Will Rogers once said, “You never get a second chance to make a good first impression.”
At least, the saying is attributed to the late humorous and social commentator, along with a host of others. I am alluding to this famous tidbit of wisdom in the aftermath of my previous column when I talked about the importance of precise ordering, especially for a grand opening event in the produce aisle.
When a grand opening is ready — and I mean really ready — there isn’t a detail out of place. Every inch of the produce department is squeaky-clean. Every display is thoughtfully hand-stacked so that the blush of every produce item is faced toward the customer; every sign is accurate, eye level and straight; and every leafy green has what looks like spring morning dew dripping off neatly trimmed, crisp leaves.
Everything is just perfect and awaiting the wanting public to experience the glorious first impressions awaiting every step into produce nirvana.
Except that it is — when it isn’t so impressive. That can happen with what chains call a “soft opening.”
Yuck. The very words still make me cringe. I had to work through a few of these soft openings as a supervisor at one misguided chain in the mid-1990s.
To explain, a soft opening is quietly opening a chain store for business, before the big, actual grand opening date. It has good enough intentions. A soft opening is without fanfare, with the hope that everything is operating up to snuff such as cash registers all working or newly trained employees are used to managing any snafus, that sort of thing, all before the full-court press and pressure of a grand opening’s heavy traffic.
A soft opening gives a store a chance to iron out any bugs, I was told.
Well, bully. Meanwhile the produce department, the star of any big grocery chain operation, is getting shopped. Hard. Sometimes the soft opening lasts only a few days or a week, but that’s all it takes for a perishable department to lose that special edge it started with.
In this produce scribe’s humble opinion, a store should be ready for the actual grand opening from the start. None of that soft-opening, on-and-off stress. A soft opening may help with a hard-line-based retail operation, but it’s counterproductive for a chain packed with perishable departments.
When a store offers a quiet soft opening, the produce department has to double or triple efforts to make everything look like it’s supposed to for the official grand opening. This typically means an entire set team has to work at least overnight resetting every display. It means recleaning, rotating, culling and detailing every display and every item. When it’s all finished, sure it looks good — and many times, really good — but grand opening good?
Sorry. Even with the best efforts, that ship has already sailed.
A soft opening is like taking a showroom-new sports car for a long drive with your sweaty brother-in-law along, making detours through fast-food places along the route, then throw in a rainstorm or two before running through one of those sandblaster car washes and expecting the car to pass as new.
It’s new, all right. But dealership, new-car smell, feel and look new? No way.
That’s how it is for a fresh produce grand opening, too. Get the store’s bugs fixed ahead of time and ditch the soft opening. Do it great, do it in style, but make that big first impression — once.
Armand Lobato’s more than 50 years of experience in the produce business span a range of foodservice and retail positions. He has written a weekly retail column for nearly two decades.
