Use the Google Doodle Guitar to Hear What Your Favorite Grocery Store 'Sounds' Like

The Friday Frolic

Google's most recent Google Doodle (here for a limited time only) is an interactive guitar that can be played using a computer mouse or by typing in words using your keyboard.

Google put the playable guitar up yesterday to commemorate what would have been the 96th birthday of guitar great Les Paul, who's also the inventor of the famous Gibson Les Paul Guitar.

Paul, who was born in 1915 and died in 2009, so loved the guitar he continued to play and perform into his 90's, doing so regularly at the Iridium Club, which is across the street from Lincoln Center in New York City.

You can learn all about Les Paul's life and music here. In fact, if you click this link you can listen to some famous musicians pay and play tribute to Les Paul and his music. We don't mind if you listen while you read this piece, as long as you can multi-task.

The Les Paul Guitar Google Doodle was so popular yesterday the folks at the GooglePlex in Silicon Valley are keeping it up today.

That's good news for Fresh & Easy Buzz readers because it allows us to share with you a fun little musical game we played for a bit last night, which we designed particularly for retail industry geeks. But you can do it with anything.

And 'doodle' we did.

First, some quick background: The interactive and playable Google Doodle guitar allows users to create music (or at least sounds) by running your mouse over the strings, as we noted earlier.

A number of professional musicians tried their hand at it yesterday and today, in fact.

For example, as a tribute to Les Paul, guitarist Tom Morello of Rage Against the Machine and Audioslave fame created a 30-second tune and posted it on YouTube. You can listen to his Les Paul tribute-tune using the playable Google Doodle guitar here.

The Google guitar also lets you create music by using your keyboard to type in letters and words. All you do is type whatever you desire into the narrow grey box below the guitar and to the left of the black button. Clicking the button allows you to record your creations.

If you haven't guessed it by now ... we did just that. But with our own food and grocery store-focused twist, of course.

And, we invite you to give it a try.

We wanted to hear musically what the names of various grocery companies, stores and supermarkets sounded like using Google's interactive and playable guitar.

We started off by typing in: Fresh & Easy Neighborhood Market, Fresh & Easy and Tesco.

So far so fun.

From there we went crazy, exploring what Walmart (and Wal-Mart), Target, Costco, Safeway, Kroger, Wegmans, Supervalu, Save Mart, Trader Joe's, Ralphs, Vons, A&P (a very short tune), Sunflower Farmers Market, Natural Grocers, Whole Foods Market (and Whole Foods), Sprouts Farmers Market, Mollie Stone's Markets (needed a longer tune), H-E-B (almost as short a tune as A&P), King Cullen (America's first supermarket chain), Morrisons and Waitrose (wanting a little British flair) and about a score more grocer and grocery store names sounded like.

We have our favorites. But we're keeping them to ourselves, at least for now.

However, we suggest you go to the Google website (no link needed) and type in whatever and however many grocery store names you desire (such as your favorite store) in the box on the guitar and listen to the sounds. If you have any favorites, share them with us using the "comments" link below. If we get a couple comments with your favorites, we might offer a few of ours.

And if you work in the food and grocery retailing business, make sure you check out what your company and store names sound like using the playable guitar at Google.com.

But hurry because we aren't certain if the guys and gals at the GooglePlex in Silicon Valley are going to extend the Google Doodle guitar's appearance on the website beyond today.

Like they say in retailing - it's available for a limited time only.

Influential Magazine Fast Company Ranks Trader Joe's Near the Top as One of 50 Most Innovative Companies in the World

Analysis/Commentary

Influential magazine Fast Company has named Southern California-based grocer Trader Joe's the 11th most innovative company overall and second most innovative in the food category - with PepsiCo first - in the 2011 version of its annual 50 most innovative companies in the world ranking.

Here's what Fast Company says about the Monrovia based Trader Joe's in awarding it at the top of its list as a global innovator:

Trader Joe's
For vaulting past Whole Foods to become America's favorite organic grocer

"Though Trader Joe's masquerades as a neighborhood store, it boasts $8 billion in annual profits. Its stores carry 4,000 different products, compared to typical grocery stores' 50,000. This meticulous stocking helps it sell $1,750 per square foot - twice as much as Whole Foods. Trader Joe's brand-name products offer low prices and 'pizzazz beyond plain old corn flakes,' says analyst Bob Goldin. It's a company that manages to borrow from the best of its competitors, with more than 350 stores compared to Whole Foods' 300."

