Winn-Dixie’s Winning Formula
Produce Business sits down with Walt Grossman, director of floral for Jacksonville, FL-based Winn-Dixie Stores Inc. to discuss its strategy for going forward. 

By E. Shaunn Alderman

Walt Grossman worked at Acme Markets in Philadelphia, PA, for 25 years, starting as a store clerk. Now, in the supermarket industry for 29 years, he taps his background in operations as he leads the floral program in the Southeast for Winn-Dixie Stores. Boosted by dedicated support from on-board suppliers, called business partners, Grossman attributes the well-implemented message — Simplify — as a motto that works. Referring to customers as guests, Grossman envisions continued accomplishments as the corporation focuses on knowing and better serving each region’s demographics.

Produce Business:  Since August 2010, you’ve been responsible for floral operations in 461 Winn-Dixie floral departments. What direction is the Winn-Dixie floral program headed under your leadership?

Grossman: For the past 12 years, there has been a large decline in the number of traditional retail florists. We have a unique opportunity to differentiate ourselves by becoming the “Neighborhood Florist.” With that goal, our focus is to offer all Winn-Dixie guests florist-quality products, including personalized upgrades that meet their needs while providing outstanding service. 

PB:  What new initiatives have been implemented?

Grossman: There’s a move to simplify merchandising programs and take advantage of cross-merchandising opportunities. Most of my career has been spent in store operations and I realize that if a program is too complicated, it will be difficult to achieve 100 percent execution at store level. Product placement in high traffic areas such as the lobby and execution at store level is critical to driving sales since many floral purchases are impulse. Providing stores with a simple 1-page slide that includes a picture of how the display should look, as well as a few key bullet points, has helped improve execution.

Another important aspect of where Winn-Dixie’s Floral is headed involves our cluster-driven strategy. Merchandising by cluster is helping us become unique and local since we have a better understanding of the demographics of each neighborhood. The cluster segments are: Affluent, African-American, Hispanic, Low-Income, Mature Suburb and Rural Working Families. We want to simplify, and the cluster-driven strategy helps us with that approach.  

PB:  Do you have any major floral promotions planned or are you partnering with a supplier for limited-time offerings on themed bouquets?

Grossman: We’ve developed a great business partnership with Passion Growers [of Miami, FL], and their consistent quality products help us build a rose experience for our guests. For Memorial Day weekend, we are running a 100-store promotion where there is a half pallet drop of 10-stem roses for only $7. The displays are easy for stores to execute and not require much labor. The displays will be placed in the lobbies, which enhances our overall fresh image and drives impulse sales, since it offers guests a great value.

PB: You refer to your vendors and suppliers as business partners. Could you discuss their role and what it takes to become a business partner with Winn-Dixie?

Grossman: In late March, we invited 100 vendor/suppliers, both current and new, to an all-day meeting in Miami. Bill Hendricks, our director of category management, presented Winn-Dixie’s overall cluster-driven strategy. The purpose of the meeting was to provide the vendors with better insight regarding the makeup of Winn-Dixie and strategy of the floral department going forward.

I also challenged the vendors during that meeting with questions. How does your company differentiate from others in the industry? How does your company fit into our strategy? What are the three primary things that you are most proud of about your company? It’s important that all business partners have a passion about their company and are aligned with our strategy by offering great quality product that is unique, which will ultimately help us differentiate our floral department from other retailers. One compliment that we heard from a vendor was they no longer felt as if they were just an order-taker. They felt like a true business partner working with Winn Dixie to build success for both companies.

 PB:  With stores in Florida, Georgia, Alabama, Mississippi and Louisiana, what does it take to differentiate Winn-Dixie floral from your competitors?

Grossman: Going back to our cluster-driven strategy, we recognize that each store and marketplace can be very different. We are working very closely with our vendor business partners, our three regional merchandisers, Jeff Krieg in the South region, Larry Campagno in the West and Todd Greene in the Central region, as well as all operations specialists to ensure that we have the right product offering and variety to meet our guests’ needs on an everyday basis, as well as for special events. The cluster-driven strategy promotes in-store merchandising that reflects the community. For example, each store has to be prepared to merchandise for local sports teams and holidays that may not be celebrated in other areas. Stores located near college towns or other sporting events can sell a large amount of balloons and other floral items in their favorite local teams colors.

In other areas, such as South Florida, there is an opportunity to offer totally different product and variety, especially in our Hispanic markets. We are currently working with a business partner to create a new bouquet line that includes wording in Spanish on the bouquet sleeves and more colorful flowers.

 PB:  Do you see emerging trends in floral such as stronger sales in garden center types of floral products and hard goods?

Grossman: Outside garden-mart selling provides an opportunity to capture additional sales in many areas of our company in each region. A solid plan, time commitment and proper care/handling are needed to ensure the success of both sales and profit when selling product outside, especially in areas where heat can be an issue. During this past spring, we merchandised three or four of the best selling outside potted items in approximately 90 stores across all three regions. Offering the right product selection, including product that has low maintenance care and handling is important. At this time we are finalizing plans to sell larger outdoor mums this fall in a select group of stores for those guests who want to decorate their front door entrances.

 PB:  In what ways do you gather feedback from Winn-Dixie floral guests and your stores?

Grossman: The majority of guest feedback is gathered primarily at store level. However, Winn-Dixie also has a formal 1-800 call system in place to obtain guest feedback. We rely heavily on the feedback from floral managers, operations specialists and merchandisers. Every week we have a conference call with the produce/floral regional merchandisers to discuss the previous week’s sales, strengths, opportunities and obtain feedback.

For Mother’s Day, we developed a 12-question survey that was sent to all floral managers a few days after the holiday. By listening to our team members, we were able to determine what went well, what opportunities existed and how we can improve going forward.  

We are currently in the process of partnering with Passion Growers to develop a 40-question rose survey that will be sent to guests that recently purchased roses at Winn-Dixie. We want to know what influences their buying decision, what colors they prefer and how often they purchase roses, how long the roses lasted, etc. This survey will help us learn more about our floral guests and their preferences.

PB: What is Winn-Dixie doing to make floral a must-have product in consumers’ shopping carts every week?

Grossman: Floral is all about merchandising for eye-appeal, which helps to create impulse sales. It’s having the right product mix in each store. However, I will always mention our commitment to quality because it’s important to us and to our guests. We also see the strong connection we have with our business partners as a vital factor in enabling us to offer unique floral products to our guests to help differentiate. An example is our strong business relationship with burton + BURTON [the balloon and gift vendor based in Bogart, GA]. They offer imprint balloons with local school names, logos and colors that help us personalize the shopping experience.

PB: What is the status of Winn-Dixie’s arrangement with FTD?

Grossman: We currently have a total of seven FTD “hub” stores that can receive, fill and deliver orders. We also have an additional 35 “spoke stores” that can take orders and send them to the “hub” stores. Over the past several months, we have had several meetings with FTD in order to gain a better understanding of the entire process and also discuss strengths and opportunities by store. We have many locations that are doing an outstanding job growing their FTD sales and we see the potential for continued growth. We are currently reviewing store-specific data to determine the appropriate next steps, including the feasibility of adding additional locations. 

PB: You mention Winn-Dixie floral positioning itself as the Neighborhood Florist. What advantages do you have as a large supermarket chain related to this neighborhood effort?

Grossman: First and most important, is that we offer florist-grade quality products. Also, our cross-merchandising with other departments helps us provide solutions to our guests’ busy lifestyles. This is especially important during events and holidays. Traditional florists don’t have that opportunity. Guests also benefit from our ability to act on what we call “hot buys.” For example, if a vendor business partner has extra cases of product on hand that ended up not going to the original buyer for whatever reason, they will offer it to us at a reduced cost. However, all product quality and specs must still meet our standards. We will then price the product at a great retail price to sell out quickly. This translates into a win for the supplier, a win for Winn-Dixie and a win for guests since they can purchase a great quality product at a great price.