Food Lion Debuts ‘Easy, Fresh and Affordable’ Stores
Food Lion's previously introduced "Easy, Fresh and Affordable … You Can Count on Food Lion Every Day" strategy has arrived at 31 stores in the Wilmington, N.C.-area market. The locations are the first in the supermarket chain to be remodeled under the initiative, which launched earlier this year.
"Since announcing our new strategy, we've been doing a lot across the Food Lion chain to create positive change," noted Beth Newlands Campbell, president of Salisbury, N.C.-based Food Lion, adding that the Wilmington locations represented "the first market of enhanced stores that bring all the elements of our new strategy to life to make shopping easier for customers."
Continued Campbell: "Our customers told us that they want a grocery experience where it's easy to shop, easy to save and easy to figure out what is for dinner tonight. In these enhanced stores, we’ve worked to deliver just that."
To mark the stores' conversion, Food Lion is giving away $10 gift cards to the first 50 customers at each location daily from Aug. 20-23. Additionally, Food Lion Feeds has donated 150,000 meals, or $31,000, to the Food Bank of Central and Eastern North Carolina, Second Harvest Food Bank of Southeast North Carolina and 27 local feeding agencies in the region to mark the launch of the stores, as part of a commitment to provide 500 million meals to needy families by the end of 2020.
Fresh Store Features
The remodeled stores now feature a new product assortment with a dedicated gluten-free section and fresh meat and produce carrying a Double-Your-Money-Back guarantee, including new USDA Choice Food Lion Beef in leakproof, freezer-ready packaging; new yellow signage highlighting three ways to save: MVP On Sale, Extended Savings and Great Value Every Day; Daily Dinner Deals, which are hot meals that feed four and cost about $10, as well as day-long daily meal deals in the deli; faster checkout technology, including larger display screens; and blue bags to help customers easily identify cold and frozen items.
A Food Lion spokeswoman told PG, "We'll continue to make these chain-wide enhancements as we engage in the multi-year project to remodel stores," including the introduction of 45 renovated locations in the Greenville/New Bern, N.C., market this November. The spokeswoman declined to reveal future rollouts "for competitive reasons."
Changes Across the Chain
Enhancements are taking place not only at store-level, but across the company. A new weekly flyer, available online, continues Food Lion’s chain-wide improvements in support of the Easy, Fresh and Affordable strategy. The flyer offers an easy-to-navigate layout that makes finding low prices simpler, and a MVP Savings Center section which enables shoppers to combine weekly specials with coupons from the in-store kiosks.
What's more, all Food Lion employees have undergone new customer-centric training. "For our customers to trust us, they need to be able to go into any Food Lion store and have a consistently great experience," explained Campbell. "This is why our efforts to improve customer service and ensure our products are always fresh are so important."
A company of Delhaize America, the U.S. division of Brussels-based Delhaize Group, Food Lion has more than 1,100 stores in 10 Southeastern and Mid-Atlantic states and employs more than 63,000 associates.