Barons Market Thrives in Southern California
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.”
Stop and Smell the Rosé at Augusta Food and Wine
By Greg Gonzales
Everyone likes to have “a guy,” whether it’s for car repair or some other service. In Chicago’s Lincoln Square neighborhood, Augusta Food and Wine is a go-to place for wines. The shop is a laid-back kind of place, dog-friendly, where Owner Shane Martin might be found playing guitar next to his own pup, Bradley. The store, named for the first designated American Viticultural Area, has earned a reputation as a local destination for small-batch European wines and providing specialty foods to match. From a limited inventory of 100 to 125 wines, customers will find small-batch, esoteric wines and a constantly changing list.
Patrons seem to enjoy it, too, as Martin’s wine club continues to grow, as does the traffic for weekly tastings. Club members get a discount, and a monthly email that details that month’s wine selection ― the wine itself, the history of the region, the story of the family of farmers and recipes to help members properly pair their wines with food. “Most of our wines are pretty small production,” said Martin, adding that most of the bottles are from Europe. “I’ve got a small collection of some Santa Barbara wines, Oregon, a few Napa cabs. You gotta keep those up top because there’s always that guy who only drinks Napa cabs.
Martin says his clientele tend to be adventurous and willing to try eastern European wines from places like Serbia, Hungary, Croatia and Slovenia. That, he said, might be due in part to how European wines go better with food. “European wines tend to be a little less punchy,” he said. “They’re a little more versatile when it comes to food. When I started bringing in wines, I brought in what I liked, and it worked. Then I started experimenting, putting some New World stuff on the shelf, and it didn’t move as much.”
Whatever inspires their interest in eastern Europe, Augusta’s clients include Millennials, from the mid-twenties and single, to the Gen-Xers their early forties and married with teenage kids ― new money types, said Martin, who like to spend a bit more to try something new and exciting. “They’re not really stuck in a box with what they drink. That’s one of the great things about this generation ― Millennials are my favorite to sell wine to because they are open to anything,” he said. “I feel like there’s an older generation where there wasn’t as much exposure to wine, and they only drink a certain style from a certain place, sometimes even one producer, and it’s very restrictive. So I love the younger audience right now.”
The shop’s location helps draw them in too, as it is literally across the street from the Brown Line stop in Lincoln Square, a route that comes straight from downtown Chicago. “People coming from downtown coming home from work, they can get off the train, come right across the street and come to grab a bottle of wine, maybe a cheese, and walk right home. That’s definitely a huge boon for our business,” said Martin.
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The strip of businesses Augusta operates in is strong on the shop small, shop local movement. And Martin lives close to the Lincoln Square Ravenswood Chamber of Commerce, which puts on a wine stroll every spring and fall, in which the businesses of Lincoln Square are temporarily transformed into wine tasting destinations; the locals purchase tickets, get a route map, and wander around to taste all kinds of different wines. Martin said these types of festivals are common in the area, giving the neighborhood a cohesive, family feel. “It’s one of those neighborhoods where, you could stay in Lincoln Square and never have to go anywhere else.”
In addition to wine, Augusta’s offerings include small-batch foods from smaller distributors ― cheese, olives, anchovies, pates, terrines, salamis, prosciutto, crackers, baguettes, condiments, salts, beers, ice cream, local pies, spirits, specialty bitters, brandy cherries, obscure Bloody Mary mixes. If it’s quirky, new and pairs well with a wine, customers can probably find it at the store.
The shop also puts together cheeseboards and charcuterie boards, and also gift baskets ― and those gift baskets are huge for the holiday season, when some corporate clients will place orders by the hundred.
Martin said local events, gift baskets and the wine club are extremely important to the business’ revenue stream. “The gift baskets are huge, the wine club is guaranteed cash flow that I know is going to happen every month ― it’s always good to have that certainty, where you know money’s going to come in every month,” he said, adding that all the shops are doing their best to fight the demise of the neighborhood small businesses. “That’s always a challenge because when you have a neighborhood like this, the thing that made it great starts to get driven out. We’re small business, we’re week to week. It’s not easy to run a small business, especially in Chicago. It’s very expensive, so you really have to be on top of things. There are little businesses that go under all the time, and I definitely have a different reaction to that now than I did before I owned my own business. It’s heartbreaking ― now I know how much work goes into it, how hard it is, how much passion you have to have to even attempt to keep it afloat.”
“It’s picked up a lot lately. I’ve noticed a lot of new faces, and the wine club is growing a lot,” he continued. “Over the last few months, I think a lot more people have become aware of us. It’s going to be a good year.”
To Everything Food, There’s a New Seasons
By Lorrie Baumann
New Seasons Market sees itself not just as a grocery retailer but as a supporter of the regional food economy. New Seasons, founded in 1999, has 21 stores under its banner, with 18 in the Portland, Oregon, metropolitan area, two in Seattle, Washington, and one in San Jose, California. The company also operates four New Leaf Community Market stores operating out of Santa Cruz, California. The stores employ more than 4,000 people. All of those who work 24 hours a week qualify for medical leave, health benefits, paid time off for Thanksgiving and Christmas, profit-sharing and other benefits.
