FORGET ME NOT

RALPH RAIOLA

Members of the retail floral community say supermarket floral operations have come a long way -- but they are still being hindered by perceptions of inferiority compared with most other departments.

The perception of floral as an afterthought to produce, according to several retail floral executives from around the country interviewed by SN, can come from store-level personnel or from the highest-level corporate executives -- and either way it is a frustration that floral directors must deal with.

"It is a stepchild, not just of the produce department, but in the eyes of the rest of the grocery store," said Gary Brewer, director of floral operations at Dierbergs Markets, Chesterfield, Mo., one of a handful of floral executives who would talk about this challenge to floral's growth.

Many supermarket operators had been paying little attention to floral merchandising until only a few years ago, typically reserving a tiny space in produce departments for flowers, and assigning personnel more familiar with fruits and vegetables to maintain the bunches, bouquets and few arrangements.

More recently, however, retailers have begun doing more with floral, with better equipped departments appearing more often in new store formats and remodels, and with merchandising and presentation that has generally grown more sophisticated.

But in the dog-eat-dog world that is the supermarket, where competitors are grabbing for a bigger piece of the sales pie both among stores and inside stores, the growth of floral sections is running up against the space allocations of other departments. In some cases, there is growing resistance.

For example, Brewer of Dierbergs said he wants to find floral items a more "prominent" position in the stores, even by cross merchandising them in a number of different departments, arguing that his floral operations are big money-makers.

However, he encounters impatience with the idea at the store level. He said that employees from other departments are sometimes resentful of having to share their space with the floral department -- and other supermarket floral executives said they are running up against similar resistance, or have heard other floral colleagues complain of it.

While Dierbergs' floral departments do manage to cross merchandise products with other departments, it is not an easy situation to maintain, because "they don't understand that it's a very labor-intensive operation. They just want us to go away and leave them alone," Brewer said.

Barbara Quagliano, director of floral sales and design at the Winnetka, Ill.-based Grand Food Center, concurred.

"I think there are some hard feelings because of cross merchandising," she said, despite the fact that generally her working relationships with store-level personnel in other departments are good. "Everybody's fighting for space in the store. People in the stores are afraid of losing space."

Even in the produce department, to which much of the supermarket floral activity remains tied, retailers said floral is not always being given its due.

"[The floral industry] has not had the support of the produce department," Quagliano said.

Floral staffers, for example, can be seen as lower down the totem pole by produce personnel, even at locations where floral operations are extensive and pull in big numbers.

The practice of looking down on floral -- which in its extremes can become a self-fulfilling prophecy from an operational standpoint -- can emanate from quarters higher up the chain hierarchy than the store, floral sources said.

On the other hand, an improvement in floral status at the corporate level can filter down, as well. One company that does seem to foster greater respect for its floral operations is Houston-based Randalls Food Markets, according to Debby Robinson, who is vice president of floral for the chain.

Robinson said that when Randalls merged with Cullum Cos. in Dallas and took over operation of the latter's Tom Thumb stores, she encountered a culture that was not very supportive of floral. But in the three years since, floral has become just as important a department as it is in Randalls units.

"We have come such a long way in such a short time," she said. While the amount of space allocated to floral is small relative to other departments, some of the chain's floral departments gross higher than departments that work with greater product volume, Robinson said.

"Our company is more vested in its floral operations. We're not taken for granted," Robinson said. "Our executives are constantly recognizing the value of the floral department."

It wasn't always that way for Tom Thumb. When Randalls acquired the Tom Thumb chain, floral did not rate as high with the upper-level decision-makers as other departments, Robinson said.

During those first couple of years after the merger, she said, the floral department at Tom Thumb continued to be treated as inferior compared with other departments, and would typically get the least space and smallest budget allocations.

"We would divvy up what the share was for each department, and floral would get the last piece of the pie. That's the way it was," she said.

Robinson told SN that, aside from her own situation at Randalls, she is very aware of the difficulty floral faces in the supermarket industry regarding perceptions of its importance on the retail floor.

"It makes me, as a member of the floral industry, want to help the others, but I really don't know how to do it. The best way I can think of is by sharing our success story," she said.

One of the reasons for the problem cited by floral directors is that flowers are not a product consumers plan to buy when they enter a supermarket. Another is that floral items are different from most other grocery products, in many ways.

"It's not a commodity that's edible -- we're just a different commodity," said a floral buyer from a Southwest chain who spoke on the condition of anonymity. "Our margins go up and down, our shrink goes up and down, we're able to merchandise with creativity, and we're more perishable than any other commodity. We're so different."

That uniqueness breeds misunderstanding and even fear, the retailer said.

"We're the comic relief of the supermarket business," she said. "There's a fear and an apprehension by people who don't understand floral, and it does alienate us."

On the positive side of the dilemma, the floral executives said they can attract the attention of upper management by showcasing the floral department as a viable contributor to the store, with the potential for bolstering both a store's image of freshness and its bottom line.

"It starts with the ownership," Robinson said. "Image and profit makes our floral departments just as good as the florists in the area."

At Grand Food, Quagliano sits with her bosses at the end of each week and compares sales for that week with sales from the previous week, as well as from the same period a year ago. That detailed analysis can highlight floral's strengths in black and white.

"If they see that ring on the register, if they see that money coming in, that says something to them right there," Quagliano commented.

At Dierbergs, Brewer said that chain's top executives were the first to recognize the floral department's potential. As a result, the chain has one of the most extensive retail floral operations in the greater St. Louis area, he said, with its own floral design facility that handles arrangements and other floral processing.

"We're the fourth-highest money-producing department, out of about 18 different departments," Brewer said.

For retailers like Dierbergs, which have extensive operations, impressive sales can carry some weight. But many other floral executives are not able to put enough effort into floral to help it reach its full potential.

"For the few chains that do have really extensive floral programs, sales do talk," said the retailer based in the Southwest. "But we don't generate the sales like bakery, or produce or dairy, and that's a fact. We generate gross and we turn a profit, but we aren't right up there with those other departments, and that's what breeds that alienation."

And Quagliano said that without the tools to show upper management the merits of a quality floral operation, the department will suffer.

For example, she said, "I think many executives feel that a full-time manager takes up too much money. That's really backward thinking, though, because flowers are the impulse ring. They bring in that impulse dollar."

Training, or lack thereof, may be one of the biggest reasons why floral is not being given the chance it deserves, according to some sources.

"You just can't put a regular cashier in the floral department," Quagliano said. "It needs a different kind of care than the produce department."

The retailers agreed that hiring people motivated about floral is one of the best ways to ensure success. What's more, to function successfully those floral personnel will probably have to be able to handle being thought of as second fiddle.

"I hire by attitude," said Robinson of Randalls. "I never take skill over attitude."

Retailers said recruiting and keeping the best floral employees at the supermarket level is tough because of the "second-fiddle" mentality that runs deep in many corporate cultures.

The floral buyer for the Southwestern chain, for example, said overcoming mentality is "a constant issue," as well as a strain even on the employees who are motivated. It can be remedied only with stress on education and motivation.

"It's up to us in the floral industry to overcome it," she said. "Some days it's overwhelming, and other days it's wonderful. Chains do commit, they just don't commit the way we would like them to."