Toward the end of October, I took a 1,426-mile driving trip to visit retail clients in Arizona and California. During my trek, I saw a variety of supermarkets whether they were of a client, their competition, or just a common grocery store while passing through a lonely desert town.

Prior to visiting a retail client, I normally like to check out their competition first. This allows me to observe anything and everything they are doing to draw customers into their stores. No two supermarkets operate with the same programs.

There is more to checking competition other than prices. Generally, each has its own unique layouts, décor, fixtures, product, advertising and merchandising. If you don’t examine all that, then they can have an upper hand on your own operation.

With so many closed and boarded up retail stores in shopping areas these days, all the remaining stores that are open really need to be on top of their game in order to survive. Those closed stores had to lose sight of what customers really wanted from them. When shoppers didn’t get it, they simply went to the competition to find it. When they found it, they remained as loyal customers.

You should wonder why customers shop at your competition instead of you. Why aren’t they over in your store buying your groceries, your meat, or your fresh produce? Why do they like your competitor?

The way to lure customers away from your competition is to offer products, programs, and services better than they do. If they have good-quality produce, then you should have superior-quality. If they have 20 organic items, then you should have 30. If they have a display at the department entrance, then you should have two displays. Just stay tuned into what they do and go back to your store and do it better.

When a super mega-discount store opens in a competing marketplace, other conventional grocers normally feel uneasy. It means the sales pie will be threatened and that their current customer base will dwindle.

Shoppers usually buy a larger amount of product from the mass discounters than a traditional supermarket. I asked one client storeowner why its store had difficulty competing. I was told, “They have bigger buying power than us.” Of course, some of that may be justified, but is it any reason to give up hope?

There are many prospering conventional supermarkets in the surrounding marketing area of mega-mass discounters that are doing well. The big mass stores have much of everything to offer, especially lower prices. However, there are plenty areas of expertise that a smaller grocery operation can offer customers that the giant stores do not have. It just takes some creativity to come up with great ideas and then promote them.

When I work with retailers, I am always perusing their competition. I asked a produce manager how often he visited the competition. It was no surprise to hear, “Every couple of months.” That is usually one of the reasons for sales declines. If your competitor is handling items you don’t have or merchandising with a different method, it needs to be known — and immediately.

Selling produce is simple. All you have to do is display the product that your customers want in the way they enjoy shopping for it. The product quality and displays should be better than your competition. Just stay ahead of them. Checking produce in competition is not always about prices. It’s a lot more than that.

Here are 10 basic points to cover when checking a competitor’s produce department:

• What is the initial overall visual presentation?
• What is the message they are sending to shoppers?
• Are the displays attractive in drawing customers to them?
• How are the product quality, sizing, and variety standards?
• What special niches, if any, complement the department?
• How does the customer traffic move?
• What are shoppers buying?
• How apparent and persuasive is the signage?
• How noticeable is the labor?
• Is the department clean?

Of course, there are many other areas to cover in visiting competition. Nevertheless, just making the trip on a regular weekly basis will be highly beneficial to your own produce operation. If anything, it should encourage you to do a better job in prying shoppers away from your competition in order to elevate your own business.

Get out in the field at the shop-floor level. Go visit every grocer competing against you. Talk to people, workers and consumers. Touch the product. Get yourself into the action.

Don’t doze off and turn your back on competition. Your competition is wide-awake and is checking out your store regularly.

Ron Pelger is the president and CEO of RonProCon, a consulting firm for the produce industry, and the chairperson of FreshXperts LLC, a consortium of produce professionals. He can be reached by phone at 775/853-7056 or by email at [email protected], or check his details on freshxperts.com for more information.