honoluluadvertiser.com

Sponsored by:

Comment, blog & share photos

Log in | Become a member
The Honolulu Advertiser

Posted on: Wednesday, June 29, 2005

Behind the supermarket scene

Last of two articles on the changing supermarket business
Last week: Putting the 'super' back in markets

By Wanda A. Adams
Advertiser Food Editor

Foodland Beretania is a "beta" test site: Here, Foodland managers are unveiling their ideas for the grocery store of the 21st century, Island-style.

Kelly Watt is just what you'd want in a head cashier — someone with a soft voice, gentle smile and an awesome ability to multitask. Fifteen-year Foodland veteran Araceli Acosta is bakery manager. Trends here include more scratch baking, more single servings.

Photos by Jeff Widener • The Honolulu Advertiser

Ask why this store was chosen and someone will quip, "Because Jenai shops here," meaning Foodland's chairwoman and chief executive Jenai Wall Sullivan.

Actually, it's that the customer base for this smallish, urban store — a mix of well-heeled retirees, young city dwellers and shoppers from nearby neighborhoods — seems receptive to new ideas.

The Advertiser recently made several visits for a backstage glimpse of how a supermarket operates.

1 p.m. Tuesday: Department heads' meeting

Each week, Foodland Beretania's department heads crowd into the tiny and distinctly unplush upstairs office of store director Clarence Morinaga. It's a chance for Morinaga, a soft-spoken man who has the air of a likable school principal, to rally his troops.

"Front-end urgency" is the buzz term this week — meaning fast-as-possible checkout times and help with carry-out. "We all have milk, we all have bread. The one thing that can set us apart is customer service," he reminds them. In self-conscious monotones, the department heads read from forms on which they have recorded their week's goals and earnings; overtime and other costs; "key initiatives" (important goals) and anything others might need to know.

Over and over, the same goal emerges: "keeping in stock." Empty shelves are the cardinal sin.

It's just before Memorial Day, and the all-important front gondola — the entry display — has to be redone with summery stuff. The grocery department is planning a full "re-set" to add new health-oriented freezer goods. Produce is anticipating the arrival of summer stone fruit.

Discussion buzzes around issues customers probably never consider: the quality of the plastic shopping bags, how to move stuff around the store without using scarce shopping carts, an upcoming "top scrub" (floor cleaning) in the wee hours.

11 p.m. Tuesday: Back of the house

Foodland employee Darren Okamoto restocks produce; the entire department is checked and stocked several times a day.
Tuesdays are one of three nights when large grocery loads are delivered, stacked in dim back-of-the-house hallways. From the wee hours on, grocery manager Neil Watanabe and his staff will be all over the store, moving at warp speed, pushing carts piled high with boxes, box cutters at the ready.

Space — or the lack of it — is a key issue. The trick is to order just enough product to a) move it through fast so nothing's stacked in the back and b) not run out. While computer tracking has taken much of the guesswork out of stocking, there's still the odd factor that can make a difference, such as a sudden spike or drop in temperature that changes people's eating or cooking habits.

All the products have to be checked into the inventory system, and Watanabe devises a schedule for how they'll be distributed. "Every day there's something to do — move displays, build displays, slot in new products," he said. Each week there are five to 15 new products for which they must find shelf space, sometimes by pulling poor sellers or discontinued items. Or they'll reduce facings — instead of two or three rows of one brand facing outward, there might be just one or two.

11:59 Tuesday: All over the store

Sale prices go into effect at one minute to midnight Tuesday, meaning Mary Gonsalves has to send the program to the store computer that updates prices for all 40,000 or so "stock keeping units" (individual products), and then she and a clerk literally run all over the store replacing all the shelf tags. Supervisors periodically pull products to check them; the goal is no more than two errors in any test of 350 items. If state inspectors find an incorrectly scanned item, the store is fined, said Gonsalves.

3 a.m. Wednesday: Produce department

Stockers go through every produce rack, all 500 or so items, packing in fresh products, culling out scratched or bruised fruit (which get used up in the deli), trimming and stacking. This will be repeated at 6 a.m. and again at noontime and in the afternoon.

Department head Donald Goolsby remembers when the only herb they sold was basil — "nobody ever asked for anything else." Now the department carries a number of fresh-cut herbs, herb plants and even a new line of root-on herbs that have a longer shelf life.

Also relatively new to the produce section: fresh juices, bagged greens and fruit cups.

Store director Clarence Morinaga spends more than half his day on his feet, circulating through the market.
Produce buyers have a particularly tricky job. Many fruits and vegetables are seasonal. Weather or shipping problems can result in shortages. Most produce have a short shelf life. Cooler space is coveted. And, said Goolsby, "You never know how much the demand is going to be." If Oprah mentions blueberries or the TV Food Network sings the praises of pomegranates, he might sell out. But if a competitor has a sale, "people in Hawai'i are very price-conscious, they'll go somewhere else for a few pennies' difference," he said.

4 a.m. Wednesday: Bakery

The first-shift bakery crew reports to work before dawn. Today, many baked goods arrive at the store as frozen dough. The late-night crew does the "break out," removing unfrosted cakes from the freezer to thaw, placing yeast doughs in a warmer to rise. The morning crew pops the readied dough into the oven, frosts the cakes and replenishes stocks throughout the day.

A 15-year Foodland veteran, bakery manager Araceli Acosta is a ball of cheerful energy, showing off new products such as crusty Grace breads and French-style miniature pastries. Trends here include more scratch baking by an in-house pastry chef and single-serving desserts for small households.

