By Lorrie Baumann

Soon after Barons Market opens its ninth southern California store early next year, it’ll host its first Barons Backroom Beer Pairing event. As happens quarterly at each of the Barons Markets, the store will sell $15 tickets for the event, staff it with employees to provide four small plates and paired with local craft beers for each dish, and 60 to 100 people will show up to eat supper in their grocer’s back room or out on the loading dock.

Rachel Shemirani, Senior Vice President of Barons Market and daughter of Founder Joe Shemirani, who opened the Barons Market in San Diego’s Point Loma neighborhood along with his brothers in 1993, happily anticipates that the event won’t bring in a dime for the store. “This is something we’re paying for,” she said. “It brings customers to the store. It gets a lot of attention for local craft breweries and community organizations. We raise a lot of good money for local charities, and we’ve become wonderful partners for them. We believe it’s money very well spent.”

Barons donates 100 percent of the ticket sales for the events to one of a rotating list of local charities – sometimes Feeding America/Feeding San Diego, sometimes breast cancer research, sometimes local dog rescue organizations. New to this year, each store chose a local elementary school to benefit during the January pairing with Refuge Brewery. “We try to make the charity local to where those stores are, so they’re giving back to their local communities,” Shemirani said. “We know that if our communities thrive, everybody wins.”

Like her father and uncles, Shemirani believes that the events develop customer loyalty that helps the chain compete with online grocers. “Amazon Go doesn’t donate for your kids’ team fundraiser,” she said. “That keeps your customers loyal and appreciative and supportive of your business. People who shop at brick-and-mortar stores shop with their hearts.”
“It’s super easy. That really is the antidote to online grocery shopping,” she continued. “My advice to other independent retailers is not to be scared. Do what you do.”

Barons Market’s focus on customer experience starts in the parking lot, where fresh flowers and produce are displayed in front of the store. “A customer decides if they want to shop in your store in the first five seconds,” Shemirani said. “Our displays there are fresh, full and clean.” Once inside the store, customers see orchids, more fresh produce and fresh baguettes from a local bakery. “They see a smiling employee,” Shemirani said. “It really is about customer experience. We extend customer service to our vendors, our distributors and other partners — it’s about being kind and respecting people.”
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Inside the 15,000 to 20,000 square foot store, customers will find 9,000 to 10,000 SKUs. Demonstrations are scheduled eight hours a day to introduce customers to new products, which are selected every Wednesday by a food panel of store managers, department managers and Joe Shemirani. “For about three hours, we taste, discuss, judge and vote,” Shemirani said.

Each week, the tasting panel will try 80 to 120 product samples and choose five or six of them to carry in the stores. “We discontinue about 10 items to make sure that the selection is intentionally limited,” Shemirani said. “Our customers are busier than ever, and we not only value their wallets — we negotiate the best price for them we can — but we also value their time…. Our customers will shop typically three to five times a week and then go to Costco for paper products. That really is our typical customer.”

The smallish store footprint and limited selection allow many customers to be in and out of the store in about 10 minutes. A few may be there two or three times in the course of a day. “They’re now wanting to shop fresh,” Shemirani said. “They don’t want preservatives. They’re going to buy it and consume it within the hour or within 24 hours.”

Around the store’s perimeter, they’ll find an olive and antipasto bar, fresh salad bar and hot soup bar. Each store makes fresh sandwiches and entrees every morning, and the chain is rolling out hot food into the stores as health permits are secured.
The same tasting panel that decides on pantry products selects the prepared food menu. “The hot soup bar is popular. We could change our name to Barons Market Soups,” Shemirani joked. “Our Mac n’ Cheese, chicken curry and beef short ribs are all doing really well in our new hot food bar. The salad bar where people create their own has been a huge success. The kids love to make their own salads.”

Pricing for everything in the store is on an everyday low price model. “The only time we change our prices is if our costs change up or down,” Shemirani said. “True value is for everything. We have good food from good ingredients at very good prices.”