The recently remodeled Winn Dixie store in South Tampa hardly looks like a Winn Dixie at all.
That’s on purpose, said Southeastern Grocers CEO Ian McLeod.
It has been about 18 months since McLeod, a Scottish businessman whose experience includes running retail stores in Europe and Australia, took over the ailing Winn-Dixie and Bi-Lo brands. Since then, he has decided that one standard Winn-Dixie store format just doesn’t work for every type of shopper he wants Winn-Dixie to attract.
So he came up with five.
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“In the past, Winn-Dixie wasn’t known for its cleanliness or quality,” said McLeod, who added that he spent the first months on the job working to improve those areas. “The biggest difference in the U.S. compared to other countries is the diversity. There’s such a large spread between income levels, tastes and ethnicities. We can’t reach them all in one way.”
The Winn-Dixie store at 2100 W. Swann Ave., has been quietly undergoing renovations for months. But the construction walls came down this week at the 46,000-square-foot store to reveal an entirely new look.
The store has a new focus on organic, locally sourced and prepared products, trends that can be seen across the board at grocery stores around Tampa Bay.
This way the new Winn-Dixie is better equipped to compete with more high-end grocery brands, like the Publix Greenwise store, The Fresh Market and Whole Foods around the corner.
The new supermarket is bright and open, with new, expanded produce sections and a large prepared meals kitchen. Shoppers can take home a hot pizza, fresh sushi, salad or made-to-order sandwich. A new cafe serves locally roasted Kahwa coffee and mini doughnuts. Shoppers can get Tampa-made Cuban bread in the bakery.
Expanded seafood and meat departments offer fresh cuts, including dry-aged meats and a lot of prepared meals.
Nearly every Tampa Bay brewery is represented in the beer and wine section.
“Our research shows that our customers in South Tampa really care about craft beer and wine,” McLeod said.
The store in Tampa is only the second Winn-Dixie in the chain that has redesigned in this way, said McLeod. The first flagship prototype opened in Jacksonville in February.
In June, Southeastern Grocers debuted Fresco Y Mas, a Hispanic-styled supermarket in Miami that focuses on discount prices and Latin flavors.
“We have an opportunity to experiment with these new pilot stores. We will be reviewing and assessing them as we roll them out in new cities to see what format works best with specific demographics,” McLeod said.
Some of these redesigns include closing pharmacies or seafood counters in some stores, or expanding the meat sections or delis in others. It comes down to demographics research from the neighborhoods each store is in and feedback Southeastern Grocers gets from customer surveys, McLeod said.
This isn’t the first time Jacksonville-based Winn-Dixie has experimented with new store designs. The grocer spent millions renovating some suburban stores around 2010 in communities like Sarasota, Margate and Plantation to give the store more upscale amenities. This was prior to McLeod coming on board.
“The grocery industry is very competitive,” McLeod said. “The only way to compete effectively is to be able to adapt and to change with the trends. A lot of the new competition coming into Florida is very niche. We offer customers a full shopping experience, and we’ve changed our product range to give them the brands and the items they want.”
Date: October 20, 2016