KROGER CO. GROOMS PET FOOD PACKAGING

RUSSELL REDMAN

CINCINNATI -- Kroger Co. here has revamped the packaging for its Pet Pride dog food and Cat's Choice cat food to give the brands a more upscale image.

Kroger was rolling out the redesigned canned food items as of late September, according to company spokesman Paul Bernish. The updated packaging for dry food, introduced roughly a month ago, already is in stores chainwide, he said. "We're adding some new [products], too," Bernish added. "We've come out with Pet Pride Meaty Round, which apparently is a growing item in the dog food category." Meaty Round dog food, introduced the last week of September, has a chewy shell with a meaty inside. It is the first of several new pet food products planned by Kroger, Bernish said. He declined to discuss upcoming new items.

The new packaging for the Pet Pride and Cat's Choice lines, which total more than 30 items, is intended to enhance the brands' shelf presence and consumer appeal, Bernish said.

"We're trying to move a little bit more into what you would call 'the premium look without the premium price.' The packages have a black background and very modern graphics, and they're color-coded for the different phases of your pet's needs," he explained.

"It's primarily an attempt to upgrade the overall look of the product to help capture more business and the attention of consumers. Pet food is a very healthy business, and our business is doing quite well. We wanted to reposition it as a really serious alternative to national brands."

Pet food is the latest in a series of store-brand package redesigns by Kroger, Bernish noted. "With

our Kroger private-label food and grocery products, we have been undergoing a makeover of our product packaging over the past several years and are upgrading that. So this is an extension of that effort."

Kroger also is providing strong promotional support for the new packaging, including in-store displays and extensive couponing, according to Bernish. "We're doing a good bit of advertising in our divisions, color ads," he said.

For example, a full-page color ad by Kroger's Atlanta division said, "We introduce our new packages with great Pride." It included a $1-off coupon for a 20- to 25-pound bag of Pet Pride dog food and pictured bulk bags of Pet Pride Chunk Style and Puppy dog food plus boxes of Kroger-brand dog biscuits. The large-size bags of dog food were offered for $5.99, and a 3-ounce package of jerky strips and an 18- to 26-ounce box of dog biscuits were advertised at 99 cents each.

Kroger's updated pet-food packaging is partly a response to heightened big-box competition in the pet supply arena nationwide, according to industry observers in Atlanta, where there are numerous pet superstores.

"We've had a lot of pet superstores open up, PetsMarts and Petstuffs, so they've siphoned off a lot of the pet food business [from supermarkets]. And Sam's and Wal-Mart have also siphoned off business," one observer said.

"You always have more brands trying to get on the shelf than you have space for, and pet food is a tight department that continues to grow," he added.

Another observer said Kroger's enhanced pet-food packaging targets popular premium pet-food brands found only in pet superstores and specialty stores, such as Science Diet and Iams.

"They probably tried to reposition it to go after Science Diet and pet brands like that," he explained. "What the supermarkets are losing to these other [pet supply] outlets is unreal. They won't get the Science Diet and pet brands that people are demanding. Should they be surprised that they are losing share?"

Competition from strong private labels at other supermarket chains -- such as A&P's America's Choice, which includes pet food -- also motivated the packaging upgrade, the observers noted.