Trader Joe's vs. Fresh & Easy

To put Trader Joe's amazing sales-per-square-foot and average weekly sales in perspective, the grocer's stores average about 10,000 square-feet in size and have combined average weekly sales of $500,000-plus per-store. In contrast, the Fresh & Easy Neighborhood Market USA stores owned by United Kingdom-based Tesco, also average about 10,000 square-feet but currently have average weekly sales of under $100,000 per-store.

Trader Joe's operates about 350 stores and has estimated annual sales of $8 million. There are 169 Fresh & Easy Neighborhood Market stores with sales estimated by Fresh & Easy Buzz of about $800 million. In October 2010 Tesco reported mid-fiscal-year 2010/11 year sales of $388 million for Fresh & Easy. [See - October 5, 2010: Philip Clarke's Early Welcome to America: Tesco Logs $151 Million Half-Year Loss For Fresh & Easy Neighborhood Market.] Tesco's 2010/11 fiscal year ended at the end of February 2011. It reports its preliminary financial results in April 2011. Our about $800 million in sales estimate for the year is based on the mid-year numbers and our research.

Trader Joe's, which is privately-held and owned by a trust in Germany set up by the late Theo Albrecht (he died in July 2010) for his children, has been around for 30 years. Tesco's Fresh & Easy is only a little over three years old. Therefore we aren't suggesting Fresh & Easy Neighborhood Market, which does have average store sales that are considerably below the U.S. grocery retailing industry standard, should be on par with Trader Joe's from a store-count-to-sales perspective.

Rather we use the example for two reasons, which are: To highlight the exceptional performance of Trader Joe's vis-a-vis a very similar format, Fresh & Easy, and to illustrate how far Tesco has to go with Fresh & Easy to even come close to doing 50% of what iconic Trader Joe's does in sales, let alone in profit. (See the October 5, 2010 story linked above for Tesco's mid-year loss with Fresh & Easy.)

Innovation in food and beyond

Trader Joe's is one of just two grocers to make the Fast Company 50 list. The other food and grocery retailer is United Kingdom-based Marks & Spencer, which came in as the 36th most innovative company in the world out of the 50 named by the magazine this year.

In the "food" category, which mixes retailers, food-makers, restuarants and other food-related companies all together, Fast Company named 10 innovators. Three of the ten - number one (in the food category) PepsiCo , Trader Joes and bean-to-bar chocolate-maker Madecasse (number three in the food category) - ranked in the overall 50 most-innovative companies ranking.

The other seven food innovators named are:

>04 / Cargill
For charging into the sweetener market with a plant-based product that's aims to be eco-aware and health-friendly. The agricultural giant has perfected a process to grow and refine sweet leaf extracts from stevia, a type of South American plant, allowing it to quickly command a sizable slice of the faux-sweetener market.

>05 / Foodhub
For creating an online tool to connect local food producers to food buyers big and small. Think of FoodHub as the Match.com for the locavore movement. Wholesale food buyers log on to access thousands of small and regional producers, as well as info on varietals sold, minimum orders, insurance, and delivery options. Launched by environmental not-for-profit Ecotrust, FoodHub has already signed on hundreds of Portland restaurants, grocery stores, and businesses and expanded to neighboring states.

>06 / Current Energy
For greening restaurants (and saving them money in the process). Fast food eateries such as Jack in the Box and Qdoba are turning to this Dallas-based energy firm's smart sensors to majorly slash their energy use (and costs). For instance, sensors can ping restaurant managers with text messages if a walk-in refrigerator is left ajar for too long, or coordinate pizza-oven temperatures based on real-time sales.

>07 / Chipotle
For boldly taking advertising in-house. After burning through four ad agencies in five years, the burrito mecca took on its own advertising, including replacing wacky promotions with on-message marketing. For instance, "Boo-rito" giveaways for Halloween were replaced this year by a campaign to promote how truly scary other fast food is, with sales of discounted meals going to support Jamie Oliver's Food Revolution.

>08 / McDonald's
For changing the way we think about the most iconic restaurant in the world. With a $2.4 billion budget, McDonald's is launching its first total makeover campaign since the Carter administration, redoing at least 400 domestic outposts, refurbishing 1,600 restaurants abroad, and building another 1,000.

>09 / Bolthouse Farms
For its ambitions to double the $1 billion baby-carrot business by using junk food tactics. Jeff Dunn has tapped his past as a Coca-Cola exec to goose baby carrots from a flat industry to a hotly marketed snack food, from adrenaline-fueled ads (think: Mountain Dew) to snazzy grab-and-go bags (think: Doritos).

