SCHAUMBURG, Ill. -- There's a scene in the film A League of Their Own where Tom Hanks, as coach of an all-women's baseball team, tries to perk up a player—played by Geena Davis—who wants to quit. After Hanks asks Davis' character why she wants to leave the team, she explains, "It got to be too hard." Hanks' response: It's supposed to be hard. "It's the hard that makes it great."
That was the message retail food industry consultant Mike Sansolo brought to listeners of the opening general session at CSP's first annual Foodservice at Retail Expo (FARE) which brings more than 700 [image-nocss] attendees to the Renaissance Hotel & Convention Center in Schaumburg, Ill., for several days of educational sessions and a 154-booth trade show. Citing the tough economy, high gasoline prices and the housing crisis, among other calamities, Sansolo pointed out that "this is also the time when it gets hard, it gets great."
In fact, the ultimate challenge is to push for even higher levels of excellence during tough times.
Adding to today's difficult food retail environment are customers who are constantly juggling issues of family, money, time and personal satisfaction each time they walk into your store, Sansolo said. "The big challenge we have is to figure out what the balance is," noting that this changes for each shopper, occasion and retail venue.
At the same time, regardless of whether there is consensus among economists on whether the United States is in a genuine economic recession, consumer confidence has fallen into an emotional recession, weighed down not only by media coverage of turmoil in the financial markets but also crises in product quality, such as the recent, confusing Salmonella scare, which began with tomatoes, only to eventually drift to hot peppers. And this loss of confidence reflects on retailers as well.
"We have a big challenge with consumers; it means a big opportunity if we can figure out the new way of answering the question" of what these consumers truly want, Sansolo said.
The retailers who do figure out the solution truly grow. "Economic changes bring about changes in retail," he said. "We don't know how customers will react to tough times. But tough companies sometimes make hay."
As part of this path toward feeling out a solution, Sansolo urged attendees to talk with someone from a completely different age demographic or walk of life, whether employee, customer or peer. He cited the example of Generation Y, which has different aspirations and a different language from the baby boomer generation. Log on to Facebook, buy an iPod—and be a Simon Cowell (the brutally honest judge from the music reality show American Idol), telling employees who are from this age demographic the truth about every situation, in order to truly communicate to them.
Sansolo explored these points further in a panel discussion with three retail foodservice execs: Jack Cushman, executive vice president of foodservice with c-store chain Nice N Easy Grocery Shoppes; James Aulds, vice president of petroleum marketing with H-E-Butt Grocery Co.; and Dick Durham, vice president of operations for c-store wholesaler Stephenson Wholesale Co. Inc.
On the theme of learning from someone outside your sphere of business, Sansolo asked the panelists what recent moves by retailers in other channels impressed them. Durham pointed to supermarkets for showing consumers how to transform a home-prepared dinner into an eating experience.
Aulds, meanwhile, cited the innovation of Tesco's Fresh & Easy concept—and Wal-Mart's subsequent introduction of a downsized retail offering—as an example of meeting the need for convenience in a new way. And Cushman pointed to the move by McDonald's Corp. to grab coffee market share from Starbucks with its Premium blend, as well as tough competition from coffee chains such as Caribou Coffee, for raising the bar c-store retailers need to meet with their own coffee programs.
Indeed, that innovation focus was well capsulated in Cushman's final point to attendees. The c-store exec cited a 1960s study that examined how certain companies enabled strategic changes. "They found that every single company changed its structure to meet the mission," Cushman said. "Will your organizational structure enable change to happen, or just weigh it down?"
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