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GOURMET NEWS APRIL 2019 www.gourmetnews.com RETAILER NEWS 9 NGA Show Continued from PAGE 1 ranks. The multi-day judging event evalu- ated presentations by 13 university student groups and concluded with Saint Joseph's University and Western Michigan Univer- sity facing off in a final round in which Saint Joseph's took top honors. For Warren Brown, Vice President of Op- erations at Commerce Quality Foods, a re- tail grocer with eight stores — six in Georgia and two in South Carolina — the event was an educational opportunity that he hopes will help him attract new cus- tomers. "A lot of our customer base is older. We've got to embrace that younger generation to have a new customer base," he said. "We need to embrace technology in the grocery busi- ness, especially in the independent world, or we're going to be left behind." He noted that many of the 400 vendors in the 57,000 square-foot exhibit hall were offering new technology that can help him do that, and his next step may be finding new meat-wrapping equipment that can help him add more deli offerings into his stores. Brown foresees that prepared foods will be playing a greater role in his stores in the future, and while he's already dipped a toe into that water with a smoker and a hot and cold bar, he's anticipating that his stores will need to go further. "That's kind of the first wave before we go into full deli," he said. Meat was on Cameron Harsh's mind, too. He's the Farm Campaign Manager for World Animal Protection U.S., and he'd come to San Diego to ask independent gro- cers to commit to sourcing their meat from farmers and ranchers who raise and harvest their animals humanely. Consumers are de- manding those welfare certifications, and he found grocers who are eager to make sure that they're meeting their shoppers' e x p e c t a t i o n s . "There's a lot of in- terest among inde- pendent retailers to have their fingers on the pulse of their customers and to recognize that their cus- tomers are asking for high-welfare meat," he said. "They're recognizing that meat is a way to differentiate from the big box stores." Fresh-cut meat is a real point of pride for Joe Jester, from Hamilton, Ohio, who be- lieves that the custom cuts that he offers in his Brookville IGA store offer his shoppers both better texture and better flavor that they can get in the pre-packaged meat they'd buy in a chain store where the meat was cut and wrapped in a central process- ing facility. "We don't have to do anything artificial to it. We cut it and present it," he said. "Custom-cut meat is a real opportu- nity for independents to showcase their meat depart- ments." He recently bought two new stores, and the first thing he did was double the size of their deli departments so the markets can offer their cus- tomers more prepared offerings like sand- wiches, deviled eggs, pasta bowls and hot pizza. "It looks like it's working very suc- cessfully," he said. "People's most valuable commodity right now is time, so anything you can do to save them time is appreci- ated." While he feels that he's got that point pretty well figured out, he came to the NGA Show hoping for some guidance on what he should do next with social media. He's got Facebook accounts, and he'll prob- ably do Twitter next, but he's been letting other grocers iron out the wrinkles on click-and-collect and other strategies for competing with online marketers before he adopts them, and he thinks now might be the time to start figuring out more of that. "If you're not keeping up with technology, you're going to be behind," he said. David Masterson, Director of Informa- tion Technology for Bristol Farms, came to the event to explore how Bristol Farms might strengthen its level of competition in the grocery industry with artificial in- telligence, click-and-collect services and various omnichannel methods. "Consumers are migrating towards digital," he said. "Wal- mart and Ralph's are strengthening that part of their business, and we need to strengthen that as well to make sure we're able to compete in the future." Chris Smith, the Vice President of In- formation Technology for Homeland Ac- quisition Corporation, which is headquartered in Oklahoma City, Okla- homa, and operates stores under the Homeland, United Supermarkets and Cash Savers banners in four states, was also searching the exhibit hall for ven- dors who could help his company com- pete in the technology arena. "The technology side of the NGA Show seems to grow every year," he noted. For him, this show offered a particular advantage because it presented him with an oppor- tunity to catch all of his vendors and prospective vendors in one place and to catch up with his colleagues in inde- pendent grocery retailing. "Some of which we see only once a year," he said. "They're resources where we can bounce things off each other." GN Cheese Cave Continued from PAGE 1 13 square-mile community