December 18, 2006
GHQ: Bridge to the Future
By Richard Turcsik
Through special arrangement, what follows is an excerpt of a current story from Grocery Headquarters magazine, presented here for discussion.
A&P is repositioning The Food Emporium from an upscale supermarket into a cross between a gourmet store and a neighborhood market to better compete with Balducci’s, Dean
& Deluca and Whole Foods.
That’s being accomplished by drastically cutting back on conventional groceries and replacing them with gourmet items.
The Food Emporium is also being given more autonomy with its own team of buyers. A new store brand is being developed with some 150 gourmet items scheduled to debut next year.
Some will be sold at Food Emporium boutiques found in up to 50 A&P Fresh stores.
A new moniker for the chain is also in the works: The Food Emporium Fine Food.
“This market will appeal to our neighborhood shoppers, tourists and anyone who has an appreciation for fine food and specialties,” said John Metzger, executive vice president
of A&P.
The transformation is being headed by Hans Heer, who joined Food Emporium in May as senior vice president and general manager. Mr. Meer has held key posts in designing food concepts
for Kaufhof Warenhaus in Germany and Harrods of London.
“This unique upscale urban brand will provide a shopping experience that we believe will be the delight of food lovers, while still continuing as a neighborhood store. We want
to have something special and don’t want to copy Dean & Deluca, Balducci’s, Whole Foods and other stores in the city. We will be a little more European in style,” said Mr.
Heer.
“This will be the first Food Emporium to have a completely service cheese counter,” he said. A key feature of the department is a glass walk-in showcase that serves as a stockroom.
“This way the associates don’t have to go downstairs and get more cheese. It is quite a unique thing, and I think there is one other, in Europe.”
Nearby, another showcase houses hams. “Our ham selection is one of the best that you can get in New York,” Mr. Heer said. “We have hams from Spain, Italy, Germany and the United
States.”
In the middle of the store, an International Marketplace houses specialty products from around the world.
A new mezzanine houses a service tea counter, featuring loose and bag teas. “You can buy loose tea and drink it right there. It is a little bit like the tea counter in Takashimaya
[a Japanese department store on Fifth Avenue], and a little bit more open,” said Mr. Heer.
The old Eight O’Clock coffee counter has been replaced with a Lavazza Italian coffee bar. “We own the shop, but Lavazza is our partner and supports us with the machines, equipment
and coffee,” Mr. Heer said.
Discussion Questions: John Metzger said, “As a company, we recognize that the middle-ground conventional supermarket is no longer a viable competitor
in the ever-evolving food marketplace.” How does the new Food Emporium represent that understanding? Does the new concept suggest to you that A&P headquarters “gets it”?
BrainTrust
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Discussion Questions
Poll
Conventional supermarkets will be successfully operating when John Metzger’s progeny are long gone. What an insouciant, historically-unaware statement (“we recognize that [the] conventional supermarket is no longer a viable competitor”), trailed only slightly in absurdity by Hans Heer’s use of a modifier (quite) with the word, “unique.” Cutesy-poo walk-in cheese coolers and Hams Of The World are not an evolution, but an aberration. What’s next, an international peppermint collection protected by an armed guard?
To me, it sounds like the normal reinvention of A&P every six months. They hire a new person with grandiose ideas and then six months later, they come up with something else that doesn’t work. It’s like a revolving door at that company with both executives and their ideas. A&P has about as much credibility as those late night infomercials.
A&P’s success will hinge partly on their products, but more so on their customer service. What makes the elite grocers successful is their blend of product offerings and customer service to create the “atmosphere” that attracts a loyal clientele. Whether A&P can offer this will require the breaking of a lot of rules and initiating corporate change that emphasizes a new type of employee, with a tremendous emphasis on training, product education, customer centric focus, a “can-do” attitude and most importantly, employees who truly enjoy what they are doing (i.e. helping others). This format requires a tremendous amount of resource investment just to put this together, but it then needs the dedication from the entire organization to give it enough time to mature and work properly. Only time will tell!
Ditto, David Livingston. Let’s see if 12 and 24 months from now A&P sustains the alleged breakthrough or lets it decline into a disappointment. So much of retail success is based upon consistent implementation. It’s hard to start something new and it’s much harder to sustain it every day, every hour, with every customer.
