General Manager John Crane and Produce Manager Ryan Ference were not satisfied with the state of affairs in their produce department at Portland Food Co-op (Portland, Maine). After witnessing double-digit sales increases in produce for many years, growth began to taper in the wake of the pandemic, settling at 2.7% in 2023. While by no means anemic growth, the Portland team wanted to get back to a solid sales trajectory.
Beginning in November 2023, Crane decided to enlist the help of NCG Retail Programming Manager Josh Crone to see what could be done to reinvigorate sales. After a brief assessment it was agreed that a full remake of the department was in order. Ference and Crane worked together to come up with the best vision for the department — one that would serve a threefold strategy:
- Highlight Maine’s bountiful local produce
- Enhance food safety by way of anodized aluminum case inserts and NSF-listed refrigerated dry fixtures
- Modernize and upfit the overall merchandising of the department to facilitate robust promotional sales activity with a focus on seasonal and local offerings
A merchandising plan was created by NCG and proposed to the co-op. After a bit of fine tuning and feedback from co-op staff, a final schematic was adopted. Merchandising accessories were sourced from Carlson AirFlo and JSI Store Fixtures, both industry-leading produce fixture companies, by way of UNFI. After a few months’ time, all equipment was received onsite, and the transformation was scheduled.
NCG’s staff proceeded to work with co-op staff to deploy the equipment and remerchandise department offerings just in time for summer stone fruit and Maine’s local produce bounty. Once completed, Crane said that Portland Food Co-op’s total store sales were up 19%, and the produce department saw 35% sales growth on average in the weeks following the project’s completion, with one week at 40% growth! That’s in addition to the 10% total store sales growth in the first quarter of 2024. While these results can’t be guaranteed with every upfit project, they nonetheless serve as a testimony to what can be achieved with hard work and a commitment to invest in the produce department.
Produce Manager Ryan Ference provided the following feedback on the project:
“From start to finish, Josh [Crone] has been an excellent partner on our full produce department redesign and equipment update. When we reached out for some help, he followed up with a plan that included examples and links to what he was thinking and gave us some really good suggestions on other things we were overlooking. He had an almost instant plan that we loved. From there he communicated clear steps forward while working with us to get everything ordered up.
When the time came for installation, we had the entire department looking brand new before our customers had a chance to see it happening, but they sure did notice the change right away! The only thing more exciting than the customers’ very positive reactions are the booming sales over the last few weeks, even reaching 40% growth in sales for a week over the previous years. I couldn’t be happier with our results, and I am looking forward to working with or running into Josh around NCG gatherings.”
Involvement together is the key to success. Please take a moment to consider asking the NCG produce team to help reinvigorate, modernize and upfit your produce department so that your co-op can grow and continue to delight the community.
