Glatt to Meet You Paisan - Kosher 'Meats' Italian at Mollie Stone's Markets

Although the item won't be introduced until early next year, Mollie Stone's is giving Fresh & Easy Buzz and our readers the first look at the label for its Nonna Luisa brand organic tomatoes, above.


Private Brand Showcase

Central to the 26-year run of success for privately-owned Mollie Stone's Markets, which operates nine supermarkets in the San Francisco Bay Area, is its format, which combines a strong selection of everyday food, grocery and general merchandise essentials - what it calls neccessity shopping - with a healthy assortment of specialty, gourmet, ethnic, natural, organic and fresh-prepared foods, which it calls passion shopping.

In many ways the format is the brand for Mollie Stone's.

And speaking of branding, a growing and evolving aspect of the grocer's neccessity and passion shopping approach and format - the stores are neither basic supermarkets or specialty markets - is its focus on private brand development, merchandising and promotion.

For example, although Mollie Stone's has only nine-stores, the grocer, which is majority-owned by partners Mike Stone and Dave Bennett, has three private product brands of its own - Mollie Stone's, which it uses on assorted dry grocery items, fresh meats, produce and baked goods; Mollie O Organic (for organic products); and Nonna Luisa, which is the retailer's Italian foods' brand.

Earlier this year Stone and Bennett also introduced the first item in what we call their "personal brand." That brand is Mike & Dave's, taken from the partners' first names. The first product is Mike & Dave's Wing Sauce.

Mike & Dave's is technically a fourth private brand for Mollie Stone's. But we call it a "personal brand" because not only is it named after the two partners who serve as each others wingmen, but they're also marketing the brand to other retailers via wholesalers and distributors, in addition to selling it in the nine Mollie Stone's stores. Therefore it's a venture product brand for the partners in addition to one sold in their stores.

There will be additional items under the Mike & Dave's brand, according to Dave Bennett, who is the retail operations, marketing and buying/merchandising-focused half of the ownership team. Stone focuses on the overall running of the chain from a headquarters perspective, along with finance, administration, new store development and other related tasks.

Mollie Stone's, which has its headquarters office near the bay in the Marin County town of Mill Valley - its stores are in San Francisco (three units) and (one each in) Sausalito, Greenbrae, (Marin County), Burlingame, San Bruno, San Mateo (San Francisco Peninsula) and Palo Alto (Silicon Valley) - is currently beefing-up its private brand offerings as part of that neccessity shopping/passion shopping overall brand its been developing since Stone and Bennett founded the small but high-volume chain in 1985.

For example, this week the grocer is introducing a line of fresh-cut Glatt Kosher meats under its Mollie Stone's private brand in a number of its San Francisco Bay Area stores, including the three small in size but high in sales volume markets it operates in San Francisco.

The Mollie Stone's brand Glatt Kosher meat line features a selection of  in-store cut, prepared and packaged cuts of beef roasts and steaks, ground meats and other varieties, as you can see in the photos above and below.

Kosher foods are a specialty of Mollie Stone's - and a passion of co-owner Bennett, who is one of the leading kosher category mavens in the food and grocery business.

For example, earlier in Mollie Stone's history, Bennett managed the Palo Alto store in addition to being involved in running the other stores the partners' operated at the time.

Over the years Bennett and his team at the Palo Alto supermarket created one of the most extensive kosher category product assortments of any chain or store in the Bay Area.

They also focused on enhancing the kosher offering for the key Jewish holidays, which has resulted in the Palo Alto location becoming a shopping venue for many Jewish consumers from throughout the nine-county Bay Area, particularly during the key Jewish holidays like Passover. There are nearly 7 million residents in the region, many of whom are observant Jews.

But Bennett isn't a kosher-centric kind of grocer when it comes to private brands or products of any kind, nor is Mollie Stone's a on-trick food retailer when it comes to ethnic and specialty foods and its own brands.

For example, Bennett tells us Mollie Stone's is in the process of growing its Nonna Luisa Italian foods private brand, which is named after the most important member of any Italian household, not to mention the entire culture. That person, of course, is Nonna (grandmother).

The grocer, according to Bennett, is in the process of adding two new items to its small but growing Nonna Luisa private brand line, both imported from Italy - shelf-stable Gnocchi and Organic San Marzano tomatoes. The label for the tomatoes is pictured at the top of this story.

Bennett tells Fresh & Easy Buzz the new items are will be introduced in the nine Mollie Stone's stores between January-March of next year. There are currently pasta, oils and vinegars under the Nona Luisa brand.

We aren't surprised Mollie Stone's has decided to grow its Nonna Luisa Italian foods' brand because, just as Bennett is the in-house kosher foods maven, the grocer also has its own in-house Italian foods maven, who's also a mensch, and has been with Stone and Bennett since nearly the beginning in 1985, when Mollie Stone's Markets' was founded.

That maven, mensch and Italophile, all rolled up into one, is Angelo Demante, who's managed the Sausalito Mollie Stone's grocery market  since it opened in 1988.

Demante, who's worked in the food and grocery retailing business for over a half century, not only is and speaks Italian, he knows the Italian foods' category inside-out, and regularly creates in the Sausalito store some of the best-looking Italian food product displays we've seen, particularly during holidays such as Columbus Day, Easter and Christmas, when many Italian specialty foods are popular and in demand.

In fact, we're told by a source we're only identifying as Deep Clerk that Demante, who may be the oldest-in-age but youngest-in-spirit - particularly when it comes to the Italian foods category - supermarket store manager in America, may already have an end-cap picked out in the Sausalito store for the new Nonna Luisa brand Gnocchi and canned tomatoes set to be introduced early next year.

If Mollie Stone's can make the launch happen in January, the timing could be perfect: Angelo Demante, the grocer's Italian foods' maven and mensch, can simply replace boss and kosher category maven Dave Bennett's current holiday kosher foods end-cap with his own, featuring the two new Nonna Luisa items imported from Italy, which would be another great way for kosher to meet Italian at Mollie Stone's Markets'.

Related Stories

May 16, 2011: 'Wing Man-to-Wing Man' - Mollie Stone's Markets' 'Mike & Dave' Create, Set to Launch 'Personal Brand' Wing Sauce

June 23, 2011: Mollie Stone's Markets' Owners' Eponymous Mike & Dave's Wing Sauce Grows Display Wings

July 14, 2011: Mollie Stone's Markets' Takes Next Step in its Social Media Journey By Hiring First In-House Manager

August 4, 2011: Mollie Stone's Markets' Year of Passionate Improvement Continues With Launch of New Website Tomorrow; But There's Also More In-Store

Read additional stories about Mollie Stone's Market here.

You can view all the stories in our Private Brand Showcase feature, including our most recent about Safeway Store's new private brand and Fresh & Easy's new burrito bowls, here.

Fresh & Easy Neighborhood Market to Offer Alcohol Beverage Tastings in Some of its California Stores

Breaking Buzz

Fresh & Easy Neighborhood Market has applied for a license to hold wine and beer tastings at its store in the Willow Glen shopping center at Bird Avenue and Minnesota in San Jose, California. San Jose, which is the largest city in Northern California with over 1 million residents, is located in the South Bay Area region.

The photograph at top, taken today by a Fresh & Easy Buzz correspondent, shows the alcohol beverage tasting application sign on the front window of the store. The application is for a tasting license, as is noted on the second subject line. The store already offers alcoholic beverages for sale. You can click on the photo at top to enlarge it.

Employees of the store tell us the Willow-Glen neighborhood Fresh & Easy store plans to start holding tasting events as soon as the license application is approved by the California Alcohol Beverage Control Department.

Additionally, we've learned via our reporting that Fresh & Easy Neighborhood Market  plans to apply for alcohol beverage tasting licenses for some of its other 134 stores in California.

