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Cynthetiq · 06-28-2008, 09:08 AM

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View: Food-Shopping Tips Direct From the Store Manager
Source: NYTimes
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Food-Shopping Tips Direct From the Store Manager
June 28, 2008
Your Money
Food-Shopping Tips Direct From the Store Manager
By RON LIEBER
At the bottom of some of its receipts, Heinen’s Fine Foods prints its phone number and asks customers to call in with comments. And each week, Tom Heinen, who runs the 17-store chain in the Cleveland area with his twin brother, Jeff, listens to a recording of those calls as he drives to work in his Chevy Blazer.

This week, he let me listen in as we made a lap of the suburbs, visiting his stores and those of the competition. While lots of self-styled shopping experts have been trotting out the same tried-and-true advice recently on clipping coupons and avoiding the store while hungry, I thought we could learn something new about shopping tactics by talking to a grocer who actually sets the prices.

It’s a tricky time to be selling the high-quality foods Heinen’s offers. Egg prices in May were up 18.2 percent from a year ago, while bread rose 15.9 percent and milk was up 10.2 percent, according to Consumer Price Index data. With those kinds of spikes, the big question most consumers are asking is whether it’s time to switch grocers.

On those phone calls, Heinen’s customers are indeed complaining a lot about prices. But so far, most of them seem to have stuck by the chain.

Their loyalty suggests a couple of things about the kind of middle- and upper-class shoppers Heinen’s tends to attract. While they are concerned about price, they’re increasingly thinking about their foods’ origins and quality. So they would just as soon not trade down from a store like Heinen’s that offers handsome local radishes and an excellent stir-fry station.

And they almost certainly don’t want to drive around to six different stores cherry-picking deals. “With two adults working and the kids going to soccer, I defy you to show me how they can do it,” Mr. Heinen said. “They’ll be in the nuthouse.”

But the chain has chosen to do a number of things differently, given that Whole Foods entered the Cleveland market last year and regional chains have been relentlessly papering the area with circulars. (Whole Foods itself has its own initiatives under way, which I’ll describe below.)

If your grocer isn’t trying some of these same experiments, you’re probably paying more than you need to. And the questions the Heinen brothers and others have been asking are the same ones you should be asking of your grocers. Here are a few of them:

HOW MUCH ARE YOU THROWING OUT? According to one Agriculture Department estimate — though it is more than 10 years old — Americans waste 27 percent of all food available for human consumption. Tom Heinen is well aware of this, since grocers have to get rid of all sorts of food past its prime. But he thinks that grocery shoppers share some of the blame as well. His solution is to spend more money but waste less food.

He explained his logic in front of a display of sausage-stuffed Hungarian peppers, assembled in Heinen’s kitchen and ready for cooking at home. “It’s not cheaper to make it yourself if you throw parts of the peppers or the sausage away,” he said.

The theory here is that if you buy marinated meat or washed lettuce or other convenience items, you’re not creating any waste in the preparation. If you chop and stuff those peppers with sausage yourself, however, you may buy too much of one or the other and neglect to use it or throw out parts of the pepper that don’t work in the recipe. You may also buy the ingredients but never get around to making the dish.

This way of shopping puts money in the grocer’s pocket, so take it with a grain of imported sea salt. But if you value your time and find yourself throwing away half-heads of lettuce on a regular basis, these sorts of convenience foods may be more economical than you think.

WHERE ARE THE ARTISAN-QUALITY DEALS? Heinen’s has won “best cheese selection” honors from Cleveland Magazine for several years running, a tall order for a nonspecialty shop. To keep that title, with cheese prices up 14 percent in the last year nationally, the store’s managers knew they had to make some adjustments.

“We went to vendors and said to them, ‘Go out and find us artisan equivalent cheese,’ ” said Chris Foltz, the company’s director of operations. What Heinen’s was looking for was the unusual, the delicious and the gently priced.

Now, Heinen’s is selling an Australian cheddar and Monterey Jack cheese for $5.99 a pound and is promoting those new offerings with signs that say “Heinen’s Great Value Cheeses.” There’s an offering from Wisconsin, too, for shoppers concerned about how far their food has traveled.

If this all sounds a bit familiar, it’s because Trader Joe’s has been using similar strategies for years, helping it to develop a cult following. “Too many of our customers think they’re too cool,” Tom Heinen said of Trader Joe’s. “We’re worried more about them than we are about Whole Foods.”

Your grocer ought to be eyeing the competition, too. Does it offer fair prices on unique products? Is there a conscious effort to stock interesting and inexpensive wines? Good olive oil for under $10? If not, ask why.

IS IT LOCAL? One way to keep prices low is to buy local produce, since it travels fewer miles to the store and tends to pass through fewer hands. Heinen’s now has a produce buyer whose primary job during the warm months is to shop the local produce auctions. The chain buys from 45 farmers, most of whom are no more than two hours away.

This last week, for instance, radishes and green onions from K. W. Zellers & Son in Hartville, Ohio, sold for 99 cents for two bunches, and they sit under a “Home Grown” sign highlighting their origin. When local bell peppers are in season, they sell for 59 cents a pound, a fraction of the price that peppers from far away fetch in the winter. At Heinen’s, local produce is cheaper about three quarters of the time.

Local products aren’t always less expensive. Heinen’s carries a goat cheese, for instance, that costs about $24 a pound. But grocers generally promote such items anyway, since many shoppers like the idea of supporting nearby businesses and buying items that didn’t consume too much diesel fuel to get to the store.

WHO’S MY TOUR GUIDE? Not every grocery store bothers to highlight local products. So you may need to ask what comes from nearby and who grew or made it. “One of the things Whole Foods taught us is the need to tell stories” about our products, Mr. Heinen said. In fact, Heinen’s has 50 stories that it trains employees to tell customers about its meat, produce, baked goods and other items.

This month, Whole Foods took another step forward on this front, designating one employee from each store as a “value guru.” Those employees now give regular tours highlighting sales, local and seasonal items and popular selections from its private label brand.

I learned a couple of new things on my tour with Alli Krohn Smith in the company’s Union Square store in Manhattan. First, you can order many grocery items by the case and receive a 5 percent discount. In the health and beauty aisle, where many grocers try to rob you blind, Whole Foods has its own brand of shampoo and conditioner. They each sold for $3.79 for 32 ounces in New York, which is a nice deal.

Though your store may not have a guru per se, there ought to be someone knowledgeable enough to answer the following questions: What’s new? What’s local? What’s exclusive to this store or chain? What’s the best deal in the store right now? What did you buy this week for your own pantry?

WHAT KIND OF GROCER DO YOU PATRONIZE? Running a grocery store is a tough way to make a living. Industry veterans refer to it somewhat derisively as a “1 percent business,” because of its rock-bottom profit margins. The stores are labor- and logistics-intensive and riddled with waste and costs of every sort.

So this is what you have to ask yourself: If you are patronizing a grocer that doubles your coupons, discounts your gasoline or runs other expensive promotions, how exactly are they staying in business? Are they gouging you on the second most popular brand when the most popular one goes on sale? Do prices bounce around so frequently that it’s impossible to keep the baseline in your head?

Shoppers can play the discount game and win by shopping six different stores, buying only the sale items and products they have coupons for, buying in bulk and then cooking from the pantry and freezer.

But if you don’t want to live that life, you shouldn’t beat yourself up. Demanding more from a single store on price — and quality —may be a better way to fill your belly.

here's tips from a gorcery manager