HI NABOR UNIT, PICCADILLY SET SELF-SERVICE CHILLED MEALS

ROSEANNE HARPER

BATON ROUGE, La. -- Independent retailer Hi Nabor here will expand its home-meal replacement strategy with chilled meals in self-service, building on a partnership it has with a regionally popular cafeteria chain.

Scheduled to be in place by the middle of this month, the chilled-meals program is an offshoot of Piccadilly Express, the in-store program operated by the partner, Piccadilly Cafeterias, a 130-unit cafeteria chain also based here.

A three-unit independent, Hi Nabor was the first retailer to link up with Piccadilly, thanks to a co-branding deal between Piccadilly and Associated Grocers of Louisiana, Hi Nabor's wholesale cooperative. That agreement gives exclusive rights to AG's 230 retail members in Louisiana, Mississippi and Texas to work with Piccadilly.

Besides Hi Nabor, three other AG retailer-members who have Piccadilly Express operations in their stores will also probably add chilled meals, said Piccadilly officials.

The Hi Nabor unit on Jones Creek Road here, at 50,000 square feet, is the largest Hi Nabor unit and the only one big enough to support a Piccadilly operation, according to Hi Nabor's owner Sam Crifasi.

"It's doing well in that store. Piccadilly's happy with it and so are we," said Crifasi. He said he expects the refrigerated, prepackaged Piccadilly Express meals will represent a valuable added convenience to his customers.

"If customers come in after Piccadilly Express has closed, they can still pick up a whole meal," Crifasi explained. The Piccadilly Express service counter closes at 8:30 in the evening while the store itself is open until 10 o'clock.

The meals will be displayed directly across the aisle in 6 to 8 feet of refrigerated coffin case.

"We'll give them whatever space they need," added Crifasi. Right now, 4 feet of space in that case are devoted to such packaged items as Piccadilly baked beans, salads, whole roasted chickens and crawfish etouffe, and those will stay, Piccadilly officials said. Hi Nabor also makes room in its in-store bakery at the front of the store for Piccadilly pies and cakes. Piccadilly officials told SN their decision to merchandise whole meals, packed in-store, at supermarkets is based on a dramatic rise in the cafeteria chain's takeout sales chainwide.

"Our hot takeout sales are up 50% over last year," said Warriner Siddle, Piccadilly's executive vice president and director of development. What's particularly notable is that there's been no cannibalization of the chain's eat-in sales, he said. At one location in Mississippi, a Piccadilly cafeteria had a 133% increase in its takeout business over the last year, Siddle said.

"They're selling 800 takeout meals a day and it's all incremental business," he said, and explained the phenomenon this way: "They have loyal eat-in customers, who maybe eat out once or twice a week. They're still doing that, and on two or three other days a week, they're also picking up meals to take home."

At Hi Nabor, six varieties of meals will be packed in-store and displayed in the self-service case. Officials from both companies said they had not yet decided what varieties would be offered. Beef stroganoff over rice, baked chicken, and lasagna, however, are pretty sure candidates, Siddle said.

He added that the choices will depend on two factors: what's popular at the hot-food counter, and what holds up well and displays best. "Eye appeal in a grocery store has a lot to do with how good sales are," Siddle emphasized.

The retail prices will fall between $4 and $6, he said.

In addition to four Piccadilly Express units operated inside supermarkets, the cafeteria chain operates nine of the trimmed-down, takeout-oriented Piccadilly Express units in conjunction with its conventional, freestanding cafeterias. Prepacked meals are not offered at those units, primarily because there's not enough space to accommodate display cases that would effectively merchandise prepacked meals, Siddle said.