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Retailer News BRIEFS GOURMET NEWS JULY 2019 www.gourmetnews.com RETAILER NEWS 1 2 Di Bruno Bros. Raises Funds for Cheese Education On Thursday, June 20, Di Bruno Bros. hosted its annual Legends of the Food World event featuring 14 top cheesemakers and producers from all across the world in celebration of the retailer's 80th anniversary as part of the fabric of Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, and as a benefit for the Daphne Zepos Endowment, a 501(c)(3) non-profit. Daphne Zepos was a pioneer in the cheese industry. A native of Greece who lived in San Francisco, California, after emigrating, she dedicated her life to the study of European cheeses. The Daphne Zepos Teaching Award (DZTA) aims to grow a squad of cheese professionals who teach about the history, culture and techniques in making, aging and selling cheese. Each year, a new winner is chosen and sets forth to learn about cheese from experts all over the world. The scholarship funds travel and living expenses during this experience. The winner then returns to share their learnings with the cheese community – at the annual American Cheese Society Conference and beyond. All of the funds raised at the event were dedicated to the Daphne Zepos Teaching Award endowment fund. This annual event has grown from a small cheese tasting with a few beloved makers to a full-scale tasting menu incorporating some of the world's most incredible products. This year, Di Bruno Bros. planned the event to host more than 200 attendees. Natural Grocers Kicks off 3-Month Photo Contest Natural Grocers launched the IamNpowered social media photo contest in June to encourage all Natural Grocers customers, {N}power members and communities it serves to share photos representing what "{N}powers" them to live a healthy lifestyle. The contest, which runs through August 31, gives participants the opportunity to engage with the Natural Grocers community and win free groceries and other prizes. Penske Logistics Opens Distribution Center to Serve Kroger Penske Logistics celebrated the grand opening of its new 606,000-square-foot build-to-suit standard freezer/cooler distribution center in Romulus, Michigan, June 4, 2019. Penske's new facility is responsible for bringing more than 400 new jobs to the region and was opened to serve the food distribution needs of its customer, The Kroger Co. of Michigan. Construction on the $98.5 million facility began in the fall of 2017 and concluded in the fall of 2018. Local on-site Penske Logistics management and workers were then gradually hired as food and beverage products were strategically moved into the facility. A grant from the Michigan Strategic Fund as well as tax incentive abatements requested through the Detroit aerotropolis from the city of Romulus and Wayne County played integral roles in the job creation and facility site selection. Native Sun Purveys Holistic Wellness Gottlieb said. "Smoothies create interest in the department. It makes nice smells. It helps the experience that the consumers are having when they're shopping organic." Further into the store, consumers will find a meat department in which the only beef is grass-fed, although Gottlieb is ex- ploring the availability of non-GMO grain- finished options. The store also carries wild-caught fish as well as farmed fish cer- tified by the Clean Fish Alliance. "It took us a couple of years to find a partner to guarantee that the fish are not poisoning the waters or the people raising them," Gottlieb said. "It's important to raise the standard." Two of the three locations are 10,000 square feet, while the Bay Meadows store – which opened in 2006 – is 18,000 square feet. Each of the stores has a slightly differ- ent customer demographic, with the newest store, opened in the fall of 2015 only three blocks from the beach, attracting mostly younger families and the Bay Mead- ows store attracting the local business com- munity. The original location has the greatest differentiation in its customers, with more Baby Boomers and seniors in its neighborhood, Gottlieb said. "We try to give people authentic natural foods – not marketing 'natural food,' – the way they imagine it should be when they go into a store that makes these promises," Gottlieb said. In addition to its grocery business, Na- tive Sun also features a restaurant offering scratch-made sandwiches, soups and salads inside each of its stores. "We have gone past what our community has available," Gottlieb said. "It's the only place in the community where you can order an organic meal that's' delivered." Home delivery is available, and Gottlieb is exploring the po- tential for wholesale sandwich sales to local coffee shops. While the in-store restaurant and Native Sun's emphasis on organic helps to differ- entiate the business from other local gro- cery stores, other grocers are closing the gap between their offerings and Native Sun's, which requires Gottlieb to be nimble to compete. "Our major competitor is a