Chronicles of the New Giant: G.A.B.

What's this? Que es Esto?
In the Customer Service section of the new website: Something called the Grocery Advisory Board (G.A.B.) Panel.

From the site ...
As a G.A.B. member, you will periodically receive short, easy-to-complete surveys that will allow you to share your ideas and comments about your shopping experiences. You will also be able to give feedback on various programs and ideas and influence whether these ideas should be implemented in the Giant stores where you shop.

Sign me up.

In fact, I am already signed up. I signed up the instant I read this, a few weeks ago. It was a pretty damned long survey to sign up, but I made it through.

Now, let's see what happens. [So far, weeks later, nothing]

Chronicles of the New Giant: Produce and Bags

So, I have visited Rolling Giant in Springfield about 3 times in the past week.

They rearranged the whole store; I guess they wanted to wait till the proverbial smoke cleared from the logo rollout. When I went two days ago, all the signs were down. So no one had any idea at all where anything was. The store wasn't too busy, so it was easy enough to just wander down the aisles. Speaking of the aisles, they are shorter, both in height and length. Although they are tighter at the front of the store. None of this makes sense to me. It seems like there is less product because of this, and horrible jams are being caused up at the checkout lines when it is 'rush hour.' But they are still working on it, so let's see what happens.

The produce section has also been totally rearranged, with new fixtures and new lighting. Most of the produce is in baskets. The floor is half done; they are putting in wood-colored linoleum. It does soften the appearance of the store; less harsh. There are new lights, too. It makes for a better experience, but they don't look like fluorescents, so I think that all this new brightness is coming at an energy cost. Of course, if Giant is planning to jump on the solar bandwagon and put panels on their roof, they'd help to offset that. (I have no idea if they are planning to do this; I just know that companies are out there, like Recurrent Energy, that broker deals to do such things with large retailers)

Most important ... the produce looked good, which is a change. I sat there and thought for a good 5 minutes about whether or not the produce was actually better or just looked better due to the lights/fixtures, and I decided it WAS better. There were fewer rotten spots on the onions, the peaches weren't hard as frozen bricks, and they had some produce they rarely carry (like red cabbage). Some things seem odd to me, like limes being at the totally opposite end from lemons, but in general the change seems good.

I talked to my favorite cashier, whom I call "Mr. Smiley," and not surprisingly he loves the new uniforms. I talked to two others, and they weren't as enthusiastic.

I also want to mention that every time I've gone to Giant since the change, I haven't gotten any of the push-back or bad-attitude I used to get at bringing my own bags. So clearly, there was some training on the re-use of bags being a priority for them.

So, things are looking pretty good at that Giant. I haven't been to the other Springfield Giant (International Giant, as I call it) for over a week and I haven't been to the Alexandria Giant at all since the change. I'll need to do that soon, and report.

Consignment: It's not just for kids

I talked just a few days ago about how great consignment shops are for getting baby clothes. Now I've discovered that adult ones can be great, too. My friend Joanna took me to Encore! Consignment Boutique in Old Town Alexandria.

They specialize in 'upscale' women's clothing, meaning that you're still going to get better prices by shopping at places like Walmart. But if you want quality -- for work, for cocktail parties, etc. -- this place offers some great deals.

In the process of shopping here, I discovered an amazing brand, Made in the USA, called "Garfield & Marks". I've never worn a more comfortable suit, ever. The one at the consignment shop was too short for me, but I have sworn that I am going to buy a new 'killer black suit' in Garfield & Marks.

Joanna said we should go to Nordstrom's this fall, to shop for them, BUT I just looked at Nordstrom's site and the brand is no longer listed! And the site search shows 0 results! NOOOOOOO! And I can't find a website for them. NOOOOOOOOOOOOOO! Please tell me that they are OK; please tell me that they haven't been forced out of business by cheap imports. I'll keep investigating, and keep my fingers crossed.

Consignment, Baby!

For anyone having a baby, all I can say is this:
Find a good consignment shop near you, because it will save you 50% or more on your clothes and toys for baby.

I can't say enough good things about "Kids Again" in Northern Virginia; my friend Edwige pointed them out to me and I am in dept to her.

Example:
$13 Baby Einstein blocks for $3
$7 baby book for $2.50
$5 for a like-new bathing suit + matching hat, shorts, terry robe and hat.

Just amazing.

Chronicles of the New Giant: The uniforms are IN and the curved aisles are OUT

Update on the NEW Giant ...

The new uniforms are now in and being worn. They started to appear about a week ago, but I didn't write anything as I wanted time to be able to talk to multiple employees in multiple stores about them. The shirts are gold, and most everyone is wearing black aprons over them.

Here are some of the employee reactions I got when I commented that the new uniforms looked nice.

• One gal meandering down the aisle at International Giant in Springfield sort of smiled at me, but clearly thought I was crazy.
• One of the produce guys at International Giant in Springfield gave me a genuine smile back; he seemed pretty happy with them.
• One of the cashiers Rolling Springfield just sort of shrugged. As she was my captive audience until she finished ringing me up, I pressed her. I think that part of the issue was that English was probably a second language for her, but eventually it became clear to me that the black apron is the issue. At least for her, I think it was extremely uncomfortable, although she did admit it helped to keep her shirt nice and clean.
• Another cashier at Rolling Springfield 'liked the green better'

I have also noticed that the curved aisles leading into the registers are slowly becoming uncurved. I'm thinking that this was not a popular change.

Chronicles of the New Giant: Yellow!

There are 2 Giants in Springfield, VA, within 10 minutes of each other. I go to both; it just depends on where I am coming from and where I am going. I went to the one at Keene Mill and Rolling Road, tonight. (I call this one "Rolling Giant" as opposed to the other one closer to the Springfield Interchange, that I call "International Giant" as they stock a lot more spanish foods.)

Rolling Giant is much further along in their remodeling than the other one. They clearly had just taken everything down off the walls and repainted the whole top half of the store Blazing Yellow.

I love the color yellow, just LOVE it.
BUT
Even I have to admit ... that is a LOT of yellow in one place. I suspect that once the signs are back up it will be fine.

Right now: it is very yellow.

Another note: They didn't move as much inventory around as the other Giant did. The moves actually make no sense. At first, I thought that the stores were settling on one unified layout. But no, Baby items and coffee are still in radically different places between the 2 stores. I have no idea what the plan is. I guess we'll find out.

The NEW Giant: "You talk. We listen."

As all of my friends know, I have a love/hate relationship with Giant Foods. I want to love them. They are the closest grocery store to both work and home. But every time I go shopping there, I end up frustrated, with new reasons to hate them. I could fill up pages of rants, but I have generally held myself back as it seemed like it might be monotonous for non-Giant shoppers to read.

But with their parent company's -- Royal Ahold's -- rollout last week of new branding for Giant and Stop&Shop, and the new tagline, "You talk. We listen." prominently displayed on the front of their websites, the game is on.



I started by chatting informally with some of my friends at the Food Marketing Institute (FMI). They of course want all food-related retailers/wholesales to thrive, but like me have a vested interest in local chains like Giant that they themselves shop.

Apparently, Ahold is rebranding all US holdings the same way, to get some economies of scale. I see no issues with that. The more they save on marketing, the more they can invest in other more pressing needs. The new Giant logo is generating some decent buzz in Washington DC, and the rollout itself has been decently coordinated given the scale.

We all raced out the first day and first weekend of the announcement, to see the new stores. Here's the recap of what we found.

Let's start with the Good ...

• The new logo offers a lot of possibilities and the TV ads the ran the last week of the Beijing Olympics get a big thumbs up.
  
• The new logo was immediately on the registers and receipts. That was well coordinated.
  
• Apparently one store -- the main Landover one -- had the new signage on the outside. None of us expected that would be done at the same time. That is very hard to coordinate. [Heck, decades have passed in this area since American Telephone & Telegraph become C&P, which became Bell Atlantic, which become Verizon and some building STILL say American Telephone & Telegraph on them.]

Now let's move to the changes that can't totally be categorized as "good" at this point ...

