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Lifestyle Tenant
Stew Leonard’s -- “The Disneyland of Dairy Stores”
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The Guinness Book of World Records lists Stew Leonard’s as the store with the fastest moving inventory, averaging $3,470 annually in sales per square foot. |
by Bryan Sacks
Shopping for toothpaste and laundry detergent can be a real drag. But imagine that you've just rounded the bend at the end of the supermarket aisle, casually walking past a row of stalled shopping carts, to encounter a family of man-sized ducks. No, it's not a flashback from your college days, it's just a typical day at Stew Leonard's.
The three-unit chain of fresh foods supermarkets and bakeries, which operates locations in Connecticut and New York, has been dubbed the “Disneyland of Dairy Stores” by three prominent national publications including The New York Times, and it’s no secret that Stew Leonard’s works very hard to create a country fair atmosphere at each of its stores. In addition to finding employees dressed as chickens, ducks or “WOW the Cow” roaming the aisles, actual animals, including goats, cows, chicken, sheep and geese, are penned in front of the stores, and children can visit with them free of charge while their parents shop. And there’s more zaniness, too.
The supermarkets are large, occupying more than 130,000 sq.ft. in freestanding facilities. Their distinctive concept is supported by an expansive array of gifts available on the company’s Web site www.stewleonards.com. Online shoppers can send friends or family a live lobster (with claws rubber-banded, we assume!), a flat of small flower or vegetable bedding plants, popcorn and candy tins, gourmet smoked meats, baked foods and more. In fact, there’s an entire catalog of gifts online for every occasion.
The family business dates back to 1924, when Charles Leo Leonard began bottling milk in an old barn and delivering it to his customers by horse and wagon. His son, Stew Leonard, took over the business later with his brother and added modern implements. When the building of a state highway forced the company to move operations, Stew Leonard Sr. opened the store that now stands on the Norwalk, Connecticut site in 1969. Most recently, a new store opened in Yonkers, New York, the company’s third. Expansion plans call for additional openings in the coming 18 months in the New Jersey, New York and/or Connecticut markets.
Because of the distinctive place it occupies in the communities where it operates, Stew Leonard’s receive hundreds of requests for contributions and donations to an assortment of causes. In keeping with the philosophy of Stew Leonard Sr. (“Give a little to a lot!”), the company proudly donates to a variety of worthy causes from its “Wishing Well” including The American Cancer Society, Courage To Speak Foundation, Crohn’s and Colitis Foundation, MADD and many, many others. Also, the company regularly donates bread and pastries to more than a hundred local churches, charities and soup kitchens.
To say that the company is doing something right would understate its success. Each week more than 100,000 shoppers visit. Yet while most supermarkets offer between 15,000 and 20,000 products, Stew Leonard’s offers only about 1,000 and the stores generally offer only one brand of its products. But the “less is more” strategy works. Customers come from as far as 50 miles away to shop at the stores, and the Guinness Book of World Records lists Stew Leonard’s as the store with the fastest moving inventory, averaging $3,470 annually in sales per square foot (a typical supermarket will do well to average $500 per square foot). For its two stores other than the new Yonkers store, the company has generated sales of almost $150 million. No wonder they named their cow mascot WOW!
This distinctiveness of the concept is deepened by the existence of a catering arm with a delivery service. Stores offer a number of mouth-watering offerings to select from covering soup to nuts. Additionally, Stew Leonard’s offers VIP tours of its facilities as well as a number of customer seminars on customer service strategies, complete with taste tests, a tour, information kit, class picture and certificate of graduation. How many other supermarkets could offer their customers a paid tour and hope to get some takers? The array of offerings makes this concept store a truly unique lifestyle tenant, and perhaps the world’s only destination supermarket.
In keeping with the customer-friendly concept, Stew Leonard’s welcomes customer feedback in the form of suggestions, complaints, accolades and the like. Web site visitors can write in their comments on an E-mail window on the “suggestion box” page.
So if you haven’t visited Stew Leonard’s, and you walk into a store a see what look to be dancing milk cartons, chickens and butter sticks suspended on a stage above the dairy section performing original songs about milk and shopping, don’t worry, you’re not losing your mind. You’ve merely in the world’s most unique supermarket watching a performance of “The Farm Fresh Five.”
For more information, contact Vincent Summa, Stew Leonard’s, 100 Westport Avenue, Norwalk, CT 06851; 203-847-7213, Fax 847-2610.
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