![]() ![]() Daughtry includes pricing information, emphasizing the advantages Bargain Grocery offers, and availability, letting consumers know the quantity available and if the store is likely to run through a given item quickly.ĭaughtry develops and designs all the digital and creative content for Bargain Grocery, and she says customers respond quickly to the video promotions. So, in mid-March, a Bargain Grocery video highlighted peppers, including organic items, and tomatoes as well as strawberries, grapefruit, cucumbers, broccoli and escarole, and it emphasized that much of the produce available came directly from growers. Because fruits and vegetables vary based on seasons, availability and the store’s ability to find commodities at costs that allow it to retail them at low prices, the videos are a way of constantly and directly updating shoppers on what’s arriving on the sales floor. The store videos highlight newly arrived produce items. Social media is a major part of how Bargain Grocery promotes fresh produce, with posts including recipe and store-focused videos. Yet, its use of social media is a particular example of how Bargain Grocery comes up with clever ways to operate consistent with its core mission. Merchandising and marketing both emphasize quality and nutrition consistent with consumer trends and the needs of underserved consumers. Sharing the Messageįor all that, Bargain Grocery is a full-blown grocery store operation with produce at its core, both in terms of concept and store lay out, and the retailer is innovative in how it goes about serving its customers and, by extension, its purpose. Now I have the Albany county executive, the Rensselaer county executive and the Troy county executive on us to move in.”Ĭurrently plans are moving forward for Bargain Grocery-type stores in Albany and Troy, among other targeted upstate New York communities. ![]() It’s been overwhelmingly successful but more effective. “Three or four years ago, social services and the human services agencies started to court us and suggested we build a larger store and really target these groups, which is what we’ve done. “I didn’t even understand food deserts at that time,” he says. Servello says many concerned parties approached him about the dietary needs of the community and encouraged him to expand the original distribution center-based food operation into the stand-alone store. We then marked it up enough to sustain the operation.” I went to our Walmart perishables DC and asked if we could buy all their salvage. I got this idea to start a low-cost food store. “We were distributing $20 million a year in food and personal care items, and household items to the community, and we were not getting any ongoing government aid. “The store came out of a need for sustainability for our distribution warehouse,” he says. All of the proceeds from the store would go back into the community in food giveaways, personal hygiene giveaways, helping the schools, and from there it’s grown. So, he started with a 1,200 square foot store. My dad grew up in the business, and he says there had to be a better way to serve our community. My grandparents were produce distributors. ![]() But what people really wanted was fresh food. “My dad started this in 2002 because of the food desert of our city,” says Rachel Daughtry, Bargain Grocery Director of Agency Relations. Today, the store claims to put 96 cents of every dollar back into the community. ![]() With its 2002 origins nestled in a small space in a warehouse of a non-profit organization, the now stand-alone Bargain Grocery offers nutritious food in central Utica while supporting the organization with its profits.Īlthough the store, which opened its brick-and-mortar doors officially in 2018, was developed to serve lower income consumers foremost, Bargain Grocery reached out to all Utica demographics, and everyone shopping there supports local people in need, as all profits from the operation go to keeping it going and funding the non-profit organization, Compassion Coalition. 2022 Marketing Excellence Award Winnersīargain Grocery provides the Utica community with quality, affordable food - produce being at the core - and, so brings abundance to what had been a center-city food desert.Research Perspective/Comments and Analysis. ![]()
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