Food Lion Going Upscale in 2008
Perhaps inspired by the success of Harris Teeter, Lowe’s Foods and Fresh Market, word is out that Wilmington area Food Lion stores will feature great improvements in 2008. Some stores may even be converted into Blooms, which is a Food Lion brand store that features upscale goods and a wider variety of items. Typically, “renewed” Food Lion stores offer a larger fresh produce department and a full-service deli/bakery with in-store decorated cakes, specialty meats, cheeses and breads, and a large meat department carrying premium cuts of beef, pork and poultry. The stores usually offer a wide selection of international and specialty items.
That’s funny, we were *just talking about* the grocery market last night, and specifically about Food Lion.
I said I thought that different grocery stores in the same market had an understanding, tacit or otherwise, in which they sliced up the great mass of shoppers along subtle socioeconomic lines: You take these guys and I’ll take those. I guess I was wrong. Food Lion is going after that upscale piece of pie.
This story is newsworthy because, as we all know and as our friend last night put it, Food Lion caters to “budget minded” shoppers. Maybe one inference is that a portion of the market that Food Lion has been content to focus on is dwindling — there are more yuppie food shoppers, more “foodies”? Is this the Turning Leaf phenomenon, where even low-ticket items are marketed in high-brow fashion.
Why not, marketing agencies must say to themselves? If you’re Food Lion and you start focusing on upscale (the thinking goes?), you don’t lose your dedicated hair-in-curlers budget clientele, and you may pick up a couple of yuppies on the side!