WINN-DIXIE UPGRADES CHAIN'S DAIRY BRAND

Lynne Miller

JACKSONVILLE, Fla. -- Winn-Dixie has introduced a new corporate brand in its dairy departments, and ultimately plans to offer 3,000 items throughout the store under the Winn-Dixie brand, chain officials told SN.

Milk, cheese, orange juice, sour cream and other dairy products under the new Winn-Dixie label will replace the company's old Super brand name. Officials targeted the dairy department for the release because of its "high penetration," an official with the chain said, characterizing the launch as a "major initiative" for the company, which operates more than 1,070 stores.

Winn-Dixie has a long history of success with corporate brands, but now is in the process of consolidating 60 house brands into a streamlined, three-tier format. Over the past year, the retailer has been preparing for the transition by converting packaging design and product quality levels on certain items. It is the first time the retailer will have a large number of products from multiple departments under a single banner, with the company name as the brand, said John Opasinski, who joined Winn-Dixie last year in a new position: director of corporate brands.

"Our corporate-brand program is going through a complete makeover," Opasinski said. "It's not just a redesign. This is a big investment."

Many of the existing corporate brands have "brand equity" with consumers, so officials have been transitioning the products carefully, he said.

"We've done a lot of consumer research. Consumers appreciate having the store name on the product. It's reassuring. They know we stand behind it," Opasinski said. "By consolidating brands, customers will see the Winn-Dixie name across the whole store."

The retailer is marketing the brand extensively, using direct mail and radio ads to get the news out to consumers. In the stores, customers find signs, ceiling danglers, new product packaging in dairy cases, product demonstrations and shelf-talkers that spotlight the quality and freshness of the Winn-Dixie-brand products. High quality is one of the key points of the program, Opasinski said.

"We do product quality testing before we convert to the new label to make sure we're meeting national-brand standards of quality," he said.

The dairy department is a logical place for the rollout of a corporate brand, since virtually all retailers already have private-label lines in dairy, and consumers are used to non-national brands in the department, an industry consultant told SN.

"Half of all milk sold in this country is private label," said Jerry Dryer, a consultant with the Dairy and Food Market Analyst, Chicago.

Milk's high penetration and purchase frequency also makes the dairy department a sensible target for Winn-Dixie, he said, noting statistics have shown about 98% of households purchase milk, while the average consumer buys milk 31.5 times a year.

"I've always heard milk touted as by far and away the [product with] the highest household penetration," Dryer added.

Another way to measure milk's popularity is by its turn rate, referring to the number of times store associates refill vacancies in the cases with fresh containers of milk. "The number of turns far exceeds anything else in the store," he said.

More than 96% of all households purchased cheese, and more than 90% bought milk in the 52 weeks ending Dec. 29, 2002, according to data from Chicago-based Information Resources Inc.