Silver Lake, Los Angeles – The first 365 store by Whole Foods Market, Inc. (NASDAQ: WFM) is set to open May 25 in the Silver Lake neighborhood of Los Angeles. It’s about a lower-priced grocery store that the company hopes will help the organics giant fight back and attract more customers as competitors are dedicating more shelf space to organic food at lower prices. Whole Foods revealed on Wednesday new details on the store’s appearance and the strategy to set out to lower prices.
The supermarket promises to bring “fresh, healthy foods to a broader audience with a streamlined, quality-meets-value shopping experience,” Whole Foods said in a 365’s press release. This means that the new store is most likely to be a budget-friendly version of “Whole Paycheck.”
Consumers will be offered items from Whole Food’s less expensive 365 Everyday Value brand at the store and they’ll also find branded and local products. And the company said two months ago that it might put tattoo parlors inside its stores as an attempt to attract younger consumers and expand its audience.
The organics giant is planning to open more 365 locations in Bellevue, Washington, and in Portland, Oregon, by the end of 2016. In addition, 10 more stores are set to open next year.
Focus on efficiency to reduce costs and prices
President of 365 by Whole Foods Markets, Jeff Turnas, said in an interview that he and his staff have focused on efficiency by designing stores in a way that helps workers save time when getting from the stockroom to the shelves and thoroughly thinking how to create attractive displays and merchandising, as well as establishing a unique, uniform store design prototype that can serve to many other locations.
The selection of products has been also based on more efficient methods. A good example of that is that 365 doesn’t have an especially deep selection in bottled water because it requires too much effort to stock and because store executives believe their customers won’t demand it.
Turnas said 365 tried to narrow the offerings of olive oil, as the store will only have ten. The president of 365 pointed out that those ten olive oils would be well-represented from around the globe and varied price points.
Whole Foods needs to more tightly curate its selection of products in such small-format locations, which are expected to be about 30,000 square feet. This shows that 365 will be more than a store offering the cheapest organic foods, as it will also be an experiment aimed at finding out whether curation efficiency and stocking can actually result in lower prices across the store.
Partners
This Silver Lake shop has a Friends of 365 program that includes partnerships with Instacart, an online service that delivers groceries within an hour to consumers who order the products on its platform; teaBOT, a kiosk that supplies custom teas within 30 seconds; and CHLOE, a fast-casual vegan restaurant that became popular at its Manhattan location. These outside retailers are among those who are now part of 365’ greater mission.
“We’ve really dedicated ourselves to partner with like-minded companies that are doing new and interesting things in their respective field to bring a truly unique shopping experience that complements our thoughtfully curated selection of foods,” Turnas said in the press release.
Source: Huffington Post