SAVE MART

MODESTO, Calif. -- Satisfying department goals isn't good enough. At Save Mart Supermarkets here, frozen food promotions have to answer to a higher order: The needs of the total store.

e. Within that theme we will integrate frozen food's plan," he explained.

"Then we will give it financial consideration. What will the financial impact be overall? Then we break it down to what impact it will have on the department."

Under department considerations, Brooks' concern is managing sales and profits, and at the same time using the promotion to create the right traffic flow "to get the consumer to shop the total aisle." On the financial side, Save Mart will develop profit targets, a sales contribution impact, profit projections and sales priorities.

"We want to develop programs to financially compensate the

department, and complement what we are trying to do as a total store theme. And then we look at how you can build traffic, incremental sales, how to use it to build store image and capture seasonal sales."

That sounds like a lot of hurdles for every promotion to clear, and Save Mart tracks the progress through detailed weekly worksheets, Brooks said. These worksheets note each parameter and watch each step of the promotion through completion and tallying of results.

Brooks chose last Easter's promotion to demonstrate how detailed the analysis gets. For about 11 frozen food items, the chain kept a running track of sales and profits for five weeks, comparing performance to projections. "We were looking for a 4% increase in gross sales in each week of the quarter," he added.

The worksheet provides Save Mart with "road map goals" for keeping promotions on track,' he said. "If I am not performing to my projections, then that part of the road map becomes a footprint."

The details are determined for each store in Save Mart's three divisions, he said.

Fortunately, frozen foods is a strong enough performer that Save Mart's management is willing to experiment, and take risks, to push frozens' promotional power to new levels.

Brooks said the chain's weekly ad of March 23, for example, broke new ground for frozens.

"We wanted to do something unique and different," he said, crediting Art Patch, vice president of operations, and Cecil Russell, director of merchandising, with being "very active and understanding the benefits of frozen food" to the store's overall marketing message.

The "something unique" was to devote the weekly circular's four-color front page exclusively to frozen foods, rather than the usual mix of other profit-generating departments such as produce and meat. "We wanted to find out: Could frozen foods be strong enough to pull the volume we needed for a given week?"

Attracting increases for frozens is one thing, but risking a negative impact on other departments is quite another. "We were very pleased with this," Brooks added. "We increased our department sales by three quarters of 1%. But you would need to go back, put the dollars together and ask the question: 'Since we did not have the other departments featured on the front page, how did we impact fresh meat, how did we impact produce?'

"I feel like we did impact them a little bit. Was our benefit more than our liability? I think it was, but I can't say scientifically that we did not offset potential sales in the departments we kept off the front page."

Science or no, Save Mart was impressed enough with the trial to plan for more full-page frozens ads. It will do the same for other departments such as meat and produce, Brooks added, on a seasonal basis. "At back-to-school time, when families are spending more time back in the home, I expect we will run another full-page frozen food advertisement," he said.

"October is one of the better months for promotions, but we are seeing frozens and dairy as departments we want to promote 12 months out of the year," he added.

The chain has backed up that attitude by ex-

panding frozen food space in the warehouse and the stores. Its leading-edge departments now stand at 56 doors and dual-island cases in its stores averaging 40,000 to 45,000 square feet. At the warehouse level, Save Mart is distributing from a new 100,000-square-foot frozen storage facility it shares with Raley's and Bel Air Markets.

It also is extending promotions, of a sort, for frozens within the company with a series of divisional seminars for store-level personnel.

Brooks said he learned an important lesson in the process.

"The first time, we brought frozens people in for seminars, and it was total disaster. You can get people very excited about what they can do in the store. But when they get back to the store, it is the grocery manager or the store manager who writes the schedule. They are told real quickly that 'we run the show, and you have a job to do, so go over to your department and get lost and we'll be OK.'

"From that point on, we decided to invite the grocery manager in to hear exactly what we are telling the frozen food person, and I'll tell you, we have had excellent residual results from it."