>10 / Max Burger
For being the first carbon-footprint fast-food chain. Calories printed on fast-food menus seems downright quaint compared with Max Burger, which is one of the first burger chains in the world to print the carbon emissions of each sandwich right alongside its cost.

The five top overall most innovative companies out of the 50 all except for one, auto-maker Nissan, come from the high-tech, Internet and social media spaces. The top five most-innovative companies in the world, according to Fast Company are:

(1) Apple, (2) Twitter, (3) Facebook, (4) Nissan and (5) Groupon. Google came in at number six.

You can view the entire list and details of Fast Company's 50 most innovative companies in the world here.

Innovative grocers

In our analysis, Trader Joe's, Whole Foods Market and Wegmans are currently the three most innovative food and grocery chains in the U.S. Close behind in our analysis is Texas-based H-E-B and the fast-growing natural foods chain Earth Fare, which is based in North Carolina. There are a number of other food retailers neck-to-neck in terms of innovation though. But key is looking at overall innovation, across everything a grocer does. That's our criteria.

If you expand that universe to the entire world, it makes picking a top three much more difficult. For example, United Kingdom-based Marks & Spencer, which Fast Company included as the 36th most innovative company for 2011, is one of the world's most innovative, as is fellow British grocery chain Waitrose, to name just two.

The global small-format, hard-discount chain Aldi, which is headquartered in Germany, has to be on any short list when it comes the world's most-innovative food and grocery retailers as well, in our analysis and opinion.

And Walmart is fast-moving up in terms of innovation because of its green, organic and health initiatives, its multi-format and multi-channel retailing strategy - huge stores, medium-sized stores and small-format stores, along with Walmart.com - along with a number of other initiatives.

In terms of picking one grocery chain, we really can't argue with Fast Company's choice of Trader Joe's, although if the magazine had chosen Whole Foods, which has been named by Fast Company in its ranking in the past, or Wegmans (and perhaps Aldi), we wouldn't put up much of a fight either, as we think all have very high levels of innovation.

But looking at performance - those amazing sales-per-square-foot numbers Trader Joe's turns in, for example - and profitability, if push came to shove and we had to pick one out of our top three, at this point in time we too would choose Trader Joe's. The grocer is not only innovating strongly but it's firing on all cylinders in everything it does (that overall crieteria we noted earlier), from operations and customer service to private brand development, merchandising and marketing.

Related Stories

March 15, 2011: There's Nothing Pie-in-the-Sky About Trader Joe's 'Elegantly Simple' Pie Recipe Contest

January 5, 2008: Learning From Trader Joe's: Setting the Bar High For Fresh & Easy

February 14, 2009: Bloggers-At-Large - Weekend Frolic: Video Blogger Spoofs Trader Joe's in YouTube Video Commercial Spot

January 15, 2009: Small-Format Food Retailing USA -Trader v. Trader: Gristedes Complies With Judge's Order; Covers Up 'Trader' Portion of its 'Trader John's' Store Sign and Small-Format Food Retailing USA: The Big Apple Won't Be A Two-Trader City: Judge Says No to Gristedes' 'Trader John's' 'Trader Joe's' Knockoff

November 14, 2008: Store Brands: Trader Joe's Long Private Label Products Journey - How Do Fresh & Easy's Store Brands Stack Up to Those Created & Sold By Trader Joe's?

November 10, 2008: Competitive Retailer Wine Category Report: First Person Singular - 'How I Sold 37 Bottles of Wine in 45 Minutes at Trader Joe's'

October 27, 2008: Southern California Market Report: Beverages & More to Join Trader Joe's and Fresh & Easy to Form Manhattan Beach Food and Beverage Retailing Triangle

June 6, 2008: Manhattan Beach First Look: Fresh & Easy Buzz Has First Photos of First New Fresh & Easy Grocery Store Set to Open After the Three Month Pause

July 22, 2008: Obituary: Innovative Trader Joe's Head Wine Buyer and Popularizer of Value Wines Robert Berning; 73

March 4, 2008: In Vino Veritas: Fresh & Easy Store Brand Wines Win Two Silvers and Lots of Bronze Medals; Trader Joe's 'Two-Buck Chuck' Chardonnay Wins a Double-Gold

July 9, 2008: In Vino Veritas: Fresh & Easy Announces 63 Wine Awards to Date; Will Face Off Again Against Wine Award Winning 'Big Kahuna' Trader Joe's at State Fair

September 22, 2008: Fresh & Easy Buzz Strategy Session: Trader Joe's and the Key to Enlightenment?

