Food City: Food, Family and Fun

National brands are an important element of Food City’s merchandising strategy, but the retailer also employs a unique approach with store brands. As part of the Elk Grove Village, Ill.-based Topco cooperative, Abingdon, Va.-based Food City offers brands that are also sold by other members, but also has its own company-specific brands, in addition to having acquired regional brands that it offers exclusively.

“We are big supporters of Topco, as they are a center of excellence we can draw upon,” says Dan Glei, Food City’s EVP of merchandising and marketing.

Food City store brands are sold under an extensive roster of names such as Food Club, Food City Fresh, Full Circle Market, Wide Awake Coffee Co., Tippy Toes, Harvest Club, Paws Happy Life, Evolve, Over the Top, Nostimo, Crav’n, CharKing, Misty Mountain, Flock’s Finest, b-lieve, Simply Done, TopCare, Culinary Tours, That’s Smart and Pure Harmony.

In addition, Food City has resurrected some regional brands that had gone under in its trading areas and breathed new life into them. Brands such as Kern’s Bread, Kay’s Ice Cream, Lay Meats, Terry’s Snack Foods and Moore’s Potato Chips have become household names once again, thanks to Food City’s backing.

“We have a pretty good variety of regional brands,” Glei notes.

In some categories, Food City may even have four separate store brands, as is the case with pasta and peanut butter, which Glei gestures to while standing in the aisle of the company’s newest store, in Winchester, Tenn.

Why so many? According to Glei, it’s about customer choice. He describes the concept of SKU rationalization employed by some retailers as a strategy for not carrying the products that customers want.