Darien’s David

Treating food and general merchandise as true works of art enables Connecticut’s one-unit Palmer’s Market to win the battle against Goliath competitors.

[caption id="attachment_36647" align="alignright" width="292"]Check out more photos from Palmer's Market here![/caption]

Whoever thinks independent grocers are an endangered species doomed to extinction needs to take a road trip out to Darien, Connecticut. When you arrive, stop and ask any local the best place to grocery shop. Inevitably the reply will be: “Palmer’s Market.”

To an outsider it appears puzzling given that Whole Foods, Fairway, The Food Emporium, Trader Joe’s, The Fresh Market, two ShopRites, two Stop & Shops and the world-famous Stew Leonard’s flagship are all in or just minutes away from the tony New York suburb. But to locals, the reasoning is perfectly clear. They know Palmer’s Market offers an outstanding array of homemade prepared foods; the freshest and highest quality produce, meats and seafood; hard-to-find imported and domestic gourmet foods; plus a complete selection of everyday groceries at prices comparable with the Stop & Shop down the block—all merchandised in a spotless, pristine environment.

Add in the unique offerings found in the gift shop, and more recent amenities, like the toy department, 100% scratch bakery and white-glove catering service and it is easy to see how Palmer’s Market deservedly nabbed 17 “Best of the Gold Coast Awards” from the Moffly Media family of local magazines (New Canaan Darien Rowayton Magazine, Stamford Magazine, Fairfield Living), including Best Gourmet Grocery and Best Takeout, along with Best of the Knot and Best of the Wedding Wire accolades from leading online wedding planning services companies.

By the way, at Palmer’s shoppers are not customers, they are clients, and treated as such.

All this has enabled Palmer’s Market, established in 1921, to thrive, while other local grocery institutions such as Acona’s and Porricelli’s Markets have fallen by the wayside.

“In Darien everybody knows Palmer’s,” says Luciano Sclafani, president of Sclafani Foods, the importer and marketer of Italian olive oil, tomatoes and other specialty foods headquartered in neighboring Norwalk.

Sclafani has close personal ties to Palmer’s Market, having personally called on the store when he started in the business more than 40 years ago. “They are known for quality,” he says, and he attributes their success to the family’s focus on customer service.

“There is always a niche for the hometown grocer,” Sclafani says. “Taking care of the customer is the key. You give them what they want—quality at a fair price and service second to none and people aren’t going to change you for the big guy down the street.”

Palmer’s is doing such an outstanding job in the face of increased chain competition that it is in the running for the Retailer of the Year Award issued by its wholesaler, Cheshire, Conn.-based Bozzuto’s.

In fact, business is so brisk during the holidays, the lines at each of the store’s seven checkouts often snake back down into the aisles, with an average basket ring over $70.

“Palmer’s success speaks for itself,” says Brian Conti, director of perishables at Bozzuto’s. “They are surviving through everything that has happened and doing nothing but growing. This store does a great job in their perishables, prepared foods. They got it down. They know their niche. They know what people want, and that’s the key.”

One of those people is Florence Kay, a retiree from Florida who moved to Darien last May to be closer to her family. “This is a great store. I come here probably three times a week,” she says. She has a particular fondness for the self-service prepared foods case, filled with entrées and sides like beef Bordelaise, beef Stroganoff, vegetable lasagna, chicken with vodka sauce and shepherd’s pie.

“As a single person I can buy beautifully made things and they are all-natural, handmade products with no preservatives. I can take an entrée and get two meals out of it, if I add a salad, vegetables and maybe fresh fruit,” Kay says. “Occasionally I’ll go to Stop & Shop, but I do most of my shopping here. Their prices are competitive and I always try to support a local business as opposed to a chain.”

Palmer’s does not rest on its laurels, a fact appreciated by Kay and other shoppers. New departments and products are continually added to the 20,000-square-foot selling floor.

“I think we are a good example for an independent on how to be successful,” says Cindy Palmer Dean, creative director and co-owner of Palmer’s Market along with her cousin Greg Palmer, who is general manager. “You have to step outside of your box and get out of your store. You have to go to shows. You have to visit other stores. My managers have to go out once a month and report back on what stores they’ve been to and what new things they’ve seen.”

“Everything has changed and center store is so much more competitive,” says Palmer. “More places are selling groceries now. You are not just competing against four or five grocery stores, but against Walgreens and Walmart. We used to have a huge baby section, but we’ve shrunk our diaper set down to two shelves. Everybody goes someplace else for that stuff now, like Costco.”   

So Palmer’s is competing by playing off its uniqueness.

Friendlier produce

When Whole Foods sprang up just off the Connecticut Turnpike a few years ago and Fairway opened just outside of downtown Stamford, Palmer’s remodeled its produce department, installing a lower ceiling and merchandising many items from stainless steel washtubs set before a mirrored case.

