CHEVRON CORP. OPENS DRIVE FOR MEALS STORE CHAIN

ROSEANNNE HARPER

SAN RAMON, Calif. -- Petroleum giant Chevron Corp. has launched a pilot store here that sells fresh meals, the first of at least six units to come this year.

Officials from Chevron Products Corp., based in San Francisco, said the next meals store is set to open in Modesto, Calif., in late April. While the concept, dubbed Foodini's Fresh Meal Market, offers hot food and limited seating, its major focus is decidedly on prepackaged, chilled, fresh meals -- entrees and side dishes.

Foodini's is targeting the customer who's looking for a variety of chilled, fresh meal components that he can grab from the self-service case and then get back on the road quickly, said John Cooper, manager for the concept at Chevron Products.

Foodini's is owned by Chevron Products, which is a wholly owned subsidiary of Chevron, one of the largest marketers of petroleum products in the United States.

The 4,250-square-foot store, 40 miles across the bay from San Francisco, stands in the midst of multiple prepared-food outlets of different types, including supermarkets.

"Lucky's and Safeway both have home-meal replacement programs in place, but we have an advantage because of our ease of use," Cooper said. Units of Safeway, Pleasanton, Calif., and Lucky Stores, San Leandro, Calif., lie within a mile and a half of the Foodini's, which opened here March 24.

"We make parking convenient," Cooper said. "We've found [via research] that customers look at 'convenience' as starting from the very beginning, starting with parking and getting out of the car. So we've put the gas pumps off to the side instead of in front of the building."

Cooper pointed out that, just as important as being easy to access, Foodini's looks easy to access, because the parking spaces are spread across the front of the store.

While the main focus is on the take-away customer, Foodini's management believes some seating is a necessity, Cooper told SN.

"We offer 12 seats indoors and 12 to 24 outdoors because, in surveys and focus groups we've run, people have told us they occasionally want to sit down and eat [where they buy their takeout food], and we want to give them that convenience," he said.

"The hot service counter is used to feature items that are in the refrigerated case," he explained. "Customers will always be able to find the selections we offer hot also in the self-service case."

Both the prepacked prepared foods and most of the fare on the hot table are sourced from regional manufacturers, Cooper said. Foodini's has spent the last year and a half knitting together a network of local suppliers that can produce what Foodini's considers the best of the best in particular categories.

"In some cases, we found the product we wanted. In others, we had them adjust the recipe," Cooper said.

"Where we thought it would be advantageous, we've used brands, such as Mallard's pasta and Levy's bagels," he added. But the bulk of the prepacked entrees and side dishes are produced for Foodini's and packaged in heat-sealed containers bearing a large window and the Foodini's name, logo and distinctive colors that Cooper described as "green, squash purple and carrot yellow."

Theater has not been forgotten at Foodini's. Panini are grilled in-store, wraps are made in-store each day, and rotisserie chickens are cooked on-site. An aggressive sampling program will be part of the repertoire too, Cooper said.

Chevron Products operates more than 5,000 convenience stores in conjunction with Chevron gasoline stations across the United States and will continue to do so.

The company's research over the past year and a half, however, has shown that customers' busy lifestyles have created a new market, Cooper said.

Surveys and focus groups the company carried out in Atlanta, Houston and the San Francisco Bay area showed people wanted service and a top-quality product as well as convenience, Cooper added.

"We asked people what kinds of things they want in their lives and a lot of what they wanted couldn't be supplied by a convenience store and our mission is to optimize value and quality for our customers," Cooper said.

Fill-in grocery items such as eggs and butter and gallons of milk and toothpaste will not be made available at Foodini's.

"It's all fresh food and single-serving beverages," Cooper said.

Half of the Foodini's stores opened in the next year and a half will be attached to Chevron gasoline stations and half will stand alone, Cooper said.

"We're in a test phase," he said. Stores to open this year will be in the Bay area and in Phoenix.