CHOICE CHOW

RICHARD TURCSIK

In the dog-eat-dog battle for pet food sales, supermarkets are hoping to take a bite out of the market shares of pet superstores with new breeds of superpremium "veterinarian-quality" dog foods.

Several manufacturers, including Ralston Purina, ANF Pet Foods and Farmland Products, are producing superpremium products for supermarkets.

These items have a nutritional value similar to the pet-store-exclusive Iams and Hill's Science Diet brands, and, like their pet shop counterparts, fetch higher retails and bring home higher margins.

Many retailers are now adding superpremium products to their pet aisle assortments, and results look promising.

"We are currently stocking the Carnivore and Purina Nutrient Management brands of premium dog foods, and initial sales look favorable," said Mike Shultz, senior vice president of Hughes Family Markets, Irwindale, Calif. "We hope these products will help bring back sales that have been lost to pet food superstores and upgrade some existing customers as well."

Last month, Rice Food Markets, Houston, also added the Carnivore line of products.

"We're hoping Carnivore will recapture part of those sales that have been lost to pet food supermarkets and also put a little bit more profit in the category, because it is a higher margin line than the mainstream foods," Vern Buford, head buyer, explained. At Rice, Carnivore is being merchandised in the aisle with the other pet foods.

Retailers are beginning to show their fangs to win back dog food sales because it is such a key category.

According to Information Resources Inc., Chicago, for the 52-week period ended Aug. 13, sales of dry dog food in supermarkets, drug stores and mass merchants reached $2 billion, an increase of 6.1% over the previous year. But the sales increase would have been greater if Hill's, Iams and their other pet shop counterparts had not been siphoning off sales from supermarkets, retailers contend.

"We're losing pet food sales, big-time," said Mark Polsky, senior vice president of Magruder Inc., Rockville, Md. To win back sales, Polsky is contemplating adding a superpremium line to his product mix.

"I think these products will be a good weapon for us to win back some of our market share," he said. "ANF just brought their new brick-pack package in to us. Part of their sales pitch was that as soon as they opened ANF up to the grocery trade, the specialty stores discontinued it. It is a good item worth looking at and I think that everything is going to go that way in the next few years."

Manufacturers have been heeding the retailers' calls.

In September, industry leader Ralston Purina, St. Louis, introduced Purina Nutrient Management, "a scientifically formulated dog food." Purina Nutrient Management, with its sister brand of Purina O.N.E., is designed to make that extra trip to the pet food supermarket unnecessary.

"We have good distribution of Purina Nutrient Management," Tera Miller, a Ralston Purina spokeswoman, told SN. "Our promotional support has just started, and television and print advertising is now running."

Heinz Pet Products Co., Newport, Ky., part of the Star-Kist Foods division of H.J. Heinz Co., Pittsburgh, continues to add products to its mix, especially since Heinz's acquisition of the pet food business of Quaker Oats Co. earlier this year.

Farmland Pet Products, a division of Kansas City, Mo.-based Farmland Industries, has broadened its distribution of pet foods from its 400 Farmland cooperatives to supermarket private label. The line made its debut at November's Private Label Manufacturers Association show in Chicago. An official at one East Coast chain told SN it had agreed to stock Farmland's products under its own label in January. Farmland was also before the buying committees of other retailers in the Midwest and on the West Coast, according to Jay Lubarsky, director of Farmland Pet Products.

Big Y Foods, Springfield, Mass., has such high hopes for its Paws Professional private label from Topco Associates, Skokie, Ill., that it has even created a 1,500-square-foot Paws Professional Pet Center in its new Spencer, Mass., location, which opened Nov. 15.

"Paws Professional has only been in the stores since September, but it is doing well initially," said John Corcoran, category manager. "We have just started to advertise it. We also had in-house demos where we gave half-ounce packages of both dog and cat foods to people to take home for their pets to try. We feel as the customers and their pets are introduced to the product, it will do very well."

Because Paws Professional is an upscale brand aimed at the Iams and Hill's Science Diet shopper, Corcoran does not expect it to cannibalize Big Y's other pet food brands. "We hope to attract customers back into the supermarket from the pet specialty stores with these products," Corcoran said.

In its other stores Big Y is merchandising Paws Professional in a separate 4-foot to 8-foot section complete with signs, banners and other point-of-sale information.

In July, Houston-based Randalls Food Markets also took on the Paws Professional canned and dry dog and cat foods. The retailer also stocks Purina O.N.E. and the new Purina Nutrient Management products.

"It is too soon to tell how the new products are doing, but Purina O.N.E. is doing very well, and we lead the city in share with O.N.E.," said Nathan Sliva, category manager at Randalls.

"We've shied away from the other upscale brands, like ANF, because we wanted to give our Paws a chance; if it had to compete with the other items, it would not have as good a chance. We are pretty much relying on the Nutrient Management, O.N.E. and our own private label," Sliva added.

Because of its expanded superpremium offerings, Randalls will be resetting its pet food aisles early next year to group the upscale products together.

"We are putting in 8-foot sections for the high-nutrition products. We've done a couple of stores so far and it will probably be the end of January before we can get them all done," Sliva said.

Retailers are finding they have to discontinue some mainstream products to fit in the new upscale lines.

"We're fitting the upscale items in with a shoehorn, like most other items these days," said Shultz of Hughes Markets.

Pat Redmond, grocery buyer at Rosauers Supermarkets, Spokane, Wash., is anxious to carry a superpremium product, but to date only Purina O.N.E. has been readily available in his operating area.

"We see these complete pet supermarkets and they are doing very, very well with the superpremium stuff. The sales from these stores has to be coming from somewhere. They are taking sales from somebody and I assume that we have to be part of it," Redmond said.

If the superpremium products are to be top dog in the aisles, they will have to be heavily supported, retailers said.

"These items must be advertised as what they are -- premium products. We will be merchandising them as such," said Shultz of Hughes Markets.

Tops Markets, Buffalo, N.Y., has taken on the ANF products. The chain supported its launch by co-sponsoring an October "Paws in the Park" dog walk in Rochester, N.Y.'s Chestnut Ridge Park, with ANF and the Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals.

For the event, Tops featured several varieties of ANF dog food at $3.48 a 3.2-pound bag, a savings of 50 cents. Several ANF cat food varieties were on sale for $4.48 a 3-pound bag, a savings of 40 cents.

Officials at Tops declined to comment, but a store-level source at a suburban Rochester Tops unit told SN that up to 10 ANF items were merchandised throughout the pet food aisle.

Retailers said the right demographics are needed for the superpremium products to be a success.

"We don't have any of the superpremium products at the present time. Although there is value to these products, demographically that is not our audience. It is not being contemplated right now," said Peter Jost, head buyer for grocery at Harp's Food Stores, Springdale, Ark.