Joe Virgona's new second-floor office features a wall of six mega-sized screens, each split into six, overlooking his 30,000 square-foot grocery store. The 36 screens aren't there for security or shoplifters, but to monitor service. Lineup at the checkout? A rush on deli? He'll immediately call the head cashier to open up more lanes or alert floor staff for backup.
"I can sit back here and see that service is running correctly throughout the store," says Mr. Virgona, 67, owner of Fiesta Farms, Toronto's largest independently owned retail grocery store. The screens were his brainchild when he was moving offices a few months back, so he consulted two companies and put it together.
"To me, it's my electronic window into the store. If you want to be successful, you've got to keep up."
On the outside, Fiesta Farms looks pretty traditional. Located in the immigration corridor at Christie and Bloor streets, the store offers a myriad of natural, organic and specialty foods displayed cheek by jowl with conventional groceries. While popular in the neighbourhood, the store also draws from outside the area with a following of professional and amateur chefs, foodies, health devotees and environmentally conscious families willing to trek across the city. Fiesta Farms was the first Ontario grocery store certified by Local Food Plus, an organization supporting sustainable food systems.
"We listen to our customers and constantly try to find a middle road," says Mr. Virgona, who's worked in the grocery business since he was 14. "We started into the natural food industry in 1994 and haven't deviated from that although we still try to maintain a regular supermarket. But we're so heavily into natural and organic foods that it's kind of squeezed out our mainstay."
With a limited advertising budget, Mr. Virgona hoped new marketing technology could get the word out to more people about what they were doing. "I've always wanted to go online, but I didn't know what I wanted to do," says Mr. Virgona, who hired Hypenotic, a Toronto communications design company, to do the strategy, design and management of Fiesta Farms's website.
"I knew it had to be more than click, click. First of all, how do I get the consumer to come online, because otherwise, all it's going to be is an electronic flyer coming to your home."
The result of months of research and planning was a highly interactive website, launched in September of 2009, with a strong social media outreach to further expand the store's savvy and highly connected customer base. The website is a hub of activity with videos on how to bag your own groceries, videos of Toronto chefs involved in raising money for The Stop Community Food Centre on why they shop at Fiesta; and stories on how to make a perfect Dagwood and Meatball Madness.
You can link up with community organizations and events or even find a carpool to shop at Fiesta. Currently the store has more than 680 Facebook members and as many followers on Twitter. Hypenotic keeps the spaces fresh with newsfeed updates and Tweets.
"Fiesta is on the right track doing things that are cost effective such as Facebook, Twitter and YouTube," says Chris Johnsen, a partner and Canadian Solutions Practice Leader with BDO Canada.
"They're taking advantage of an infrastructure that's very popular and already in place and getting their customers to populate the space they've created. Facebook and Twitter are still in their adolescence with lots of room to grow yet. By being willing to take a risk, Fiesta Farms has put themselves in the forefront."
But Marty Weintraub, executive vice-president with Karabus Management, a subsidiary of PricewaterhouseCoopers LLP specializing in the retail industry, isn't convinced.
"There's certainly a move right now to try and test the impacts of social media marketing, whether it's Facebook, Twitter or blogging, but at the end of the day, I haven't seen any strong evidence that it's got strong long-term financial payback," Mr. Weintraub says. "But for a small company with one store that's got a focused market, what it does is create a lot of hype, buzz and word-of-mouth. So if you're in the high end, gourmet type of food retailing and your customer base is Internet savvy and likes to Tweet or chat with other customers, it would be helpful. But as a way of driving significant growth, I think the jury is still out."
Mr. Virgona says it's too soon to measure how effective the move online has been since they launched right before the Thanksgiving and Christmas holidays, but customer response has been positive.
"People are actually talking about a grocery store in their personal, private spaces," says Hypenotic principal, Barry Martin. "That's the first thing we measure. Second, what matters is what they're saying."
Mr. Virgona meets weekly with Hypenotic staff to discuss his website and social media outreach. Otherwise, the only marketing he does is a door-to-door neighbourhood flyer and regular ads in two "foodie" magazines.
"I'm enjoying this technology because I'm getting to know the customer more and more," Mr. Virgona says. "Some of this is out of my depth but I learn quickly. If there's a problem, we can react immediately."
While he jokes he could have "bought a Ferrari" with what he's invested, he encourages other independents to try it.
"More than anything else, it's building your community," Mr. Virgona says. "But keep your site interesting or they won't come back on. Done correctly, it's probably the cheapest advertising that any grocery store is going to get today."
