CHICAGO -- Supervalu customers now have 500 stores that participate in the wholesaler's center-store sales-building program, and the company expects to add that many more again this year, the firm's top wholesaling executive told attendees at the Food Marketing Institute Show here last week.
Michael Jackson, executive vice president of Minneapolis-based Supervalu and president of the company's wholesale division, told attendees at the show's opening session that some retailers who have adopted the company's holistic approach to building sales in the center-store categories are generating sales gains of as much as $1.50 per customer.
"You can grow both the top and bottom lines," he said.
He said Supervalu groups center-store product based on their risk in order to determine how to promote them. Some groups are described as "attack categories," in which supermarkets have already had more than 1% sales erosion. Examples include laundry products and pet food. In those categories, the goal is to get share back from alternative channels.
Other products fall into "defend" categories, which include cereal and coffee. Those are the categories that Supervalu sees as being at risk for sales erosion. Sales in those categories must be protected to prevent sales from shifting to alternative formats.
"If we put as much focus on center store as we did on the perimeter in the last 10 years, we could do it," he said. "We could revitalize center store."
He said customers have become accustomed to avoiding whole "blind spots" within the center-store sections of supermarkets."They find shopping in alternative channels much more rewarding."
