When Big Y opened its newest store last month in Bethel, Conn., the chain proclaimed to the press that “The Butcher Is Back.” The 65,000-square-foot location features the company's first exclusively full-service meat department — -all beef, pork, lamb and veal products available at the store are custom-cut by a staff of butchers.

With all manner of case-ready meats now available to ease the workload — and labor costs — of a full-service department, Springfield, Mass.-based Big Y's move may seem unusually retro to some industry observers. But in many ways, the department is the latest iteration of two competing philosophies in food retailing: Either make service departments a cornerstone of a supermarket's image, or get rid of them entirely.

Wal-Mart helped set this growing dichotomy in motion seven years ago. In 2000, a vote to unionize by 11 of the company's meatcutters at a single Jacksonville, Texas store was followed shortly afterward by an announcement that Wal-Mart would make a chainwide shift to case-ready meats — something the Bentonville, Ark.-based giant accomplished within six months.

Since then, many retailers that have attempted to maintain a price-conscious image have followed suit or have made significant cutbacks in service staff. Others, like Big Y and their new Butcher Shop, have found that reinventing and reinvigorating service departments is by far the best way to make a store or chain stand out in a crowded field of competitors.

“One of the first things retailers have to decide is how are they going to offer service,” noted Jim Wisner, president of Wisner Marketing Group, Libertyville, Ill.

“It really starts with fundamental and basic positioning in terms of ‘Who are we in this market, what do we stand for, what kind of a store are we to shop?’ And if that includes service, then now you're going to have to figure out how you're going to provide that in a way that the customer perceives that they are genuinely getting something extra that makes it worth shopping there.”