6:30 a.m. Wednesday: On the floor

Store director Morinaga wheels into the parking lot, scanning the area for trash that needs to be picked up or lights that have gone out. Morinaga, like most store managers, spends more than half his day on his feet, circulating through the store, his smile welcoming but his eyes alert for situations.

Even as he's being interviewed, he notices a customer looking lost and turns to him without a pause. "Oh, I'm just looking for my wife," the man says. "We can have her paged," Morinaga offers, always ready with a solution. He started with Foodland 36 years ago as a part-time stocking clerk while he was going to school and has never worked anywhere else. "I like it," he says, simply. "The people. And it's always changing."

7:30 a.m. Wednesday: Meat department

On one of his periodic visits to the store, Foodland director of meat and seafood operations Bill Arnold reflects on then and now.

The biggest change is "block-ready primals": Once, stores bought whole carcasses; now they order smaller, boxed portions that create less waste.

Nationally, because consumers spend less time in the kitchen, boneless cuts are 90 percent to 95 percent of the business. But not in Hawai'i, Arnold said, where short ribs, oxtails and especially bone-in chicken thighs are staples.

We eat more chicken thighs per capita than anywhere in the country (think mochiko chicken, garlic chicken, shoyu chicken).

Fifteen-year Foodland veteran Araceli Acosta is bakery manager. Trends here include more scratch baking, more single servings.
Arnold nods to Elsie Takenaka, who is filling cases. She's the "wrapper," a reference to the days when meats were wrapped in butcher paper. "The wrapper is the eyes and ears of the department. She's out here every half hour seeing what needs restocking," Arnold explained.

The trend here is the same as elsewhere: more partly processed foods, more heat-and-eat. He points to house-made stir-fry "meal packs" of cut-up vegetables and marinated meats, and pre-cooked dishes from Hormel. These may cost more per ounce than unprocessed meats, but, said Arnold, for today's shopper, "time is money."

8 a.m. Wednesday: Seafood department

The big difference between a fish case here and one on the Mainland is one word: poke. Seafood manager Glenn Antonio offers at least half a dozen varieties.

Islanders buy more seafood in the grocery store than do Mainlanders, Arnold said, and poke is one reason.

Antonio's focus now is on introducing customers to more varieties of whole, local fish, a pet project of Foodland corporate chef Keoni Chang.

10 a.m. Wednesday: Deli

Diane Tauanuu is flying around the deli, answering questions, tidying shelves, readying for the lunch rush. The Kama'aina Kitchen has gone from picnic (cold cuts, fried chicken) to banquet (sushi bar and chef-made, restaurant-quality takeout).

Customers hover around the display. "As soon as we can see them looking, we ask, 'Do you want to sample this?' We know they're thinking, 'It looks pretty, but does it taste good?' That's what's important," she said.

Tauanuu said R. Field — the store-within-a-store gourmet shop — has helped educate shoppers. Wall calls R. Field the "R & D lab." It stocks the hard-to-find, the exotic, the high-quality. Once products begin to sell well in R. Field, they tend to shift into the mainstream store.

Every 30 minutes, Tauanuu or one of her staff cruises the self-service areas. Tauanuu can't wait until they get a real espresso bar, a common grocery store feature on the Mainland. She admits that until she began working in the deli, the only cheese she knew was Kraft: "I love it in here. Every day, I'm learning."

11 a.m. Wednesday: Checkout line

Kelly Watt is just what you'd want in a head cashier — someone with a soft voice, a gentle smile and an awesome ability to multitask. The head cashier must almost simultaneously ring up an order, chat with a customer, direct a questioner to the correct aisle, open up a new checkout line, call for help with spills and generally keep the entire front end moving. "You kind of have to have eyes on all sides," she said.

In 25 years, she's seen the job go from brain-driven (cashiers had to manually punch in prices, calculate the tax, memorize all the produce prices and count change) to computer-driven (scanners record prices, tax is automatically added, produce has coded price stickers, and the computer tells how much change to give). "It's much easier now," she said.

One thing that hasn't changed is the need to make shoppers feel welcome. "We're the last ones they see going out the door. You want them to feel happy and come back."

• • •

Supermarket speak

Supermarkets have an internal language of their own. Some terms you'd hear back of the house are:

Category — group of like products (e.g., paper goods)

Category killers — products sold so cheaply elsewhere that they "kill" supermarket sales

Channels — types of food stores (supermarkets are one channel, big-box stores another, etc.)

Continuity program — sales promotion for sets of things (e.g., dishes, pots), with special prices on a featured item each week

Displayable categories — popular staples that display (stack) well and have high turnover

End cap — product display area at end of aisle; highly desirable

Entry gondola — products stacked at store entrance; high-impact area

Facings — number of products of a single brand and type displayed facing outward

In and out — seasonal items carried only at certain times of the year

Pack out — putting an entire case on the shelf; re-shelving

Push — automatic distribution to stores from warehouse (usually of something where there's a lot in inventory)

Set — group of like products (e.g., all canned corn) on the shelf

Shrink — loss from items that didn't sell, or had to be discounted

SKU — Stock Keeping Unit; the individual scan code applied to each different item

Slotting allowances — payments from manufacturers to place, or keep, products on shelves

Loss leader — staple item sold at a loss to bring customers into the store

Loyalty programs — scan cards that allow stores to track purchases, reward frequent shoppers