The leafy lettuce seemed fresh. Mary Ann Schmieder of Bethel Park checked it over carefully because she has been disappointed before. “I’ve bought them in grocery stores and they were already pink and green,” she said.
Walmart, which operates the West Mifflin store where she was shopping, wants to take no chances that customers will be disappointed in its produce.
The Bentonville, Ark., retailer earlier this year announced it was putting 70,000 associates through a produce training program, including giving them quality guides to help identify the important characteristics. Walmart also has instituted independent weekly checks in more than 3,400 stores and hired produce experts to work with its suppliers.
Last month, Bill Simon, president and CEO of Walmart U.S., told analysts on a quarterly earnings conference call the bet was paying off. “Our produce business also continued to gain momentum,” he said, noting a sales gain over the same period last year in stores open at least a year.
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Unlike the pre-packaged goods found in the center of stores, the colorful piles of green peppers, tomatoes, oranges, peaches, green onions and potatoes around the perimeter of groceries resist standardization and add an element of risk — both for the customer and the store.
Shoppers are poking and prodding to try to avoid the moldy raspberries and the overripe bananas, while retailers who prove themselves reliable in this department can set themselves apart from every other merchant on the block who has a shelf of the same canned soups, the same boxed cereals and bagged loaves of breads.
As the “buy local” trend and the growth in farmers markets influences how people think about produce, the nation’s largest food purveyors have felt the pressure to improve quality even as they use their extensive distribution systems to keep prices down.
In a July conference call with analysts, Minnesota-based grocery distributor Supervalu president and CEO Sam K. Duncan said the company had continued to see a drop in sales but things were improving. In the Save-A-Lot grocery chain, Mr. Duncan said he thinks better produce is already starting to help.
“We have recently standardized the quality specs of the produce across the network and increased the shelf life of many items by working directly with growers,” he said. Supervalu, too, is retraining its store employees on best practices.
Date: September 8, 2013