November 6, 2008: Serendipitous Marketing & Cooking With the Trader: Trader Joe's Hits A Marketing Home Run Without Doing A Thing

June 11, 2008: Vox Populi: Let The People Speak: Fresh & Easy Vs. Trader Joe's On QVC: The TV Shopping Channel's Online Food Forum...Not Actually On TV

March 11, 2008: Tesco's Fresh & Easy Surpasses Competing Phoenix, Arizona Area Small-Format Grocers in Total Store Count...But Not in Sales and Market Share

Walmart's UK ASDA Chain Wins 'Best National Retailer' At Tonight's World Food Awards in London.

Live Blogging: The World Food Awards

Walmart Stores, Inc.'s ASDA grocery and general merchandise chain just won the 'Best National Retailer' in the United Kingdom (UK) award at the 2010 World Food Awards, which is currently going on at the tony Hilton Park Lane Hotel in London.

ASDA defeated Tesco and Sainsbury's for the honor at the annual awards ceremony, which some people like to call the 'Oscars' of British and European food industries.

The awards ceremony focuses on "the best" ethnic (or world) foods available for sale in the United Kingdom and Europe, along with honoring what the judges determine is "the best" food retailer in the UK.

ASDA is the second-largest food and general merchandise retailer in the UK. Tesco is number one. Sainsbury's is the third-largest, just slightly behind ASDA in market share.

Tonight's event is being broadcast globally in over 100 countries by Sony Entertainment Television. In addition to the various awards presented by various celebrities, sports personalities and chefs, the awards ceremony includes performances by a host of musical artists.

In addition to the 'Best National Retailer Award' won by Walmart-owned ASDA, the award's ceremony includes numerous other categories, all focused on various aspects of food retailing, distribution and restaurants.

The categories are:

>Best Independent Retailer
>Best Wholesaler
>Best New Product
>Best Packaging
>Best Marketing Campaign
>Entrepreneur of the Year
>Best Catering Supplier
>Restaurant of the Year
>Lifetime Achievement

You can learn more about the World Food Awards at the website here.

For real time results of tonight's winners, check the World Food Awards' Twitter feed here.

Keep On Truckin' - Whole Foods Market Celebrates 30 Years This Weekend

Serendipity and Opportunity + Planning, Innovation and Hard Work = A Formula For Success For John Mackey and Whole Foods Market

Sometimes the light's all shinin' on me
Other times I can barely see
Lately it occurs to me
What a long, strange trip its been...

- Truckin' - The Grateful Dead (Listen to the song)

This weekend, Austin, Texas-based Whole Foods Market, Inc. is celebrating its 30th birthday. In a spirit similar to the lyrics above from the Grateful Dead song, Truckin', Whole Foods' 30-year journey has been a "strange trip," in the 1960's definition of the term. However, it hasn't been all that long. But in its fairly brief 30-year history, the grocer has achieved more, both quantitatively and qualitatively, than most food and grocery retailers do in a lifetime.

It was just 30-years ago, on September 20, 1980, when 25-year-old John Mackey, sporting bushy red hair and a matching mustache (see the link to the video below to see the young Mackey), and partner Renee Lawson Hardy, along with 19 store team members, opened the first Whole Foods store in Austin, Texas.

That first store wasn't even called Whole Foods Market. Instead, the name was 'Safer Way Natural Food Store,' a suggestion the market would be a "safer," alternative - as in offering healthier foods - the then, and still, giant supermarket chain with a similar name. That's pure Mackey. Iconoclastic from the start.
The first Whole Foods Market (banner) store, pictured above, came later, in 1981. (You can watch a video about the store here.)

Renee Lawson Hardy later left Whole Foods. But many others joined Mackey for his great adventure in natural, organic, healthy and upscale food and grocery retailing.

One of those who joined him, in 1989, is Walter Robb, who was named Whole Foods Market's co-CEO earlier this year.

The story of Robb's joining Whole Foods Market is worth telling, as it exemplifies the 'Serendipity and Opportunity + Planning, Innovation and Hard Work' formula, which in many ways sums up John Mackey's 30-year journey with Whole Foods, which next Wednesday will hit the 300 store mark. Those 300 stores are in 40 U.S. states. And in addition to the U.S., the natural/organic grocer, which now has $8 billion-plus in annual sales, has stores in Canada and the United Kingdom.

After owning his own small natural foods market, Mountain Marketplace, in Weaverville, in Northern California's north coast region for 10 years (1976-1986), then managing one of the two then popular (and now closed) Living Foods natural foods stores in Marin County for a couple years, Robb struck out on his own as an independent marketing and sales agent for various natural and organic foods companies in Northern California, where he lived. [Take a look at Walter Robb in the produce section of his Mountain Marketplace store.]