United Kingdom-based Tesco, which is the third-largest retailer in the world after number two Carrefour of France and U.S.-based Walmart Stores, Inc., currently operates 183 Fresh & Easy grocery markets in the Western U.S. The other 49 Fresh & Easy stores are in Arizona (28 units) and Nevada (21 stores).

Fresh & Easy Neighborhood Market hasn't publicly announced its plans to begin holding alcohol beverage tastings at its Willow Glen-San Jose store, or at any of its other grocery markets in California, or elsewhere.

New California law

Last year the California State Legislature passed a legislative bill (AB 605) that then-Governor Schwarzenegger signed  into law which loosed the restrictions on how alcohol beverage tastings are required to be conducted in retail stores in the Golden State.

The new law, which went into effect January 1, 2011, allows supermarkets, mass merchandisers and large liquor stores to host free wine, beer and distilled spirits tastings as long as the area where the tastings are conducted are separated out from the rest of the store by a temporary barrier of some sort, such as a rope, fence or chain.

Previously retailers were required to dedicate a permanent section of the store for the alcohol beverage tastings if they wanted to hold such events.

One retailer that's had such dedicated areas in its stores for a number of years is Northern California-based Beverages & More (BevMo), which is a category-killer format, specializing in the wine, beer and spirits categories, along with specialty foods.

However, besides BevMo, few grocers with stores in California have created such dedicated spaces in their stores in order to hold the tasting events.

Whole Foods Market and West Sacramento-based Raley's Supermarkets have in-store restaurants and cafe's in many of their respective stores in California. As a result, a number of the two chains' stores hold alcoholic beverage tastings in the restaurant/cafes, which not only qualified as a dedicated area under the old law but is a natural place to hold tastings because there's seating and food available.

For example, the Raley's store at 255 South Tracy Boulevard in Tracy, California holds alcoholic beverage tasting events in the store's restaurant/cafe every Wednesday from 5:30-7:30 p.m. Think happy hour. Tracy is in California's Northern Central Valley, about an hour's drive from San Francisco.

The restaurant and cafe, which is attached to but separate from the store's deli department, features prepared food and drink items in an eat-in area that has a seating bar, a lounging and eating area with tables and chairs and a big screen television set.

Pictured above and below: A recent wine tasting event at the Raley's superstore in Tracy, California. The photos were taken by a Fresh & Easy Buzz correspondent who attended the event, which also featured a full-spread of food, which you can see in the photo above.

Under the new law Raley's and Whole Foods Market, like all other grocers, can now hold the tastings elsewhere in the stores if they choose. But in those stores with dining and drinking-in areas - Whole Foods' has numerous stores in California, for example, that have either in-store wine or beer bars (and often both) where the drinks are available for sale by the glass - it makes good sense for a variety of reasons to do the tasting events in them.

Most of these Whole Foods' stores in California that have such in store features, which are attached to in store restaurants or food bars, hold alcoholic beverage tastings.

For example, the patio wine bar at Whole Foods' store in San Francisco's Potrero Hill District, where the grocer holds regular tastings, has become a neighborhood hangout and a third place, where people eat - food is available in the attached in-store restaurant - drink wine and catch up on what's happening with each other and in their neighborhood. Home and the workplace are the first and second places for most of us.

But most grocers in California haven't set up the dedicated spaces because square-footage is an extremely valuable commodity in a supermarket. Therefore it's difficult for a grocer to justify setting aside even 500 square-feet to be used only for alcoholic beverage tastings, particularly when that space can be used as merchandising space to produce sales on a daily basis.

The new law that went into effect in January of this year has opened the door for grocers to offer the tastings because they need only to temporarily rope off a section of the store, say in the beer, wine and spirits department, when they hold a tasting, rather then permanently dedicate valuable square-footage for the events, as was required under the old law.

Grocer interest growing

Not much application activity took place during the first few months of this year following the new law's taking effect. However its been picking up considerably over the last few months, according to a spokesperson for the state Alcohol Beverage Control Department.

We've also discovered a spate of recent activity among grocers in our reporting. For example, a number of Whole Foods' stores in Southern and Northern California have started conducting tastings, under the provisions of the new law, over the last few months, as have some stores operated by Southern California-based upscale grocer Bristol Farms.

Also in Southern California, Albertsons, which is owned by Supervalu, Inc., has applied for tasting licenses for some of its 200-plus stores in the region.

Mollie Stone's begins tastings

In Northern California, Mill Valley, California-based Mollie Stone's Markets, which operates nine stores in the San Francisco Bay Area, began its first alcohol beverage tastings - after recently receiving licenses at the stores - at six of its nine stores - three units in San Francisco and the stores in Burlingame and Greenbrae - on Friday, October 28.

Friday's Halloween-themed tasting, which was held from 3-6 p.m at the six supermarkets, featured Hornsby Hard Cider.

A spokesperson for Mollie Stone's told us the grocer is waiting to receive its tasting licenses for the other three stores, which are in San Bruno, San Mateo and Palo Alto, and that once it receives them from the state it plans to hold tasting events at those stores as well.

Mollie Stones has a number of  upcoming tastings planned. Some of the adult beverages a spokesperson for the grocer tells us will be sampled include wines from Ghost Pines, Edna Valley, Frei Brothers, Barefoot Bubbly, Red Rock and Dancing Bull. The grocer is also planning some upcoming spirits tastings, including having a mixologist create cocktails using Ketel One Vodka and Limoncello di Sonoma. Limocello is a popular Italian distilled spirit that's been catching on in the U.S. over the last few years.

The new supermarket tasting law is particularly advantages for grocers that operate small-format stores, like Tesco does with its Fresh & Easy Neighborhood Market chain. The Fresh & Easy stores average about 10,000 square-feet of selling space.

Were it not for the loosening of the regulations under AB 605, a small-store chain like Tesco's Fresh & Easy would be extremely hard-pressed to even justify dedicating a couple hundred square-feet for the tastings on a permanent basis. It needs every square-foot it can get for merchandise.

More on the new law

The new law is also particularly advantageous for upscale and foodie- format-oriented food retailers, like Whole Foods, Bristol Farms and Mollie Stone's, for example, that do a lot of specialty and gourmet food sampling in-store. Now, for example, under the new alcohol beverage tasting law in California the grocers can offer wine and food pairing-type demonstrations, as long as the sampling takes place in the temporarily designated area required by the law.

The law has a number of requirements that retailers must follow in order to hold the alcohol beverage tastings in-store.

In order to qualify for the tasting license, retailers must already have an off-sale beer and wine permit, to do beer and wine tastings, and an alcohol beverage license, if they also want to conduct spirits tastings.

Then retailers must apply for and be granted a license from the state Alcohol Beverage Control Board, like Fresh & Easy is doing for the store in San Jose.

Retailers must pay a $300 application fee and $261 annual renewal fee for a state license to hold the tastings, which can only be conducted by alcohol beverage manufacturers or wholesalers. Significantly, store employees are prohibited from conducting the tastings, as are any other employees of the retailer holding the event.

Of additional significance, cities and counties have the right to restrict the alcohol beverage tasting events under the state law. That means retailers must follow any and all local regulations that may be in place in addition to the state law.

There are also a number of restrictions on how the tastings can be conducted in-store.

For example, participants must be 21-years-old or older, and it's the retailer's responsibility to verify that they're of legal age, even though the alcohol beverage manufacturer or distributor is conducting the tasting.

Only one type of alcoholic beverage can be offered per tasting event - either beer, wine or distilled spirits. But there can be no multiple combinations. Tequila shot with beer-chaser tastings are prohibited, for example.

The alcoholic beverages sampled at the events must be given free to the participants.