between San Bernardino and Los Angeles, California, with a population of 36,000 people living in half-million dollar houses under enough trees to make the city a perennial winner of the National Arbor Day Association's Tree City USA award and 21 city- owned parks, of which 2,378 acres are wilderness. "It's a very cute community, we knew we wanted to be in Claremont from the start," Marnie said. The plan to be two sisters running their 1,100 square-foot cheese shop forever and ever lasted a matter of weeks. The commu- nity embraced them and their shop, and Marnie and Lydia needed another em- ployee within the first couple of months after opening their doors. Then they needed a few more. The customers started asking them about accouterments for their cheese plates and then for the tinned fish, the pasta, the olive oil that they needed to round out their meal plans. "People really came to us when they needed or wanted something," Marnie said. "We've become the go-to purveyors for people who are in- terested in food." As their business grew, the sisters roped in Lydia's boyfriend, Chef Reed Herrick, who joined Cheese Cave in 2012, and Marnie's husband, Milan Dragojlovich, who came into the picture in 2013 as they were planning an expansion into a second shop, DTLA Cheese + Kitchen, in Los An- geles' Grand Central Market. Today, Herrick and Lydia Clarke manage DTLA Cheese + Kitchen. He runs the tiny kitchen turning out sandwich orders, while Lydia manages the retail business. Drago- jlovich gave up his career in information technology and proj- ect management to become a Cheese- monger and admin- istrator at Cheese Cave. "We really rope everybody in. Our mom picks up bread and makes sandwiches every day," Marnie said. "The whole family makes baskets for Christmas. We're very intertwined." The DTLA store inside Grand Central Market, a food hall that brings together the cultures and cuisines of southern Califor- nia under the roof of the longest continuously run- ning public mar- ket in Los Angeles, is about 420 square feet with a tall cheese case, a small retail shelf with crack- ers and a few spe- cial chocolates, a countertop with five seats and a pass- through window to the minuscule kitchen where Herrick makes grilled cheese sand- wiches and salads to order. "Reed really loves seasonal produce," Marnie said. "He also loves to pickle things, so there's always some sort of fun project that's hap- pening on the menu." At Cheese Cave in Claremont, there's also a class- room space where the community comes in to learn about cheese or just to drop in to taste some of the Cheese Cave's selection of organic and bio- dynamic wines along with some cheeses that they might not ordinarily be adventur- ous enough to try. On the first Saturday of each month, Cheese Cave hosts an after- noon in which they pour natural wine and offer cheese plates for anyone who wants to drop in. "We have a really quirky wine lineup so it's a great way for people to try new wines without having to take a leap of faith on whether they'll like it," Marnie said. "People find new things that they didn't know they'd love." The cheese case with its 120 or so cheeses cut to order is the star of the show with its bal- anced mix of im- ported and domestic cheeses and a par- ticular emphasis on local products. "We try to support them [California's artisan cheesemakers] as much as possible and have a lot of California cheeses," Marnie said. "We try to work with smaller produc- ers and have a different selection that we really love.... Throughout the week, we keep getting things in. All of our awe- some staff of c h e e s e m o n g e r s love to tell the sto- ries of the cheeses and have that in- teraction with the customers, which they really love too." She gets asked all the time about her fa- vorite cheese, and like most devoted cheesemongers, she's hard-pressed to an- swer it. She's very fond of Monte Enebro, a soft goat cheese from Avila, Spain, that's made by a father-daughter team, she said. That's officially a blue cheese, but it's inoc- ulated on its exterior for an insistent flavor near the rind that has overtones of black walnut and a salty, lactic core. "But right now, the Kenne [from Tomales Farmstead Creamery] is at its perfect ripeness," she said with a sigh. Comte is always a favorite, and she loves it so much that she fre- quently has more than one in the case. Ja- cobs & Brichford's Ameribella is so interesting. And then, there's Grafton Vil- lage Cheese Bear Hill.... "All of our cheese- mongers feel the same way," she said. "We really have an incredible team at both shops. When we're working together, we're always talking about what we're going to take home. We feel passionate about the condition of all of the cheeses in our case. It's easy to sell because we're so excited about so many of them." GN PHOTOS CREDIT JANE BRUCE PHOTOS CREDIT JANE BRUCE PHOTOS CREDIT JANE BRUCE

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