Old Kroger Outlives Signage, Thrives
Store facia updates may not be worth what they cost.
I stopped recently at a Kroger’s in the ‘fancy’ end of Lynchburg VA. The street-side sign is probably 1960’s era — hardly enticing to a new-to-Kroger’s shopper. But the store entrance itself is right up to date: wide automatic doors, large cart lobby… then you step inside, and you’re in a totally modern Kroger’s somewhere else.
The older Kroger logo on the same Boonsboro Rd. store
Well, maybe not totally modern: The produce section offers the usual blow-you-away variety and presentation; the wine section right behind it is vast — thankfully so in an area where wine-buying options are slim, at best.
Efforts have been made to update elsewhere, but let’s face it, they’re working with an older model, small footprint store. Still, this store stands head and shoulders above its nearest (physical) competitor, a Food Lion, half a mile along the same road. Next nearest is a Fresh Market, aka Whole Foods Jr. (The former is owner by the latter.)
This Kroger has an above-average range of products, in its market area, and does an outstanding job of presenting its range where aisles are, in some instances, nearly as narrow as those in big-city stores — but the trade-off, a reduced facia-count for many items, is a wide range of offerings, including a reasoned range of well-beyond-food items.
Space limitations across the back wall mean the deli meats are in a relatively confined back strip, followed by an eight-foot-wide seafood/best meat case. The choice, in the limited space, is highly impressive, and the presentative is top-of-the-line Kroger’s.
$50 for Two Steaks
(That local shoppers don’t balk at higher-than-market-average prices for meat was obvious when the man preceding me at that seafood/best meats counter casually ordered a pair of steaks that set him back close to $50 — a sizable single-meal meat expenditure in this part of Virginia!)
Immediately after entering the store, I scanned the meat/seafood case to ensure they had what I wanted. The patrolling ‘butcher’ (or was he a seafood specialist?) gave me a ‘can I help you look,’ and I said I’d be back in a few for a pair of lobster tails. It was a good ten minutes before I did return, and when he finished serving the steak buyer, he looked at me and said, “Two lobster tails, right?”
I agreed, pleased he’d remembered me, and I added half a pound of Texas Gulf shrimp to my order
For someone who’s reported on supermarket matters for the better part of the last 40 years, I’m still not always a good shopper: I failed to notice I was charged $17.98 for the lobster tails when a case sign showed them to be two for $12.00 — an excellent price. I caught the error when I got home, phoned the store, and was assured that, even if it was a while before I got back there, my receipt would earn me a refund. Duly noted, I’m saving both the receipt and the printed label from the butcher’s package.
When I returned for my refund, I was also given a $5 Kroger gift card. Nice touch!
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I visited this store in mid afternoon, on a Wednesday. If I were the manager, I’d say the store was “comfortably busy” for that time of day and week. (I encountered, at the end and back sections I visited, a total of some 20 customers. They clearly weren’t overrunning the place, but they were, with quickly filling carts, piling profits into Kroger’s coffers.)
Traffic was slow at competing Food Lion
Meanwhile, traffic at the Food Lion down the road, which I visited for comparison purposes, was — to put it mildly — slow… creepily slow.
Both stores are in mini-shopping centers, with an abundance and a variety of stores. Plenty of shopper draws. A reasonable amount of parking. Similar street access (via two access/exit points). They effectively serve the same neighborhood, near a hospital in the area of a middling-size city that attracts lots of offices of sizable assortments of medical specialists.
There are some rental housing units in this neighborhood, but the majority of residents own.
Because of the hospital, the area — this road, in particular — tends to see a lot of non-local potential shoppers. Some them may be put off by the decades-old Kroger sign. But like most supermarkets, this one relies on locals far more than passers-by. And a single visit will make a ‘regular’ of the occasion area visitor.
More than some, Kroger is a stick-with-your-signage company, keeping its principal exterior logo for decades. Many decades, in this instance: As noted, the current street-side sign advertising this store probably dates from earlier than the 1970s.
Still: The store, on Kroger’s overall reputation and the quality of the store’s offerings, sells itself.
Memories of an old ‘cash cow’ store
It reminds me, in a way, of an A&P store in New Orleans. Long gone now, that store was on a corner in the French Quarter. Prime real estate, probably bought by A&P when A&P was in its prime — many decades earlier. When the property sold for a fraction of what the company eventually got for it.
While offering up several alternative formats over the years, A&P maintained its traditional logo on eponymous branded stores as long as the chain survived — into the mid-1970s. The sign on this particular New Orleans store was old, and small, and almost unnecessary: For many years, this was the nearest thing to a supermarket within walking distance of most French Market-area residents and hotel stayers.
And it was a great lure for tourists: It stocked a lot of things visitors want, including small packets of this or that health & beauty aid-type product, snack foods, and liquor. The latter is a big seller in stores thereabouts.
That A&P was, for many years, what’s known in the trade as a ‘cash cow’: The store was paid for, many years (and many times) over; Profit margins were high; overheads were relatively low — until the real need for upgrades outweighed the advantages of keeping it open.
But all the while, the old-fashioned, physically old logo out front did its job: It drew shoppers in in droves! The old wood floors and wood cases didn’t hurt, but it was the convenience and the product range that drew them in.
Just as is the case with the Lynchburg store with the old street-side signage. The Kroger name, like the A&P name in New Orleans, drew the shoppers in.
