January 20, 2016
Sources: Instagram @wsparkmeadows, @wscolumbuscircle
Is there gold in the stories of local food artisans?
While many consumers first find out about the stories of local food artisans at farmers markets or sites like Etsy, Williams-Sonoma for the fourth straight year will bring many to its stores as part of its monthly Artisans’ Market program.
The program, expanding this year to 75 stores, enables local purveyors of artisanal foods and beverages to showcase their wares in their stores.
The Artisans’ Markets have “come to serve as an incubator for small, local producers who have evolved and successfully scaled their production to serve the more than 240 Williams-Sonoma retail stores nationwide.”
A Portland-based start-up, Jacobsen Salt Co., first showed in 2012 and now has more than 35 exclusive products available in Williams-Sonoma’s stores.
The Artisans’ Market program is also an extension of the retailer’s “ongoing commitment to the artisan food community.” For the fifth year in a row, Williams-Sonoma sponsored the Good Food awards, a national platform recognizing small batch food producers for environmental and social responsibility.
“Williams-Sonoma has always been about building a sense of community around food and bringing the highest quality products to our customers,” said Jean Armstrong, VP of brand marketing, in a statement.
Many grocers are increasingly playing up local food purveyors as part of “buy local” initiatives. Kroger and Meijer have spots in stores for select products made in each store’s state. Kroger holds “Discover Local” events where local food suppliers hand out samples.
At Whole Foods Market, anywhere from 10 to 30 percent of the products on shelves come from local producers. In October, Whole Foods invited local growers and food artisans to meet with buyers for its newest store in St. Louis’ Central West End neighborhood to support local buys for a new store that’s set to open in April.
“We love supporting local farmers, food artisans and producers who share our passion for quality products made from pure, simple ingredients,” said Stefanie Garcia, Whole Foods Market Midwest local forager, in a press release at the time.
- Williams-Sonoma Expands Its Renowned ‘Artisans’ Market’ Program – Williams Sonoma/Business Wire
- Whole Foods supplier summit invites local growers to meet with buyers – The Produce News
- ‘Food with a story’: Small producers create specialties – Lansing State Journal
- Kroger hosts locally-grown food event – Circleville Herald
BrainTrust
Ryan Mathews
Founder, CEO, Black Monk Consulting
Recent Discussions
Discussion Questions
What further approaches could retailers use to capitalize on the appeal of local food purveyors? Is there more upside or downside to programs such as Williams-Sonoma’s Artisans’ Market program?
Poll
More and more restaurants are citing their local providers on their menus. Given the mainstreaming of the “locavore” movement, it makes sense for national chains to capitalize on this trend. It’s more challenging for Williams-Sonoma (not purely a food retailer in the same sense as Whole Foods), but the “Artisans’ Market” program should resonate with their consumer.
Retailers can use the local food purveyors’ food in their deli or cooked food section. This will showcase the use of artisan food at the retailer. They can also provide a farmers market within a store. Supporting local food purveyors is a positive direction that all consumers embrace. It will increase the relevancy of certain retailers by supporting local artisans.
Any area that has a Williams-Sonoma store will do well, as the income per capita is very high, and as I have said for years, money towns always do well with fancy local foods, whereas rural areas do not.
In our area the farmers have stands all summer long and occasionally sell off their excess to our stores, and we do well with the foods we can find. I do not see a downside to this as it brings customers into the stores and gives exposure to the local products being featured. There was a movie with Diane Keaton, in which she made homemade organic baby food, sold it in the local general store in Vermont, and went on to make millions with her own production facility. Even though it was a movie, it can and has happened over the years, and what small local food purveyor wouldn’t want that type of success?
I love the idea of local foods/products going into mainstream supermarkets and Williams-Sonoma. Williams-Sonoma is doing well with a program that calls attention to the products. Without any support, local products can easily get lost in the shuffle on the shelf.
I have also heard from an organic personal care products maker that getting distribution of locally made products at Kroger is an expensive process and that the reality is the vendor makes almost no margin to support costs of expanding production, etc.
For shoppers’ sake, I hope more locally produced products can be shelved and highlighted more effectively in the future. Personally, I will still enjoy scouting out local foods at the various farmers markets because the shopping experience itself is so rewarding.
Local products have great appeal to consumers. Retailers, on the other hand, have to work to ensure safety, inventory control and have the ability to track elements of the products. Local retail managers need to manage these responsibilities for local products more directly than they do for national or regional vendors.
Western Markets, a store close to my house, has devoted an entire room off one of its entrances to local products. Can’t push much harder than that.
That said, if I can be frank for a moment, many of the artisanal products I’ve tasted are … well … fresh, but hardly superior. Of course this varies a great deal by category.
I am (in general) a huge fan of artisan cheeses and breads but categories like pickles are quickly overrun by products whose claim to fame is that they were made close to home. Ditto for sauces — pasta, hot and barbecue. Just because something was made next door doesn’t make it good.
So the problem is really one of curation. Retailers need to find ways of objectively judging a product’s merits other than where it was bottled, jarred or smoked.
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More and more restaurants are citing their local providers on their menus. Given the mainstreaming of the “locavore” movement, it makes sense for national chains to capitalize on this trend. It’s more challenging for Williams-Sonoma (not purely a food retailer in the same sense as Whole Foods), but the “Artisans’ Market” program should resonate with their consumer.
Retailers can use the local food purveyors’ food in their deli or cooked food section. This will showcase the use of artisan food at the retailer. They can also provide a farmers market within a store. Supporting local food purveyors is a positive direction that all consumers embrace. It will increase the relevancy of certain retailers by supporting local artisans.
Any area that has a Williams-Sonoma store will do well, as the income per capita is very high, and as I have said for years, money towns always do well with fancy local foods, whereas rural areas do not.
In our area the farmers have stands all summer long and occasionally sell off their excess to our stores, and we do well with the foods we can find. I do not see a downside to this as it brings customers into the stores and gives exposure to the local products being featured. There was a movie with Diane Keaton, in which she made homemade organic baby food, sold it in the local general store in Vermont, and went on to make millions with her own production facility. Even though it was a movie, it can and has happened over the years, and what small local food purveyor wouldn’t want that type of success?
I love the idea of local foods/products going into mainstream supermarkets and Williams-Sonoma. Williams-Sonoma is doing well with a program that calls attention to the products. Without any support, local products can easily get lost in the shuffle on the shelf.
I have also heard from an organic personal care products maker that getting distribution of locally made products at Kroger is an expensive process and that the reality is the vendor makes almost no margin to support costs of expanding production, etc.
For shoppers’ sake, I hope more locally produced products can be shelved and highlighted more effectively in the future. Personally, I will still enjoy scouting out local foods at the various farmers markets because the shopping experience itself is so rewarding.
Local products have great appeal to consumers. Retailers, on the other hand, have to work to ensure safety, inventory control and have the ability to track elements of the products. Local retail managers need to manage these responsibilities for local products more directly than they do for national or regional vendors.
Western Markets, a store close to my house, has devoted an entire room off one of its entrances to local products. Can’t push much harder than that.
That said, if I can be frank for a moment, many of the artisanal products I’ve tasted are … well … fresh, but hardly superior. Of course this varies a great deal by category.
I am (in general) a huge fan of artisan cheeses and breads but categories like pickles are quickly overrun by products whose claim to fame is that they were made close to home. Ditto for sauces — pasta, hot and barbecue. Just because something was made next door doesn’t make it good.
So the problem is really one of curation. Retailers need to find ways of objectively judging a product’s merits other than where it was bottled, jarred or smoked.