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Big grocery stores stocking shelves with more local products
http://www.greenvilleonline.com/story/news/local/2015/04/24/big-...
Big grocery stores stocking shelves with more local
products
Watch as local food and drink vendors share their products with BI-LO grocery representatives in hopes to make it onto the store's shevles. MYKAL
McELDOWNEY/Staff
Lillia Callum-Penso, [email protected]
10:41 p.m. EDT April 24, 2015
"The wine is made locally, at Greenville's only winery."
That was the pitch Anita Tamme made to convince a team of BI-LO representatives that her wine should be
carried in the grocery chain's Upstate stores.
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Tamme was among 29 making pitches at a BI-LOcal event in Greenville last week. It was the first of many the
company is holding here to meet growing customer demand for local products, said Nicole Hatfield, senior
(Photo: MYKAL McELDOWNEY /
Staff)
manager for local business for BI-LO.
Farmers markets have surfed a wave of popularity, and now, larger grocery stores are tapping into consumers'
passion for locally made products, too. Stores like BI-LO, Ingles and Whole Foods, which have carried items from local producers for years, are stepping
up their efforts and making sure the public knows about it.
It's a wise move. In a 2012 Mintel International study, 52 percent of U.S. consumers said that buying local produce is more important than buying organic,
a shift from several years before.
"For years people wanted organic," said Martin Eubanks, assistant commissioner for the South Carolina Department of Agriculture, "but then people
realized organic is part of it, but we've got all these other good local products, too.
"Consumers have zoned in because they know food is fresher, they know it's closer to home, they know it's good for the environment and there is a trust
factor with that local producer," he said.
In South Carolina, sales of local produce rose by $27 million between 2007 and 2012, according to the last agricultural census. The demand has fueled
the growth of the Department of Agriculture's SC Certified program, which promotes South Carolina products in restaurants, at farmers markets and in
retail outlets, Eubanks said. The program started in 2007 with fewer than 100 members. Today, it has 1,700.
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Big grocery stores stocking shelves with more local products
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That means more dollars stay in South Carolina, Eubanks said. But the benefit could be even greater. In Georgia and North Carolina, food dollars spent
on local products total around $17 million, while in South Carolina it's about $10 million.
Some of the discrepancy can be attributed to the size of each state, Eubanks said, but other factors are at work as well. Western North Carolina, for
instance, has a robust local foods movement in place to support local producers.
Ingles dietician Leah McGrath said her company has found many local producers through the Appalachian Sustainable Agriculture Project and Blue
Ridge Food Ventures. Both offer local producers help in getting started, growing their businesses and getting products retail ready.
"They've really been a catalyst for the local food movement in North Carolina," McGrath said. "And they've been a really important piece in educating
farmers about standards retailers have to meet."
Eubanks said the state is in the process of developing those infrastructures and pointed to efforts to create food hubs throughout the state.
He's thrilled to see large grocery stores stepping up local efforts. Many have long carried local products, he said, but they haven't always let consumers
know. SC Certified is bridging that gap by helping stores and farmers markets find and highlight local products.
"There's opportunity there and there's growth potential," Eubanks said.
Good for grocery stores
Consumer demand is driving the BI-LOcal campaign, Hatfield said. The company held its first event in Charleston last January, just after the purchase of
Piggly Wiggly.
The idea then was to maintain the sense of a community-focused market, Hatfield said. The event attracted about 20 producers primarily from the
Charleston area.
Last year, BI-LO held a similar event in Chattanooga. Today, 30 stores in that area now carry 92 locally produced products.
"Foodies, I think, are really driving it," Hatfield said of the buy-local trend. "There's a greater awareness, a greater demand, a greater consciousness but
also a greater opportunity for us as retailers to go into these markets because people are making these products."
Other stores are following suit, ramping up the number of local products they offer and working to promote producers.
Though Ingles, for example, has carried produce from farms in South and North Carolina for years, the company more recently has been a presence at
the annual Local Food Hub conference in Greenville and has created new advertising campaigns that feature local producers.
"I think we're listening to our customers," McGrath said. "All the data I see about what consumers want, the consumer actually ranks local products higher
than organic products. So I don't know if it's a reaction to the recession and people want to help out and make a stronger economy to support local."
Today, Ingles carries everything from Thomas Creek beer and Carolina Pride meats to Buchi, a kombucha soda made in Asheville.
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Big grocery stores stocking shelves with more local products
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Kizito and Patricia Wademi, owners of KW Collards near Charlotte, pitch their collard greens products to representatives of BI-LO at a recent event the store held to
recruit local producers. (Photo: MYKAL McELDOWNEY / Staff)
One hangup is that larger grocers tend to have more regulations in place governing products. Items must meet certain packaging and labeling standards,
and producers must be insured. It means that some producers just don't make the cut.
"There's much bigger liability selling at a supermarket than at a farmers market, so there is a different layer of standards that we have to comply with,"
McGrath said.
But she said Ingles still tries to work with local producers just starting out.
Whole Foods does the same. The grocery chain requires insurance, GAP (Good Agricultural Practices) certification and products containing only
all-natural ingredients. However, Jesse Rome, the Greenville store's produce team leader and local liaison, said he tries to work with local producers.
In short, he said, it's good for stores.
"It makes good sense to reduce shipping costs," McGrath said. "And it helps the local economy."
Good for producers
Tamme and her husband, Wayne, started City Scape Winery (/story/entertainment/2014/01/16/city-scape-winery-brings-winemaking-to-upstate-southcarolina-/4521329/) seven years ago on a whim.
"Our kids call it our hobby gone stupid," Tamme says with a laugh.
The two had been into making beer and then discovered winemaking. They were making it out of their home about six bottles at a time and working in the
distressed real estate business. That's how they discovered the 12-acre property in Greenville County that's now their vineyard.
The Tammes figured winemaking and running the vineyard would be something fun to do in retirement, but it quickly turned into a full-time job.
Today, that job includes marketing and selling their products and helping others learn how to make wine as well. City Scape produces 12 wines, including
four that are made from all-South Carolina products.
The wines are in several stores around the state but none quite have the cache that BI-LO does, Wayne said.
"It gives us exposure," Wayne said. "When you go to a place as well thought of as BI-LO, it kicks it up a notch."
That's precisely why the prospect of getting into BI-LO stores was so appealing. The Tammes see it as a chance to really break into the market.
Likewise, Kathy O'Neal sees potential for her line of pimento cheeses at BI-LO. She started Nellie T's officially in September of last year, while still
working as an automation manager at Fluor. In February, she retired and decided to devote herself fully to her new business. She also pitched at the
BI-LOcal event.
So far, O'Neal's line of original, spicy and seriously hot pimento cheese can be found in many smaller stores like Carolina Olive Oil in Simpsonville and
Jerky and Vine and Swamp Rabbit Café & Grocery in Greenville, and this year at the Travelers Rest Farmers Market as well. But to really grow, O'Neal
knows she needs a bigger audience.
"We buy California raisins, we buy New York-style pizza; the caviar of the South is pimento cheese," O'Neal said. "But you get out of the South, people
don't even know what it is. I think everyone in the world should know what pimento cheese is. I'm aiming high."
BI-LO can't promise international exposure, but it can promise a lot of local and regional.
BI-LO's Hatfield said increasing the stores' local offerings is "a win win for everyone."
"I can't think of a better way to help build a community and the success of a community than by supporting local," she said.
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