The free tastings cannot occur before 10 a.m. or after 9 p.m.The manufacturer or distributor representatives conducting the tastings are allowed by law to serve a person no more than 8 ounces of free beer in a day, which is 4 ounces less than a standard 12-ounce can; and up to three samplings of wine or distilled spirits, at maximums of 1 ounce and a quarter-ounce per sampling, respectively.

If tasters ask more alcohol they the law allows to be offered at the tastings the manufacturer or distributor conducting the tasting is instructed to explain the legal limits to them. If they persist, the retailer can ask them to leave the event and the store.

Fresh & Easy

Fresh & Easy Neighborhood Market sells beer and wine in all but two of its stores in California. The grocer offers distilled spirits (hard liquor) in a number of its stores in California but not in the majority of the 134 units.

The Fresh & Easy store in San Jose's Willow Glen neighborhood has been one of the grocery chain's top-three sales performing stores, out of the 15 units opened so far this year in Northern California, since it opened on March 2, according to our sources.

The store, along with the unit in Danville, were the first two Fresh & Easy stores Tesco opened in Northern California.

The wine category is a major focus for Tesco with the Fresh & Easy stores; more so than beer or distilled spirits. Therefore, it's our analysis that wine tastings will comprise the majority of alcohol beverage testing events held at the store on Bird Avenue in San Jose, although not exclusively, as we expect some beer tasting to go on as well.

'The Insider' Offers Some Advice He Suggests the New Owners of Northern California's Andronico's Markets Should Take Post-Haste

All six of the stores still have signs saying Andronico's Market, like on the San Francisco store above, despite the fact the grocer changed the name to Andronico's Community Markets over a year ago. For 'The Insider' this is a blessing in disguise because he says the new ownership needs to bag the Andronico's Community Markets name and return to Andronico's Markets, with an emphasis on Andronico's, similar to how it's depicted on the sign above.

The Insider - Heard on the Street

In my October 18 column - May-to-October at 82-Year-Old Andronico's Markets: New Owner, 2 Stores Closed ... Now What? - I reported that an investment fund led by Renovo Capital and created by it and Rosewood Private Investments got the green light from the Oakland, California division of the U.S. Bankruptcy Court to acquire 82-year-old grocer Andronico's Markets, which has its headquarters next to and above its store in San Francisco and operates six stores in the Bay Area region, down from a high of 14 units less than a decade ago and two stores shy of the eight it operated until closing two units this year - one grocery market in Palo Alto, California, closed in July, and the store on University Avenue in Berkeley, closed yesterday.

Three of the existing Andronico's stores are in Berkeley - on Shattuck Avenue, Solano Avenue and Telegraph Avenue. The other two units are in Los Altos, in the South Bay Area, and San Anselmo, which is in Marin County in the North Bay.

On Friday, October 28, the day before the closing of the University Avenue store in Berkeley - the university city that's been home base for Andronico's since it was founded in 1929 by Greek Immigrant Frank Andronico - Renovo Capital partner Scott Lavie and Andronico's CEO, Bill Andronico, who is Frank's grandson and has been running the chain since the 1980's, publicly announced the closing of the deal and sale of Andronico's to the investment firms and their fund, following the approval by the bankruptcy court, as I reported on in my October 18 column.

The purchase price, as I noted on October 18, was $16 million.

Renovo Capital has already invested about $5 million in Andronico's in the form of secured debtor-in-possession financing, which was part of its strategy to keep Andronico's alive financially and operationally until it could complete the acquisition through the court proceedings, which began in August.

The closing of the University Avenue store in Berkeley was also a part of the deal worked out with the court.

The store's about 20 employees have been told by the new owners that they can apply for jobs at the remaining six Andronico's stores. However, that's more theoretical than a reality for all or most of the workers because the last thing the new ownership wants and needs to do is add to rather than reduce Andronico's labor costs, considering the small chain's debts of $10-$15 million are about equal to its assets, according to the Chapter 11 filing.

Renovo's Lavie and Bill Andronico, who is staying on for now to continue running the 82-year-old chain that bares his family's name, said Friday, as they've said previously, that the new ownership plans to invest cash to improve the stores and the small chain's operations.

Here's what Bill Andronico said on Friday: "I want to thank our loyal customers, our committed employees and our faithful vendors who have worked with us through this difficult chapter in the company's history. I am pleased that Renovo Capital's purchase will allow us to improve our standing in the market and build on the strong brand my family has built over three generations."

Bill Andronico is the third generation of the Andronico family to run the grocery chain, having taken over for his father John in the 1980's. John Andronico took over from his father, Frank Andronico, who in 1929 founded Andronico's with a small grocery store on Solano Avenue in Berkeley, the site of one of the three existing stores in the city.

Here's what Scott Lavie, a Renovo Capital partner who's been heading up the Andronico's deal said as part of the same announcement on Friday: "Andronico's will continue to operate six locations: three stores in Berkeley and markets in San Francisco, San Anselmo and Los Altos. Renovo is committed to investing into the store's physical infrastructure to update the facilities and ensure that the stores continue to improve the quality of service for which they have historically been known. As part of this effort, key members of Andronico's executive management team will be retained to manage the company and its operations."

Lavie added this in the announcement: "We are excited about the opportunity for improvement in Andronico's stores to better serve our customers." The acquisition of the Andronico's brand was based on its market cache, and in combination with Renovo's ability to invest in the stores and employees, we want to ensure that Andronico's continues its commitment to excellence and delivering value to our customers for generations to come."

According to the August bankruptcy filing, Andronico's was doing about $120-$130 million in annual sales at the time, which is considerably less than half the annual sales the chain was doing at its 14-store peak, based on sales figures I'm aware of from the early-to-mid 2000's.

In my October 18 column I offered some analysis and informed opinion on what I think the future might hold for Andronico's under the new ownership, if you care to take a look, here.

The "key members" of Andronico's executive management team that Scott Lavie says in the quote above will be retained by the new ownership potentially include, in addition to Bill Andronico: Steve Epidendio, Justin Jackson and Anthony Gilmore.

Last year Bill Andronico brought the three men, all former Whole Foods Market guys, along with another Whole Foods' alum, John Clougher, into the then family-owned chain to help him raise financial capital and turn the chain around.

Claughter, who has been the president and COO of Andronico's since then, reporting to Bill Andronico, is leaving to become the CEO of A.G. Ferrari Foods, a small specialty grocery chain that Renovo Capital and Rosewood also recently bought out of bankruptcy. (See my October 18 column for details).

Claughter, who is leaving to head A.G. Ferrari Foods as noted above is the former president of Whole Foods Market's Pacific Northwest Region, which includes Oregon and Washington State.

Jackson, who's held the title of executive vice president at Andronico's since last year, was the first Whole Foods Market alum Bill Andronico recruited last year. Most recently prior to that he was vice president of purchasing for Whole Foods' Pacific Northwest division.

Epidenio, who managed one of the Andronico's stores for about nine years, from the 1980's-to-early 1990's, later went on to become vice president of retail operations for Whole Foods Market's Northern California division. His position at Andronico's since last year has been as the grocer's vice president of operations.

Lastly, Anthony Gilmore, who was president of Whole Foods' Northern California region from 2004-2007 and worked for the natural-organic foods' chain from 1996-2007 before leaving in 2007 to take a job titled vice president of corporate lifestyle, new concept development and corporate perishables, at Pleasanton, California-based Safeway Stores, Inc., has since last year been Andronico's chief strategist and chief administrative officer.

From 2007-2010 at Safeway Stores' headquarters in the San Francisco Bay Area city of Pleasanton, Gilmore worked on, among other projects, the development of the grocer's "The Market" small-format fresh food and grocery chain.

Safeway opened its first "The Market" store in Long Beach, California in 2008, followed by a second unit in San Jose in 2009.

