Supermarket Craftiness

Nudging Grocery Shoppers Toward Healthy Food

Just as I was contemplating the topic of my next blog post, this article was posted to my facebook wall by one of my NPR-loving friends who shares my deep and abiding hometown love of Wegmans. It is perfectly pertinent to our discussion last week and reaffirms my affection for the big W.

For those who don't have time to read, allow me to summarize. This article talks about taking some of the same techniques used to market unhealthy food and applying them to healthy food, like produce. Wegmans is used as an example because of the way their produce department is the focal point of the store when you walk in the door. At least in my Wegmans in Canandaigua, you don't even really have to "veer right"; the first thing you see when you walk in the door is a big old produce display. This past summer, Wegmans set up a "farmer's market" booth in the produce department, complete with bushels of local summer squash and tomatoes. It was a pretty clear marketing strategy, and it made it very difficult to ignore the fresh produce.

Also, sample day at Wegmans (always a joyous occasion) is especially fun in the produce department. They have apples with cheese, smoothies and other fresh fruits and veggies for tasting. As much as I would like to believe sample day exists for my pleasure alone, it is a great marketing technique to get people in the produce frame of mind (or mouth).

The article also talks about the way Wegmans is using lighting in their newer stores to literally highlight fruits and vegetables, especially with natural light from high windows. Although I haven't been in any of the newer stores to experience this myself, it seems like it would be a good subtle technique. And, as the article points out, subtlety is the key. If people feel like they are being seriously pressured into buying produce, they will probably buy less of it; consumers don't like to feel like they're being "taken" even if it is in kind of a good way.

Obviously the motives of supermarkets like Wegmans are not entirely aimed at healthying up the consumer. It makes good business sense to sell as much produce as possible and reduce waste. Because produce is so perishable, it needs to sell as quickly as possible. My darling boyfriend worked the produce department at Wegmans for the past few years. He recently swithced over to grocery (pretty much the rest of the edible goods in the store) and he tells me that the turn over for grocery is much, much slower than it was for produce. This makes perfect sense; cans of soup are infinitely more shelf stable than bananas. I asked him what they do with the produce that has gone bad and all I could ever get out of him was that it gets "shrunk". I have no idea what this means. I'm pretty sure it is not a literal shrinking process a la "Honey I Shrunk the Kids", but he didn't seem to know where it ended up after he tossed it in the pile for shrinking. What's the point of having a man on the inside if you can't get any information out of him? My hope is that it is composted. This seems likely to me, simply because Wegmans Organic Test Farm is located in Canandaigua, on a lovely sloping hill on the west side of Canandaigua Lake. However, I would be interested to know what happens in supermarkets in general when the food goes bad. I've seen "expired" bread that is still perfectly good get donated to community kitchens, but what about fruit that is actually bad? Does it get composted or simply tossed?

Overall, I think the idea of marketing fruits and vegetables in the same way highly processed foods are marketed is a great idea. However, if the consumer wants chips, she is certainly not going to head for the carrots instead just because they are cleverly marketed. The problem of the American diet is not a problem of marketing or supermarket design alone. But all together, this is a step in the right direction.


Finally, on a separate, only mildly related note, Wegmans is being sued! Walgreens is suing Wegmans because their most recent logo change contains a W that is apparently too close for comfort to the Walgreens W. They are suing for all the profits Wegmans has made since changing their logo. Which I think is pretty funny, since I have never wandered into a Wegmans thinking it was an enormous Walgreens.