“We focus a lot on fresh, quality and local. All the merchandising and marketing we do is around those principles,” said Chris Tjersland, New Seasons’ Director of Brand Strategy and Development. “You’ll know when you walk into the store that we really highlight produce. We do fresh, local sourcing of meat. At New Seasons you come and shop with the idea that it’s an event. Solution centers sample products every day, and you can taste what’s fresh in the produce department. We have a lot of shoppers who come in on a daily basis because it’s part of their routine.”
As a certified B Corporation, New Seasons commits 10 percent of after-tax profits to the communities it serves, and as part of that, the company supports a variety of programs to help local food producers succeed in the specialty food industry. Those efforts include “Getting Your Recipe to Market,” a partnership with Portland Community College and Oregon State University’s Food Innovation Center. It’s a 14-week program in which food producers can take their idea from concept to finished product that they can present to buyers. New Seasons also participates in Ventures, a Seattle, Washington, non-profit organization that supports women-owned businesses, especially food entrepreneurs, partly by providing basic business classes, and Portland Mercado, a business foundations boot camp, and in Adelante Mujeres, a non-profit focused on education and training for low-income Latina women who want to start their own business or launch their own product.
At the core of its support for the regional food economy is its robust Partner Brand program, a private label program that specializes in sourcing products made within 500 miles of Portland. “We try to target and support minority- and women-owned businesses and target companies with fewer than 50 employees,” said Tjersland, who was hired by New Seasons seven years ago to create the private label program.
The New Seasons private label program is built around supporting the local food economy rather than creating a price-driven line of products, Tjersland said. “Creating a traditional program wasn’t going to fit with what we do as a company,” he said. “Instead of creating a value-driven program, we source local whenever possible, we’re very transparent from seed to shelf, and we use simple, clean ingredients.”
The New Seasons Partner Brand product line now includes 300 products that come from 43 suppliers. About 80 percent of the products are sourced locally, and in terms of dollars, about 25 to 30 percent of the product is made by small companies. The line has seen double-digit growth year over year for the past six years.
The New Seasons products are labeled with a bright-orange call-out on the front of the package that tells shoppers who made the product they’re buying and where they’re located. The lineup includes fresh and dried pasta, milk, butter and eggs and tortilla chips, among others. The popcorn uses local sea salt from Jacobsen Salt Company, hand harvested from the company’s salt works in Netarts Bay, Oregon, and the blue cheese in the Butternut & Blue Cheese Ravioli comes from Rogue Creamery in Central Point, Oregon. New Seasons Raspberry Fruit Spread was created by Kelly’s Jelly in Portland, Oregon and was made with fruit from Bauman’s Farms in Gervais, Oregon. “It makes it a little bit more unique for our customers; it’s a brand concept that they wouldn’t find at other retail stores,” Tjersland said.
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Some of those products were pitched by their existing producers who had a recipe they wanted to try out as a new-product launch; some of them come from producers who were willing to make a product based on an inspiration that came to Tjersland while he was visiting a trade show; and some of them came from entrepreneurs who were just getting started in the business. “We go with the idea that we’re looking for innovation, products that we can source from a local producer, and we look at things they can do with their own local twist,” Tjersland said.
One example is a pair of Korean sauces – a gochujang and a garlic-sesame sauce created by a family who produces a local kimchi. They had family recipes for the sauces and wanted to create them as a retail product, Tjersland said. “It’s an opportunity for them to create the product and determine if it’s feasible for them to launch under their own brand,” he said. “If they want to develop it as a product that they’d sell to other stores, I would not have a problem with that.”
The emphasis for the line is on small batches of artisanal products as well as on local sourcing. Products are responsibly priced based on a fair price for a quality, locally-made artisan product, Tjersland said. “Not too high that you wouldn’t consider buying it, but enough to help people recognize that they’re supporting the local vendors.”
That emphasis on supporting the local food economy has been with the privately-held company since it was founded more than 18 years ago, and many of the supplier relationships that the company built when the first store opened are still operating today, Tjersland said. “As we’ve grown, we’ve made sure we keep those relationships and work with them so that they can grow along with us,” he said. If New Seasons’ needs outstrip what a local farmer or fisherman is able to provide, the company will look for other suppliers who can augment supply to help support the grocery chain’s growth, he added.
That growth has been supported by the Pacific Northwest’s strong food culture and culinary presence. “Consumers are looking for a place where they can source a lot of products that are local,” Tjersland said. “We have a customer base that is generally more supportive of the local food economy. Portland has a vibrant farmers market community that plays into the ethic, and the New Seasons stores are an extension of those farmers market providing vendors with other avenues where they can sell their goods.”
The emphasis on local suppliers adds a level of complexity to store operations. Whereas a large store belonging to another grocery chain might see 30 to 40 deliveries a day, a New Seasons store might get 65 or 70, Tjersland said. Some farmers are only able to grow enough produce to supply a few of the New Seasons stores, requiring the grocers to deal with multiple suppliers for the same produce variety. “But what they do might be so special or so delicious,” Tjersland said. “We try to set ourselves up to be very flexible.”
“In terms of the New Seasons brand and the products we sell, it’s our largest brand in the grocery department of our stores. It’s gotten to the point where we get product recommendations from our customers. They’ll sometimes ask for products from specific producers,” he added. “Over 18 years, we’ve created a lot of equity in our brand. Consumers trust the product.”