Safeway's CEO, Steve Burd, decided not to go forward with the small-format stores, which are very similar in format to Tesco's Fresh & Easy Neighborhood Market, as Fresh & Easy Buzz has reported. Not long after that decision by Burd, Gilmore, who worked for Safeway as a retail clerk and store manager for 19 years before joining Whole Foods Market, left the Pleasanton-based chain to join his fellow Whole Foods' alums at Andronico's.

There are additional details about the industry backgrounds of the former Whole Foods Market alums in my May 30, 2011 column about Andronico's  - 82-Year-Old Grocer Andronico's Needs A Sugar Daddy of Sorts: 'The Insider' Suggest Tesco and its Fresh & Easy Neighborhood Market Might Fit the Bill - if you're interested.

The executive management team - Bill Andronico, Epidenio, Jackson and Gilmore - is deep with experience in food and grocery retailing, including in Northern California's San Francisco Bay Area. But it also might be a bit to collectively expensive for the new ownership and for Andronico's balance sheet, even though there will be some savings on the expense side with John Claughter's move over to nine-store A.G. Ferrari Foods, which Renove bought out of bankruptcy for less than $2 million dollars.

Assuming all or most of the executive team is retained, based on the extensive experience and individual talents of each of the members, they have a shot at turning Andronico's around, assuming they do some out of the box thinking and implementation - no wholesale Whole Foods Market format cloning, for example - and are able to strike a fine balance between creating a strategic blueprint for going forward that combines the best elements of Andronico's successful food and grocery retailing history with much needed changes in how the chain has been operating for the last decade.

Andronico's knows merchandising - and executes it extremely well. As an example, take a look at the produce department merchandising pictured in the photographs above and below. The photos were taken November 27, 2009, at one of the six remaining stores. [Photo credit: Willo O'Brien.]

I'm not the foremost expert on Andronico's, if such a thing exists. But I've been a close observer of the grocer and the markets it operates its stores in for nearly three decades.

Therefore, I'm going to offer a list of five key action steps the new ownership needs to have the executive team start and focus on post-haste (immediately), as in beginning on Tuesday. On Monday they all need to go out in the stores, interact with shoppers, and give away free treats to kids in the stores for Halloween - along with an action timeline, if its serious about saving the six-store chain - and eventually growing it.

There are additional things to focus on - but this is a list to get busy on starting Tuesday morning.

Here goes:

1. Dump the Andronico's Community Markets name and go back to Andronico's Markets, which has been the grocer's name since it changed it from Andronico's Park & Shop in the 1980's.

Adding "Community" to the name of the stores add zero-value to Andronico's, its marketing position or operations, in my analysis. In fact, it's a determent. I see it as added word baggage and meaningless semantic clutter.

Customers and residents of the San Francisco Bay Area call the chain "Andronico's," and have done so for decades. Even before the family changed the name of the stores from Andronico's Park & Shop to Andronico'sAndronico's." In fact, that's one reason the grocer dropped "Park & Shop" from the name.

The name "Andronico's" (not Andronico's Community Markets) has brand equity with shoppers in the Bay Area, which is one reason Renovo says they bought the grocer out of bankruptcy. Why mess that up?

Further, the exterior signs on the six stores still say Andronico's Markets. Dropping "Community" from the name will not only fit with what shoppers already call the stores, it will save a ton of cash because it will eliminate the need to buy and install new store signage, which is an expensive proposition, particularly for a fledgling small grocery chain. It's money that should be put to better and higher uses by the new ownership.

Conversely, keeping the Andronico's Community Markets name but keeping the Andronico's Markets signs on the stores, which has been the case for over a year since the name change, creates brand dissonance among consumers. It's also extremely poor marketing and branding.

Additionally, if these two reasons aren't enough - and they are - dumping the Andronico's Community Markets name, which the new executive team created and changed the name of the company and stores to last year, apparently in an attempt to tell shoppers that the grocery chain that's been family-owned and community-based for 82-years was now really community-based, gives the new ownership a great press release headline story.

My press release story headline would read something like this: "Back to the future at Andronico's: New owner takes back the Andronico's Markets' name because it's meant 'community grocer' for eight decades."

Timeline: Launch by Friday, November 4.

2. Evaluate each of the stores ... using a metaphorical microscope.

The San Francisco store (Inner Sunset District) is an excellent location. The new owners need to nurture it.

The Shattuck Avenue Andronico's unit in Berkeley is a good location. The store on Solano Avenue (Berkeley) is decent-to-fair. The Telegraph Avenue (Berkeley) unit is mediocre - but has potential to improve.

The benefit in Berkeley is the three stores give Andronico's brand, advertising and promotional synergy and reach. But the stores have to perform on their own, and do so against major and increasing competition, in order to justify keeping all three open.

Regarding the stores in San Anselmo and Los Altos, unless they're performing better than I'm told (neither has ever been a sales barn-burner by the way), I would put them under the microscope closely. I would be asking 'Would closing one or both of these stores and using the savings to grow business at the remaining stores (and possibly adding a new location) be a better alternative than keeping them open?'

Were I crafting the strategy for Andronico's, there's a scenario I would look at closely.

Here it is: There's a potentially good location available to Andronico's in San Francisco, which is the vacant Delano's IGA Market store (about 15,000 square-feet) in the city's Richmond District. The store, at 6333 Geary Boulevard (at 27th Avenue), has been has been vacant since last year, when owner Harley Delano closed it, along with four other units, because of financial struggles. (see here for details.)

Tesco opened one of its Fresh & Easy markets not far away (at 32nd and Clement) in June of this year. That store has been doing fairly well since opening four months ago.

However, in my analysis the highly populated Richmond District could support a grocery store in the former Delano's building, particularly one that offers a strong mix of everyday grocery items, along with specialty and fresh foods offerings.

One problem with the Fresh & Easy stores is they only offer about $5,500 SKUs in the 10,000 square-feet of selling space. About 65% of those items are the chain's private brands. And of the remaining 35%, about half the items are nationally branded packaged food and grocery items. As a result, most shoppers can't get all they desire at a Fresh & Easy store, particularly when it comes to their favorite national grocery brands.

The former Richmond District Delano's location is just across Golden Gate Park from Andronico's supermarket in the Inner Sunset District. But the distance is such that few if any residents who live in the Richmond District cross the park to shop at the Andronico's, instead shopping at a Safeway supermarket in the neighborhood, along with another unit not far away on La Playa at Ocean Beach, and at the now-opened Fresh & Easy store.

What I would seriously look at would be potentially closing one of both of the two worse-performing (taking into consideration the future performance potential the stores have) Andronico's stores (which could easily be the San Anselmo and Los Altos units or the Telegraph store in Berkeley as I've noted previously) and then putting a new store in the vacant Richmond District Delano's building, assuming the costs of doing so were within reason. A decent monthly lease and the like. (I have no affiliation with the landlord of the building.)

Doing so would give the new ownership five or six stores - three units in Berkeley and two in San Francisco, under the two-store closing scenario, with one additional unit (total of six) under the one-store closing scenario.

Depending on relative performance, keeping the San Anselmo store in Marin County (the one-store closing strategy), which is much closer to San Francisco and Berkeley geographically than the Los Altos store is, would make the best sense from a synergy perspective because the six units would all be located in fairly close geographical proximity.

Berkeley, San Francisco and San Anselmo are all clustered fairly close together. Los Altos is farther out in the South Bay Area, next door to Palo Alto where Andronico's closed the store in July.

The type of store I envision for Andronico's in the former Delano's building is a smaller version (with some differences) of its Inner Sunset-San Francisco supermarket, which is nearly 30,000 square-feet.

The Richmond District-San Francisco Andronico's would carry at least 20,000 SKUs, with a mix of basic groceries, specialty-natural-organic products and fresh prepared foods.

