One of the enduring questions in the supermarket industry is whether open refrigerated dairy and other medium-temperature cases should have doors.
Retailers save energy by enclosing these cases with doors, but some chains, especially in their operations and merchandising departments, fear that doors would deter impulse sales of refrigerated items. But speakers at the Food Marketing Institute's Energy & Store Development Conference in Minneapolis last month presented evidence that stores would benefit from refrigerated cases with doors.
In one session, Bryan Becker, professor, mechanical engineering, and Brian Fricke, assistant professor, mechanical engineering, both with the University of Missouri-Kansas City, presented the results of their study of the door question. The study was funded by the American Society of Heating, Refrigerating and Air Conditioning Engineers (ASHRAE) and the Air-Conditioning and Refrigeration Technology Institute.
They found that while an open display case consumed about 1.3 times more energy than a doored display case, there was no significant difference in sales between the two cases. Doored cases “had no effect” on the sales of both dairy products and beer, said Becker. They also concluded that the doored cases exhibited less product temperature variation within the case or due to store conditions, resulting in increased food safety.
Becker and Fricke conducted their study from January to June of last year at two independent grocers, Moon's Hometown Market, Osawatomie, Kan., and Dyer's IGA, Wamego, Kan. At Moon's Market, an old open case selling dairy products was replaced with a new glass-doored case selling the same products; at Dyer's, an old open case selling beer and other alcoholic beverages was replaced with a new open case selling the same products. Moon's Market also replaced an open beer case with a doored beer case.
Becker acknowledged that more sales data may be needed to convince retailers that they can put doors on cases and save energy without negatively impacting sales. “An urban setting with more competition over a longer period would make a good study,” he said. In addition, their study may not hold equally true for all products, he noted.
In another conference session, Tom Mathews, a former supermarket executive who is now president of Baseline, Waterville, Maine, a consulting engineering firm, urged retailers to use doors. “For God's sake, put doors in your dairy cases,” he said. “How long is this going to go on for?” The loss-of-sales argument, he added, “is starting to crumble,” while arguments demonstrating energy savings and less product shrink with doors “are getting stronger.” Doors also eliminate the “cold-aisle problem.”
The best operators are finding ways to eliminate the possible downsides of doored cases, such as additional labor costs, by stocking cases from the rear, said Mathews. He also recommended using 30-inch glass doors. “That is what shoppers are used to opening.”
In another study, Food Lion, Salisbury, N.C., conducted an eight-week, two-store test of doored dairy cases in the Winston-Salem, N.C., area this year between Easter and Memorial Day, said Wayne Rosa, energy and maintenance manager for Food Lion, which operates around 1,300 stores. Each store was matched up against 20 stores with similar sales patterns; refrigerated products included dairy, beer and lunch meat products. Doors were provided by two vendors — Remis America and Anthony.
Food Lion found the same results in both stores — “there was no change in sales because of the doors,” Rosa said. In addition, the doored cases delivered a 30% savings in energy compared to the open cases.
Since then, the chain's standards committee has approved another 22-store test of medium-temperature case doors next year in an undisclosed market, Rosa said. The test, which will revisit the sales-impact question, will include new doored cases (from Hill Phoenix and Kysor/Warren, both with Anthony doors) and existing cases that have been retrofitted with doors. In addition, another test of the energy impact of retrofitted cases will be launched by the end of 2010 at 25 stores in various markets with high energy costs.
Rosa is confident that doored cases will continue to reap 30% energy savings. The hurdle still remains convincing merchants that doors won't impact retail sales. “We have to break that glass ceiling,” he said.
Sweetbay, Tampa, Fla., one of Food Lion's sister companies, completed its own 50-store retrofit in which doors were installed on open cases, and plans to retrofit another 50 stores next year, essentially covering the entire chain, Rosa said. Sweetbay has also found no negative impact on sales, which helps Food Lion's door efforts, he added.
CONTRARY TESTS
Not all of the tests done on doored cases have concluded that doors don't negatively impact sales in refrigerated cases. Last year at the FMI Energy Conference, Larry Meeker, senior manager, mechanical systems, criteria and engineering at Supervalu's Boise, Idaho, office, reported that tests at three stores all showed sales drops across a range of refrigerated products, along with energy savings, after doored cases were installed.
In one store studied by Supervalu where existing cases were retrofitted with doors, about 50,000 kilowatt hours were saved on an annual basis, enough to deliver a 3.56-year payback on the cost of the retrofit without utility incentives; but sales at the store declined 3% to 4% over time. At a second store where new doored cases were installed, the payback would take over a decade and the sales decline was 8% to 10%. Another store that received incentives would get a two-year return on investment but had a sales decline of 2.2% to 4.5%.
Depending on the margin of the products studied, Supervalu determined that about a 2% decline in sales would “offset all of the energy savings,” said Meeker. On the other hand, the stores in the study did not use signage touting energy savings that could have positively influenced sales. Future tests will continue to work on ways to increase sales of doored cases, including experimenting with signage.
Meanwhile, five-deck open cases were the standard at Supervalu, though a few of its banners do use dairy and deli cases with doors in new and retrofitted stores, Meeker said. (He did not indicate which banners.) He said that “doors are probably the right decision from an energy standpoint in this country.”
Minneapolis-based Target also remains resistant to dairy-case doors at the 340 conventional general merchandise Target stores that will have P-fresh food departments by the end of this month. Open cases are needed to convey the “fresh” concept the P-fresh departments are trying to establish in Target's traditional format, said Rich Varda, senior vice president, store design, Target, during another FMI conference session last month.
Yet Varda also believes that the energy advantage of doored cases “is a goal we should all support.” He suggested it may take a government mandate to get the industry to adopt doored cases en masse.