“We decided to make it a lot friendlier,” Palmer Dean says. “All of the Whole Foods have a very high ceiling and these big displays, so we are redefining ourselves and making ourselves that smaller, totally different experience than what you get there.”

The department was relit with LED lighting from Baero North America, based in Olivette, Mo. “We love their lighting product,” Palmer Dean says. “With LED you need so many less of them. We are putting them all over the store. I think lighting is one of the most important things you can do in a supermarket.”

Another addition to the produce department is manager Peter Sparan, a 35-year Porricelli’s veteran. He has added special touches, like personally wrapping each apple and pear in tissue paper to protect against bruising and impart a fruit basket appearance, and instituting a diced vegetable program, where carrots, celery, red and white onions and red and green peppers are sold for $6.00 a pound.

Although size-wise Palmer’s produce department is a fraction of the competitors, according to Sparan it offers a richer, greater variety.

“We have a large amount of organics, some specialty and novelty items,” he says. “When summertime comes and the local produce hits we go all out. We’ll have a lot of specialty, interesting local items, like different kinds of eggplants and peppers. Whole Foods can’t do that because they are kind of boxed into their organic program, and with Fairway, I’m not quite sure what they do. I’ve only been there a couple of times and wasn’t that impressed.”

Next to produce Palmer’s has installed a scratch bakery, run by Palmer Dean’s daughter Megan Palmer Rivera, and set apart by its signature pink wall, antique tinplate ceiling, crystal soffit and crystal chandeliers.

“We actually run two bakeries here,” Palmer Dean says. “We run the traditional supermarket bakery, where par bake and bake-off items are merchandised from the center of the aisle and cases along the rear, and the scratch bakery, where everything under the crystal soffit is made from scratch, with milk, eggs and butter.”   

Specialties include wedding cakes, pastries, croissants and pies made with Palmer’s famous all-butter crust. They are so good one customer actually brought in her own pie plate and asked the bakery if they could bake the pie in it so she could pass it off as homemade.

Then there are the cupcakes. Priced from $3.00 to $4.50 each, they run the gamut from plain Vanilla/Vanilla to the Samoa, named after the popular Girl Scout cookie, with a topping to match.

In the rear of the store the meat and seafood department was repositioned, and new service cases were brought in, along with new meat manager Nunzio Golia, who, like Sparan, was brought over from Porricelli’s, along with specialty foods/grocery manager Tony Mica.

“Once this change was done we saw a dramatic increase in our seafood sales, probably 40%,” Palmer Dean says.

Palmer’s Market is the type of store that carries six different types of fresh turkeys for Thanksgiving—but not one frozen one. In the summer months, the handmade burgers and sliders have developed quite a following.

“On average our service case is 10% of meat department sales, but it is lower in the winter months because so many of our customers are out of town for the winter,” says Palmer.

“During the summer months we push out of here maybe 4,000 to 5,000 steaks and kabobs a week,” says Golia.

Palmer’s Pick

Even with all of its fresh foods Palmer’s manages to squeeze in 10 aisles of groceries. While all of the name brands are stocked to compete with Stop & Shop and ShopRite, there are literally hundreds of unique products, like Red Bee Honey, produced in nearby Redding from single-source honey, a fact that awarded it a Palmer’s Pick shelf tag.

“We try to assign as much as we can with Palmer’s Picks,” Palmer Dean says. “A Palmer’s Pick is something I like, something unique.”

Another is the Rustichella D’Abruzzo pasta imported from Italy that fills a six-foot shelf set.

“We started out with three varieties, but we finally gave it more room,” Palmer Dean says. “It is handmade pasta and once people try it they cannot ever go back to the mass brands. Once our clients got started on it, it is amazing the amount of business we are doing with it.”

It is a similar story with the neighboring Cascina Brarola risotto display. Imported directly from Italy by Palmer’s, it is merchandised in eye-catching novel clear, shrink-wrapped film that shimmers like an abstract painting in the store’s fluorescent lighting. “We probably go through 25 cases every few months,” Palmer Dean says. “It is a fabulous product and I’m all about the packaging. If your product is not in the right packaging it is not going to sell.”

Just before Thanksgiving, a small addition was built in the back of the building for added kitchen and refrigeration space for Palmer’s booming prepared foods and Palmer’s Events and Catering business. In addition to the prepackaged entrées, sides and salads, service cases are filled with made-from-scratch products like lamb pot pies, eggplant Napoleons and Grilled Thai Flank Steak.

“Our prepared foods business is phenomenal,” Palmer Dean says. “We won Best of the Gold Coast for Best Takeout for all of Fairfield County, which is crazy, considering we are not a restaurant.”

The front of the store, beyond the cash register is set up as a series of boutiques, starting with the floral department. Naturally, like the rest of the store, sales are blooming.

