By Joel Albrizio
As Retailers How Do We Gain & Hold Sales...During & After This Stop & Shop Strike?
While I am a business owner I will not pretend to have the answers for what is really taking place with the Stop & Shop strike. As a business owner in retail food we understand the incredible headwinds of running a business today. However as a vendor we understand how difficult it is to do business when we face reductions in the marketing budgets of our customers.
It is likely we will never understand the real nuts and bolts of the how & why this strike took place. It seems fair to say the differences between the parties were significant enough to have both sides say enough and walk away from the table.
What Could We Do As Retailers To Capture & Keep These New Found Retail Sales?
Some of our supermarket retailers are bag stuffing coupons or bonus buy type specials that can be redeemed anywhere from four to eight weeks out. This effect of releasing specials now that can be redeemed over a protracted time period are often called bounce back coupons.
Many supermarket marketing executives are running additional perishable "3" day sales via eMail. These eMails are responsive to the strike as it continues each day. The complication today is the supermarkets are now so busy it is difficult to be both reactive and proactive at the same time.
There Is Some Great Talent On Strike This Week!
From local and national politics these striking employees seem to have not only local but national political support. Is this an opportunity to interview employees that otherwise might not be looking to make an employment move?
How about supporting the striking employees with coffee or drinks every so many hours. Does it make sense to have pizza or some food delivered even if only once per day? While controversial, goodwill is goodwill. Local employees and even more important local shoppers just might find a local retailer suddenly means something they now miss.
In retail "Local" has lots of strength. Most feel local is often stronger than the term organic. Your business is local. Stop & Shop is not. We need to do everything every day to annunciate what shop local really means. Today is that day.
The answers to these questions will be different for each retailer. The key is this Stop & Shop strike is a long term opportunity for every retailer who sells food. Lets not miss this long term opportunity while we reap short term sales.
Many have asked why I choose to write about what I see in the supermarket industry today and my ideas. At Bad-Adz Digital, PreparedFoodPhotos.com & Adlife we believe great ideas and the resulting branding will give new life and direction to any company. So for that reason we chose to open the discussion.
Yes, I understand I probably misspelled something or butchered the English language in a few places, the goal however was to open your minds to new ideas.
Joel Albrizio Bad-Adz Digital, Bad-AdzVideos.com PreparedFoodPhotos.com & Adlife