The idea is absolutely right on, and should be pursued by A&P with great vigor. However, as Napoleon Hill documented many years ago, “definiteness of purpose” is the single greatest driver of success in ANY enterprise (See Think and Grow Rich.) Constancy of purpose comes from the heart and mind of a single individual, but it can be contagious. Whether Hans Heer is that person, only the future can tell.
There once was a time when A&P ruled the American grocery realm with the lowest prices and had stores on nearly every corner. Then self-evisceration began to slowly set in. Now they are in an extended era of reinventing what’s already been invented. The boys from Allemagne are behind the American curve and the new Food Emporium is a dynamic store of past innovation. But with grace, may I be proven wrong this time next year.
A&P et al are FINALLY Whole Foodsizing the industry…yippee for consumers in established communities who don’t want to travel distances and fight for a space in the Whole Foods lots. Clearly, Whole Foods is not a stock to own long any longer….
If A&P had not ruined Food Emporium they would not have to fix it. Food Emporium was created by the President of Shopwell. He saw the need for a new food store that served a specific target consumer. It was a great success. A&P bought the company, changed the product mix, lowered the service and kept the prices. Food Emporium became just another supermarket, but with high prices. If they had continued the Shopwell model and expanded the chain into the right areas, their bottom line would be far greater today. Do they get it? Only time will tell, but my bet is no.
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Conventional supermarkets will be successfully operating when John Metzger’s progeny are long gone. What an insouciant, historically-unaware statement (“we recognize that [the] conventional supermarket is no longer a viable competitor”), trailed only slightly in absurdity by Hans Heer’s use of a modifier (quite) with the word, “unique.” Cutesy-poo walk-in cheese coolers and Hams Of The World are not an evolution, but an aberration. What’s next, an international peppermint collection protected by an armed guard?
To me, it sounds like the normal reinvention of A&P every six months. They hire a new person with grandiose ideas and then six months later, they come up with something else that doesn’t work. It’s like a revolving door at that company with both executives and their ideas. A&P has about as much credibility as those late night infomercials.
A&P’s success will hinge partly on their products, but more so on their customer service. What makes the elite grocers successful is their blend of product offerings and customer service to create the “atmosphere” that attracts a loyal clientele. Whether A&P can offer this will require the breaking of a lot of rules and initiating corporate change that emphasizes a new type of employee, with a tremendous emphasis on training, product education, customer centric focus, a “can-do” attitude and most importantly, employees who truly enjoy what they are doing (i.e. helping others). This format requires a tremendous amount of resource investment just to put this together, but it then needs the dedication from the entire organization to give it enough time to mature and work properly. Only time will tell!
Ditto, David Livingston. Let’s see if 12 and 24 months from now A&P sustains the alleged breakthrough or lets it decline into a disappointment. So much of retail success is based upon consistent implementation. It’s hard to start something new and it’s much harder to sustain it every day, every hour, with every customer.
The idea is absolutely right on, and should be pursued by A&P with great vigor. However, as Napoleon Hill documented many years ago, “definiteness of purpose” is the single greatest driver of success in ANY enterprise (See Think and Grow Rich.) Constancy of purpose comes from the heart and mind of a single individual, but it can be contagious. Whether Hans Heer is that person, only the future can tell.
There once was a time when A&P ruled the American grocery realm with the lowest prices and had stores on nearly every corner. Then self-evisceration began to slowly set in. Now they are in an extended era of reinventing what’s already been invented. The boys from Allemagne are behind the American curve and the new Food Emporium is a dynamic store of past innovation. But with grace, may I be proven wrong this time next year.
A&P et al are FINALLY Whole Foodsizing the industry…yippee for consumers in established communities who don’t want to travel distances and fight for a space in the Whole Foods lots. Clearly, Whole Foods is not a stock to own long any longer….
If A&P had not ruined Food Emporium they would not have to fix it. Food Emporium was created by the President of Shopwell. He saw the need for a new food store that served a specific target consumer. It was a great success. A&P bought the company, changed the product mix, lowered the service and kept the prices. Food Emporium became just another supermarket, but with high prices. If they had continued the Shopwell model and expanded the chain into the right areas, their bottom line would be far greater today. Do they get it? Only time will tell, but my bet is no.