very long list," he said. "We're in the mid- dle of the grocery wars down here." He has responded by steering the busi- ness in the direction of providing wellness services to the community. With experts on nutrition, natural first aid and holistic well- ness on staff, Native Sun offers educational programs on these subjects and partners with local businesses to encourage their employees to participate. "We've taken pas- sionate people who are getting degrees in the same area where our passions are and taking those people out to corporations to do programs," Gottlieb said. "We're not going in there and selling our products; we're going in there and talking about what stress reduction exercises can do." Native Sun tracks employee participation in these programs for each company and provides a report on that to the company, which helps the companies earn rate reduc- tions for their health care insurers. Employ- ees who participate get Native Sun discounts, coupons and samples from sponsoring manufacturers, which helps bring them into the stores, where Native Sun tracks how they're utilizing their well- ness education as they make their pur- chases. "The only thing we expect back is exposure and support from these corpora- tions," Gottlieb said. "The companies see the need for wellness programs." GN BY LORRIE BAUMANN Native Sun Natural Foods Market, with three locations in Jacksonville, Florida, is striving to be more than a grocer. Chief Ex- ecutive Officer Aaron Gottlieb is respond- ing to heavy competition among local brick-and-mortar grocery retailers as well as looming competition from e-commerce by transforming Native Sun into a wellness center that works with other businesses to lower their health insurance costs and offer their employees extra benefits. "Today, brick and mortar – and retail in general – have changed faster than most retailers can adapt to," Gottlieb said. "While that can be nerve-racking, it creates white space in new areas of wellness to go into." Gottlieb, a graduate of Emory University with a degree in anthropology, was born and raised in Jacksonville, Florida, and opened his first Native Sun store there in the city's Mandarin neighborhood in 1997. He was already a convert to the idea that nutrition and wellness are intimately re- lated, and he opened his store as Jack- sonville's original natural and organic grocer. "Before that, there wasn't organic milk or organic produce," he said. "We be- lieved you could have an organic market." Native Sun now carries no genetically modified products, and products are or- ganic whenever the organic option is avail- able at a non-prohibitive cost. "Otherwise, clean and natural," Gottlieb said. Consumers see the organic produce de- partment as soon as they walk into the store. The next thing they're likely to notice is the signs that confirm the store's local outreach, both for its supply chain and for its relationships with its shopper commu- nity. "In addition to that, we have the or- ganic juice bar in the front of the store," Garden Gourmet Continued from PAGE 1 was really nothing available – there was nothing available for a new graduate. It was either start your own business or sell insurance door to door. I didn't want to do that.... I followed in the family footsteps and started my own store." During his childhood years, Farhan's family had owned a grocery store about a mile and a half from where he operates today. Since he was familiar with the area, that's where he started looking for a location to open his own store. "I found a space that wasn't for rent, but when I asked the landlord, they were more than willing to rent it to me," he said. "It turned out to be a good location because of its proximity to the busy inter- section and the busy train station. I have customers who stop in twice a day." The store's Wicker Park neighborhood offers a tra- ditional downtown area with its row of bars and cafes along Division Street, and it's revitalizing with new apartment buildings that are attracting residents into the area along with tourism traffic from Airbnb rentals. "We all add to the ap- peal of the neighborhood. It's kind of what brings people to the neighborhood," Farhan said. "It has ambiance. It draws peo- ple who want to experience the neighborhood." Farhan operates the store with four em- ployees who have a voice in the products that he stocks. "People send us samples all the time. We buy what we like," he said. "Instead of a sales- man coming through the door, we tend to buy what we like, and it's been working out for us." That focus on buying the products that interest the store's staff trans- lates into the staff's ability to provide cus- tomer service and to influence shoppers' purchasing decisions, Farhan said. "We can vouch for the products. You've got to know what you're selling," he said. "One of the main things I live by is just product knowl- edge. You've got to know what you're sell- ing, and it just drives sales." GN

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