Leader of the Pack

The Lily does not lie. 

The community newspaper serving the St. Paul suburbs of Oakdale and Lake Elmo, Minn. recently polled its readers asking them to name their favorite supermarket. The winner hands-down: Cub Foods in Oakdale. 

“We take a lot of pride in that,” says Darren Caudill, vice president, retail sales planning at Cub Foods, based in Stillwater, Minn. “We try not to be boastful, but when you have a major competitor come into a market like this and they were here before we had this store, it means a lot that this community embraces us the way we embrace them and voted us No. 1.”

Caudill is referencing Hy-Vee, which operates a store directly across 10th Street North; the two even share a traffic light.

Technically, Cub was there first, as a Rainbow Foods, a Roundy’s banner that operated a smaller store is set back from 10th Street at the far end of the shopping plaza. Cub, a corporate-owned division of Eden Prairie, Minn.-based Supervalu, acquired the store in 2014 when Roundy’s pulled out of the market. 

Cub officials then took over the lead anchor spot in the shopping plaza—a vacant Kmart. “We took off the front half of the Kmart and the site was retrofitted,” says Caudill. 

The resulting store is far different from the warehouse-style outposts of Cub Foods’ roots. While still maintaining its low-price leader grocery image, a heavy emphasis has been placed on fresh departments, service counters, scratch bakery, bulk foods and upscale accouterments, like kitchenware and small appliances. Grocery aisles are wide and easy to shop thanks to dangling markers over each category.

“We have moved along with the customer,” says Caudill. “This store represents who we are going forward. It is a vision of what we’re becoming, where we’re moving. We lead strong with fresh impressions, which has been kind of a Cub mainstay for some time,” he says, noting that when the original Cub Foods store opened in 1968 it did not have any fresh departments.

Shoppers enter the store through a vestibule leading to a separate liquor store to the right and the supermarket to the left.

Gone is Cub’s hallmark “Wall of Values.” 

Instead, in Oakdale the first thing supermarket shoppers see is a large floral department, which in the middle of winter was filled with pots of budding hyacinths, tulips and daffodils. 

“Traditionally for us floral was a very small presence, but now when our customers come in they are really wowed with floral,” Caudill says. “Our floral sales go up on a cold day once we get the spring bulbs in because when people come in out of that bitter Minnesota cold we find they cannot wait for spring.”

When the outside weather warms up shoppers can expect the front of the store to become a blooming field of bedding plants, shrubs, rose bushes and trees. “When we hit warm weather here the people go crazy for plants,” Caudill says. “They know it is a short season for summer and they jump all over it.”

A greatly expanded produce department lies across the main front aisle from floral. The selection includes a vast array of organic items, called out by translucent chartreuse “ORGANIC” signboards in front of the slanted shelves. “Fresh organic is kind of new for us, but we are moving to what the customer wants,” Caudill says.

Also new is yellow jackfruit—an ugly prickly Asian tree fruit bigger than a football—on sale for $27.99 each. It has become so popular management has trouble keeping it in stock.

“Our selection is unique by store, so this is a segmentation item that is popular with the Hmong population that lives in St. Paul,” Caudill says, noting that the new, larger store is drawing from a much wider radius than its predecessor. Jackfruit is also growing in popularity among the mainstream population, spurred on by Cub selling it by the slice out of its cut fruit case. “Most folks have not seen it, so this way we can showcase it. The fleshy part can be eaten as is, and the large seeds can be boiled or roasted,” he says.

A source of pride for Cub officials is that the produce is cut in-store and not at a central commissary, like at some competitors. “Every store does its own cut fruit program; all of this is done fresh in-store,” Caudill says.

To the right of produce is the prepared foods, deli, cheese and bakery departments. 

“Probably our biggest change in this store is our expanded fresh foods area,” Caudill says.

Unlike Hy-Vee, Cub does not have a sit-down restaurant.