At the same time he acquired the lease on a plot of land in Marin County's Mill Valley. On the plot was a vacant metal Quonset Hut that was previously home to an independent butcher shop called Jerry's Meats. Robb's plan was to renovate the building and open his own natural foods store at the location.

But circumstances - and John Mackey - intervened. Mackey, chomping at the bit to expand Whole Foods Market further in Northern California, offered Walter Robb a deal: Sell the lease to Whole Foods, take charge of designing the store, and become its manager. Robb said yes. The store, the 14,000 square-foot Whole Foods unit on Miller Avenue in Mill Valley, opened in 1991, less than a year after construction started.

Robb went on to become the president of Whole Foods' Northern California region, a position he held for a number of years. He then was promoted by Mackey to a corporate executive position, then made Whole Foods Market's Co-president. Earlier this year Robb joined John Mackey as co-CEO. [See: Newly-Named Whole Foods Market CO-CEO Walter Robb Comes Full Circle With the Opening of the New Store in Mill Valley CA.]

This is classic Mackey. He saw an opportunity in Mill Valley - and in Walter Robb - who he was friendly with at the time, and brought him on board, getting Whole Foods' first store in Mill Valley as part of the deal. It was a deal good for both Whole Foods Market, John Mackey and Robb. The store on Miller Avenue has turned out to be among Whole Foods' top units in sales-per-square-foot. Robb turned out to be a good catch for Whole Foods. And Whole Foods has been very good to Robb.

Serendipity played a huge part as well. Had the stars been in a slightly different formation, Robb might have said no to Mackey, and opened the Mill Valley store as his own natural foods market. But opportunity, followed by planning and hard work, struck.

The corporate co-CEO arrangement has a history of being less than easy. That's one reason you don't see it often. But Mackey and Robb appear to work well together. Perhaps the history described above has a little to do with their good relationship.

The two co-CEO's, who balance each other well, were interviewed today by Austin, Texas television station KVUE for its evening newscast. You can view the two-minute video of the newscast piece here.

For its birthday celebration, Whole Foods has created a virtual shopping cart full of information about its first 30 years. At this link, you can view fact sheets, a photo album, which includes pictures of the 'Safer Way' store and the first Whole Foods Market banner store, videos and more, all charting John Mackey's and Whole Foods' grocery retailing journey over the last 30 years. We suggest looking through the materials. They're among the best we've seen a grocer produce for its birthday, be it a 30th or 100th anniversary.

Additionally, Whole Foods is holding a variety of special events and promotions for its 30th birthday this weekend. To see what's happening click here.

Fresh & Easy Buzz writes often about Whole Foods. You can read a selection of our stories here. (In an upcoming piece, we'll look at what the next 30 years might hold for Whole Foods Market.)

But our focus today, primarily, is to wish the innovative grocery chain - and founder and co-CEO John Mackey - a happy birthday.

Mackey, with Walter Robb now sharing the CEO duties, is still combining Serendipity and opportunity with planning, innovation and hard work. John Mackey also continues to speak out on various issues of the day, ranging from health care reform to labor unions and much more, from his Libertarian perspective

What's "in-store" next for Whole Foods Market? We'll let John Mackey tell you:

"We're going to do five wellness clubs where we're going to have intensive educational programs, a healthy dining club. Once you graduate from the club, you'll get a membership card that will give you discounts on produce and other really healthy items we sell."

Keep on Truckin'

The next 30 years should be very interesting for Whole Foods Market - and the grocery retailing business.

U.S. food and grocery retailing has been made better (and consumers have benefited too) - and far more interesting - having Whole Foods Market and John Mackey around for the last 30 years. May there be many more birthdays for the Whole Foods team.

A Celebrity Endorsement For New York Grocery Chain Wegmans That's as Good as Mom's Apple Pie

Late last week actor Alec Baldwin appeared on David Letterman's late night talk program, "The Late Show."

During Baldwin's spot on the show Letterman asked the popular actor about his mother, who recently celebrated her 80th birthday. Baldwin talked at length with Letterman about his mom, who lives in upstate New York.

In addition to detailing what he says are his mom's secrets to longevity, which are well worth hearing because they're not only funny but very politically incorrect in today's health and nutrition-conscious environment, Alec Baldwin told Letterman why, despite his encouragement, his 80-year old mom just won't leave the cold winters of upstate New York for sunny California, where two of his actor-brothers live.

Hint: Her reason for not leaving involves the upstate New York-based Wegmans grocery chain. It's a money can't buy celebrity endorsement for Wegmans.