Nonfoods Shop ‘til You Drop

A visit to Bloomington, Minn. retailers shows a wide disparity in nonfoods offerings and price points.

With the massive Mall of America as the heart of its vibrant retail core, Bloomington, Minn., (population 86,319), is a shopper’s paradise. In addition to the largest mall in the U.S., the fourth largest city in Minnesota is home to an Ikea store and several smaller regional shopping centers.

Scores of high-rise hotels service out-of-town shoppers making a pilgrimage to the mall; business people conducting meetings at the corporate headquarters of Best Buy, The Toro Co. (lawn mowers), Holiday Companies convenience stores and Schwan’s Consumer Brands; as well as passengers on layover from the neighboring Minneapolis Saint Paul International Airport.

Most of the shopping geared toward locals is a few miles away from Mall of America in the older part of town. Bloomington is home to two Cub Foods warehouse-style stores, an upscale Festival Foods, a Walmart Supercenter and an outpost of hometown favorite Target. There is also one CVS and four Walgreens, plus scores of supermarket and drugstore shopping opportunities in neighboring Edina.

Grocery Headquarters recently visited several retailers in Bloomington to take a look at how they merchandise nonfoods and general merchandise and found a wide disparity in merchandise selection and price points.

The Cub Foods on Lyndale Avenue South was a busy store with two entrances. The one on the right, adorned with a massive red neon “Cub Foods” sign, leads into the perishables departments, including floral, produce, bakery and meat. The left entrance, marked by a smaller red “Cub” sign over a blue “Pharmacy” sign underscored with a blue swoosh, leads to the pharmacy, OTC drug, nonfoods and general merchandise side of the store.

Adhesive signage in the form of a red bandage above each of the entranceways announced that flu shots are being administered in the pharmacy. A similar smaller tent-style sign is on a small round table on the main front aisle leading to the pharmacy. The table was covered with apples given away as an extra incentive to shoppers asking for a flu shot.

Of the 20 numbered aisles, aisles 18, 19 and 20 run perpendicular to the rest of the store funneling their shoppers to the pharmacy counter along the left wall. Lower than Cub’s grocery aisles, they stretch from aisles 13 to 17 and contain various over-the-counter medications, oral care, deodorants, shampoos, soaps and the like. They are marked with a blue circle containing just their number, whereas the other aisles feature brown and beige signs that provide details of what items can be found down them.

Aisle 12, for example, runs the length of the store and contains laundry care and dish detergents. Ending at the drugstore aisles, aisle 13 is somewhat shorter and contains cosmetics, diapers and feminine care products. An e.p.t. Early Pregnancy Test kit can be found here as well as in front of the pharmacy, next to the condoms and other family planning items.

Aisles 14 and 15 are shorter than aisle 13 because they house pet care items and are set off as sort of a store-within-a-store pet boutique. Aisle 16 is the same length as aisle 13 and has plastic bags, light bulbs and other household items. The last aisle, 17, runs along the left side of the store and contains paper products.

Nonfoods pricing at Cub Foods is in the middle between the high-priced Walgreens and Festival Foods and the much cheaper Walmart and Target. Many items are marked with bright red and yellow shelf tags that announce the item is cheaper and state the savings.

No L’eggs
Hosiery at Cub Foods is housed in a four-foot set in one of the drugstore aisles, but unlike Walgreens and most other stores in town Cub does not carry L’eggs brand, only No Nonsense.

About a mile away, the Walgreens on Penn Avenue South is the anchor of a small strip mall, along with T Mobile, Jimmy John’s subs and Caribou Coffee. The traffic light in front of Walgreens is for an access road leading to the Target directly in back and the busy South Town Shopping Center across the street, anchored by Kohl’s, Herberger’s and Bed Bath & Beyond. Because it is on a corner lot, Walgreens has two facings lined with windows covered with pictures of vintage Walgreens scenes, including the first store in 1901 and a 1927 soda fountain. A large marquee digital sign on Penn Avenue announces the weekly specials.

Shelves in Walgreens are slightly lower than those at Cub Foods. About three-quarters of the 10,000-square-foot store is devoted to traditional drugstore merchandise, with the rest to grocery. The pharmacy is located in the rear left corner of the store and has a dual drive-thru lane in the back.

Above the shelving, Walgreens’ back wall is lined with mirrors designed to deter shoplifting.

Walgreens has a substantial selection of OTC merchandise. Both Walgreens and Cub offer eight feet of eye care, but Walgreens had a superior selection of eye drops. However, pricing throughout the store was the highest in town—by far.

