Supermarkets face changing landscape

Food shopping has undergone a revolution as consumers demand local produce, organic choices, low prices and more convenience, according to Consumer Reports.

To respond to our evolving food-shopping tastes, supermarkets are offering novel formats, products and services. Consumer Reports offers this overview:

• Smaller footprints. Rather than taking a one-store-fits-all approach, some grocers are hypertargeting a single customer type and scaling back in size as a result. Those new locations offer a more “curated” experience -- say, selling just a few choices of organic olive oil instead of many -- saving shoppers the work of distinguishing among brands.

• To attract time-pressed millennials, Whole Foods has opened new Whole Foods Market 365 stores in four U.S. locations. The smaller-format stores feature primarily Whole Foods’ 365 Everyday Value products. Focusing on the higher-profit store brand and managing fewer square feet could also help the company’s profit margins, notes Asit Sharma, senior consumer goods analyst at the investing website Motley Fool.

Aldi is a fast-growing, nofrills vendor that operates stores about one-third the size of a typical American grocer. It sells a limited selection, mainly of private-label goods; Consumer Reports’ readers rated it highly for competitive prices.

• Local farm partnerships. Many supermarkets have added locally grown produce sections. Dierbergs, which debuts in Consumer Reports’ ratings this year, is one example. The family-

owned chain, with locations mainly in Missouri, shows a photo gallery of local partner farms on its website. Readers gave the quality of Dierbergs’ local produce top marks.

• Meal kits without the wait. To compete with online meal-kit vendors, Giant Food Stores, based in Camp Hill, offers fresh meal kits through its partnership with the Peapod grocery delivery service. Each $15 box comes with enough premeasured, fresh ingredients to make

two servings following a provided recipe.

• Home delivery. Responding to the threat from online grocers, many chains now offer this amenity. Safeway charges $13 to deliver orders of less than $150 and $10 for orders of $150 or more. Kroger and Wal-Mart have begun testing door-todoor delivery in certain locations, with Wal-Mart using the delivery service Deliv and car services Lyft and Uber. Publix is testing home delivery in certain areas of the Southeast.

• Curbside service. WalMart offers a “click and collect” system called Online Grocery Pickup in

more than 30 states: Consumers buy online and drive to a Wal-Mart store to pick up their bagged orders at designated times for no fee. Kroger’s ClickList service, available in about 300 locations, works the same way. Patrons pay a $5 pickup fee, waived for the first three instances. AmazonFresh is experimenting with curbside pickup in two Seattle-area locations. The retailer plans to expand the service to Amazon Prime members without requiring an additional AmazonFresh membership fee.