LCD in Aisle Three
CHARLOTTE, N.C. --Matthew Allan and Briony Morris used a hand-held bar-code scanner to add glasses and towels to their wedding registry, but they'd never seen one in a supermarket before pulling into the Bloom off W. T. Harris Boulevard here.
"This is a really cool idea," says Morris, who points the white-and-blue scanner at a bottle of merlot, pulls the trigger, and reads the LCD screen. "The total now is $19.86," she tells her fiance as she places the wine in one of the brown-paper bags in their double-decker shopping cart. She does the same with a package of chicken, then some frozen vegetables. By the time they reach the checkout, all that's left to do is pay.
The scanners are one way Bloom hopes to improve grocery shopping. Touch screens scattered around the store guide you to the raisins or the gravy mix, and a machine in the meat department will scan any cut from the refrigerated case and suggest a half-dozen ways to prepare it. Bloom isn't the only company betting that the supermarket of the future will be shaped, or even transformed, by advances in technology. Some Piggly Wiggly stores have introduced biometrics at checkout; a sensor can recognize a regular customer's fingerprint, which releases payment from a bank account or credit card. Online delivery, one of the notable failures of the dot-com era, is finally catching on, and an entrepreneur in the Southwest is developing a drive-through superstore where everything from groceries to dry cleaning can be ordered from a computer beside your car.
No elves. But many of the ideas at Bloom, generated in response to common customer complaints, are distinctly low-tech. Attached to each shopping cart is a map with the store layout, which is supposed to be intuitive; bacon, cereal, and yogurt in a breakfast aisle, pasta grouped by shape, not brand. Aisles are wide and free of clutter. "You won't see a Keebler display with Ernie the Elf jutting into the aisle," says Matt Nereim, Bloom district manager. Nereim leaves out business cards and responds to customer E-mail; other employees wear eye-catching chartreuse shirts and are encouraged to get to know shoppers.
At the front, Bloom has Table Top Circle, a zone with staples (bread, milk, Cool Whip) and various dinner options: frozen pizza, hot roasted chickens, and a case stocked with the ingredients for the Recipe of the Week. With a dedicated Table Top cashier and 20-minute parking spots by the front door, Bloom wants customers to come in for a quick midweek shop, even think of the place as a convenience store.
Why did Food Lion, which has over 1,200 stores at busy intersections from Pennsylvania to Florida, open five Bloom stores in and around Charlotte last year? Warehouse clubs, supercenters, dollar stores, and drugstores that sell food are eating into supermarket business. Whole Foods, built around the idea of natural foods and a healthy lifestyle, is also taking customers from the traditional supermarket, as are gourmet stores, natural-food outlets, and farmers' markets. In 1995, Americans bought 85 percent of their groceries at a supermarket; that share fell to 72 percent by 2002, the year Food Lion's president gave the team that came up with Bloom its marching orders. "He didn't say Wal-Mart, but he might as well have," says Susie McIntosh-Hinson, who is responsible for Bloom's information technology.
On a recent Saturday afternoon in Mooresville, 20 miles north of Charlotte, the grocery aisles at the Wal-Mart Supercenter and SuperTarget were bustling. Down the road at Bloom, which is neither outsized nor upscale, there was only a trickle of business, and all the hand-held scanners were docked in the charging station.
Even with a greeter at Bloom explaining how the scanners work, most people went about their shopping as they usually do. Of course, it can take a while to teach shoppers new habits; in the 1930s, Sylvan Goldman, credited as the inventor of the shopping cart, had to hire shills to push them around his Oklahoma City market until his customers got comfortable with the notion.
But the scanner has won some converts. Maxine Gaston, who shops weekly at Bloom, says, "It helps your budget. I don't go over, no matter what it is." And Morris, who is visiting from Florida, wishes her supermarket back home had the self-scan-and-bag option: "I hate it when people put my meat in with my tomatoes."
Reinventing The Grocery Store
In the high-tech experimental "Bloom" grocery store, customers obtain a personal ID, grab a hand-held scanner and some bags, and go to it. The scanner keeps a tally as the shopper selects, scans, and bags the groceries. Along the way, kiosks answer questions and offer extra information. At checkout, a final, single scan completes the sale.
SMART SCALES
Self-serve produce scales automatically give the price.
MEAT AND WINE KIOSKS
Suffering from chef's block? Scan the bar code on your selected meat. The kiosk displays recipes and cooking instructions, suggests foods to go with your wine, and offers party planning tips. Print your information right there.
PHARMACY
Drop off your prescription when you arrive. When it's ready, the pharmacist sends a message to your scanner.
HAND-HELD SCANNER
This bar code scanner keeps a running tab of your items. Customers bag as they go. Scanning an "end of trip" bar code wirelessly sends the total to a check out station, where you pay. Random grocery checks aim to curtail cheaters.
INFORMATION STATION
Here customers may check prices and locate items, which are displayed on a store map.
[labels]
Information stations
Produce scales
Meat kiosk
Wine kiosk
Personal scanner station
DELI & BAKERY
MEATS
GROCERY ISLES [4 labels]
Graphic by Rob Cady-- USN&WR
This story appears in the August 15, 2005 print edition of U.S. News & World Report.