Mollie Stone's Markets, which took over one of the former five Delano's stores, the unit in San Francisco's Castro District, offers that many SKUs in the store, which only has 9,000 square-feet of selling space. The former Delano's in the Richmond District has at least 12,000 square-feet of selling space, based on my estimate.

I would go stronger proportionately on the basic grocery category and item mix (essentials) in the hypothetical Richmond District Andronico's store than Mollie Stone's has done with its store in the Castro District (which has a good mix for the neighborhood) because the Richmond isn't as strong demographically for specialty-natural organic and fresh-prepared foods, a specialty of both Mollie Stone's and Andronico's, as the Castro District neighborhood is.

Were I directing strategy at Andronico's I would use the Castro Mollie Stone's store, along with an edited version of the Inner Sunset Andronico's supermarket, as the basis of my blueprint for the Richmond District Andronico's new unit. The Richmond District neighborhood also has a substantial Asian-American population (primarily Chinese but also others), so I would make sure to focus on the Asian foods category across all of the store's departments, particularly dry grocery, produce and fresh meat.

The hypothetical Richmond District Andronico's in my plan would be very much a basic grocery store - rather than a specialty grocery store with a selection of everyday products - with a major focus on fresh produce and meats, a lot of everyday food and grocery essentials, and a decent selection of specialty-natural-organic items, along with a small but very comprehensive ready-to-eat and ready-to-heat fresh-prepared foods offering, which historically is a category Andronico's has been a pioneer of in the Bay Area and even nationally in the U.S.

Timeline: Start the analysis now. Make a decision fast.

3. Conduct the category and pricing reviews next week. Make changes rapidly.

The new ownership needs to focus more than Andronico's has in the recent past on customizing the store's product mix to location. For example, with the opening last year of the Whole Foods Market store nearby in the Haigh-Ashbury District, Andronico's should beef-up its everyday grocery product offerings at its store in San Francisco's Inner Sunset District. Whole Foods doesn't carry everyday groceries - Tide, Charmin, Kelloggs, Coke and the like - and doing so is a competitive advantage Andronico's should better capitalize on in the store, which is its best-performing unit out of the six grocery markets.

The new ownership needs to look at each of the six stores in this way. Localize, localize, localize, when it comes to product categories and merchandise mix.

Timeline: Begin next week. Implement before year-end.

4. Go back to a weekly advertising circular. Add substance back.

One of the major cutbacks Andronico's made was to reduce its once very substantial weekly advertising circular to one that's a fraction of the former flyer. Its also reduced the promotional frequency of the circular from weekly to about one every three weeks. That won't cut it in the very competitive Bay Area markets where its stores are located.

Therefore, one of the first things I would do is bring back the substantial, weekly circular. However, I would put an equal focus on distributing digital, non-paper versions of the weekly ad - company website, Facebook, ect. - as I would paper versions, which are generally direct-mailed to households our included in Tuesday or Wednesday editions of local newspapers.

Timeline: Break the new, expanded ad for the Thanksgiving holiday sales week. That's about two weeks from today.

5. Hold a "Thanksgiving" community celebration at each store, thanking shoppers for sticking with Andronico's through tough times - and letting them know better days are coming soon.

Timeline: A week before the Thanksgiving Holiday. It is a "thanksgiving" celebration, after all.

This is just a start. But the five action items are good ones for the new ownership to put on the "to do" list, to be tackled starting Tuesday morning. I'll take a look at Andronico's, and my list, again before the end of the year.

Note: In my first column about Andronico's financial difficulties, on May 30, 2011, I strongly suggested to president Bill Andronico and his senior management team that they start using social media, particularly Facebook and Twitter, post-haste, as a low-cost, potentially high-impact way to talk to customers and shoppers specifically about what's going on with the company and generally as a way to communicate about and promote the stores.

Three weeks later, on June 20, Andronico's became active with a Facebook page, and over the last few weeks has been posting a variety of information on it on a regular basis - and doing a good job of it.

Additionally, on July 29 Andronico's set up and account on Twitter - @andronicos1 -  and has benn regularly posting tweets as a way to talk to customers and promote the stores.

I haven't (intentionally) has any direct communication with the members of the Andronico's senior management team, but the timing of the launch on Facebook and Twitter is definitely interesting, based on the playbook I've been suggesting for the grocer.

It's also something the senior management team should have been doing a long time ago. But, as a wise man (or it could have been women) once said ... Better to be late to the party than to have never attended. Social media offers a lot of potential for Andronico's if used regularly and in a creative way.

Related Stories

October 18, 2011: Look for Fresh & Easy Neighborhood Market to Grab Closing University Avenue Andronico's Supermarket in Berkeley CA ... If it Can

October 18, 2011: May-to-October at 82-Year-Old Andronico's Markets: New Owner, 2 Stores Closed ... Now What?

May 30, 2011: 82-Year-Old Grocer Andronico's Needs A Sugar Daddy of Sorts: 'The Insider' Suggest Tesco and its Fresh & Easy Neighborhood Market Might Fit the Bill

>Also see the following links - Mollie Stone's Markets, DeLano's IGA Markets - for additional related stories.

>You can read all of our 'The Insider' columns at this link -  The Insider - along with all past coverage about Andronico's here.

Mollie Stone's Markets' Year of Passionate Improvement Continues With Launch of New Website Tomorrow; But There's Also More In-Store

Northern California Market Region

Mollie Stone's Markets' uses the slogan "The Best of Both Worlds" to describe its retail format and approach to food and grocery retailing, which is to offer basic necessities - what it calls necessity shopping - along with specialty, natural, organic and gourmet foods - passion shopping - under the same roof.

But the theme or slogan also aptly describes 2011 for the privately-held, nine-store San Francisco Bay Area grocer, in that so far this year Mollie Stone's has been passionately focusing on the necessity of continuous improvement in what today have become the two worlds of food retailing - a grocer's stores and its use of cyberspace and social media to communicate with shoppers.

Mollie Stone's Markets' year of passionate improvement takes another step tomorrow when the Mill Valley (Marin County), California-based food retailer launches its brand new website, which according to co-owner Dave Bennett will not only look good but will also be filled with added features, along with being a work of continuous improvement in and of itself.

The website is at: http://www.molliestones.com/. If the new website isn't working right away on Friday it's probably because it's being tweaked by the designers.

The launching of the new website tomorrow comes on the heels of Mollie Stone's hiring of its first social media manager, which we reported exclusively on in this July 14, 2011 story: Mollie Stone's Markets' Takes Next Step in its Social Media Journey By Hiring First In-House Manager.

As we noted in the story, Mollie Stone's Markets' has been growing its use of social media significantly. As part of that growth the new website will over time integrate the grocer's social media sites with features on the website, according to Elizabeth Milks, the retailer's social media project manager.

Speaking of integration, Mollie Stone's isn't letting its passion for cyberspace and social media take its focus off the nuts and bolts of food retailing - its stores.

In fact the opposite is true. Since January of this year the retailer has been waist-deep in various store remodeling projects as well as acquiring its ninth store in late January in San Francisco's Castro District and opening it less than two months later, on March 9.

Along with opening the new store in San Francisco's Castro District, which is Mollie Stone's third store in the city, the grocer has remodeled the produce, bakery and deli departments in its Burlingame, California supermarket, a project it started in January and completed in April. (You can see a photo here.)

Additionally, Mollie Stone's has just completed the remodeling of the produce department (pictured above) in its Sausalito, California store, along with doing major resets of the in-store bakery and cheese shop.

As part of the produce department remodeling project, the store's manager and the Mollie Stone's team heading it up decided to extend the fresh fruit and vegetable-filled department outside, adding the merchandising feature pictured below in front of the store.

