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ZEITGEIST
Supermarket Shakeup
The grocery industry in Westchester is undergoing dramatic change.
BJy Elaine Pofeldt
udy Shampanier finds herself doing more and more of her grocery shopping at DeCicco & Sons in Pelham these days. “The selection is decent; the produce is good; the service is beyond!”
says the attorney from Pelham. Each time Shampanier has made a special request—whether for Amy’s frozen vegetarian burritos, King Arthur flour, or Ghirardelli chocolate chips, the store has added her selections to its shelves within days. DeCicco’s even signed up a new distributor, to get the brand of cookies-and-cream ice cream Shampanier’s daughter wanted.
Shampanier sometimes hits Whole Foods, Trader Joe’s, and Fairway for specific items, but as DeCicco’s expands its selection, it keeps pull- ing her back. Still, she’s happy for the wealth of grocery options in Westchester. “There is a tremendous amount of competition, which is good,” she notes.
Competition is an understatement for what is happening in Westchester County’s grocery scene—a micro- cosm of trends sweeping the country.
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the former Croton-on-Hudson A&P, while ownership of the Millwood store was still up in the air as of presstime.
Spotlight on Specialty Stores
But supermarkets increasingly must try to pry customers’ attention from specialty stores such as Whole Foods and Trader Joe’s—America’s favorite grocery store for the third year in a row, according to an May 2015 survey by Market Force Information, a customer- intelligence firm in Louisville, Colo.— along with a host of local specialty markets like DeCicco’s. Both Whole Foods and Trader Joe’s each run three stores in the county, and Whole Foods plans to open a fourth, in Chappaqua, in 2017. That has set the bar high for competing local players, such as Stew Leonard’s and Mrs. Green’s, which closed a 20,000-square-foot store that sold organic, natural, and local foods in Hartsdale in November 2015. Mrs. Green’s has been in the midst of rede- signing its stores to highlight its natural fare and improve the customer experi- ence, a project that has included its Rye location. Also planned are a new Mrs. Green’s in Dobbs Ferry for 2016 and fresh looks for the 14 other area stores.
People of all income levels are also gravitating to higher-end groceries, according to Jeff Cohen, CPA, part- ner at accounting firm Grassi & Co., who works with clients in the food- and-beverage industry. During the Great Recession, American consum- ers cut back on restaurant-going and began embracing home cooking, he says—something which boosted the amount of supermarket and specialty shopping among consumers.
Even with the economy doing bet- ter, that trend has continued. “If peo- ple are on a budget, they may go to a Stop & Shop or a club store like BJs,” explains Cohen. “But a lot of people who are no longer spending $150 to $200 to go out to dinner on Friday have no problem spending an extra $75 on high-quality imported food. That’s the big change in the food industry.”
The foodie trend, promoted ev- erywhere from the Food Network to friends’ Facebook pages, has also stoked interest in better quality grocer- ies among shoppers at all income levels.
“Shoppers are sharing recipes via the Internet, Pinterest, and social me- dia,” says Joe DeCicco Jr., who runs DeCicco & Sons, a group of six stores from relatives of the owners of DeCicco
“It’s extremely competitive in every area, not just Westchester,” says Jim Keenoy, director of marketing and external communications at Stop & Shop New York Metro.
With profits down for traditional grocery stores nationwide, some big chains are trying to expand their footprint, especially into commu- nities where other stores are doing well. In the wake of A&P’s bank- ruptcy, for instance, Stop & Shop, which now operates 14 stores in Westchester, acquired a former A&P in Mount Kisco and opened it in November 2015. Meanwhile, ACME Markets, a subsidiary of Albertson’s, announced in October 2015 it was going to purchase 16 stores owned by A&P in Westchester. Two months later, however, ACME pulled out of buying four stores (Yonkers, Millwood, Bedford, and Croton-on-Hudson), which meant the stores were headed for auction. Since then, Key Food bid success- fully for A&P’s Port Chester store and the Food Emporium in Bedford, and Best Yet Market bought an A&P in Yonkers. Foodtown now operates
“Our main
strategy is
to customize
the offerings,
where possible,
to the local
neighborhoods—
and promoting
our natural and
organiclines.”
—Jim Keenoy, Stop & Shop New York Metro
Supermarkets like Stop & Shop, with 14 locations in Westchester, face stiff competition from specialty stores.