The holidays always remind me of our old produce staff meetings. We’d meet every Monday and Wednesday morning at the produce warehouse, right about 10 a.m.
This was after we, as specialists, had been on the job since 5 a.m., updating costs on our shared office computer, inserting our current prices, any pack changes and volume movements. Afterward, we’d return to the office after hitting the road to do competition price checks. More data input; the days of everything being tediously, routinely keyed into a program manually, ugh.
The buyers were in an equally early work mode: busy getting inventories in line and writing purchase orders, all while wearing their phone headsets, the indispensable umbilical cord to the buying world. By the 10 a.m. meeting, they were still taking care of last-minute details when we arrived at the warehouse conference room.
We talked price changes, ongoing events and reserved the most amount of time to cover upcoming ads. We’d write initial ad plans, sometimes months in advance.
Which brings me to the crux of this column topic, as when we revised imminent holiday ads someone always brought up the question, “Why do we need to give away so much for the holidays?” — the point always being that customers are going to buy cranberries, sweetpotatoes, parsley, celery, potatoes, herbs and more anyway.
So, why discount the whole shooting match? Why not just price normally and soak up all the added gross profit? Why, indeed. Why discount all those key items during the holidays?
For one, it’s just expected. Consumers expect a break for the holidays. Think: Black Friday.
Second, if you didn’t discount key holiday essentials, you could get stuck with way too much inventory afterward. If you don’t do something to drive sales, nothing else goes right.
Third, and most importantly: This is the time of year when the news outlets are comparing grocery prices. You never see the local action news team do this so much during, say, Labor Day or July Fourth holidays. Well, hardly anyhow.
But for Thanksgiving, Christmas and New Year’s? You and your competitors are all under the white-hot media spotlight.
The news makes it a ritual. The headline reads something like: Here’s how much this Thanksgiving or Christmas dinner will cost; then this is compared to last year or the year before. They will lay out the ads or even hit the stores and do their own price comparisons and then add it all up while they break it down: It costs so much for the turkey, so much for the potatoes, so much for the cranberries, the celery.
This pricing blitz includes many of the dry grocery holiday essentials. Everything is scrutinized from nuts to pumpkin pie to all the ingredients that make up the famous (or infamous) green bean casserole.
That’s when it boils down in a summary focus. Your chain is listed in order of affordability compared to every other major retail player. Where do you stand this year? First, second or worse? Whether you’re considered gourmet, discount or a chain somewhere in the middle, you’re going to look great, or not, based on how low you’ve discounted the holiday essentials.
Few shoppers lay out holiday ads on the counter, deciding where to shop for the holiday feast needs, but plenty of others are doing just that, and you can bet the final PR verdict in the news is all that customers notice. For your chain, it’s more than just bragging rights.
That No. 2 holiday ad pencil has to be as sharp as you can make it.
Armand Lobato’s more than 50 years of experience in the produce business span a range of foodservice and retail positions. He has written a weekly retail column for nearly two decades.