The concept fits the outside of the store well because Sausalito, which is just over the Golden Gate Bridge from San Francisco, is a European-style village community located on the water and its residents are very healthy food and foodie-oriented. The fresh produce outside therefore makes a very locally relevant message, as well as lending itself to impulse purchases and thus added sales for the store, which is exactly what happened last week as the fresh fruits featured in the tropical-themed display below were selling briskly.

Next up for Mollie Stone's Markets, which is co-owned by Mike Stone and Dave Bennett who founded the chain together in 1985, is a remodeling of the deli-prepared foods department in its Greenbrae (Marin County) supermarket. The store's produce department was remodeled in December 2010.

Stone and Bennett have also channeled some of their passion for the grocery business and specialty foods into a new brand of products called "Mike & Dave's." The first product under the eponymous brand, Mike & Dave's Wing Sauce, was launched in May of this year (see our stories linked at the end of this piece). Additional "Mike & Dave's" products are in development, Bennett tells Fresh & Easy Buzz.

Back in cyberspace, Mollie Stone's has launched a new "Secret Sales" promotion on its Facebook site. The promotion works this way: Each Tuesday the grocer posts a deal item along with a promotional code which allows shoppers to get the product at the special Facebook-only price. Customers note the promotional code number and give it to the checker at a Mollie Stone's store in order to get the "secret sale" item at the special price.

The promotion, although brand new has, based on our observation and research, been driving shoppers to the Facebook site and in-turn is driving users of the site into the stores for the deals, depending of course on the specific product and how good the deal is.

Social media project manager Milks' tells us it's the first of what will be many social media site-based promotions Mollie Stone's Markets will be doing in the coming months.

In addition to Facebook, Mollie Stone's has a very active Twitter feed, and also uses the location-based site Foursquare. It also has a YouTube channel where it posts videos.

The launching of the brand new website on Friday will tie-in Mollie Stone's Market's eight month year of passionate improvement - and neither are over yet - in a solid way in our analysis because it will be a bigger and better central place online where the grocer can showcase all it's been doing to improve its stores (and open a new one), along with its growing social media efforts, allowing it to better communicate to shoppers its focus on both the necessities and passions of food and grocery retailing in the San Francisco Bay Area.

Mollie Stone's Year of Passionate Improvement: Follow the Story Below

July 14, 2011: Mollie Stone's Markets' Takes Next Step in its Social Media Journey By Hiring First In-House Manager

June 23, 2011: Mollie Stone's Markets' Owners' Eponymous Mike & Dave's Wing Sauce Grows Display Wings

May 16, 2011: 'Wing Man-to-Wing Man' - Mollie Stone's Markets' 'Mike & Dave' Create, Set to Launch 'Personal Brand' Wing Sauce

March 7, 2011: Fresh & Easy Neighborhood Market, Superior Grocers, Mollie Stone's All Opening New Stores in California Wednesday

March 1, 2011: Mollie Stone's Markets Will Open its New Store in San Francisco's Castro District On March 9

February 17, 2011: Mollie Stones Markets Planning to Open Newest Store in San Francisco First Week in March

January 28, 2011 Mollie Stone's Markets Confirms Our January 13 Report; Announces New San Francisco Store Via Twitter & Facebook

January 13, 2011: Mollie Stone's Markets Taking Over Closed 18th Street Delano's IGA Market in San Francisco's Castro District

November 30, 2010: DeLano's IGA Markets Closing Five Stores in San Francisco & Marin County; Fairfax, Davis Units to Remain Open (For Now)

November 29, 2010: Veteran Grocer Harley DeLano's 'DeLano's IGA Markets' Chain On the Verge of Closure in San Francisco Bay Area

Also see Northern California Special Report for related stories.

Mollie Stone's Markets Takes Next Step in its Social Media Journey By Hiring First In-House Manager

Two very different ways to drive business. But both are social: One of the many ways Mollie Stone's Markets uses its Facebook, Twitter and YouTube sites is as a way to help "drive" food and grocery shoppers into its nine stores in the San Francisco Bay Area. The grocer also uses stickers like the one pictured above, which it put in the window of its newest store in San Francisco's Castro district in January 2011 in advance of the store's opening in March, to alert and "drive" customer traffic to its social media sites...

But Mollie Stone's doesn't rely on social media alone to "drive" business, particularly not in the case of its three stores in San Francisco. Instead, the grocer literally drives shoppers who live anywhere in the city to the stores, picking them up at home and returning them back with their groceries in tow, in its Mollie Bus (pictured above at the March 9 grand opening of its newest store in San Francisco's Castro District), as long as the customers buy at least $30 worth of groceries.

Food & Grocery Retailing in the 21rst Century: Social Media

Social media is for people of all shapes, sizes and ages (although not too young).

It's also something grocers of all sizes - not just the big chains - should be taking advantage of because in our experience and analysis it offers itself up to smaller (and not so small) regional grocery chains and independents as a potential "great equalizer" in their ever-increasing challenge of competing against the growing power of nationally focused chains like Walmart Stores, Target, Safeway, Supervalu, Inc., Whole Foods Market, Trader Joe's and numerous others, which continue to spread throughout the U.S., opening new stores in existing markets as well as launching into new ones.

Regardless if the operation is a chain of 250, 100, 50, five or just a single store, a grocer can create an account on Facebook and Twitter for zero cost, for example, and find someone with some talent and experience in using social media to coordinate and be in charge of it. From there, the grocer has a potentially whole new world of opportunity opened up to it to talk with customers and potential customers, to create added awareness, promote, and most of all to build, enhance and strengthen customer relationships as part of its overall customer service experience and process.

We use "potentially" above for a very good reason: Social media alone isn't a panacea for grocers, regardless of size. Instead it's a potentially powerful platform that if used regularly and used well - like a plant it must be given regular attention and care - can over time become a powerful communications and customer relationship-building tool for grocers of all sizes, along with that potentially "great equalizer" for smaller chains and independents.

Mollie Stone's social media journey

One independent grocer that's recognized both the overall potential power as well as the "great equalizer" aspect of social media is Mill Valley, California-based Mollie Stone's Markets, which operates nine stores in the San Francisco Bay Area and is majority-owned by partners Mike Stone and Dave Bennett.

Mollie Stone's joined the social media world in late 2010 (Facebook, Twitter and YouTube sites) with some very important help from San Francisco, California-based Reasonate Social Media, which was founded by Eric Harr, who's also the CEO of the firm.

Harr and his team took a comprehensive approach with Mollie Stone's Markets' in partnership with co-owner Dave Bennett, who splits the running of the food and grocery chain with Mike Stone, his partner of  25 years, having founded Mollie Stone's together in 1985.

Harr, Bennett and Stone brought all of Mollie Stone's headquarters office employees together - buyers and merchandisers, finance folks, human resources people and more - together for a number of social media training sessions, so that not only would the process be department and company-wide, but also because they realized that in order to make social media an integrated part of the grocer's overall customer service, marketing and community outreach efforts it had to be something shared by everybody, instead of ending up as a social media ghetto at the company, which often is the case at organizations of all kinds.

Mollie Stone's Markets is now humming on multiple cyber-cylinders when it comes to social media - and most importantly, in our analysis, using it as an integrated part of its overall operations, marketing and customer service functions, which even includes signs in the stores and on store windows inviting shoppers to join the grocer on Twitter and Facebook, for example.

Those multiple cyber-cylinders include very active Facebook, Twitter and Foursquare sites and campaigns, along with active and regular participation on review sites like Yelp, in which Mollie Stone's responds to both criticism and praise (and in-between) of its stores, including aspects like product pricing and customer service.

Reasonate Social Media, which has operated Mollie Stone's various social media sites as part of its consulting relationship with the grocery chain until now, also encouraged co-owner Dave Bennett to step out and become the "face" of Mollie Stone's Markets by appearing in a few videos (like the one above) the firm has produced for the grocery chain, which feature Bennett, who's latest venture, along with partner and fellow wingman Mike Stone, is a specialty foods brand, "Mike and Dave's," the first product being Mike & Dave's Wing Sauce, which we wrote about here in May and again in June.

