CARLISLE, Pa. — On Jan. 24, Giant Food Stores will open a Di Bruno Bros. cheese shop in its Camp Hill, Pa., Super Food store.
The Di Bruno Bros. store will be positioned adjacent to the deli department and not far from the produce section.
There will be 125 different specialty cheeses available at the new Di Bruno Bros. shop, sourced domestically and internationally, as well as 60 types of antipasti and cured meats, and crackers, jams, jellies and oils and sauces, according to Giant.
Giant will also continue to offer its own selection of specialty cheeses.
“We are thrilled to welcome the celebrated Di Bruno Bros. to our Camp Hill Super Store,” said Rick Herring, president of Giant, in a media statement.
“By partnering with Di Bruno Bros., we’ll be introducing our customers to an amazing variety of high quality, innovative specialty foods and products from Philadelphia’s authentic cheese experts.”
Aside from the new store, Di Bruno Bros. has four other locations, all in Philadelphia.
“While we have grown significantly within the Philadelphia market, we are excited to expand our business and the Di Bruno Bros. legacy into Central Pennsylvania,” said Bill Mignucci, Jr., president, Di Bruno Bros., in a statement.
“This partnership will allow us to share our spirit of culinary pioneering with Giant customers so that they too can enjoy the vast world of cheese and the numerous accompaniments available to create delicious and interesting pairings every day.”
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Di Bruno Bros. is well known for its cheese pairings, Chris Brand, Giant’s public and community relations manager, told SN.
Brand gave an example pairing of white truffle honey, gorgonzola cheese and figs on a piece of bread.
“They really love the discovery of finding different pairings and what’s going to make the palate really explode,” said Brand.
The partnership with Di Bruno Bros. will be extensive — the cheese shop won’t have dedicated registers, and it will be Giant associates who staff the shop. These associates will be trained by Di Bruno Bros, who have a detailed training manual. The associates will be available to answer customer questions.
Plus, the Di Bruno Bros. store will cross-merchandise with all of the fresh departments.
“It will be a true partnership in the sense that if we’re looking to pair figs with some cheese and some other things, we’ll have our produce department right there,” said Brand.
“So we’re going to be looking for ways to have that Di Bruno Bros. shop interact with each of the fresh departments in the store to offer different pairings to customers and give them different delights that will help them understand the cheeses and how they interact and what they want to bring home with them.”
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The Camp Hill store is one of three Giant Super Stores and the first the Ahold banner opened in 2005.
Giant uses these superstores as a sandbox for new ideas.
“These superstores allow us to introduce and find out what concepts will work. So we were of course very happy with our current selection of artisanal cheeses and specialty cheeses, but we thought this would make a very strong statement to introduce something exciting, something unique to the Central PA market,” Brand said.
The Camp Hill store was the first to offer Giant’s Nature’s Promise Marketplace health food store and the Shop From Home program that allows customers to order online and pick up in store.
Although the Camp Hill Giant Super Store is open 24 hours, the Di Bruno Bros. portion of the store will only be open form 9 a.m. to 9 p.m. because it needs to be staffed by associates.
“We’re always looking for opportunities to partner and grow our business, but right now this is the only Di Bruno Bros. shop that is planned, and of course we’ll be monitoring its success and we’ll make some decisions going forward once we get a sense of how the shop is doing,” Brand said.
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