Rolling In Great Taste
A major change to Bristol Farms' product selection coincides with an overhaul of its original store in Rolling Hills Estates, Calif.
During Bristol Farms' 30 years in business, owners have come and gone, but there's been one constant in the specialty grocer's history: its original location in Rolling Hills Estates, Calif.
Since the first location opened its doors in 1982, Bristol Farms has expanded to 13 stores and been owned by Albertsons and Supervalu, with a few equity firms involved along the way. Then in October 2010, the longtime senior management and Endeavour Capital purchased the company.
About a year after becoming an independent grocery store once again, Bristol Farms embarked two major projects: a remodel of its original location and the launch of a major merchandising initiative.
The Remodel
In mid-January, Bristol Farms celebrated the grand reopening of its original store, which has been remodeled to look like its Newport Beach prototype. The vintage-inspired graphics — created with fictional yet locally inspired names — give the store's 11,500 square feet of selling space an "old-fashioned mercantile" feel, says Kevin Davis, president and CEO of Bristol Farms. The Rolling Hills Estates location is the smallest in the chain, measuring 17,800 square feet; its 12 other stores average around 30,000 square feet.
As part of the remodel, the fascia was repainted to a lighter, neutral beige hue, and the store's prepared foods and deli department flip-flopped positions. Now upon entering the store, customers are greeted with the store's stunning array of prepared foods and deli items. The end result is a look and feel that has opened up the space, creating the illusion of a larger store.
The store's cheese area was expanded to include 300 domestic and imported specialty varieties. Also added near the grab-and-go soups and salads was a new refrigerated case for cheeses that are cut and wrapped at the store's commissary kitchen in Carson, Calif. On the other side of the store between the frozen foods and produce departments, a bulk foods fixture was installed. In addition to the center store updates, the store's café, which is original to the store, received a facelift and a new coffee kiosk.
Great Taste Squared
The biggest transformation of all occurred in the center of the store. The Rolling Hills Estates remodel coincided with the addition of 4,500 SKUs of organic, local and gluten-free products through the independently owned grocer's "Great Taste Just Got Better" initiative. "It's the most important change to our merchandising plan" in the company's history, asserts Davis.
The Great Taste Just Got Better initiative kicked off in the yogurts and drinks area, the two fastest-growing categories in the specialty food industry. Chain-wide, all 13 Bristol Farms stores feature banners and shelf-talkers highlighting the merchandising initiative, which also includes more specials and more everyday values on key brands. To accommodate the additional products at the Rolling Hills Estates location, 25 percent more, and taller, shelving was added, while the least-popular items were rationalized.
"We did take out some conventional items that were not high-volume items for us, and we added more contemporary items," primarily natural, organic and local, says Davis, who is also the president of FMI's Independent Operator Committee.
While some retailers opt to segregate their specialty foods in stand-alone sections or store-within-a store, Bristol Farms' merchandising scheme favors natural, organic and gluten-free products fully integrated into the mix. "It's better to put them in-line with similar items," explains Davis, adding that for customer convenience, the specialty grocer also places all options in one area so shoppers aren't searching in different areas of the store.
High-visibility, easy-to-read graphics are used at the shelf level, as well as in the weekly flyer and online, to quickly communicate the appropriate glutenfree, organic and locally made, grown and raised products, as well as its signature "Naturally Better" and "Fresh from Bristol's Kitchen" messages to shoppers.
It's an important step for the retailer, says Davis, noting that before the initiative, "We didn't have bib tags. Local, gluten-free and natural attributes are important to our customers. If you're celiac, you don't care if something is on sale. You want to know, 'Does it have gluten in it?' For us, it is a way for us to communicate a product's attributes."
In the center of the store, the specialty grocer is known for stocking hard-to-find items and imported foods. About 20 percent of the store's product offerings overlap with those of chain stores, notes Davis.
Among its must-have conventional items are staples such as mainstream brands of grape and strawberry jam, peanut butter, and national-brand soda in one-liter and 6-pack configurations. "You can get too esoteric when carrying specialty products," says Davis. "We carry a good mix of organic, natural and conventional items."
In line with the Great Taste initiative, the retailer is rolling out a revamped line of private label pasta sauces and salsas. The five pasta sauce and three salsa SKUs were reformulated to be all natural.
"Our customers have spoken. They want more local, organic and all-natural products," says Davis. "We're migrating to those types of products wherever we can, especially if we can make it taste fabulous and all natural."
Some of the stores' 150 private label products have been on the shelves for years. "Where we can migrate to those [natural and organic] types of products and provide them with a better product, we will do so," continues Davis, noting that while "natural" is one of today's hottest buzz words, it's vague and often watered-down.