Elizabeth Milks hired as in-house social media manager

Mollie Stone's Markets has now taken a next big big step in its social media evolutionary process, hiring its first-ever social media project manager, Elizabeth Milks, who is working in-house at the grocer's headquarters in Mill Valley, California (Marin County) and will be using that day-to-day vantage point to increase the amount and variety of social media content Mollie Stone's produces, and to do so in a real time way.

The grocer and Reasonate Social Media are currently in the process of transitioning the day-to-day social media tasks and responsibilities from the firm to in-house at Mollie Stone's Markets, Elizabeth Milks told Fresh & Easy Buzz yesterday.

Mollie Stone's Markets has not publicly announced the hiring of its new social media project manager. Therefore you're reading it here first.

Ms. Milks, who graduated from the University of California at Berkeley in 2006 with a BA Degree in Public Health, worked as a marketing assistant (2008-2011) for VR Research, which is a public records-oriented research firm in Oakland, California. Prior to that she worked in the legal services industry in the Bay Area, following graduation from U.S. Berkeley.

Grocers and social media

Ms. Milks starts her new position at Mollie Stone's with a good base.

For example, Bennett, the chain's head grocery and produce buyers, and a number of other employees regularly use social media sites such as Twitter and Facebook, having established their own accounts.

Additionally, the fact  Reasonate Social Media worked so closely with Mollie Stone's on a chainwide basis is also a big plus because there exists a strong buy-in for the use of social media throughout the grocery chain, from it's headquarters office to the stores, based on our reporting, research and answers we've received from Dave Bennet, Eric Harr and others at the chain.

Such buy-ins are key in order for a grocer to make social media more than a mere promotional vehicle, instead using it as part of the overall customer-relationship building experience, which includes face-to-face interaction where it counts most, in the stores, enhanced by using social media as a cyber-storefront of sorts, harnessing the potential power of many along with the immediacy factor.

For example, think about product recalls in terms of the power of the immediacy factor. Before Twitter or Facebook, a grocer really had no way to let customers know that the FDA or USDA were recalling this or that product for this or that reason except to post signs in all of its stores and alerting the local media, hoping they old report something about it sooner rather than later.

But today, a grocer's social media coordinator can go on Facebook and Twitter, along with a host of other sites, and communicate to followers that a food product has been recalled literally the moment it's found out. There's no longer a need to rely on third parties like the media. Instead the grocer can communicate directly to its followers (the power of many) on the social media sites. And nearly always those followers will tell others using their Facebook pages, Twitter feeds and other social media sites, which harnesses the power of many even further.

This way sound simple (or "so what") because we're already so used to social media despite its young age. But this ability to communicate immediately and directly is revolutionary for food retailers, as are many of the other ways in which social media can be harnessed by grocers who put an effort into doing so. And effort is required, because like those plants, which need attention, care and watering - along with re-potting at times - so too does the use of social media by grocers.

Mollie Stone's Markets is a good example of how grocer's of any size - but particularly those regional chains and independents we mentioned at the start of this story because of the potential "great equalizer" effect - can, if they make a commitment to it, harness the low-cost, high-impact power of social media and use it in an integrated way to enhance what they are already doing at store-level, along with using it to open new doors that previously didn't exist for food and grocery retailers in the pre-cyberspace and pre-social media eras, which seems like it was ages ago but really was only a few years ago, particularly in the case of social media.

Related Stories

June 23, 2011: Mollie Stone's Markets' Owners' Eponymous Mike & Dave's Wing Sauce Grows Display Wings

May 16, 2011: 'Wing Man-to-Wing Man' - Mollie Stone's Markets' 'Mike & Dave' Create, Set to Launch 'Personal Brand' Wing Sauce

March 7, 2011: Fresh & Easy Neighborhood Market, Superior Grocers, Mollie Stone's All Opening New Stores in California Wednesday

March 1, 2011: Mollie Stone's Markets Will Open its New Store in San Francisco's Castro District On March 9

February 17, 2011: Mollie Stone's Markets Planning to Open Newest Store in San Francisco First Week in March

January 13, 2011: Mollie Stone's Markets Taking Over Closed 18th Street Delano's IGA Market in San Francisco's Castro District

January 28, 2011: Mollie Stone's Markets Confirms Our January 13 Report; Announces New San Francisco Store Via Twitter & Facebook

November 30, 2010: DeLano's IGA Markets Closing Five Stores in San Francisco & Marin County; Fairfax, Davis Units to Remain Open (For Now)

November 29, 2010: Veteran Grocer Harley DeLano's 'DeLano IGA Markets' Chain On the Verge of Closure in San Francisco Bay Area

Mollie Stone's Markets' Owners' Eponymous Mike & Dave's Wing Sauce Grows Display Wings

Private Brand Showcase

Mike & Dave's Wing Sauce, the eponymous first-in-brand food product created and launched in May by Mike Stone and Dave Bennett, the co-owners of Mill Valley, California-based Mollie Stone's Markets, has sprouted wings of a display kind in one of the grocer's nine stores in the San Francisco Bay Area.

The attractive display (pictured above), in the Mollie Stone's supermarket in San Bruno near San Francisco, is all about summer - A big "wing-style" display of Mike & Dave's Wing Sauce, cross-merchandised with beer and displayed in front of the store's meat department, where the fresh chicken wings are available nearby.

And for many people, summertime and chicken wings go together like, well ... a chicken and its wings.

We wrote about the partner's new brand and first product in this May 16, 2011 story: Wing Man-to-Wing Man' - Mollie Stone's Markets' 'Mike & Dave' Create, Set to Launch 'Personal Brand' Wing Sauce

In addition to offering their wing sauce in the nine Mollie Stone's stores in the San Francisco Bay Area, Stone and Bennett, partners since 1987, are looking for distributors and retailers throughout the U.S. who are interested in taking the product on.

A management member of Unified Grocer's specialty and natural foods distribution division, who also happens to be regular reader of Fresh & Easy Buzz, recently told us the City of Commerce, (Southern) California-based cooperative, which is the largest grocery wholesaler in the Western U.S., is interested in distributing Mike & Dave's Wing Sauce to its chain and independent customers throughout the west.

Unified also has an office in Livermore, in Northern California, along with a distribution center in Stockton, as well as distribution facilities in the Pacific Northwest.

Mollie Stone's Markets is a longtime member of the Unified Grocers cooperative.

Left-to-Right: Partners and wingmen Dave Bennett and Mike Stone.

Strategy Session: Extending the Mike & Dave's brand

Every so often we offer retailers we write about a suggestion or two regarding their private brands - or in the case of Mike & Dave's Wing Sauce what we call a "personal brand." We call this aspect of Private Brand Showcase the "Strategy Session."

Here's our suggestion for the wingmen, Mike Stone and Dave Bennett, as it pertains to their Mike and Dave's Wing Sauce.

One of the hottest fresh-prepared foods items in grocery stores at present is fully-prepared (including the sauce) and cooked ready-to-eat and ready-to-heat chicken wings.

For example, Safeway Stores, which Mollie Stone's Markets competes against in the San Francisco Bay Area, offers a couple varieties of ready-to-eat wings under its Signature Cafe brand. The items are selling extremely well in the grocery chain's stores

Tesco's Fresh & Easy Neighborhood Market also recently introduces a couple varieties of wings to its stores,as we reported on and wrote about in this June 11, 2011 story: Sliders, Meatballs and More - Fresh & Easy Neighborhood Market Introducing Six New Heat & Serve Food Items.

