Photo: Raley’s
Will guiding ‘personal wellness journeys’ drive loyalty for Raley’s?
Raley’s is introducing its Something Extra Health service, described as “a new feature of the company’s loyalty program designed to help interested customers on their personal wellness journeys.”
The program’s web page promises:
- Store tours to learn how to navigate our aisles to fit your lifestyle
- Health consultations & services
- Recipe demonstrations & sampling
- Nutrition classes
The program is guided by dietician Yvette Waters, the Sacramento-based grocers’ first in-store nutrition strategist and brand influencer, hired in 2018, and an in-store nutrition advisor.
Raley’s launches the initiative on top of its Something Extra loyalty program that allows members to earn points on purchases for “Something Extra Dollars” every three months.
The Something Extra Health program debuted in late July at the new Raley’s O-N-E Market concept that opened in Truckee, CA.
The new concept also features:
Curated assortments: Building on food upgrade efforts over the past five years at its core stores, Raley’s O-N-E Market’s mix focuses on products that are fresh, nutritious, organic when possible, minimally processed and sustainably sourced. Items exclude ingredients from Raley’s banned ingredient list, such as high fructose corn syrup, artificial preservatives, artificial flavors, artificial sweeteners and hydrogenated fats and oils.
Community hub: Resembling a ski lodge for health-minded individuals, the store includes a meeting place, two patios and fireplaces on each floor and plenty of outdoor seating.
The increased emphasis on education and transparency follows the launches of Better-For-You check stands and Raley’s Shelf Guide at core stores.
“It has become increasingly clear that our customers want to know where their food comes from, what’s in it and how it may impact their overall health and wellness,” said Keith Knopf, Raley’s president and CEO, in a statement. “We are consistently listening and learning, and that’s led us to the next step in our company’s transformation: Raley’s O-N-E Market.”
Discussion Questions
DISCUSSION QUESTIONS: What do you think of Raley’s Something Extra Health initiative and the potential for bringing more store tours and personalized nutrition counseling to grocer’s selling floors? How effective do you expect the initiative to be in building customer loyalty for the grocery chain?
Poll
BrainTrust
Joel Goldstein
President, Mr. Checkout Distributors
Tony Orlando
Owner, Tony O's Supermarket and Catering
In this new world where customer experience is paramount this is a perfect example of a company stepping out of the box and doing it right. It will be hard to measure the ROI since it will have to be weighed with customer experience and word of mouth value as well.
As I’ve written about and commented on many times before, curated assortments MUST be a top priority across the retail sector. Hats off to Raley’s for making this a focus.
Their focus on community, wellness, and personalized journeys is an outstanding way to provide unique services to their customers and demonstrate a commitment to their shoppers’ well being.
Wellness is a huge area of focus for consumers and the pandemic seems only to have accelerated the growth. The introduction of more “good for you” products taps into trends and should, by itself, help generate growth. However combining this with an array of wellness services – especially educational and community-related ones which are also growth areas in their own right – is very smart and will help to differentiate and generate customer loyalty.
Raley’s has been doing parts of this for a long while now in many of its stores and put a stake in the ground on how they were going to differentiate themselves from the rest of the market. This is definitely a plus for them – I hope they will allow the labor dollars to do this because there are long term benefits to this — building knowledge and trust from their customers.
Personalization, localization, and providing an outstanding experience will enable Raley’s and other independently owned supermarkets to compete with the big-box grocers. Health and wellness have been an emerging trend for the past few years and, with the great acceleration of COVID-19, it is a top priority for stores such as Raley’s to step up and meet the growing demands.
By focusing their strategies solely on the customer experience and meeting the needs of the local communities they serve, Raley’s and our nation’s independent grocers will not only be relevant, but profitable in our uncertain times.
This is an excellent approach to being more involved in the customer journey — being able to listen to the customer and understand exactly what they want, and then being able to guide them toward meeting their goals. Actions like this are being taken in different areas of retail and I fail to see any downside to this. Expect others to follow and this to be a point of differentiation for the brands who embrace this approach until it becomes more of a standard.
