Georgia Grown produce is featured in produce. Reynolds Foodliner has begun a conversion at its Oglethorpe store, its home store, but instead of tackling the project all at once, it will be done more piecemeal, Coogle says. The company’s other two stores, in Oglethorpe and McRae, are traditional grocery stores, he added. Like the Adel store, it has been “very successful,” Tom says. Its partner is True Value, so the store is referred to as Piggly Wiggly True Value. The company’s newest store-also a cost-plus format-is in Valdosta (open since June 2016), and it also features hardware. “The marriage of that has been cool because the industrial customer who comes in to get some nuts and bolts and plumbing supplies is now also stopping in and doing things like buying turkeys for their employees, picking up this or that, asking us to do a meal for them, that kind of thing. In addition to buying their building supplies, they often shop the grocery side as well. He adds that it’s a “real-deal hardware store” that does a lot of paint and plumbing business with contractors. Maybe we’re better hardware guys than we are grocery guys,” he jokes. “To date, and I hate to say it, I think our hardware side is more successful than the grocery side is in that town. Putting in hardware has “worked great people love the store,” he says. He had to put his foot down that he was not going to have two different systems, letting it be known that he was willing to walk away from the project if he was forced to do so. Reynolds is unusual in that it rings both grocery and hardware through the front end. Coogle says there were maybe 10 Ace Hardwares in grocery stores when they opened their store today there are about 125 Ace Hardware stores-within-the-grocery store locations. The company was one of the early adopters of the idea of putting a hardware store inside (or adjacent to) a grocery store. hardware space in and it has been phenomenal,” Coogle says. “We were struggling with that store and looking for another way to turn some sales, and we put an 8,000-s.f. They decided to put an Ace Hardware inside their Piggly Wiggly cost-plus store in Adel. The Hazlehurst store isn’t the only one where it has diversified its offerings to increase sales. Tom Coogle meets with staff in the Ace Hardware section. Reynolds Foodliner operates five stores in central and south Georgia-Adel, Oglethorpe, McRae and Valdosta in addition to Hazlehurst. He encourages them to allow technology into their stores it’s actually a good thing. They’re also on hot tables throughout the store.”ĭesign-wise, the store has new flooring as well as new lighting and other fixtures that reduce energy use, Tom says.īut, he acknowledges, “A lot of independents are still scared to put LED lights up and maybe put down a laminate floor to reduce your slip-and-falls or take action that some of the bigger guys take.” “So we’re doing a lot of cold-packing those items and getting them ready for grab-and-go to reheat. The store wants people to know “we have this for you at all times,” he said. The smoked meats are treated like regular inventory items instead of just for lunch or dinner. Large smokers are used to prepare a full range of smoked meat products and other custom items “that are on the smoker all the time,” Coogle said. The biggest expansion is in deli at the Piggly Wiggly Country Fresh, he said. We just couldn’t be more excited about that store and its future.” But 40? It really has blown the doors off of it. “You feel like, ‘hey, we’re going to go in and put these things in place and it’s really going to help the store, but we’re looking for 10, 12, 15 percent increases, which is a lot. “It amazed me I did not expect that kind of a jump,” Coogle says. What an achievement, and what a way to celebrate. So the year the Hazlehurst store was redesigned marked the company’s 40 years in business, and sales rose by 40 percent. We’re real excited about that.”Ĭoogle is VP of Reynolds Foodliner, a company based in Oglethorpe, Georgia, that his dad, Tommy, founded back in 1976 (Tommy is president). “We have had a tremendous amount of success in that store,” notes Tom Coogle. In 2016, Reynolds Foodliner celebrates the grand remodel of its store in Hazlehurst, Georgia. As part of the Country Fresh part of the name, the store features expanded fresh departments like meat, produce and deli/bakery. In 2016, Reynolds Foodliner converted its store in the southeast Georgia town of Hazlehurst to the Piggly Wiggly Country Fresh banner.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
Details
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |