Laurel Grocery Co. is continually developing new merchandising and marketing programs for its retail customers as part of its commitment to always “think retail.”
Based in London, Kentucky, Laurel Grocery Co. is a full-service wholesaler of groceries, meat, produce and general merchandise in addition to offering accounting and advertising services. It serves more than 200 stores in Kentucky, Ohio, Tennessee, Indiana, Georgia, West Virginia and Pennsylvania, with the greatest concentration in Kentucky and Ohio, according to Jake Jennings, VP of marketing, advertising and customer communication.
Jennings, who has been with Laurel Grocery Co. for 16 years, was promoted in June to his current role. Previously serving as senior director of marketing and advertising, he added responsibility for all communication to Laurel retailers and the coordination of marketing programs, tags and signage.
Recent marketing efforts are touching several departments around the store. These are designed to boost sales for the grocers, who continue to work to bring sales back to where they were in 2020-21 when the government was providing extra SNAP benefits and other subsidies due to COVID-19.
“There were a lot of extra EBT dollars distributed in the state over the course of the pandemic and even the year or two following, and stores have wrestled with sales basically going back to normal,” he said. “They are trying to recapture those sales.”
While some of the larger grocers in the market are being aggressive with the prices in their ads, Jennings said Laurel is looking to offer long-term value pricing as opposed to a high-low ad approach.
Laurel continues to see “cost increases in select categories” from vendors, but with the right performance level, vendors are willing to invest in promotions that show great value to consumers, Jennings said.
A vendor might approach Laurel with an opportunity, but the wholesaler doesn’t sit back and wait for those; it is proactive in developing deals with suppliers.
“Laurel has largely been tapping into kind of ‘deconstructing’ each department and developing programs for stores that help them drive additional sales,” said Jennings.
Wall to wall value
One promotional program is for center store. It involves a roster of about 1,500 items on temporary price reductions. “We are making those deals available to our customers to share with their shoppers. Our senior category managers went to the vendors and pressed for better deals based on performance,” Jennings said.
Laurel created signage and shelf pop-outs to draw attention to the TPR. 
The program includes more than 1,500 items. Pop-outs and tags draw attention to the items in the store.
In the bakery, Laurel has “put an emphasis on creating incremental sales by reassessing our variety in the bakery’s ‘on sale’ section and going back to vendors and working for better costing,” he said. “We’ve developed signage that they can use for their displays, focused on common price points. Retailers can make a table display with those items grouped together if they have the space in their store.”
Similarly, Laurel is working on a produce program “to really give a great value image in the produce department,” he said.
In the meat department, as prices have continued to rise for many cuts of meat, especially beef, Laurel has shifted its focus to total pack price rather than price per pound. Many shoppers still want meat at the center of their dinner plate but need it to fit within their budgets that have been impacted by inflation and the reduction in benefits, in some cases.
“What we found is a focus on a lower price point for a package shows value, whether it’s a package of hot dogs or bologna – the smoked meats – but also, depending on meat market pricing, it could be a certain number of burgers or pork chops at a set price point,” Jennings said.
“We’ve really tapped into the price per package being prioritized over the price per pound in the meat department.”
If a shopper decides to buy a cut of meat that he or she is not as familiar with and would feel more comfortable with a little instruction on how to prepare it, Laurel is working on a recipe program for its retailers.
[RELATED: Laurel Grocery Named Wholesaler Of The Year, Celebrates Anniversary]
Useful tech
Retail communication with shoppers continues to be more digital than physical these days, Jennings noted.
“We still are seeing a tremendous shift to digital marketing from traditional methods of marketing, print and otherwise,” he said. “Some areas are quicker adopters than others, but we see a heavy emphasis on digital – the success of digital ads and Facebook marketing. We continue to support programs for our retailers in those two areas as well.”
Last year, Laurel began a partnership with AppCard to offer grocers the opportunity to have a shopper loyalty program, and several stores are in the process of onboarding it to enable digital coupons, rewards points, digital punch cards, etc., for shoppers, he said.
“We recognize the importance of loyalty and how technology can support customer loyalty.”
Some stores also will use AppCard to streamline the process of integrating fuel rewards, tobacco rebates and other programs into their loyalty programs.
“For the stores of ours that would participate in the program, it really gives them essentially all the capabilities and maybe even some more than what is being offered by competitors like Kroger or Giant Eagle and even other independents who have different programs. We feel like AppCard is really leading the charge for independents in that regard,” Jennings said.
Growth across groups
Laurel Grocery Co. is “all in” with IGA, said Jennings. Company President David Pearson serves on the IGA Executive Board and Kip Faulhaber, SVP of marketing and merchandising, is a member of IGA’s national retail advisory board.
Within the advisory board, Laurel is part of a subgroup that is starting to explore electronic shelf tags for IGA retailers.
“We are going to help IGA investigate all the options that are available to independents with regard to electronic shelf tags,” Jennings said. “There hasn’t been high demand with our retailers at this point, but we’re wanting to do our due diligence on the research side to see what options are out there – the pros and cons, how realistic it is, what the return on investment is.”
While Laurel is a strong proponent of IGA, the company also is fully committed to serving its retailers that operate under any other banner.
“We put a heavy emphasis on IGA and we make sure that our IGA customers are taken care of, but at the same time we make sure that we have equivalent offerings wherever possible for our stores who are not IGA,” Jennings said. “We do see IGA growing, but the stores in the sector of our business that is not IGA are growing as well.”
Whatever the banner, “the ‘think retail’ philosophy that we have is basically saying if our stores are successful, if our stores are selling product, then Laurel doesn’t have to worry about our success. If our stores are successful, we will be successful. Our No. 1 emphasis is on thinking like a retailer and developing programs and offerings that help them succeed.”
Keeping everyone in loop
Jennings is responsible for communications with Laurel’s retailer customers, and the goal is to make sure they are always aware of new products, programs, prices – everything they need to run their businesses day in and day out.
“Laurel has always prided ourselves on excellent customer service, excellent customer communication, and in some ways we probably overcommunicate,” Jennings said with a laugh. “They may say, ‘I received too many emails today.’ But we always try to keep retailers in the loop on price changes, new items and the like. I like to think we do a great job of that for our retailers, so hopefully they would say the same.”