“We do a ton of custom arrangements,” Palmer Dean says. “The girls make arrangements up here, which is nice because the customers can watch them.”

A children’s toy department specializes in hard-to-find items not readily found in Toys “R” Us, like metal mechanical wind-up toys. “Everything is under $25 because that is impulse buying,” Palmer Dean says. “If they are spending $50 on a kid’s birthday present they are going to go to a toy store or online, not the supermarket.”

Business at the neighboring gift department has really picked up, especially since the last recession knocked out many of the local boutiques.

“There used to be candle stores, places where you could go in and buy candles and those are mostly gone, so candles have become a tremendous business of ours,” Palmer Dean says. “We carry all different kinds of candles—scented, tapered, fall, gift—and it has become one of our biggest categories.”

The department also specializes in unique items, like the hand-painted Austrian Easter eggs on display in early March. Each one is a unique work of art, and at only $9.00 each, quite the bargain. “We have been carrying them now for about six years and people collect them,” Palmer Dean says. “People drive from all over Fairfield County to come and get them because we are one of the few places that carries hand-blown eggs.”   

Palmer’s is also one of the few supermarkets in the area with a succession plan. “We’ve been figuring it out and we have a nice strong generation ahead,” Palmer Dean says. “My daughter [Palmer Rivera] is our culinary director. She has been with us for nine years, and now oversees 55 employees and has created 18 full-time positions.”

And as of this year, Palmer’s son Alex joined the staff full time. He has been working his way through the different departments and is currently working in the front office.

Watts happening

Retailers looking to brighten up their general merchandise sales might want to take a cue from Cindy Palmer Dean, co-owner and creative director of Palmer’s Market in Darien, Conn., and stock a collection of Edison Bulbs—the stylish, over-sized decorative incandescent light bulbs with numerous intertwined filaments.

“We just put these up,” she says, pointing to a string of the clear illuminated orbs in varying shapes and sizes suspended over a table of high-end Easter candy merchandised near the self-service meat case in the back of the store. “They are going to be the hottest thing that comes into the marketplace. We travel to Atlanta twice a year [to the Atlanta International Gift and Home Furnishings Market] to pick up on the latest trends and you are going to see these in every magazine,” she predicts.

At Palmer’s, Edison Bulbs are more than just a decorative fixture; they are also part of the product assortment, merchandised from a basket on the floor of the gift department in the front of the store. Each comes in a plain brown box, with prices ranging from $9.00 to $35.00, depending on the size. However, on a recent visit, the large ones were already sold out. With a standard base, Edison Bulbs can be screwed into any suspended socket, but Palmer’s also sells the cords. “They are inexpensive, around $10, so the customer can hang them herself,” Palmer Dean says.

Because they are considered decorative, Edison Bulbs have skirted government bans on traditional incandescent bulbs.

“This year’s Academy Awards had the entire stage lit with Edison Bulbs,” Palmer Dean notes. “I think it is a fun item and they are always coming out with all kinds of new shapes.”

For retailers they can easily brighten up the bottom line. “I think this is a great item that any grocery store can carry,” Palmer Dean says. “Just put it right in your lighting rack. I think the price is really good for a really cool light bulb that lasts some 2,000 hours,” she adds.    

Lovin’ from the oven

In Fairfield County, Conn. the secret to a happy marriage might very well begin with a trip to Palmer’s Market. With its scratch bakery, award-winning floral department and new catering service, the store has become a happening place for brides-to-be.

“We do between 60 and 80 wedding cakes a year that range in price from $500 to $3,000,” says Cindy Palmer Dean, creative director and co-owner.

Baking is done downstairs where the store’s warehouse and offices are also located.

“We’ve grown the bakery as large as we can right now,” Palmer Dean says. “We need to expand downstairs. We only have one oven so the oven goes 24 hours a day. The scratch bakery staff comes in at 2:00 AM and bakes until 7:00, and then the traditional bakery staff comes in and uses the oven. I have 20 people in the bakery and six cake decorators.”

Palmer’s Events and Catering office is also located on the lower level.

“Our catering business is just two years old. We have the office downstairs, which we didn’t even have last year,” Palmer Dean says. “We’ve got one full-time catering director, and we’re probably adding on another part-time catering director this year.”

The catering business is being advertised via word-of-mouth. “When we first started this venture we would go and provide food at community events, the chamber of commerce meeting, wherever they were asking for food we would go and cater it. And we wouldn’t just bring the food, but also the tables and flowers. We realized that just getting our food into people’s mouths was enough,” she says.

As an extra coup, Palmer Dean handed out large biodegradable Palmer’s Market shopping bags at the Best of the Gold Coast event held at the Stamford Hilton.

“There were thousands of people walking through the venue with their Palmer’s bag, which was great because when it is over someone’s shoulder all you see is the Palmer’s name,” she says.