BONNER SPRINGS, Kan. -- Price Chopper is brewing interest with fresh-roasted coffee beans in its produce aisle.
Just weeks after putting in a bulk display of Gourmet's Choice coffee beans in 10 varieties, officials at the single-unit independent said they're happy with sales.
"We'd had it less than two weeks when I had to reorder. I was surprised. We'd sold out of two varieties, the lighter roasts, and Hawaiian hazelnut had a pretty good-sized dent in it," said Joe Pieper, produce manager, at the 80,000-square-foot Price Chopper store. "We're selling about five pounds a day. Without knowing its track record [in a supermarket], I'm impressed with that. And we haven't hit the peak season yet. As the weather gets colder here, folks will be looking for something to warm their bones, and that aroma will get them as soon as they come in," Pieper added.
The coffee display has perked up the aisle's ambiance, too, he said.
"The fact that you can scoop your own beans and grind them right there just adds something," he said. "It's intriguing. I just saw a woman today calling her friend over to the coffee. She was commenting on the variety. Customers love it."
The boxes of whole beans are situated in a busy section about midway down the aisle, at the end of a tomato display and across from a wet rack of salad products.
The coffee beans, fresh-roasted just prior to delivery, are merchandised in open, white cardboard boxes set on overlapping flaps of burlap to give the display "that look of, or make people think of, big burlap bags of fresh-roasted beans."
Pieper said he'll try not to backstock the beans at all, but instead order them as needed, because their freshness is such a strong selling point.
"I work with a broker who can get them quickly, so I'll just reorder when I see the supply getting down."
Adding the product this fall was an easy decision for the retailer. With a retail price of $6.99 a pound, the gross margin on the beans is good, and it's not an item that's labor-intensive either, Pieper said. The timing was right, too.
"The soft fruit season was over and the citrus season wasn't here yet. It was just a good addition to the department."
A spokesman for the coffee company, which is making its first foray into supermarkets, said the produce department is ideal for merchandising the beans.
"Consumers associate produce with 'fresh,' and also we wanted our product to be sold in a department where the employees are used to handling perishable products. We want it to be treated as a fresh, specialty item, which it is -- not as a grocery item," he said.
Pieper said sales of the beans right now are running neck and neck with other brands of bagged, whole-bean coffee sold in the grocery aisle, and Gourmet's Choice Coffee Co. expects them to pull out ahead of the others. The Kansas City, Mo.-based roaster's spokesman explained his rationale.
"Let's face it -- 98% of customers go down the produce aisle, and as soon as you enter the store here you pick up the smell of coffee from the beans. If a customer is a coffee drinker, we'll have a good shot at getting them to try this."
He added that Gourmet's Choice is still trying to figure out exactly what demographics it's after for maximum sales in the supermarket.
This family-owned Price Chopper, which is part of Associated Wholesale Grocers, sits on the edge of Kansas City, Kan., in a mid-income, mostly residential area that backs up against farmland.
While Gourmet's Choice acknowledges it's experimenting with locations, Pieper said he's still getting acquainted with the product and its possibilities. He's been cross merchandising coffee mugs at the display, and he has big plans for the coffee beans as the holiday season approaches.
"We do a lot of gift baskets," he said, explaining that the specialty coffee will make a good addition to those.
With other independents under the Price Chopper and Thriftway banners opreating nearby and Wal-Mart supercenters all around, this store will make the most of pairing gourmet coffee beans with fresh produce to give it an edge on the competition, Pieper said.