“We have a large hot bar,” Caudill says. “Finding that sweet spot is a challenge for retailers. So many of them are trying to build restaurants. But we really think the hot grab-and-go bar is where the play is for the grocery store shopper. That’s where we keep our focus.”

Cheap Chicken Mondays

One of Cub’s signature items is its fried chicken, and Oakdale is holding its own against a nearby fast-food restaurant. 

“This is one of the few stores where you’ll see a Kentucky Fried Chicken out front because there are hardly any KFCs in Minnesota,” Caudill says. “We have Cheap Chicken Monday where we charge $5.99 for an eight-piece, and people line up at the counters for it. In some stores we have to start cooking three hours early for the dinner rush because we sell so much fried chicken.”

The adjacent service deli case is large and spacious, with plenty of room between the platters piled high with store-made salads, including a Super Food Salad made with kale, blueberries, strawberries, edamame, carrots and nuts. “Our history was pretty much in the white salads—mayonnaise based potato, macaroni and coleslaw—but the customer has moved away from that and we have moved with them,” Caudill says.

In addition to salads, the service case is doing a booming business in chilled dinner entrées, including meatloaves, ribs, twice baked potatoes and prime rib slices, at $13.99 a pound.

“We sell a lot of the prime rib. It has been a little bit of a gem for us,” says Caudill. “We are really surprised by how much we sell. The customer just takes it home and heats it in an oven or microwave.”

Next to the service cases, in the rear corner of the store, is Cub’s acclaimed bakery. 

“We’re primarily a scratch bakery and most everything is done in-store,” Caudill says. That includes the doughnuts. “Our doughnuts are our renowned item in the Cities. There is no debate that there is no better doughnut in town than a Cub doughnut.”

Another signature item is the Chunky Cinnamon Bread. “It has been in our mix for a long time and has been a primary driver of our bakery business,” Caudill says. “It makes one heck of a fine French toast.”

Elaborately decorated cakes, done in-store, can be had for as little $11.99—a fraction of what they would fetch at the nearby upscale Lunds & Byerlys and Kowalski’s Markets stores. “Our customers want the indulgency and the experience, but not everyone has 30 or 40 bucks to spend on a cake,” Caudill says.

A greatly expanded bulk foods department sits across the main rear aisle from bakery. Key attributes include a wall of Certified Organic grains and other products, a selection of bulk loose teas, a Create Your Own Trail Mix bar, and urns of honey and fresh maple syrup sold by the pound for $8.99.

“All of the syrup in our warm maple syrup station is from Minnesota. One of our taglines is ‘we are born and raised here’ and we love supporting things that are born and raised here,” Caudill says. “We actually have customers that will order entire jugs.”

A service meat and seafood case lies against the back wall. Popular items include a wide array of store-made stuffed pork chops and chicken breasts, and bratwursts made for this corporate-owned store by another Cub franchisee. 

In the self-serve case, natural and organic meats under the Wild Harvest private label brand are gaining in popularity. “We are just seeing this section explode,” Caudill says. “Few mainstream retailers will have a section this big, but for us it has been an absolute homerun. Our price point versus the competition on that level of product is second to none.”

Microwavable steamer bags featuring a protein and vegetables have also been hitting it out of the park. Containing either a plain or marinated salmon filet or chicken breast along with a vegetable, like asparagus spears or broccoli, the store-made kits can be microwaved in minutes. “We’ve had this program for about a year now and it has been really successful,” Caudill says.

Kitchen Store

Across from the service meat department is a greatly expanded aisle of housewares dubbed the Cub Kitchen Store featuring a wide array of kitchen gadgets, cutting boards, teakettles and small appliances. “This just makes sense for the customer,” Caudill says. “If I am buying food I need to buy things that I can prepare it with, and if people need a last-minute gift they can get it here instead of having to make a special trip to Macy’s.”

Cub’s grocery aisles are wide and spacious—and easy to shop thanks to dangling header signs above each product set, like shelf stable Mac ‘n Cheese.

