Jewel Progressive Lunch — a report

I attended a blogger event sponsored by Jewel. All opinions in this post, however, are my own.

This past Thursday, I had the pleasure of attending a “Jewel Progressive Lunch” at three flagship area stores along with a number of other local bloggers. The highlight here, of course, was meeting “Bob” from the new Jewel “gotta love Lower Prices” commercials 😉 — and we also got to see a sneaky peek of the new commercial featuring Bob that will be airing soon. Hey Bob: You beat the pants off the creepy singing fruit, although my kids do miss them — they just don’t get enough Annoying Orange in their lives!

So what was this all about?

Click map to view larger!

We visited three area Jewels: Fulton River District, Evanston (Howard Street), and Lakeview, where we learned about Jewel’s “hyper-local” focus. Now this was very interesting: All three of these were gorgeous stores, and all three had obviously taken some pretty significant steps to cater to their local communities, most notably the Evanston store — more on them in a minute here, because they blew me away! Jewel also provided us with a specialty map (above — click to view bigger and more legibly)

Hyper-local focus

So the idea of a hyper-local focus is to respond to the needs and shopping patterns of the local community. The Fulton River District store we started at, for instance, serves a huge lunchtime crowd as well as a number of apartment buildings right across the way. (It’s also, incidentally, a “green” store — and has grass on the roof!)

So, they have a heavy focus on healthier convenience foods, and we heard from their local Chef’s Kitchen chef, Chef Doug (above left), who talked about starting cooking classes at the nearby apartments and about customized catering and other offerings. No, not all Chef’s Kitchens have their own chef — only five have a chef on site, and this again is part of the local focus and neighborhood needs.

Chef Doug also mixes things up and keeps a sense of fun, with offerings like the bacon & eggs pizza, above.

That crazy amazing Evanston store

Above, find Yakov, whose last name I completely missed because everyone just referred to him as Yaakov — so hope he doesn’t mind that here! Yakov spoke to us about the Evanston store, which is one of 10 flagship Kosher stores throughout SuperValu. This store serves over 3000 Orthodox families in the immediate area (who average 8-12 kids), but others drive from as far away as Milwaukee to take advantage of their offerings.

The experience here starts with a Kosher Chinese restaurant as soon as you walk in the door (and they also feature a nice selection of Kosher sushi at their deli), but that’s just the beginning.

This store maintains two separate bakeries — one Kosher, one regular — and two separate delis. What I found especially interesting about the Kosher bakery section is that it’s entirely Kosher Parve, which means its products are all both meat and dairy-free. This makes these products a great choice for those with dairy allergies or lactose intolerance, as well as for those who keep Kosher.

This idea of serving multiple communities with these Kosher products was repeated several times. For instance, the bakery imports Kosher for Passover products around the holiday each year — and those made without matzo meal tend to be gluten free, so their gluten free customers stock up heavily each spring.

Other customers, even if they don’t keep Kosher, sometimes invest in Kosher meats due to the perception that they’re processed better and healthier — Yakov told us that no Kosher meats, for instance, have ever been recalled for e. coli.

This Jewel’s Kosher wine section was about the size of the entire wine section at my Jewel, and they had two lengthy aisles of Kosher foods, in addition to the bakery, deli, meats and fish sections.

The Lakeview store

Then we visited the Lakeview store — which has two stories! Their (extensive) liquor department is basically up in a loft.

Here, we also tasted seasoned steak and learned that the Butcher Block will season the meats you buy there with these “Amazing Taste” seasonings at no extra charge, if you want to go from the store straight to the grill. (We didn’t have as much time in this store, since we were running late due to the lovely Chicago traffic!)

We did, however, sample wines and some lovely cheeses in that upstairs liquor department, including an apricot stuffed Brie, and chatted about the fact that this department was one of the first and largest gotta love lower prices initiatives — and heard that they’re the “number one liquor store in Chicago.”

Let’s expand this, Jewel

To be honest, I don’t see a lot of evidence of this “hyper-local” focus in my own local stores. I shop at several Jewels, since I’m kind of surrounded by Jewel here, but the one I visit most often is the Lombard store. Lombard has a fairly small produce section, a fairly small ethnic foods section, and no Halal meats. Before they built the new Pete’s Market nearby, Ultra Foods right down the street pulled a lot of customers away from Jewel with a focus on produce and ethnic foods, both in-store and in their ads. Pete’s, however, really did their market research and draws in customers from all around for things like Halal meats, a vast selection of ethnic foods, and a produce section that’s probably four times the size of Jewel’s.

I understand space limitations in an older store, but even with their recent remodeling, the mix of products at my local Jewel hasn’t significantly changed. More responsiveness to the needs and shopping patterns of the local community would have made it harder for a new store to pull customers away. The flagship stores: Beautiful, and bustling. However, I’d really love to see these principles implemented more heavily chain-wide.

Notes from the Jewel President

We also heard from Jewel-Osco president Brian Huff, who spoke a bit about Jewel’s history — which I found fascinating! Jewel began 113 years ago in 1899 as the Jewel Tea Company, delivering coffee and tea to customers’ homes in horse-drawn carriages, and began their retail store business in Chicago in 1932. In 1961, they merged with Osco Pharmacy, and pharmacy is now their second-largest sales department (after grocery). Jewel now operates 180 stores, serves around three million customers a week, and employs 30,000 mostly-union workers. They’re one of the largest employers in the state of Illinois — which is another reason to hope that parent company SuperValu’s new initiatives turn things around, right?

Mr. Huff also discussed the fact that Jewel-Osco is the largest supporter of the Illinois Food Bank, and that they’ll have donation bins in stores again this month for Hunger Action Month, as well as the opportunity to “round up” your purchase to the next dollar at the register as an easy way to donate. (We heard more about this at our third stop, where we found that they donate a lot of food items that are just past their expiration date — they can’t sell them, but they’re still safe to consume and shouldn’t go to waste. They also donate a number of holiday meals each year.)

Lastly, I asked him about the reasoning behind the partnership with Shell for Fuel Rewards, since I know that some of you have expressed concerns about prices at your local stations. His response was twofold: Due to the number of stations in the Chicagoland area, Shell serves most of their customers, and they already partner with Shell in other markets so the infrastructure was already in place.

You said lunch, what about the food?

This was a progressive lunch event, so we had a bit of food at each store — which largely featured Jewel house brand products, and of course started off with Culinary Circle pizza and Farm Stand veggies.

Highlights at the Evanston store included both fried and grilled chicken — they said all stores should have grilled chicken available, so I’m going to check mine, because it was darn tasty.

Lastly, dessert included triple-whip strawberry cake as well as Stone Ridge Creamery ice cream, with a choice of their new salted caramel (yum!) and seasonal strawberry lemonade flavors.

Overall

This was a fascinating experience, and I appreciated the opportunity to learn more about Jewel’s history and business decisions. I know that some of you have expressed concerns about whether “gotta love Lower Prices” is a long-term commitment or another gimmick, and my sense both this week and at the national SuperValu event the past June is that they’re very committed to making this a permanent change.

I would also love to hear what you guys think about the idea of “hyper-local” focus, and whether you see evidence of this in your own stores.