PHILADELPHIA — Standing in front of the health and beauty aisle in The Giant Company supermarket she manages here, Jessica Fischer pointed out a hidden problem in plain sight.

Elevators leading down to the store’s garage are immediately adjacent to the section, inadvertently turning a part of the store intended to be convenient for shoppers into an attractive target for thieves.

In addition to its location close to the elevators, the health and beauty aisle currently has more than one entrance, another design element that has made it all too easy for people to slip out with costly products without paying, Fischer said.

To stem the flow of health and beauty items the urban store is losing to shrink, Giant is reconfiguring the aisle to more tightly control traffic flows. The project, which involves enclosing the department and converting it into an alcove with a single entrance and exit point, is due to be completed by the end of December and could be replicated at other stores depending on its effectiveness, according to a company spokesperson.

The Giant Company will “monitor the impact of these changes and consider implementing other locations where it makes sense,” the spokesperson said in an email.

The modification is among several initiatives at the store that reflect The Giant Company’s efforts to address pressing challenges, including theft as well as inflation and difficulty finding workers, that continue to command the grocery industry’s attention.

During a media tour of the flagship store on a recent Tuesday morning, officials of The Giant Company showed off an array of high-profile features — including a self-service wine-tasting station and a food hall with local restaurant outposts — intended to set the flagship location apart. The store, which opened in early 2021, also includes a 7,000-square-foot produce department with food from about 200 local suppliers as well as the largest assortment of plant-based goods across the 193-store mid-Atlantic chain.

The Giant Company is also using the 65,000-square-foot store, located at the base of a high-rise apartment building known as Riverwalk along Philadelphia’s Schuylkill River, to try other ideas, some of which could eventually show up in other Giant stores.

The Ahold Delhaize-owned chain, which operates stores in Pennsylvania, Virginia, West Virginia and Maryland under banners including Giant, Martin’s and Giant Heirloom Market, is facing profitability pressures and is looking for ways to become more efficient as it competes with discount grocers like Aldi and Lidl, President John Ruane said during the tour.

Moving the milk away from the wall

Aside from adjusting the design of the health and beauty section, The Giant Company is evaluating a dairy storage room on the store’s sales floor that is lined with shelving and customer-facing cooler doors. Workers stock the shelves from inside the space, allowing employees to keep the shelves stocked without impeding shoppers.

The refrigerated space resembles the storage areas that are traditionally placed along the back or side of a supermarket and have doors facing the shopping area, allowing associates to stock shelves with fast-moving, cold goods without getting in the way of customers. A key difference, however, is that the cooler in the Riverwalk store is in a more central location, potentially making it more convenient for customers.

“Moving the dairy cooler on to the sales floor has enabled us to maximize the available floor space for selling and storage, enhancing the experience for both our customers and team members,” the spokesperson said. Other coolers on the sales floor and around the perimeter of the store are used only for storage, with products they contain displayed to shoppers in front-filled cases, they added. 

The Riverwalk Giant is the first location in the chain to include a dairy cooler on the sales floor, but the company is considering adding similar facilities to newly built and remodeled stores in the future, the spokesperson added.

Another notable characteristic of the store is its intense focus on value messaging juxtaposed with signals about quality. In addition to ensuring that signs with proclamations like “The value you’ve been looking for” and “Budget-stretching deals that last longer” occupy prominent positions, Fischer and her team are using other techniques to underscore to shoppers that Giant is focused on helping them save money.

For example, Fischer drew attention to a display featuring $9.99 jars of Rao’s Homemade spaghetti sauce alongside packages of Parmigiano-Reggiano cheese on sale for nearly half off. Meanwhile, a sign on a produce case noted that shoppers could save 16 cents by purchasing four cucumbers.

Giant is also using the Riverwalk location’s food hall to stand out with shoppers and has found partnering with restaurants to be an especially effective way to provide ready-to-eat meals, Dave Lessard, senior vice president of operations, customer experience and perishable distribution, said during the tour. Vendors with space in the food hall include Saladworks and Hissho Sushi.

Lessard added that Giant is using the food hall to supply prepared foods to locations that do not have restaurant outposts under a hub-and-spoke model – an arrangement that allows the vendors to reach more customers and the grocer to further leverage its flagship location.