“We added these way finders because customers can’t look up at the end of aisle signs anymore,” Caudill says. “They want to see it where they are. They need to see instant information at the moment that they want it. We’ve adjusted our signage and our marketing approach to make sure we are navigating the store easier and more clearly communicating where to find things.”

Natural and organic items are now merchandising in-line with their mainstream counterparts, instead of in a store-within-a-store, as it used to be at Cub and is still done at Hy-Vee and some other competitors. 

“When we made this change, we saw a significant increase in consumer sales, because if the customer is walking down the aisle and sees that option she may choose it as opposed to having to go into a separate section,” Caudill says. “Today’s customers don’t believe that that product is special or unique. They believe it should be part of the overall shopping experience.”

Freshest milk in town

After meat, dairy runs along the back wall. Signage touts that Cub has the “Freshest Milk in Town.”

“We get milk from the farm to our store in less than 48 hours, and we guarantee our customers that on a Cub brand gallon of milk we’ll always have seven days,” Caudill says. “So even though the expiration date on the milk is still good, we won’t sell it if it is less than seven days. We’ll pull it off the shelf and donate it, but we turn so much milk in our stores that that is a rarity.”

An expanded health and beauty care department is located at the head of the store, as is the Cub Pharmacy, complete with a drive-thru window, which according to Caudill, is “almost essential” in the pharmacy business today.  

Twin Cities shoppers can expect more Cub Foods like Oakdale on the horizon.

“As we make new store investments we’ll follow this format. On older store remodels we’ll take the key elements that we can duplicate,” Caudill says.  

A Twist of Upscale   

The Cub Foods supermarket is not the only operation that went upscale—so did the adjacent 10,000 square-foot Cub Wine & Spirits liquor store. 

“This is a whole new concept for us,” says Darren Caudill, vice president of retail planning at Cub Foods. “Our original concept with liquor stores was more of a discount liquor operation with a lot of warm beer at discount pricing in a footprint maybe 20 percent the size of this one.

“Our intent was to keep who we are and stay focused on suitcase beer, great pricing and all of that, but we also figured out where customers are today, and they want more variety in spirits, and wine in particular. We were significantly underrepresented in wine. That has changed,” Caudill says.

Minnesota state law requires alcoholic products be sold in a store separate from the supermarket, and each municipality also has its own set of regulations. Although separate, in Oakdale the stores share the vestibule.

Upon entering, shoppers will still find an aisle filled with cases of warm beer, but along the back wall a doored refrigerated cooler is filled with six or seven deep with gravity-fed chilled cases.

“Historically, in Minnesota if you wanted a cold case of beer for a Saturday football game you were in trouble because the small liquor stores would only have two cold 12-packs,” Caudill says. “That is not going to happen here.”

Across from the expanded cold case is the equally impressive 99 bottles of beer on “The Wall,” a Craft your own 6-pack wall of loose beers, sold in a six-pack for $9.99 or $1.89 per bottle. “We counted them one day and there are actually 400 different unique bottles,” Caudill says.  

Entire linear aisles are devoted to whiskey, vodka and other spirits and the wine selection is equally impressive, running from bottles under $10 to a customer accessible, open-air, temperature controlled case containing laydown bottles of rare vintages retailing for upwards of $100 a bottle.

“When we opened a number of folks came in and asked ‘How did you get a bottle of that? I can’t find that elsewhere,’ which was fun,” Caudill says.

The centerpiece of the store is the tasting bar located in the middle of the sales floor where a bartender offers tastings to LDA shoppers of featured products, such as imported Spanish sherries for $9.99 a bottle. As an extra bonus, the tastings are free.

“If we were to charge for the tastings we would need a bar license and the state won’t let me have a bar license,” Caudill says. “In Minnesota, a bar can have an off-premise license to sell packaged goods, but a supermarket cannot sell open containers.”