VICTORY PUTS DINNER FIRST WITH DEMOS AT NEW UNIT

ROSEANNE HARPER

DERRY, N.H. -- Victory Super Markets has put dinner on the front burner at a new store that has just opened here.

Specific changes in the food court at this 70,000-square-foot store -- the Leominster, Mass.-based retailer's largest and its first outside its home state -- are aimed at building dinner business, said Arthur P. (Jay) DiGeronimo Jr., president of the 18-unit chain.

Part of the strategy includes heated-up cross merchandising and concepts presented in new ways that say "meal" more clearly, DiGeronimo said. The most notable additional element is a newly designed demo station positioned at the head of the store's Market Square/Courtyard Cafe food court.

"We think that demo station, with the recipes and all the products right there, will help with dinner," DiGeronimo said.

The staffed demo station -- which forms part of an island, along with a sushi bar, soup and salad bar and open work area -- positioned in this way is a first for Victory. While demo stations themselves are not new to the chain, the concept has been significantly expanded, DiGeronimo explained.

A self-service display of packaged, chilled entrees and other meal components also has been expanded at this store, he said. "We added another case, making the display of those products about 15% larger than at our last store [which opened last year in Leominster]," DiGeronimo added.

Concepts introduced at Leominster -- a grain bar, an Asian grill, pasta station, a sushi bar and a carving station -- all have been brought to the from-the-ground-up store here, which opened April 30. So have gourmet pizza, rotisserie chicken, made-to-order sandwiches, and homemade soups and salads, all of which made their debut earlier. Some of the elements here have been moved closer together in an effort to make more of a statement with them and also to make it easy for customers to visualize putting a meal or meals together.

"We've put the pasta station adjacent to pizza here and we've brought a table of cut vegetables that's used at the Asian Grill into line alongside the grill itself," said Jim Riesenburger, managing partner in Riesenburger, Leenhouts & Associates LLC, a Rochester, N.Y., design and consulting firm.

The pasta station at the Leominster store was originally situated beside rotisserie chicken, but has been changed there, too, to bring it adjacent to the pizza counter.

At the Asian Grill here, a 5-foot refrigerated table displays a colorful assortment of cut vegetables and parcooked noodles. Customers choose items from it for inclusion in stir-fry entrees they order at the grill.

Such a vegetable table at Leominster was originally positioned at the end of the salad bar, across the aisle from the Asian Grill. When, later, it was brought in-line, making it an integral part of the grill, sales went up significantly, Riesenburger said.

"The Asian Grill is one of the most successful concepts. Sales are very strong," he said.

Riesenburger, along with Mark Leenhouts and Terry Roberts, created The Market Square/Courtyard Cafe concept for Victory nearly three years ago at a Kingston, Mass., store. He continues to work with Victory as the concept evolves and is rolled out to new stores.

The demo station that anchors The Market Square/Courtyard Cafe here -- one of several demo stations in the store -- is staffed all day on weekends, beginning on Friday, and also for a few hours each weekday. There, a staffer creates an entree or other meal component from a "recipe of the week" that features products from various departments advertised that week in the chain's circular.

For example, a recipe might call for chicken, escarole and tomatoes, and olive oil. Those ingredients, and loaves of Italian bread from the bakery and a wine deemed appropriate to go with that entree, would be displayed for sale there.

Adjacent to the demo cooking station itself is a display case -- with a refrigerated section -- that holds ingredients and meal accompaniments, scanned, labeled and ready for purchase. And the recipe of the week, printed on handouts, is available there.

In many respects, the station is similar to one SN saw at a unit of Rochester, N.Y.-based Wegmans Food Markets in Pittsford, N.Y.

Victory, at this store, has its first opportunity to merchandise wine with meals and meal ideas, Riesenburger pointed out. State laws in Massachusetts, where the chain's other stores are located, prohibit wine from being sold in grocery stores.

Here, approximately 1,500 square feet in the grocery section have been dedicated to a wine and beer center. Wines are cross merchandised with products in other departments as well as at the demo stations.

Other fine-tuning measures at the food court here include an expansion of the service deli's display of Italian cheeses and deli meats. The 12-foot section has also been given its own identity. Blackboards and eye-level strip signs behind the counter call attention to "Italian meats and cheeses."