COVER STORY | RETAILER OF THE YEAR
Wakefern’s extensive prepared food program features cuisines from around the world, meeting growing consumer demand for convenient, restaurant-quality meals and positioning stores as culinary destinations.
“We don’t talk about serving geographies or states. We talk about neighborhoods because that’s how you make sure that your business works cohesively and with the singular focus of success around the customer.” Ron Margulis, owner of RAM Communi- cations and whose father and grandfather were both ShopRite owners in the Wake- fern co-op, has spent a lot of time in the stores and also took part in a Wakefern ownership training program. He said Wakefern’s individual member-owners have always had a powerful voice at the corporate level, helping drive buying deci- sions and merchandising and marketing strategies. “My opinion is that the key to their success is that their members have been actively involved in the wholesale opera- tion from day one,” he said. In addition, Wakefern and its members have always acted with urgency to attract and retain market share, Margulis said. Operators behave as if their sales are under constant threat, whether it’s from other traditional retailers, ecommerce players, Walmart or more recently the hard dis- counters Aldi and Lidl. Casey agreed and said Wakefern and its members, despite their No. 1 market share in New Jersey, where more than half of their stores are located, are relentless in their aggressive pursuit of driving more and more sales volume.
“If they open a store and they’re not doing the volume they think they should be doing, they’ll tweak it, they’ll bend it, they’ll turn it, they’ll fix it until they are doing the volume they believe they should be doing,” he said. Growing with ecommerce, prepared foods Caudill said Wakefern sees ecommerce and prepared foods as two key areas that have the potential to drive more sales volume. “Ecommerce continues to be one of Wakefern’s biggest growth drivers, and we’re investing across multiple channels to meet customers wherever and however they want to shop,” a spokesperson for Wakefern told Supermarket News . ShopRite continues to expand its store-fulfilled pickup and delivery service, where prices match those offered in-store, and Wakefern is also seeing strong growth through third-party platforms such as Instacart and DoorDash, the spokesper- son said. The company is also focusing on enhancing the shopping experience through personalized digital offers. “It’s about understanding what our cus- tomers like to buy and saying, ‘thank you’ with discounts on the products that matter most to them,” said the spokesperson. Prepared foods have been an area of par- ticular focus as consumers have gravitated to supermarkets as a money-saving alterna- tive to dining out at restaurants. That plays
right into Wakefern’s hands as a low-price leader. “We see continued demand for fresh prepared foods and grab-and-go items and ingredients that make meal-time easier and offer an affordable, value-driven alterna- tive to dining out,” the spokesperson said. “What really sets us apart is local differen- tiation and the ability for our members to offer unique specialties, signature prepared foods and family recipes in their respective stores.” At a recently remodeled ShopRite in Livingston, N.J., for example, Village Super Markets expanded its prepared foods offer- ings with a wide variety of meal solutions, including hot sandwiches, rotisserie and fried chicken, ribs and an assortment of grab-and-go sides and snacks. The depart- ment also includes an international hot food bar, in addition to salad, soup and Mediter- ranean bars and freshly prepared sushi bar. True to the company’s commitment to meeting the needs of the local cus- tomer base, the store also includes a certified kosher bakery, which followed the expanded kosher offerings that rolled out across several departments in the store last year. “The foodservice in Wakefern’s newest stores is great, and they have world-class kitchens,” said Casey. “They have really upped their game in that area in the last decade.” In addition to fully prepared foods,
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