Grocers, as a rule, are a conservative lot.
At least, that’s how I remember how things were in the early going. Our chain was deliberate in how we made merchandising changes. Very few things were done on a rush basis. When we did consider doing something a little bit off-the-cuff, we tried it in one, perhaps two test stores first.
Most of the time, these attempts didn’t pan out and we cut our losses early. Our chain did not like to jeopardize how we did business. Except for this one time …
Just a few weeks into my (and my also newly promoted counterpart’s) tenure as produce supervisors, we received word that our company president had returned from touring some store in another state. He liked something on his trip that he saw in produce and wondered if we might consider trying it in our own chain.
“Wondered,” as you might suspect, is corporate-speak for “I want this done, and now.”
The something he saw was a merchandising scheme that rearranged straight, fixed produce tables so that one end butts against the refrigerated case on one side, then the next straight table in line butts against the opposite refrigerated case. This pattern continues until all the table fixtures form a maze. The strategy forces customers to wind their way through the produce department, exposing shoppers to more of everything a store has to offer, thereby driving sales.
It was almost a good idea — but more about the downsides in a moment.
As new merchandisers, we had little choice but to support the president’s, um, suggestion. The first store and produce managers we worked with were understandably reluctant, but like us, they were compelled to comply.
We had the store’s crew and ourselves work overnight to complete the reset. A pallet jack coaxed the heavy tables up and away from the many-years-waxed connection to the floor tiles, breaking more than a few. Then, one by one, we butted each of the produce tables against the opposing nearby cases, ensuring equal distances between them all, until we achieved the maze look.
As we re-merchandised the department, it became clear why this something you don’t see every day; it was a very unconventional look.
Related: Read more retail insight from Armand Lobato
And more than just odd. We saw right away that in the process we effectively lost the endcaps of the tables that butted against the racks — valuable endcaps reserved for higher-volume items. We also had to build plywood bridge steps at these points to blend into the refrigerated cases. (It was a good thing that most of us got at least a C grade in high school shop class). We did the best we could to make the connection somewhat workable, but it was a challenge.
Since the rearranged tables looked like two sets of fingers pointed in opposite directions, we referred to the project as the “finger” stores. In all, we re-merchandised about 10 stores before stopping to allow time to evaluate.
We tracked the finger stores closely in the weeks that followed. In all affected locations, produce sales immediately jumped. Maybe there was something to this concept, we thought. At least the president was pleased, at first anyway. After all, it had his fingerprints all over it.
However, the cracks in the odd merchandising foundation formed all too quickly. The finger produce departments were difficult to manage, stock and keep clean. The tables created multiple barriers. It may have worked OK elsewhere, but our shoppers complained they didn’t like being “herded” through the store.
As for the sales, after the initial uptick, sales sank below pre-finger levels. We concluded that it wasn’t the finger effort that initially drove up sales, but rather that sales always spike when a department gets a new reset.
When done correctly, a reset continues to pay dividends. A faulty one has the opposite effect. In this exercise, our chain should have stuck to its usual conservative merchandising philosophy and stopped at a one- or two-store test.
The next project? The president wisely threw in the towel, and suggested we convert these finger stores — the maze look — back to normal. We were all too happy to comply.
Armand Lobato works for the Idaho Potato Commission. His 40 years of experience in the produce business span a range of foodservice and retail positions.