DELAWARE COUNTY, Pa. – Swiss Farms is a unique retailer. In fact, you may think it’s a convenience store, but don’t call it that.
“We’re a fill-in provisional store,” Paul Friel, Swiss Farms CEO, told The Delaware County Times, comparing the stores to the express lane of a supermarket with a drive-thru.
As a store that offers convenience in the form of a drive-thru, the retailer is preparing for competition from supermarkets, including remodeling 13 stores and offering hot dinners for take-home dining, such as rotisserie chicken.
“This is a really solid position against the grocery store. We are really trying to be competitive with supermarkets,” said Friel, noting one of the store’s biggest challenges: informing customers of the store’s inside offer when it’s a drive-thru.
With the help of Chute Gerdeman architectural design firm, Swiss Farms reversed the stores’ customary colors so that the walls are red and the roof is white, added more windows and an additional service door to service more than one customer at time, and installed four 42-inch screens that provide information on weather and product specials.
The screens are linked to a Web site that provides the current temperature, which then signals an ad appropriate to the weather condition. For example, if temperatures soar into the high 90s, an ad featuring cold water will appear. “You can change rapidly,” Friel told the newspaper. “You can adapt. It’s a much cleaner way to communicate.”
Swiss Farms credits its success to its ability to interact with customers. Friel said that the company dismissed the idea of using headphones and speakers and continues to have employees talk to customers and put their items in their vehicles.
But, convenience store or not, the drive thru offer at Swiss Farms is in fact convenient — especially for parents with kids. “It’s a lot easier than to go to our friends at Acme and Giant,” Friel said. “We truly have become America’s express-lane market."
To see more on Swiss Farms and its drive-thru offer, be sure to attend the Ideas 2 Go General Session this year at the NACS Show. Register today.