 50 years of experience in the produce business span a range of foodservice and retail positions.