WEST SACRAMENTO, Calif.—Consumers say they want to eat better, but don't always know where to start. Raley's Family of Fine Stores has an answer in its new “Let's Begin” initiative.
But it's more than just an ad campaign for consumers, Chelsea Minor, director of public relations for the West Sacramento, Calif.-based retailer told me during a visit shortly after the campaign kicked off this fall.
We walked through a Bel Air Market where a new basket of fresh fruit samples for kids was placed front and center — in front of the Halloween candy — as you walk in, where checkout lanes had “better for you” options instead of mainstream candy and soda and where produce was featured as the cornerstone of new initiatives about saving money, eating better and starting new.
“Our third generation CEO Mike Teel is really driving this for us and challenging the organization on how we can do things better and infuse life with health and happiness,” Minor says. “What you'll continue to see in all of our stores is really a transformation. We're thinking about how we can put health and wellness at the forefront of our marketing, messaging, in-store displays and conversations with customers.”
And the way that starts is internally, by evolving the role of retail dietitian to “wellness evangelist,” a role filled by Emmie Satrazemis.
“A lot of what I'm doing is internally focused,” Satrazemis says. “Educating our team members is a major priority.”
A strong foundation
Raley's has been slowly peeling away things like tobacco, which the company removed from its stores in 2015, and, most recently, private label goods with high fructose corn syrup and artificial colors, Minor says. In produce, however, there's nothing but a good story to tell, more often, and more effectively.
“With ‘Let's Begin' there's nothing more healthy than produce,” Greg Corrigan, senior director of produce, told me during a visit. “It's a natural tie-in. The more produce we get on the plate, the better off we all are.”
It's more than just marketing, however. Raley's is taking significant steps in pricing, called “Hello Savings,” highlighting cost-effective produce options weekly, in addition to lowering prices on staples like bananas in the Raley's Dailies promotions.
“These promotions are all part of ‘Let's Begin' working to encourage that level of produce buying,” Minor says.
Raley's also has dramatically increased the availability of local produce through its Living Local 50 program, and, thanks to Teel's direction, the company now offers more organic produce across the board. “Over the last two years, we've significantly grown our organics program,” Corrigan says. “The produce penetration, our percentage of total produce is now up to 15%. That's a strong number for a conventional retailer.”
Call-outs to local and organic suppliers are all over the store. Strong supplier partnerships are nothing new for Raley's, but the promotion of these partnerships has stepped up. “We're doing a lot of business where things are literally being harvested and shipped that day direct to stores,” Corrigan says. “We've got some strong relationships and we're constantly growing their business.”
Raley's has been working with some local growers for decades, a bit of a challenge when it came time to refreshing grower profiles into the new “Let's Begin” campaign, Minor says. “We say we've been farm to fork since 1935, and you can tell,” she says. “When we were pulling some of these farmer photos, we realized they were from 20 years ago.”
Updated photos and videos were definitely in order, and it gave the produce team a chance to shine. Buyers star in some of the videos and do the voiceovers for videos, because they know the farmers best, she says.
I finished up my visit to Sacramento with a spin through the Farm to Fork festival, one big party celebrating the area's rich history in American agriculture. It's easy to see why Sacramento bills itself as the “Farm to Fork” capital. As your plane descends into Sacramento, the landscape is nothing but farms for miles, and Raley's sits right in the heart of all of it.
Their booth at the festival was all produce. Local growers were on hand sampling products, and consumers were encouraged to do a selfie in front of the “Let's Begin” banner to kick off their own wellness journey.
I even took a spin on the smoothie bike, a fixed-gear bicycle equipped with a blender Raley's had set up for display. It was harder than it looked, but aren't most things worth doing?