All three say food shopping takes a big bite from their budgets — the national average is $38 per person per week — so price plays a role in their choice of store. But Onishiro, widowed and suffering health problems, also values single-serve packaging and healthier foods. Lee, whose divorced son has boomeranged back home with his three children, buys in bulk, shopping both the supermarket and Costco. Souza and her husband are weekend gourmets, experimenting with wine and Food Network recipes.

The three generations represent the challenges for today's supermarkets: Changing needs. Broader tastes. Cutthroat competition.

Perhaps you've noticed:

• At Foodland Beretania, the deli is stocked by white-coated chefs, and the usual fried chicken shares space with blackened 'ahi with soba and grilled pork with pineapple salsa; the labeling in the wine section focuses on flavors.

• In Safeway stores, colorful posters advertise "Ingredients for Life," chill cases are filled with restaurant-quality, heat-and-eat soups and other dishes, and the meat department features premium private-label meats.

• Star Markets' renovated Mo'ili'ili store boasts an olive bar, a Foods of the World section and new signs that allow you to stand in one place and see the directories for every aisle.

• In Times stores, shelves are dotted with colored tags advertising discounts and Royal Card savings, and the wine selection has grown more interesting.

These retailers are responding to consumer trends: Lack of time. Less planning and more impulse shopping. Greater interest in healthy eating. Hobby cooking and entertaining. Short-cut cooking. A hunger for ethnic products. Demand for greater variety. A desire to find it all in one place.

These come bundled with price consciousness, all the keener in paradise-taxed Hawai'i.

'Unusual market'

The Islands have their own quirks. Says Abel Porter, Foodland Super Market Ltd.'s president and chief operating officer, "Hawai'i is a very unusual market when it comes to its passion for food, food being the centerpiece of every gathering. There are a lot more dual-income families, and there is a lot more takeout food."

But he notes that Hawai'i's supermarkets are a little behind the curve: While restaurants here do a lot more takeout than on the Mainland, grocery stores do less. Most still have only relatively modest sandwich delis — if that.

Hawai'i supermarkets are, on average, a bit smaller than those on the Mainland — 30,000 square feet or smaller, compared to the national average of 45,500 square feet. And, as George Glukfeld, general manager of Safeway Hawai'i notes, Island stores must make room for locally made and locally preferred products — from arare and crackseed to bagged rice and poke.

The driving force behind the supermarket evolution is competition.

"There is always someplace else to go to buy food," said Michael Sansolo, senior vice president of the Washington, D.C.-based Food Marketing Institute, trade organization of the supermarket industry. "I'm old enough to remember when a supermarket sold one kind of product, a drug store sold another and everybody had their own domain. Today, we can buy the same products in many different kinds of stores."

The institute counts more than 15 categories of businesses that compete with the conventional supermarket. Big-box stores such as Costco and Sam's Club are the biggest threat, but even Longs Drugs stores sell food. Hawai'i's stores face added competition from large ethnic groceries, such as the Daiei chain, Marukai membership stores, and Palama Market, which recently opened a spiffy new Korean market in the Ala Moana area.

"It's an exciting time," said Star Markets president and chief operating officer Karl Wissman, putting a positive face on things. Competition "is making us all operate better."

Hot products

Star's renovated Mo'ili'ili store is a vision of that chain's future, Wissman said. "Expanding itemization" is store-speak for the addition of thousands of strategically selected products — high-volume, highly desirable items that might lure customers away from another store.

Star belongs to a consortium of independent retailers, Raise the Bar, which pools information about merchandising, customer service and product sourcing.

In a program called Healthy Living, Star has identified eight choice areas — such as organic, fat-free, low-carb, low-sodium, wheat-free — and have added products in these categories, Wissman said. The items are stocked throughout the store, not isolated in a "health foods" section. This is called "integration" — mainstreaming what were formerly considered "specialty" products, a tactic Foodland and other stores are using as well.

A new vision

At Foodland, chairwoman and chief executive officer Jenai Sullivan Wall is overseeing company-wide initiatives that range from Wineplicity (grouping wines by flavor profile, not grape variety) to the upcoming introduction of in-store espresso bars. Earlier this year, Wall and Porter took a dozen managers to the Mainland to tour 80 stores in six days. They chartered a bus, debriefing and brainstorming between store visits. "It was a team-building experience and a chance for the staff to become clear on our vision," Wall said.

Corporate chef Keoni Chang and his staff chefs have introduced house-made restaurant-quality menu items to the Foodland Beretania deli. Now the company is outfitting a central catering kitchen to serve all the stores. Head baker Judy Aveiro is developing a fresh-baked line just for Foodland. The deli is also meant to drive shoppers into the rest of the store. Chefs do cooking demonstrations, recipes are posted to encourage customers to try new products, and the deli uses ingredients from the store.

Service is another Foodland tack. The company's Hoaloha (friendship) program incorporates a group of tactics — greeting customers, asking if they need help, etc. — that everyone must memorize. Every store has a "service champion," a staffer who has demonstrated good customer-service skills and is given four hours a week to mentor others in one-on-one pep talks or present Hoaloha ideas to groups. Mystery shoppers report on the service they receive, jotting down names; these reports are closely tracked.

Between small profit margins (the institute reports an average of 1.45 percent profits, with larger chains below 0.85 percent) and the advantage enjoyed by no-frills box stores, it's tough for supermarkets to compete solely on price. But price strategies such as seasonal specials and "loss leaders" — selling staples at discount —Êare used by all retailers.

Pricing strategy

Times stores have made pricing the centerpiece of the company's marketing strategy, aggressively advertising color-coded everyday low prices and specials.

Last year, the chain purchased Fujioka Wine Merchants, and its wine selection has become more eclectic under the direction of Lyle Fujioka.

Safeway nationally is "rebranding" with its Ingredients for Life program, which incorporates higher-quality perishables (from produce to Safeway-brand chilled prepared foods, such as soups), premium proprietary brands such as Safeway Select and Rancher's Reserve, emphasis on employee service training and a $100 million advertising campaign.

The heart of the initiative is the Lifestyle format store with softer lighting, warmer colors, more and expanded service counters, sushi bars and even olive bars. Hawai'i's first Safeway Lifestyle stores will be in Hawai'i Kai and Kapolei in the near future, general manager Glukfeld said. Eventually, all stores will adopt some version of this format, said Safeway director of public affairs Jennifer Webber.

All the retailers agree that, projects and programs aside, individual stores have to know what their particular customers want. Computerized inventory systems closely track sales. Loyalty card programs offer an avenue for communicating with regular customers via newsletters, and for charting their buying patterns. Stores subscribe to ratings services that track statewide sales so they can compare their in-house numbers. And they employ mystery shoppers for feedback on stores' performance.

Still, said Sansolo, the best information might not be the most sophisticated: "It all comes down to the store manager and the employees knowing their neighborhood." This includes keeping tabs on nearby competitors. Said one Foodland department manager, "If you're not in and out of the other guy's stores all the time, you're not doing your job."

Some stores are attempting to be more interactive. At Star Mo'ili'ili, a new initiative guarantees that, if they don't have an item you want, they'll research it and get back to you within 48 hours. Foodland has a similar policy. Foodland Beretania store director Clarence Morinaga says it's definitely worthwhile to approach someone if you've got a request. "If a product is going to make a difference to a customer shopping here, we want to try to get it," he said.

"Feedback is absolutely essential," said the Food Marketing Institute's Sansolo. "It's important for supermarkets to be good customer-service representatives, but I think it's also important for us to be good consumers and say what we want."