Leigh Chase has been with Maine-based grocery store chain Hannaford supermarkets for 29 years. She began her corporate career as a retail operations support specialist, which led her into meat and seafood merchandising, and then to her current position as seafood category manager, where she is responsible “for delivering Hannaford’s strategy by focusing on fresh, local, healthy, priced right and great service.”
In this exclusive interview with IntraFish, Chase explains what seafood suppliers have to do to get contracts to supply her company’s 181 stores in the northeastern United States.
Lent is just around the corner. What are your expectations?
We expect to have a strong Lent season and carry our positive momentum into March and April. We have constructed a strong item rotation in our weekly sales flyer at great price points that will certainly drive traffic into our stores. We will also look to leverage some spot buys for additional seafood offerings during the Lent season.
How important is Lent to your seafood sales?
The Lent selling season is extremely important for seafood performance, much like the other major holidays such as Christmas, New Years, Valentine’s day. The reason for the emphasis put on the entire seafood portfolio is that people are giving up meat for Lent.
For example, if you compare it to Valentine’s Day when the emphasis is focused on a few specific items that spike (lobster and oysters, for example), Lent encompasses a focus on the entire portfolio, making is extremely important that we have the availability on key items and they are priced right.
Lent is also important for sales performance due to the duration of the religious holiday. This provides retailers such as Hannaford the opportunity to highlight and promote its strong seafood portfolio for an extended period time. It also allows us more storytelling opportunities, as we typically receive more marketing support to highlight our sustainable seafood story.
Which seafood items will you feature this year?
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We will be featuring an array of items within our portfolio for the Lenten season. The main emphasis will be placed on the more relevant species to our New England consumers, such as haddock, cod, salmon and scallops that are sold from the seafood service bulk case. We also feature the same items in our grab-and-go assortment, which is the same fresh seafood from the bulk case, just packaged in-store for customer convenience.
Additionally, we will also look to highlight other items from the fresh and frozen side case, such as our variety of smoked salmon, private-label frozen finfish and private-label shrimp portfolio.
Roughly how much seafood do you buy annually?
We annually procure approximately 14.9 million pounds of seafood.
How has the sustainable seafood movement changed your seafood purchasing and marketing decisions?
As consumers become more aware and mindful of where their food is sourced, it is critical to have policies in place that assure our consumers that their purchases from the seafood department come from a responsibly harvested source. It’s imperative to be on the forefront of sustainability and continue to partner with suppliers and science-based, third parties who share the same ethics and passions and will place emphasis on best practice and continuous improvement to ensure that we have seafood for future generations. It’s important for us to have full supply chain transparency and traceability that will allow us to have credibility with our consumers.
We ensure that the seafood products sold throughout our stores are harvested in a sustainable manner. This means that seafood is fished or farmed in a way that it will be around for generations to come. We only sell seafood from fisheries and farms that are managed by competent authorized authorities that use a science-based approach to their management plans.
In addition, Hannaford has partnered with well-respected third parties such as the Gulf of Maine Research Institute and the Global Aquaculture Alliance to ensure policy transparency. We require all seafood suppliers to provide traceability back to the fishery for wild caught species, and back to the farm for farmed species, for all of the products we sell. This practice ensures that our products are harvested from sources that we approve.
We take pride in marketing our sustainability efforts and put emphasis on educating customers. This past summer we launched an updated in-store signage package that speaks to our sustainability efforts (above). We will continue to make information available to customers in publications, at the point of sale, and online that empowers them with the information needed to make responsible and informed purchasing decisions.
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Which are your top 5 selling seafood, and are you seeing any changes?
Our top selling seafoods are the New England staples, which include salmon, haddock, cod, lobster and scallops. We are not seeing any significant changes within our top species, however, we are seeing some buying patterns that are changing. Consumers want sustainability and they want traceability.
Which leads me into another pattern we see continually gain momentum year to year. Located in the New England footprint, the Gulf of Maine is our backyard and consumers desire locally-sourced seafood. They want to support the local fisherman and communities they live in. We continually see 7-10 percent year-over-year growth with our local [seafood] assortment, which we are continually looking to support and expand upon.
“Hannaford is seeing 7-10 percent year-over-year growth for locally-sourced seafood”
What attributes make a great seafood supplier?
Some attributes that make a great seafood supplier are suppliers that share the same passion and have the same commitment to seafood sustainability. Other attributes are commitment to reducing environmental impacts, commitment to social welfare and food safety. These are all important pillars that make up our seafood sourcing policy.
Which seafood suppliers do you most depend on and why?
We depend only on suppliers who share our ethics, best practices and beliefs as Hannaford.
What is the potential for greater seafood sales?
At Hannaford, regarding seafood, I believe we have two big opportunities for greater sales:
1) Local seafood: There is opportunity for more local processing, which would help us leverage and build sustainable programs for underutilized species from the Gulf of Maine. As we continue to see local items grow year-over-year this provides great potential for increasing seafood sales and has a positive impact on the people and communities across our footprint.
2) Customer education- I believe there lays great opportunity for more seafood sales by way of customer education. Seafood is one of the cleanest sources of protein and has many additional health benefits, yet many consumers shy aware from the seafood department due to lack of knowledge on how to prepare. If we can better educate our consumers on preparation paired with the many health benefits I believe we can grow sales across the department.
Please finish this sentence: Selling more seafood to consumers requires …
… a commitment to telling the story behind the sustainable seafood we source every day.
What could the seafood industry do better?
We would love to see more marketing support for seafood industry, similar to the pork and beef councils. Many suppliers do not have marketing funds and they rely on retail and foodservice to tell the story. If we all told our stories that educated our consumers about best practices, we would have a much stronger impact. Consumers want the story and this is a great way to establish trust with our consumers.
What do you think is the secret to getting consumers to eat more seafood?
Speaking to local offerings and customer education. However, I would add that price is a component in getting consumers to eat more seafood. As we look to push greater seafood sales we need to be cautious of other protein commodities in the rest of the store. We will always retain the customer that purchases seafood week to week, however, getting incremental sales from consumers in the beef/pork/poultry case is challenging. Per pound, seafood typically exceeds other key commodities, making the decision to purchase seafood a trade-off for other items in the basket. This circles me back to the importance of messaging all the benefits of seafood to our consumers … locally sourced, sustainable and health benefits.