To further support its natural products' positioning, Davis says, "We enhance the product any way can, in every case. Our goal is to make product better and healthier. No trans fats, no artificial corn syrup. We don't try to market them as anything they're not. Our goal is to be honest with customers," he says, citing as an example the retailer's stance against marketing chocolate chips as all natural, because the chocolate is emulsified.
Singular Sensation
A sizeable part of the store's offerings is its prepared foods, which include ample grab-and-go salads; the service deli's hot items such as ribs and rotisserie chicken; and heat-and-eat entrées and side dishes such as Asian grilled flank steak, wild-caught poached salmon and turkey poblano chili cakes. Soup is the top-selling item volume- and dollar-wise, followed by salads, which include everything from greens to potato salad to spinach pasta salad.
Also among the many items made in-house are the store's 50 or so bakery items — everything from cakes to dinner rolls, breads, cookies, cupcakes and macaroons. The specialty grocer has noticed an increased demand for single-serve desserts. "At our San Francisco store, almost all the bakery sales are individual desserts," says Davis.
A shift in family sizes and more people living alone are among the reasons that single-serve desserts are more than a passing fad, notes Davis. And Bristol Farms' customers are more adventuresome and want to sample a variety of flavors. ""Consumers' palates are broadening, and now they want to try all kinds of stuff," he says.
Catering to the Crowd
Bristol Farms has always been synonymous with high-quality foods and superior service. And organically, the catering department grew from the specialty grocer's service deli. "We were being asked to do weddings and special events,
and it grew from the ground up," Davis says of the company's thriving catering business. Today, the company has a catering director, and there's a catering manager at every store. "The outside category is huge," says Davis.
In fact, the specialty grocer has a full roster of events it regularly caters at the Verizon amphitheatre, University of Southern California, University of California at Los Angeles and more. Back in January, Bristol Farms catered an event at the Rose Bowl with 2,600 attendees. The event, one of its largest to date, went off without a hitch, thanks to Bristol Farms' organization, which included 180 servers, bartenders, chefs and 20 on-site ovens.
The catering department works on events of all sizes. Eric Duarte, food service manager at the Rolling Hills Estates store, says requests vary from day to day. "One day, I'll be planning a wedding, and the next day, I'll be doing a cheese platter for a party," Duarte explains, adding no matter how big or small the job, "we take care of the customer."
During the fourth-quarter holidays, Bristol Farms catering is wildly popular. "We did $1 million in seven days before the holidays," beams Davis. "It's monstrous for us. The holiday period is huge." For the independently owned grocery store chain, Thanksgiving through New Year's Day is "out of control," he adds.
Raising the Meat and Seafood Bar
The Rolling Hills Estates store has 16 feet of fresh seafood and a seafood salad bar, which "does well in all stores," notes Davis. It showcases a variety of cold salads, including ceviche, marinated shrimp and octopus, as well as several varieties of the Hawaiian specialty poke.
Also, the retailer ages its own beef; most stores have an aging locker. All of its beef is sourced from a controlled herd and is 20 percent to 25 percent prime, notes Davis.
Long before lean finely textured beef and its less-than-appetizing nickname became household words, Bristol Farms was grinding its own beef every day.
Among the store's poultry offerings is air-chilled chicken that's raised without antibiotics and fed a vegetarian diet. On the luxury side of the spectrum, Bristol Farms carries caviar and the prized Jamon Iberico De Bellota, a shoulder ham that's from the acorn-fed, free-range Iberico pig.
Vintage Charm
As the saying goes, wine completes the meal, and Bristol Farms' wine department features more than 2,000 varieties that complement the store's quality-oriented food selection. Many of the wines are less than $20 per bottle, and the store showcases 10 for 110, an in-store campaign that highlights the location's most affordable yet flavorful vintages.
In the café, the store hosts wine tastings on Tuesday nights — and a recent promotion at the Rolling Hills Estates store allowed registrants to bring a guest for a penny.
Bristol Farms At a Glance
837 Silver Spur Road, Rolling Hills Estates, CA 90274
Grand Reopening: Jan. 18, 2012
Total Square Footage: 17,800 square feet
Selling Area: 11,500 square feet
Employees: 95 at the Rolling Hills store, 1,400 company-wide, including 75 in catering
Checkouts: Five traditional
Hours: 7 a.m.-9 p.m.
Store Designer: DL English Design Studio, Pasadena, Calif.
"Our customers have spoken. They want more local, organic and all-natural products. We're migrating to those types of products wherever we can, especially if we can make it taste fabulous and all natural."
— Kevin Davis, CEO
"We think great taste is what it is all about."
— Kevin Davis, CEO