By Ylan Q. Mui
Washington Post Staff Writer
Saturday, August 19, 2006; D01
Food Lion has given up on one-stop shopping.
Instead, the Salisbury, N.C.-based grocery chain once known for low prices and old-fashioned service is staking its future on two store banners being rolled out in the Washington area.
The first is Bottom Dollar, which debuted early this summer in Fredericksburg in former Food Lion stores. Employees wear neon-colored shirts with kitschy slogans like "I'm a black belt in price chopping." Shelves are low for easier access and packed with bestsellers like strawberry Jell-O and 18-ounce peanut butter. Customers are expected to bag their own groceries.
Across the Potomac River in Maryland, Food Lion has unveiled another remodeled store under the name Bloom, with one just opened in Laurel. Shoppers there have handheld scanners to ring up their purchases. There are more than 50 types of cheese. Interactive kiosks help customers look up products and prices.
These are Food Lion's newest weapons in the long-running grocery store wars. Squeezed between the low prices of Wal-Mart Stores Inc. and the organic abundance of high-end retailers such as Whole Foods Market Inc., the company has decided to fight back on both fronts.
"We were stuck in the middle," said Michael J. Haaf, senior vice president of sales, marketing and business strategy for Food Lion. "We didn't really stand for anything, and that was a really untenable position."
Call it the Old Navy-Gap-Banana Republic model of food retailing. Food Lion is planning to remodel 40 stores in Fredericksburg, Manassas, Dale City, Herndon, Fairfax, Leesburg and Gaithersburg, among other areas, into Bloom. Fourteen stores will become Bottom Dollar -- including at least one within three miles of Bloom. The remaining Washington area stores will be remodeled but keep the Food Lion name, serving neighborhoods with lower average income than those served by the new stores.
The chain has 73 stores in the area, making it the third-largest grocer behind Giant Food and Safeway Inc. But according to data from trade publication Food World, Food Lion has the lowest per-store sales average of the top 10 chains in the region, with an average of $9.87 million per store, compared with Giant's average of $25.3 million over the past year. Total sales over the past 12 months were $721 million, compared with $3.3 billion at Giant.
"We had a cookie-cutter grocery store," Haaf said. Everything was "the same, the same, the same."
Food Lion isn't alone in scrambling to reinvent itself. Giant is remodeling its stores to focus on perishables and has installed Redbox DVD rental kiosks in some locations. Safeway's re-branding as a fashionable "lifestyle center" is also well underway, with more prepared and organic foods and general merchandise, such as cookbooks. Shoppers Food Warehouse Corp. last year opened a new ethnic food market, El Primero Mercado.
Food Lion spent three years studying its customers and created an internal research department to look at income levels and demographics, along with how customers shopped, what they bought and where they bought it. They conducted surveys, reviewed transaction histories and conducted focus group interviews.
Eight types of shoppers emerged, Haaf said, ranging from "wealthy elites" to those with "babies and bills." He declined to describe the other profiles, citing industry competition. But he said capturing each of those shoppers would be impossible with one store format.
"We took a different approach to the business, rebuilding around the customer," Haaf said during an interview at Food Lion's headquarters, sketching polygons on a napkin to illustrate how the company matched store brands and locations with shopper profiles. "It's difficult to do a good job being all things to all people."
Wendy Cobrda, founder of Catenate LLC, which advises banks and retailers on where to put new stores, said each brand appeals to different population segments, though there is some overlap. At the request of The Washington Post, the firm analyzed communities within a three-mile radius of Food Lion's stores.
Catenate found that many Bloom stores are in what the company calls Boomburbs, populated by wealthy dual-income young families with busy, prosperous lifestyles. Bottom Dollar, on the other hand, is often found in neighborhoods of "aspiring young families," who have less discretionary income and may rent their homes.
But there remains a large swath of shoppers in the middle who could swing both ways. Both stores are in densely populated areas with large numbers of "enterprising professionals" who are tech-savvy and are frequent travelers. According to Catenate, the average household income around Bottom Dollar stores ranges from $64,900 in Fredericksburg to $114,779 in Chantilly The range around Bloom stores is $64,141 in Bealeton, Va., to $133,006 in Sterling.
Industry experts say Food Lion's multi-brand strategy reflects the increasingly fragmented way people shop, visiting discounters for low prices on paper towels, traditional supermarkets for pasta and specialty stores for produce.
"Consumers claim to want one-stop shopping. But when we're with them, they're actually increasing the number of places that they shop," said Laurie Demeritt, president and chief operating officer of consulting firm the Hartman Group Inc. "Different occasions are driving their uses."
Food Lion executives said they expect customers will shop across all three brands. As Haaf put it, "If you're going to shop somewhere else, it might as well be with me, too."
At Bloom stores, the color scheme is a calming pale blue, and faux bamboo plants decorate the walls. Flickering recessed lighting in the produce department evokes the image of water on the walls. In the remodeling, aisles were widened and cleared of the large displays that can cause shopping cart congestion -- supermarket feng shui.
A Bloom pilot store near Charlotte carries exotic fruits such as Kiwano melons and porcini mushroom oil. Shoppers are encouraged to open and test products before buying. Merchandise is arranged by "universe," so that breakfast items are grouped together. Milk, a shopping list staple, is at the front of the store.
Not all Blooms are the same, however. At the recently opened store in Laurel, "taste ambassadors" who handed out free food samples at the Charlotte store were absent one morning last week. Milk was in its traditional spot at the back of the store.
Bottom Dollar, painted neon orange and green, competes in the "extreme value" segment, with pallets of merchandise plopped into aisles. At one Fredericksburg store, cans of Campbell's soup were still in their packing cartons on the shelves. Service in the meat, bakery and deli departments was eliminated in all Bottom Dollars to cut costs.
The store carries only 6,500 different types of products -- the bestsellers in each category -- compared with the 25,000 to 30,000 sold at traditional Food Lion stores. Still, the brand tries hard to make frugality fun. A mural on the back wall of the store portrays a frightened pig thinking, "More loin for the coin?"
"We're trying to create a lighthearted atmosphere," said Peter Brodbeck, vice president of Bottom Dollar, during a tour of the Fredericksburg store. "Discounting doesn't have to be a hard shopping experience."
The chain is also remodeling its namesake stores, adding hardwood flooring and expanding their organic sections. But Food Lion stores may be retreating into the shadow of their sister brands.
Just ask Jill Feldmeyer, who was filling her basket at the Bloom near Charlotte on a recent morning. She used to be a Food Lion shopper, but then Bloom opened and now she's hooked.
"I don't like Food Lion," she confessed.