NORTH PROVIDENCE – Rhode Island Stop & Shop stores have lowered everyday prices on some 3,500 items in each store, new company president Roger Wheeler, who has been in the job about a week, told The Providence Journal in an exclusive interview Monday.
The pricing change is the splashiest of a three-prong strategy to win back customers who have found the Massachusetts-based chain has stressed their grocery budgets more than area competitors.
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"We don't want to be known for always having the highest price," Wheeler said. "Here we are today lowering [prices] on thousands of items across the entire store. Because we want you to think of us in a different way than you might have thought of us for the last however many years."
The chain also has done away with the 10-cent fee it charged customers for paper shopping bags in Rhode Island.
"I decided actually my first day that I got here to eliminate the bag fees that we were charging," he said. "It's causing a lot of kind of angst, on top of everything else, getting charged for a bag."
Stores in other states may follow suit later, depending on state and local regulations there.
"Rhode Island doesn't have any restrictions where you must charge for bags like we do in some other places we operate," Wheeler said. "It was easier for us to make the decision, just say, 'Hey, Rhode Island, we're just taking it away.' "
The company is also installing "savings kiosks" in each store, hoping it will make it easier for customers to take advantage of deals.
"There's a lot of more-digital offers and those type of things, and not everybody finds it easy to navigate that, Wheeler said. "And so we're trying to solve that problem. You can just easily either scan your Go Rewards card, or you can punch in your phone number, and it will activate all the digital coupons to your card so that when you check out you'll get them all."
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It will also print out the most important deals each day as well as personalized deals based on your shopping history.
Only one or two stores had the kiosks yesterday, but all 25 Rhode Island stores will have them before Thanksgiving.
What's in store for Eastside Market?
When Stop & Shop announced in mid-July it was closing 32 of its underperforming stores across the Northeast , it named two in Rhode Island, including Eastside Marketplace , which Stop & Shop continued operating under the separate brand.
"We'd like to be able to find a partner to go in there, to run it as a supermarket," said Wheeler. "We're not going to block that or anything."
What about a Rhode Island competitor, such as Dave's Fresh Marketplace ?
"Be happy to talk to them, and, you know, it all depends on the terms of the deal or whatever."
Stop & Shop offered these examples of its price drops
Boneless chicken breast from $3.99 a pound to $2.79 a pound.
Six-ounce Yoplait yogurt from $1 each to 89 cents.
One-pound Land O' Lakes butter from $7.39 to $6.29.
One-pound Stop & Shop brand pasta from $1.39 to $1.19.
This article originally appeared on The Providence Journal: Stop & Shop is trying to win back customers. Here's their strategy.
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