Each month I write my Sauce on the Side column for Foodservice Monthly ... a personal take of what's spinning around in my world. Safeway gave me the center-of-the-plate for my view on customer loyalty and discounting ... and at the same time I relived some personal disappointments in "my" Safeway in the Maryland burbs. As I reprint my September column below, I continued my series of less than stellar customer experiences at the Safeway less than two miles from my house and less than four miles from the Safeway East Coast headquarters. First you will see my weekend account ... and then my September column.
LOCAL BECOMES A GLOBAL CONCEPT AT THE FAIRWOOD SAFEWAY
For the last month, we have been pretty much a one-car household while my wife has been working seven days a week at a Rockville wood shop on her latest sculptures. As always it's exciting to see her work come into being ... but it's cut my time on the road. I haven't been to a farmer's market for over two weeks. That brings me to "my" Safeway with its local program. I saw a sign that indicated they had "local" white peaches. The floor display had bright four-color graphics for Kingsburg Orchards but nowhere did it say where the peaches were grown ... other than USA on the fruit stickers. Not only that, but the white peaches were nowhere to be seen ... the display had white nectarines. The peaches were on sale for 99 cents/pound ... but I suspected the nectarines would be a different price. I saw a store supervisor walk by and asked her about the pricing. She referred me to a produce clerk who had appeared and he said he didn't know. He did go to check the sku in the computer: 
indeed he came back with a 2.49/pound price and then placed the nectarine back in the same place. When I told him that doing that would cause a "surprise" at checkout for an unsuspecting customer, he stopped a higher ranking associate from produce who explained the white nectarines had just come in that morning. Then I had to remind him consumers have a right to have items marked with prices as he moved them into the center row of the display barely away from the 99 cent price sign. He shrugged his shoulders. I walked away.
Tonight I went just to see how things had progressed 24 hours plus later. Tonight there were no replacements for the white peaches and now the nectarines are marked. And the local sign for the California produce is still up, so am I to believe that USA is local on the Safeway map. On my way to buy some Central American bananas I saw another local sign ... this time behind asparagus and yellow/green squash. Now I know local asparagus is long gone ... but yes, spring is just a couple of weeks away in Peru where this asparagus is grown. Nice, but now the local map for Safeway has expanded to North and South America.
I did send an e-mail to Kingsburg to see if by some chance they are contracting local peach orchards. Their mailbox is full ... my e-mail server sent me a note saying six hours later they are still trying to deliver. In the morning I will call. I didn't talk to a Safeway manager because after five on the weekends it appears they turn the store over to the cashier supervisors and it's pretty much an auto-pilot store.
Safeway Misses the Point … Do You Get It for Your Restaurant?
An article in the Drug Store News by reporter Michael
Johnsen had a headline that caught my eye: “Safeway chairman, president and CEO
addresses promotional pricing bust.” It appears that Safeway’s top exec Steven
Burd is convinced in Johnsen’s words, “It just doesn’t pay to be too
promotional anymore.” Is there a lesson here for restaurants during a time when
we see more and more discounting? I see restaurants and groceries with
synergies that come together more often than many realize when you consider the
appearance of chefs selling their own lines of foods in the grocery aisles,
ready-to-eat foods from grocery chefs and buffet and sandwich businesses inside
the stores.
Maybe you’ve seen the ads that have come out for Safeway
since this story broke. “Everyday low prices.” Safeway has made a change in the
way they do business.
The Safeway CEO went on to say in the story that especially
during a recession economy, the change in pricing strategy will create more
“loyal” customers. This is a break from their deep discounts on selected items
to get people in the door.
The quote that got me thinking is Burd’s, “The budget
shopper is not very loyal at all.”
Then he described exactly how I shop at Safeway, preferring
only to buy the deep discounted items. Buying only those promotional items, “ …
would really hurt you from a P&L standpoint,” he said.
The point the Safeway chief misses here is that there is
much more than price that goes into a satisfying grocery shopping experience.
It is why I am more willing to drive 25 minutes to the nearest Whole Foods and
Trader Joe’s than go the one-mile to buy anything other than the deeply
discounted items when I go to Safeway now.
“My” Safeway is less than two years old. It is the perfect
sized store for the way I like to shop … meaning it’s not one of those
mega/entertainment stores that are so popular these days. I’m not always into
sensory overload so my Safeway has soft comfortable lighting … is well designed
and easy to maneuver through. When it opened most of the cashier lanes were
open – showing how efficient they were. It has a laundry/dry cleaning center
and a bank. Later it added a Starbucks. And they had a sandwich department. All
was well in the world.
I gave up on the laundry almost immediately … the customer
service desk was never staffed to handle customer issues and laundry. Lost
laundry, long waits and an unwillingness to back the on time guarantee drove me
away. I gave up on sandwiches when I knew more about the ingredients and the
steps to make a sandwich than the person on the other side. But I was not
seriously dismayed, neither of those things were a primary reason for me to go to
the store.
It’s in the area of declining store cleanliness, a filthy
restroom (yes, they are a foodservice operation like a restaurant in many
ways), surly counter staff, indifferent management, poor restocking practices,
understaffing to the point of making the checkout experience a daily challenge
and a lack of awareness of the deterioration of the store … all within three
miles of the East Coast headquarters. They accelerated the depreciation on the
store by aging it prematurely by ten years. In the beginning the store had two
big stacks of hand baskets at the left and right entrances. Today they only
have 30 baskets left from the opening inventory and they are only kept at the
left entrance. When I reported the dirty restroom, I was greeted with a smirk.
When I questioned a price, I was mocked. One Sunday when the checkout lines
were insufferably long, the manager had staff loading his SUV with his personal
groceries.
So I say, there is more to loyalty than pricing.
That gets me to restaurant recession-discounting and
everyone’s favorite: “restaurant week.” The head of Safeway is right: deep
discounts will not build loyalty. Reasonable discounts and “restaurant weeks”
work when the effort to make the experience a real one is demonstrated by the
owner, managers and staff. It works if the product is not compromised in
quality or size; it works if the service is splendid. It works if the
restaurant is spruced up to reflect the pride of ownership. It works if we are
relentless in our desire to serve and exceed expectations. It works if staff is
trained to relate to the customer who may be there only twice a year for the
special pricing – be happy they are here for the deal.
Working the front lines of the people, hospitality world is
not easy … but I cannot imagine anything more rewarding when we pull it off. My
Safeway doesn’t get it … I hope your restaurant does. I know next year I’ll be
getting a Wegmans in my neighborhood … and I can tell you they do get it. Your
restaurant may have a Clyde’s or a Great American Restaurant concept moving
next to you. They get it.
Reinvigorate your passion as you discount. Rededicate your
commitment. The customers will take notice. That’s how you build loyalty.
