LIGHTS! FOOD! ACTION!

ROSEANNE HARPER

NEW YORK -- When Morton Williams Associated opened its newest store here, it went into show business. The main act, prepared foods, hogs the spotlight at the new venue, which is smack in the middle of "Eatertainment Row," a stretch of theme restaurants that begins just around the corner from Broadway on 57th Street in Manhattan.

When you have neighbors like Hard Rock Cafe and Planet Hollywood, it takes some doing just to get noticed as a retailer of fresh meals, said Morton Williams officials. They've met that challenge with display cooking, animatronics, and neon signs over food stations.

"We knew we had to do something different here," said Morton Sloan, president of the Bronx-based company that owns and operates nine supermarkets in the Bronx and Manhattan. "If we had opened just a plain supermarket in this spot, I think we would have fallen on our faces."

The unit does not seem like a conventionalsupermarket by any means. Entering from 57th Street, customers are engulfed in aromas of burgers, spaghetti sauce and brewing lattes, all being prepared on site.

Staffers saute vegetables in blazing skillets at a fresh pasta and pizza station. Just across the aisle, at an island grill, flames curl around jumbo hamburgers that are flipped with flare by associates in chefs' hats. Other associates wrap meatball sandwiches and attend to a roaring espresso machine.

If all that isn't enough to grab the attention of even the most unresponsive New Yorker, there's more. The cooking drama is set against a backdrop of animatronics that includes a moving alligator in the act of eating a submarine sandwich, an octopus twirling a pizza atop each tentacle, an entire dinosaur family eating carrots, and marching cows demonstrating for a "butter" New York.

Almost all of this activity can be seen from the street, through a floor-to-ceiling window. One row of chairs and tables is positioned against the window, so diners at the store are practically sitting on busy 57th Street. It's all very New York.

"We want you to look in from the street and see the food," Sloan said.

Just beyond the window seating, customers are seen serving themselves from a 26-foot island "hot and cold salad bar" that features everything from scratch-made Chinese and Mexican items to meat loaf and pot roast, as well as cut fruit and salads. A self-service soup station caps one end of the bar and a frozen yogurt machine is positioned at the other end.

The bustle of activity and the animation are key elements. "We were very motivated to conform to what this neighborhood is: a fun neighborhood. There's the Hard Rock Cafe next door and you have Motown and the Harley-Davidson Cafe down the street," Sloan explained.

Also clearly visible through the store's front window is a sign that says "Parkview Terrace," posted over a wide staircase that leads to a lower level where seating for 60 is provided. There, a 60-foot mural depicts scenes in Central Park with the New York skyline in the background, and huge, colorful hot air balloons being launched from the meadow.

The tables are decked out with red tablecloths and topped with squares of glass, which adds to a restaurant-like ambiance.

The show continues downstairs. Diners can see into a preparation kitchen through large rectangular windows, where associates continuously ready up fare that will be given its finishing touches upstairs at the grill or pizza/pasta station.

The pre-preparation of some of the foods is important in order to keep things moving, Avi Kaner, vice president of the company, pointed out.

"You can't grill a 10-ounce hamburger in two minutes, for instance. So they're partially cooked downstairs. We don't want our people prepping things upstairs during the lunch rush. We want them putting on a show and serving people."

When staffers are not flipping hamburgers and serving up lunch, they're preparing and packing up whole meals, meal components and a variety of sandwiches for a long, walk-around self-service case across from the grill.

Getting the customer's attention is one thing, but keeping him coming back is the key to survival in New York City where real estate is so costly, Kaner said.

"First, we've made sure we have the kind of top-quality food that customers come back for, but we're also looking to make their whole experience here enjoyable, from getting their food to getting out of the store," he added.

"People feel they're being entertained. As I look at the customers at the hot bar, I can tell by their smiles. When I see that, I know we've got a repeat customer.

"This is a very high rent area," he added. "If we don't do a large amount of business, we're in trouble."

Getting the customers in and out quickly is part of keeping them happy, he said, and that's been taken care of with three dedicated express registers at the front of the prepared-foods area.

A large sign above the registers points out that they're for "deli x-press" check out. The day SN visited the store, the lunch crowd was being shepherded toward those dedicated registers by a staffer.

The express registers are part of a sophisticated front-end system that serves up detailed sales data by the minute, Kaner pointed out. That helps immeasurably in deciding, for instance, how many tamales to make tomorrow or how many roast beef sandwiches, as opposed to tuna wraps, to put into the self-service case on Wednesday, he explained.

According to Sloan, the company, which 10 years ago didn't even have delis and in-store bakeries in its stores, now finds itself competing with nearby restaurants, delis and Korean markets as well as with fellow supermarkets.

Morton Williams Associated executives expect its increasing focus on food service at this store to set it apart from other New York supermarkets. In the first weeks after the new store opened, prepared food was accounting for 25% of total sales. (SN reported on the unit's grand opening in the May 15 issue.)

A newly developed Morton Williams logo is designed to differentiate the company's stores from other Associated Stores as well, officials said. The nine-unit independent is a member of wholesale cooperative Associated Food Stores, Jamaica, N.Y., which supplies 140 supermarkets in the metro area.

At this particular store, Morton Williams is targeting the lunch crowd that pours from the office complexes that surround the area, and also residential customers who live in towering apartment buildings between 58th Street and Central Park South.

The peak volume during the week is at mid-day, Kaner said.

"We have two types of customers. The business customer who buys lunch to eat here or take back to the office. That customer also buys dinner sometimes or groceries to take home, but he does it at lunchtime. The other major segment is the customer who actually lives in the neighborhood, who usually comes here at night or on the weekend," he said.

Thus, the trick was to design a store that caters to both types of customers. For the overall store concept, which even includes two separate entrances so the two types of customers "don't come into conflict," Kaner gave credit to Peter Marotta, president of STS, Supermarket Technical Services, based in the Bronx.

Marotta told SN that, after brainstorming with Morton Williams officials, he came up with a layout that was aimed at making meals shopping and grocery shopping both a pleasure.

The 58th Street entrance opens into the grocery section, which has its own checkout section. The grocery section presented its own challenge: to include enough variety and upscale products in a limited space and display them attractively, Marotta said. And that has been accomplished with careful product placement and lighting, he added.

Entering from 57th Street, SN noted that it's like going into a different store than the one entered from 58th Street.

First, there's the overall "restaurant-quality" look both inside and outside that's produced with gleaming stainless steel, neon overhead signs, and lighting that spotlights products. Also creating the feel of a restaurant are the design and positioning of display fixtures, and the sleek look of surfaces made of ceramic tile, stainless steel or vinyl.

The menu, too, looks like a family-restaurant menu -- at first glance. The comfort foods are there, but attention-getting items such as freshly made squid-ink pasta, a black pasta made with real squid's ink, are also regular features.

"This is an upscale, sophisticated neighborhood. People are familiar with squid-ink pasta and it's a popular item for us," said Christal Foley, regional supervisor for the retailer's gourmet-foods division.

But customers like the old favorites, too. Meat-ball sandwiches and sausage sandwiches have recently been added at the pizza station, because they're popular and because they're profitable, Sloan said.

The 17,000-square-foot space the store occupies had formerly housed a movie theater. It required major renovation to make it into a supermarket, Marotta said. The store is on three levels: the lower level, which has seating and a pre-prep kitchen; an upstairs with a storage area and meat-processing department; and the street-level floor.

Sloan pointed out that the polished look of the interior makes the store an appealing place in which to eat.