Branding the products also adds value (which for a grocer means a higher gross margin), compared to merely offering the wings as generic prepared foods items. This is particularly true is one has a good hook on which to hang that branding. And we think Mike & Dave do - their "personal brand," Mike & Dave's Wing Sauce.

Our suggestion for the Mollie Stone's wingmen: Create a fully-prepared, ready-to-eat chicken wing item (SKU or two), using the Mike & Dave's Wing Sauce. Brand it as "Mike & Dave's Chicken Wings," using the same graphic design on the label as is on the shelf-stable wing sauce product label, and offer it for sale in the in-stores' deli-prepared foods departments. in the nine Mollie Stone's stores.

Mollie Stone's is well known in the Bay Area for its fresh-prepared foods offerings, so the item is a natural.

The wingmen can also use the ready-to-eat "Mike & Dave's Chicken Wings" product package, merchandised in the store deli departments, to cross-promote the shelf stable Mike & Dave's Wing Sauce, by simply putting a instantly redeemable (IRC) cents-off coupon (say for at least 50-cents) for the bottle of sauce on the outside of the packages. Or tuck a coupon inside to be used later by the customer after they eat the prepare wings. Or do both.

And in good wingman fashion, one hand helping the other, the bottles of Mike & Dave's Wing Sauce can also be used to promote the new ready-to-eat chicken wings under the brand by simply putting a coupon for the product in the deli case on the bottles, a sticker or bottle neck coupon) of the existing wing sauce.

Traditionally it's called cross-promotion or cross-couponing. But in this case we call it "Wingman product marketing." After all, products just like people, can always use a wingman.

Related Stories

Click on this link - Mollie Stone's Markets - for related stories about Mollie Stone's Markets.

Click here - private brands showcase - for past stories in our Private Brand Showcase feature.

'Wing Man-to-Wing Man' - Mollie Stone's Markets' 'Mike & Dave' Create, Set to Launch 'Personal Brand' Wing Sauce

Dave Bennett (left) and Mike Stone, who we've nicknamed the "Wingmen."

Private Brand Showcase

Mill Valley, California-based Mollie Stone's Markets, which is majority-owned by partners Mike Stone and Dave Bennett who founded the local chain in 1985, offers a number of private brands in its nine supermarkets in the San Francisco Bay Area, including a selection of items under its own three brand names - "Mollie Stone's," "Mollie O Organic" and "Nonna Luisa" - which is something that's not all that common for a chain its size to do.

The privately-held, upscale-oriented grocer is a member of the Unified Grocers retailer-owned cooperative and offers its two major private brands - "Western Family" (mainstream food, grocery, perishable, frozen and general merchandise items) and "Natural Selections," the wholesaler's natural and organic products brand - in its nine stores, the newest unit being the store in San Francisco's Castro District, opened on March 9.

Unified, which is the largest retailer-owned wholesale grocer in the Western United States based on annual sales volume ($3.921 billion in 2010), is headquartered in Southern California. It has a Northern California distribution  center in Stockton, in the Northern Central Valley, and a buying-merchandising office in the East Bay Area city of Livermore.

But the focus of this story isn't on the grocer's existing three private brands or the store brands from Unified Grocers it merchandises in its stores.

Instead it's a product branding story of a more personal nature, involving Mollie Stone's Markets' and its owner-partners, Stone and Bennett - Mike and Dave, the "Wingmen."

In fact, if we had a special feature called "Personal Brand Showcase" that's where we'd prefer to put this story. But, and we know our readers will understand, we aren't going to create such a feature because there aren't many stories like this we could put in it.

Stone and Bennett, both veteran grocers in Northern California's San Francisco Bay Area, have created and are preparing to launch in their stores not a new private brand but what we're calling a "personal brand," as a way to distinguish between the two, although there are more similarities between a private brand and "personal brand" (in our usage) than there are differences.

The grocer-partners have created a brand named after their first names and are launching their first item in the nine Mollie Stone's stores this week. The brand name: "Mike & Dave's." The product: "Mike and Dave's Wing Sauce," pictured below.

When we saw the new item (and brand) the name resonated well in our always brand-evaluating minds for a couple reasons.

First, sometimes the best brand names for products come, instead of from long brain-storming sessions and multiple focus group trials, from the simple and familiar - who we are, what we know and the like.

For example, Henry Ford used his last name for his auto company. Familiar. And simple.

The founders of Apple named the company after a common fruit. Simple and familiar enough; though very "out of the apple box" for what was then a revolutionary product - the personal computer.

The football team in Dallas, Texas is, what else - the Cowboys. Could it really be named after anything that's more familiar (and some might say simple) to a Texan than a cowboy?

And two guys in Vermont named Ben & Jerry decided to call their start up company and ice cream brand Ben & Jerry's. The rest, when it comes to the equity and success of the Ben & Jerry's brand today, as they say - is history.

For Stone and Bennett - Mike and Dave - who've been working together in the grocery business for decades, nothing could be more familiar to the partners than each other - and their respective first names.

Imagine, for example, how many times they've used each others first names - face-to-face (or across the way) in the office, over the phone and in e-mails?

The brand name "Mike & Dave's" also fits the product - a wing (as in chicken) sauce - in two key ways: Chicken wings, which absolutely must have plenty of sauce on them, are a personal food, eaten with our hands and usually with family and friends, or strangers who will soon become friends, while watching sports on TV or at parties, picnics and the like.

Secondly, A good business partnership requires the partners to work as a team, something Stone and Bennett are noted for, often acting as each others "wing man" when needed, meaning both understand that in order to stay in business together and maintain and grow a successful grocery chain, neither of them can always be the top banana or spread his wings too much or too often without giving the other a chance to do the same.

Instead, and this is true with the "wing men"-partners, each focuses on his key strengths - and let's the other shine at his. That's what a good "wing man" does in the grocery business.

Dave Bennett's main strengths and key areas of focus are marketing, buying and merchandising - including knowing as much about the kosher foods' category as any grocer in America. Mike Stone focuses primarily on operations, finance and new store development.

As a result of this relationship and partnership "Mike & Dave's Wing Sauce" not only is a "personal brand" in that the name is taken from the two men's first names, it also obtains brand credibility (and offers a fairly decent pun) from what we call the "wing man factor," as described above.

Stone and Bennett - the "Wingmen" - are launching their "Mike & Dave's Wing Sauce" in their nine Mollie Stone' grocery markets, where they will offer it exclusively for now.

But Dave Bennett tells Fresh & Easy Buzz exclusively that he and partner Mike Stone are already "planning [to create and launch] other 'Mike & Dave's' food product items."

Mollie Stone's Markets sells a lot of groceries - particularly specialty food-oriented products - in its nine Bay Area stores. The chain's creative merchandisers love coming up with and implementing cross-merchandising-style displays in the stores.

Therefore, although neither Stone or Bennett - Mike or Dave - or any of their "wing men" on the merchandising team or in the stores have told us this, we're going to spread our predictive wings a bit and offer this: If you happen to be near a Mollie Stone's market (store list here) in the very near future don't be surprised if you see "Mike & Dave's Wing Sauce" not only on the store's shelves but also displayed in one or more locations in the store.

We will offer four potential display opportunities for you to look for if you do happen to visit one of the stores:

>on a thematic end-cap, cross-merchandised with other compatible items;

>in the meat department, displayed near the fresh chicken wings;

>in the deli department;

>and displayed in the produce department, cross-merchandised with ranch dressing, celery, baby carrots and other fresh veggies regularly served with dipping sauces and eaten with sauce-coated chicken wings.

After all, once the store managers and department heads at the nine Mollie Stone's stores learn about the new wing sauce created by and named after their bosses, being the creative merchandisers they are, they're going to want to feature Mike and Dave's "personal brand" in places in the stores where the product is sure to get noticed - and purchased - by customers because ... that's what good wing men and women do in the grocery business.

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