The New York Times
Wednesday, March 21st, 2007
pg D1&D5
The Story
The Summary: A chain of grocery stores in Los Angeles, Los Vegas, and Colorado has become more specialized, catering to several Hispanic cultures.
In the produce section, a dollar will buy you three avocados. The tilapia are sold live. Stacks of fresh tortillas, made from 600 pounds of corn ground in the store daily, are always warm. And maybe, if the local political winds shift, shoppers might one day be able to buy a chicken that was slaughtered and plucked on site a few hours earlier.
The store’s slogan pretty much says it all: “Si es de allá lo tenemos aquí.” Translated, “If it’s from there, we have it here.”
I love the idea of specialty grocery stores, especially with the advent of Walmart Supercenters. Not only can I get the same hamburgers everywhere (McDonald's), the same pasta everywhere (Olive Garden), but there isn' much local flavor in the grocery stores, as well. Even with chain stores, they had a regional feel. Now, every Walmart is the same, and carries just about the same thing. I wish we could get something like this for Scandinavian, Polish and German food.
Rancho Liborio is not the only grocery chain hungry for more affluent shoppers whose families have roots in Mexico, the Caribbean and Central and South America. The 65-store Minyard chain in the Dallas-Fort Worth area is pumping money into its Latino-theme Carnival stores. In Northern California the Super Mercado México chain, based in San Jose, has started buying old Albertsons stores. Publix, one of the biggest grocery chains in the country, is experimenting with Publix Sabor stores in Florida.
Everyone is going to Hispanic themed grocery stores, as they will be the largest "minority" in the United States in a few years.
For decades small markets and bodega-style stores in cities like Los Angeles, Dallas and New York catered to new immigrants looking for lower prices. But larger, more traditional chains are now trying to capture shoppers in those cities, as well as in places like Denver, Atlanta and Minneapolis.
They are finding that it takes more than a few Mexican products mixed in among the ranch dressing and Fruity Pebbles to attract them.
“If you add jalapeños to the produce department, it doesn’t become a Hispanic store,” said Jack Rosenthal, the food service supervisor for the two Rancho Liborio stores in the Denver area. Mr. Rosenthal, who was born in Peru, speaks English, Spanish and German fluently.
A lot goes into specializing a supermarket. I've never gotten the vibe that the "Hispanic" section is actually meant for Hispanics. I kinda feel like it's for white people who want to experiment with Mexican food. I've never gotten a good vibe from the Mary and Jesus candles. They're just kinda creepy.
Attracting Hispanic shoppers is a delicate business, said Juan Guillermo Tornoe, who runs Hispanic Trending, a market research company in Austin, Tex. Buyers for big chains will often go to Hispanic food trade shows, order everything in sight and then wonder why their efforts to market to Latinos fail.
“Well, what are you buying?” he said. “Are you buying hot sauce and expecting to sell it to Cubans?”
"Hispanic" is not a one-item category. It's like saying European or Asian (except it's cross-continental). There are several different cultures wrapped up in that one word. It's not the Tex-Mex food most Americans are used to.
In the meat section at Rancho Liborio, nary a T-bone is to be found. Most people from Mexico and elsewhere in Latin America cook with thinner cuts, so the 10 varieties of beef are stacked like crepes, separated by pink paper. The chicken section is stocked with both the smaller inexpensive yellow-skinned chickens that Jack Rosenthal said are popular with recent immigrants and the plumper white-skinned birds more popular with people who were born here.
When the chain started its expansion into Colorado, the owners had hoped a polleria would be the star attraction. Live chickens would be shipped in every morning, then slaughtered and processed by noon. But the polleria, which has met the federal Agriculture Department’s guidelines, sits unused at the Commerce City store, the first in the chain to open in Colorado, because the idea of chicken slaughtering didn’t go over with some city officials and residents.
YUM!!!! Fresh chicken. That sounds pretty damn cool. I don't see what the problem is. You do the same thing to lobsters. Couldn't they build a smaller building on the grounds, like a butcher shop, and still have fresh chicken daily?
And in fact the Liborio markets are attracting white, black and Hispanic customers. When it comes down to it, a grocery shopper is a grocery shopper.
“It’s not so much the cultural stuff,” said Marie Lopez, a dental hygienist in the Denver area. “Everything here is fresh, and the prices are good. That’s really what I’m looking for.”
I'd totally shop there. I love to try new and authentic recipes, and it's hard to find some of the ingredients at a Walmart, or even a real grocery store, especially in the north. (Sorry Lueken's, your baking department kinda sucks... not your bakery, your baking goods aisle.) It would be really fun to have a specialized market for a cultural sector.
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