Great Seafood Sells…
Great Seafood Sells - More than you might think
As the economy has gotten tougher and customers have looked to increase their buying power, seafood has become challenged to compete with other lower priced proteins in stores. Consequently, seafood has seen smaller increases in sales than any other proteins over the last 12 months. Consumers have transferred their food dollars from restaurants to the grocery store. In response to this and the need to work on tighter margins, retailers have been reviewing the viability of maintaining fresh seafood departments in every store. In some cases, based on the ROI per square foot, retailers have decided not to keep a service department and convert solely to a self-serve case. But, purely looking at ROI does not tell the whole story. It does not provide the complete impact that a fresh seafood case can have on sales dollars and profits that a store generates.
One chain in particular discovered that the fresh seafood service case has a broad reaching impact on every department in the store. After removing a number of service cases, they found that store sales were suffering in most of the other departments. They noticed that a number of higher ticket items were showing softness in sales and that the average order size per customer was declining. Upon further inspection, it was determined that the withdrawal of the service seafood case drove customers to purchase their groceries elsewhere. These same customers tended to create more culinary experiences and drove the sales of many of the higher priced and potentially higher margin vegetable, dairy, grocery and meat items. Where the average consumer might have spent $75.00 per visit, the average service seafood case consumer would spend $125 per visit. Although the seafood department may represent only 2-3% of total sales in retail - the truth is that it has a greater impact on the success of the store. The results would lead one to believe that by effective merchandising of fresh seafood, highlighting its health and convenience benefits, and the cross merchandising of products, the percentage of customers who frequent the seafood case increases. This also generates a new contingent of customers who are interested in creating a culinary experience, not just a meal.