instore - March 2018 - 25

Small-store
values, scaled
Creminelli, Applegate, Diestel and Charlito's Cocina. During our January
visit just one deli meat being sold at Bi-Rite, an Italian prosciutto di parma,
was sourced from outside the U.S.
On the cheese side, one buyer is dedicated to sourcing Bi-Rite's offerings, all of which are clean-label. Labels include Tillamook, Cabot
Creamery, Rumiano, Tine, Emmi Roth, Calabro, Vella, Meredith Dairy,
Cowgirl Creamery, Walter Rass, Chalet Ossolo, Colston Bassett Dairy
and Penterman Farms.
With the exception of cookies, which are made at the company's
commissary, the baked goods sold at the 18th Street and NoPa markets
are made on 18th Street, in the Bi-Rite Creamery kitchen. A typical
lineup may include eight types of cookies, two or three varieties of
sweet breads (e.g. banana bread), three or four cakes, three or four pies,
cupcakes and other goodies.
Mogannam's wife, Anne Walker, is the head pastry chef. Before the
Creamery opened, Walker and Kris Hoogerhyde, who is also a baker
and a partner in Bi-Rite Creamery, made the markets' baked goods after
hours in the San Francisco restaurant where both worked. All told,
Walker and Hoogerhyde have been making Bi-Rite's baked goods for 17
years. Before that, Mogannam's mom, Mariette, handled baking duties.
Trendy bakery items at the beginning of 2018 at Bi-Rite included
individual-portion cakes and tiramisu and other serving-sized desserts
in jars, Mogannam says. A basket of grab 'n go items at the market in
January included homemade pop tarts, cranberry orange muffins,
ginger pecan scones with ginger glaze, banana bran muffins, dark
chocolate coconut scones and - on the savory side - cheddar black
pepper muffins and white cheddar, garlic and chive scones.
While Bi-Rite makes its own dessert breads, it sources its traditional
loaves from Bay Area bakeries like Firebrand in Oakland and Acme in
Berkeley. Varieties on the shelf in January included sourdough, walnut
levain, olive bread, meyer lemon rosemary and pumpkin seed.

People power
Mogannam knows how important the sacred "C" word - convenience
- is to today's harried consumers. Many of his customers, after all, are
Mission residents who work long hours at tech jobs in Silicon Valley.
But in the Bi-Rite version of retail, the focus is not on convenience per
se. They keep their eye on the "R" word instead. "It's all about relationships, and convenience is just one tactic to support good relationships,"
Mogannam says. "Efficiency - that's another tactic. You start with trust
and connection. We're connecting the person we're feeding with the
person who's growing it. We have to educate and feed our customers
simultaneously."

Sam Mogannam would be the first
to admit he has no ambitions to
take Bi-Rite beyond San Francisco,
much less California or the West.
The Bi-Rite model is built on
community-building, something
that gets harder to do the bigger
you get.
That said, Mogannam sees no
reason why medium and big
companies can't take at least
some of the values of a Bi-Rite
or another small retailer and
scale them. But it takes a vision,
he says - one that's clearly
established at the beginning of
the journey. Whatever particular
shape that vision takes, it has to be
"your North Star, your purpose,"
he says. For Bi-Rite, that North
Star was its commitment to
community-building.
Even if the Bi-Rites of the world
remain focused on cultivating
their own small corners of the
retail universe, in many ways the
grocery retail industry as a whole
is shifting in their direction.
Take center-store. It's a mistake,
Mogannam says, to think centerstore is going away because of
Amazon, Walmart or other forces
beyond the independents' control.
"But CPG (consumer packaged
goods) will go away" in its current
form, he says. "Foods that have
no flavor, no nutritional value, no
story to tell will go away. Look
at the way CPG companies are
investing in smaller companies
with more 'human' values. There's
potential for center-store to have
those delicious products, to have
those stories to tell."

Different motives drive different
perimeter- store actions.
People want to cook more,
Mogannam says. That may
lead them to buy steak from
the meat department. But
they're also time-starved. And
that's where retail foodservice
comes in. "They cook the steak
themselves, but they buy the
mashed potatoes from the
prepared foods section to go
with it," he says. "I think the
future is bright. People want
the sense of discovery and the
sensory experience, the intimate
experience you get in a grocery
store."
But not all stores are equally
likely to thrive. "The future for
big box stores isn't as bright,"
he says. Shoppers want a more
intimate environment. In some
cases, you can be big and thrive
- if that "big" is made up of a
bunch of "littles." "Wegmans'
stores are big, but they create
intimate environments within
the larger environment, and
they invest in their people and in
amazing products."

But the real future for grocery
may not be in center-store but
in the perimeter departments,
Mogannam says.

instore * MARCH 2018 * 25

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of instore - March 2018