The staff at Walgreens is extremely friendly. A cashier greets shoppers entering the store with a “hello,” and store associates and assistant managers working the aisles readily ask customers if they are finding everything they need and remind them to feel free to ask for assistance.

Customer service is also a high priority at the Target next store; a “Beauty Concierge” wearing a black apron walks the aisles in the OTC and cosmetics departments asking customers if they need assistance.

Target’s HBC prices are substantially lower than Walgreens, Cub and Festival, although they do not offer as in-depth a selection as some of the other stores. In pain relievers, for example, Target does not stock Anacin or St. Joseph’s baby aspirin, only products from Bayer. Target also does not stock the e.p.t. Pregnancy Test, although it has Clear Blue, First Response and its own Up & Up private label.

Target has an extensive HBC department, stretching from aisles 47 to 19. Each aisle is about 32-feet long and well marked with signage such as “General Pain Relief.” The department is along the front of the store, anchored by the pharmacy.

Twenty-four feet of trial sizes are merchandised in front of it from metal wire bins.

The department contains five aisles of beauty and hair products displayed from seven-foot high merchandisers that are well-lit via fluorescent lighting with reflectors.

A unique approach is taken at Target when it comes to merchandising deodorant. Running the length of an aisle, there is a dedicated section for men and one for women separated by a Power Grooming Shop featuring hair trimmers and electric razors from Wahl, Norelco, Remington and BrAun. Each item was on display with the corresponding products boxed on the shelves underneath. While the female deodorant set was fully stocked, the male deodorant set was out of about 40 percent of its merchandise.

Swirl vs. Venus
The opposite side of the aisle houses razors and shaving cream. There is ample selection and even room for a novel motion activated display of Swirl vs. Venus, both products from Gillette. A two-foot acrylic box lights up when shoppers walk by, activating a flesh-colored roller rotating beneath both razors, simulating the closer shave a woman gets from the new Swirl.

Across town, the interior of Festival Foods has a very easy-on-the-eyes, pleasant-to-shop harvest gold with burgundy color scheme, but it offered the least amount of general merchandise and nonfoods of all the stores visited. That may have something to do with its location in a strip mall, one store front away from the independent Bloomington Drug.

While there are 14 aisles in Festival Foods, only one, aisle 11, is mostly devoted to nonfoods, and that is only on one side. There are only two four-foot shelf sets of eye care products, while most other stores contain at least eight, and only one four-foot shelf of skin lotions. Popular brands like Jergens Lotion are not stocked.

Inexplicably, the stationery set is in the middle of the cereal aisle, nestled between the Pop-Tarts and hot cereals. The four-foot set contains Scotch tape, Crayola markers, Elmer’s glue, pens, pencils, paper clips, staples, rubber bands, notebooks and other items.

Festival also has a large upscale selection of greeting cards merchandised on innovative wire merchandisers at the front of the store across from the bakery.

It is a much different environment a couple of miles away at the Walmart Supercenter on American Boulevard. Visible from busy I-494, in an industrial/residential neighborhood, the store is one of Walmart’s smaller supercenters. During the late afternoon the large parking lot was filled and the store was crowded with mostly lower income and ethnic customers.

Shoppers enter the store under the “Market & Pharmacy” sign and head straight into produce. The pharmacy department is behind produce, in the center of the store facing the back. It was the only store visited that had a line of customers waiting to see the pharmacist, standing in line between two ropes.

OTC items, including eye care, medications and cough and cold are merchandised on low aisles running out from the pharmacy. Higher aisles run parallel to the pharmacy and contain shampoo, shaving cream, hair coloring, feminine care, etc. Cosmetics are merchandised from fixtures similar to Target’s, although Target’s merchandisers offered a much more upscale and brighter look.

The area was well-staffed with approximately six employees stocking shelves and offered a full assortment of product. Nonetheless, the store was the most cluttered and unattractive of all the stores visited. However, Walmart was also the cheapest of all the stores surveyed, undercutting Target by a few cents on virtually every item.

One major downside was that other nonfood items, such as insecticides and dish washing liquid, are found in far-flung areas of the store, making an “in-and-out” shopping trip time consuming and cumbersome.

Like Walgreens, Walmart has a drive-thru pharmacy lane. In Walmart’s case the drive-thru is to the right of the store, which is unusual given that the actual pharmacy department is in the center of the store.