Trend: Mainstream Grocers Go Latino

Imagine this: you walk into your local Safeway to find that it's been completely remodeled, with new prodcut offerings such as a full-service butcher shop, top-of-the-line produce (at Safeway? No...) and a Mexican-style panadería. A bit disoriented, you wander off to the "ethnic" aisle, where you normally find things like canned chiles, canned salsas, etc. only to find that it's been expanded to five times its size, and now houses legitimate Mexican products -- no Pace picante sauce! Accompanying you along your tour of the newly remodeled store is a troupe of roving mariachis. What is going on?

This isn't a weird "what if?" scenario. This is a trend, at least in the Dallas-Ft. Worth area, in the grocery business. And it's no wonder. With Latino demographics skyrocketing, all types of marketers -- from cell phone providers to banks to even Google -- are scrambling to find ways to seduce the Latino consumer. Grocery kings Minyard Foods in Dallas, as mentioned in the following article from the Ft. Worth Star Telegram, are answering the call in a big way. They've taken an entire chain of "mainstream" grocery stores (previously known as Minyard and Sack 'n Save) and converted them to their Latino-centric brand Carnival. This, the article says, in response to the exponential growth of the Latino community in the Dallas-Ft. Worth area in the past two decades. Add to that the fact that Latinos shop for groceries and eat out less and there you have a great target market: big and buying.

The article goes on to quote an expert who says that although the "ethnic dimension" (gag) might isolate the non-Latino shoppers, it seems no one is really concerned about that. Why? Because the Latino numbers are just too compelling to ignore. Adapt or die.

Latino Flavor: Minyard to convert 11 stores to Hispanic-oriented Carnival format

By Barry Shlachter

Star-Telegram Staff Writer

Minyard Food Stores is gambling on the numbers, and those numbers are increasingly Hispanic.

Minyard, the biggest locally owned supermarket chain, will start converting 11 of its Minyard and Sack'n Save stores this fall to its Latino-oriented Carnival format, the company's chief executive said in an interview Wednesday. Carnival will be the new core of the Coppell-based company business strategy, reflecting growth of the ethnic market.

"I'm focused on the Hispanic consumer," said Ron Johnson, who became president and chief executive of the 68-store chain after a Fort Worth-connected investment group, Acquisition Vehicle Texas II, bought the 73-year-old company from the Minyard family in October.

"It just so happens our stores are located right in the middle of this population shift," Johnson said.

And what a shift.

The Hispanic population in the Dallas-Fort Worth metro area has grown more than fivefold since 1980 to 1.35 million, while the general population has increased 87 percent to 5.56 million, according to the U.S. census.

Star-Telegram.com            READ MORE

Comments

[Mitchell Berg]

My redneck neighbors would go postal if this happened at our neighborhood grocery store! Cool strategy though