• It appears that part of the long-term plan may be to get new carts. Great. But apparently some of the stores seem to have gotten rid of a bunch of their old cards BEFORE the new ones arrived. My friend Sue went to her local store the weekend of the change, early in the AM, when hardly anyone was in the store and could not get a cart. She said they just were gone; only a handful remained. A huge crowd was gathering, trying to get carts to go shopping. She asked a store employee what was going on, but this person just 'muttered incoherently' and so she left after 20 minutes and went to their competitor, Safeway.
  
• The point of sale area has changed. There is less 'crap' piled up around them, offering a better line of sight (Good). But the lines to the registers are also now curved. This is great if you are coming from the 'correct' direction, but really not so great if you're coming from the other way as those carts aren't known for their ability to 'turn on a dime,' so to speak.
  
• The aisles seem to have lower shelves. This is great if you are short, but this is definitely bad for breadth and quantity of inventory (see more on this topic, below).
  
• Some of the stores have been rearranged. They did change the signs in the aisles, and the changes are very obvious because the new parts of the sign don't quite match the old parts. (I doubt this was intentional, but it is helpful.) However, here is the problem, their big, new, useless 'Markety' signs block the vital 'What the heck is in this Aisle' signs. Perhaps this is on purpose, so you have to walk down every aisle, but let's hope not.
  
• The new low price tags on the shelves (I believe they are branding them as 'Real Deals'), give the impression that the item is on sale. But it is not. My friend Sue already witnessed one argument at checkout between a woman who felt that the item should be on sale and the poor clerk.
  
  
• Their new reusable bags are much more prominently placed and they seem to have renewed their commitment to this concept. However, the bags weren't in all stores on that first weekend, and that was poor planning. It is too bad that they don't seem to be made from recycled plastic (which is the newest trend), or if they are it is not advertised on the bag (which is a mistake). But I will give them credit for creating something quite unmistakably vivid.
  
• The new website is really attractive, although there were some technical load issues those first few days. One oversight; they are missing the coding to stop the 'old logo to new logo' movie from playing every single time you go to the home page. They need to add that.
  
• New uniforms are coming, but they weren't in stock the first day, at least at most of the stores. That's too bad; that would have made a big impact. We'll be waiting for those to appear.
  

In general, given the size of the task, we felt that the rollout went as well as to be expected. Here are the major gaps I'm worried about ...

The new opening message on the website is relatively surface:
With delicious prepared foods, savings on the things you need, and a fresh new look in our stores, we're working to make a difference in your lives every day. And we're just getting started.

The customer pledge shows more promise:
We pledge to make a difference in our customers' lives every day with great food, low prices, and friendly helpful service.

But neither one really makes me feel that Giant is aware of it two core issues*** and is taking action to correct them.

Core Issue #1: Category/Inventory Management and Quality of Merchandise

They must improve in this area. I could fill up pages with the issues I've had in these areas. Their garlic is ALWAYS rotten. Some weeks, they have 3 shelves of chicken stock, some weeks they have none. You have to get there before Noon on delivery day to get a Perdue Oven Roaster Chicken. Roll a die to find out if they have Kalamata olives on the day you are shopping.

Core Issue #2: Employee training, customer service and morale

I would estimate that at least 90% of the Giant employees with whom I have had any interaction with have a huge morale issue. They seemed resigned to their fate of sitting somewhere on the scale between hating the customer and just not caring. I could fill up pages with my rants on this, as well, but that is water under the bridge, right? This is NEW Giant. They are turning a new page. There will now be "friendly helpful service," right?

It's up to YOU, Giant!

Like I said earlier in my post, I want them to succeed. And I'll be following their progress. I've added a 'Giant' tag to my blog, and I'll be reporting on what happens in the coming weeks/months as the rollout continues. I'll be basing most of my observations on the stores in Alexandria and Springfield, Virginia, so stay tuned!

***Footnote: I want to put one big caveat on the two core issues. These might only be the core issues in the metro DC area. I visited the Giant near my parents, near Walkersville, Maryland, three months ago. That store was amazing. The staff were friendly and helpful. The store was big and well-stocked. The produce was amazing. I had to walk outside to confirm I was really in Giant.