Stop & Shop serves up ‘Free-Days’

Stop & Shop is enticing customers with giveaways to drive signups for its loyalty card and downloads of its mobile app.

The Ahold Delhaize USA supermarket chain said yesterday that it’s launching “Free-Days” on select Fridays at its more than 400 stores across the Northeast. When prompted, customers can stop by their local Stop & Shop store and pick up a free product, such as a Chobani yogurt, KIND bar or Ghirardelli Gourmet Milk chocolate squares.

To be eligible for the giveaways, shoppers first must go online to enroll for a Stop & Shop card and download the Stop & Shop app. They then will receive a notification when a Free-Day deal is available.

Customers have two days to load the Free-Day offer to their card via the app. The deals are automatically applied at checkout when they scan their Stop & Shop card. All Free-Day offers must be redeemed within two weeks, Stop & Shop noted.

“Free-Day is a way for us to surprise and delight our customers, and a fun opportunity for them to try a product or flavor they might not have purchased at our stores before,” Rachel Stephens, vice president of digital and loyalty at Stop & Shop, said in a statement.

Examples of Free-Day deals sent to Stop & Shop app users include Planet Oat oat milk, Chobani Gimmies crunch, LÄRABAR and KIND bars, Enlightened ice cream, Hershey’s Gold candy bars and Ghirardelli Gourmet Milk chocolate and caramel squares.

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Stop & Shop’s app enables customers to create shopping lists, access digital coupons and the weekly circular, view recipes and the retailer’s Savory magazine and track and redeem rewards (including fuel) and savings.

“The Stop & Shop app is really an incredible way to unlock savings and get access to hundreds of dollars’ worth of digital coupons,” Stephens added.

Providing customers with more value and an enhanced shopping experience are part of a five-year brand repositioning now under way at Quincy, Mass.-based Stop & Shop, Ahold Delhaize’s largest supermarket chain.

The effort began in October at 21 stores in the Hartford, Conn., area, and includes a modernized store format and a new logo that reflect a more customer-centric strategy based on convenience, notably a wider selection of fresh, fast, healthy and local food options. Next up are Stop & Shop stores on Long Island, where the company also acquired 32 King Kullen stores earlier this year. Plans call for 60 to 80 stores to be remodeled annually under the project, with total capital spending of $1.6 billion to $2 billion.

Earlier this month, Stop & Shop launched same-day online grocery pickup through Ahold Delhaize’s Peapod e-commerce arm at 20 stores as part of a bigger rollout this year. Plans call for the chain — whose stores are in Massachusetts, Connecticut, Rhode Island, New York and New Jersey — to add 175 more click-and-collect site by the end of 2019.

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