Complementary store tours, health consultations and services, nutrition classes — I love everything about Raley’s new store concept. What I don’t love is Yvette Waters title: Nutrition Strategist & Brand Influencer.
I look at much of the world through the eyes of the consumer because it’s part of my job. Ms. Waters has an impressive resume as a registered dietitian; adding “Brand Influencer” seems like an oxymoron. Is she going to share how to follow a healthy nutrition plan and then try to influence shoppers to purchase certain products because those vendors are paying for that privilege?
I get that influencers are a big deal right now, especially with younger generations. Maybe the Boomer in me is suspect, but Boomers will be a big part of this concept store’s success. And I think Ms. Waters background has earned her a more professional title.
The personal touch regarding healthy choices is a perfect example of how you can separate yourself from the big box stores. There are a number of ways to do this, such as offering real expertise on high-end meats, homemade deli dishes, unique gluten free/sugar free foods made from scratch, and vintage wine deals that are always available in each state. Presented properly, with a sampling program that knows how to sell — presto, you have a winning formula for building sales. I’m still in business because of how I talk to our customers and build relationships one at a time, which is how you get repeat sales week after week. If you’re going to commit to this, do it with excellent knowledgeable employees who can create the positive experience for your customers.
Customer engagement is increasingly difficult. Our guests have lots of options and are exposed to many highly targeted messages from competitors interested in capturing their attention. Raley’s is right on point combining a personal, localized assortment of product and services with in-store experiences and targeted information. They’re creating experiences that customers can’t find elsewhere. I love that this strategy plays to Raley’s strength in the market by building on the enormous credibility they already have as a food and wellness destination.
This is a great example of being a customer-centric organization! Raley’s has truly designed their strategy keeping the well-being of their customer as the focal point. By incorporating deep personalization efforts they will build a strong relationship with each and every customer.
The “curated assortment” in the Truckee new One store is based on a “banned ingredients list” and kicks out some, but by no means all major brand products. It is merchandised more like a Whole Foods, but it is just weird what is there and what isn’t.
The store feels like it is a halfway Whole Foods. Cherrios are there, most branded cereals are not (sugar content too high). Hunt’s Tomato Sauce is there, Del Monte is not (but other Del Monte items like canned vegetables are). So, there are still a lot of conventional brands there (if they meet the ingredient standards of the store).
Private label is a huge mess present in some categories and missing from others due to the banned ingredient situation (Raleys ought to clean up their private label line if they are truly committed to this type of concept and the “banned ingredients” and get rid of the “banned” ingredients from any item that has their name on it).
Truckee is a major tourist area (ski area in the winter, beach and outdoor area in the summer). I think people will do without Coke and Lay’s chips which this new One format does not sell. The drug aisle in this new One store does not have standard OTC medicines (like Advil or NyQuill). These are major categories in Truckee during the winter and there is no drug store in this shopping center they are in. Huge miscalculation of customer needs.
With that said the new One store looks busy when I have been there (always on weekends and there is very heavy tourist traffic) so it appears to be working out well. The Safeway in Truckee which was one of their best performing stores in the NorCal region has noticeably fewer customers than before and has been running $10 off $50 coupons.
Based on what I have seen of this chain, I expect they will spend the labor necessary at this time to properly execute this program. However, Raley’s has gone through so many programs in the past, many of which have been very good, simply because when the programs do not work quickly (like, after a year) they just scrap the program. This may take longer — and they may need to be patient for this to generate results (like, 5 years).
I wish them well, but it’s a little confusing from the press release whether these initiatives are for just for the “O-N-E Market” concept or for the whole chain. Or perhaps I should say “chains”: Raley’s operates under an usually large number of nameplates — at least for its size — spread about over a similarly large geographic area. Some of the areas (Sacramento, the Bay Area) are large, economically advanced and very competitive, while many of the smaller areas are none of these things. I imagine developing a coherent marketing strategy is always a challenge, and I suspect it will be for this program too.