Barons Market opened its ninth location at the Otay Ranch Town Center in May in the midst of the current pandemic.
It is a first for this San Diego-born family business to pick a large shopping center as a location, but Barons Market Senior Vice President Rachel Shemirani said it was one of their best decisions and that is due to the Otay Ranch community.
So Barons decided to give back. It sent a small care package, complete with its signature Barons’brownie, gift cards for a cup of soup and a piece of fruit along with a thank you note to 300 frontline workers at both Sharp Chula Vista Medical Center and Scripps Mercy Hospital.
“They sent pictures back with people really excited about it,” said Shemirani. “It was just something that we were happy to do and want to continue to do at our other store locations, just as a thank you for how hard everyone works. I’m hoping that they are enjoying it. I know it seems so silly to hand out gift cards when it is 100 degrees outside, but our soup bar, well, we could change our name to Barons Soup Bar and double our sales.”
Shemirani said opening a new store in the midst of a pandemic wasn’t easy, and this grand opening wasn’t like anything that Barons had ever seen before.
“Usually we have a big ribbon cutting ceremony, a ton of food with about 25 vendors who come out and cook for our customers, balloons, face painting, and live music and we really didn’t have any of that,” she said.
“And yet, it was probably one of our most successful grand openings. The community there is wonderful. Unlike any other community that I have seen so far.”
Shemirani said with so many changes happening, customers were so respectful with all the new protocols.
“They get it,” she said. “They get social distancing and wearing masks, making sure you wash your hands. They were just so kind to our employees, especially when we first opened and so we were so thrilled and excited.”
Shemirani said that planning for the grand opening was all “fine and dandy” until COVID-19 hit the community hard. She said they immediately went into action in early March when things began to shut down and it seemed like they were making 100 different big decisions every day, how to keep employees and customers safe, and what protocols needed to be implemented.
“That was very tough for everyone, but especially in the grocery industry in the beginning when people were just buying toilet paper, rice, pasta,” said Shemirani. “People were panicked. We really felt that we needed to calm our customers and employees as much as possible.”
Shemirani said part of the new shopping experience was to develop an experience. Barons did not want customers to come into the store and see empty shelves and panic, so it immediately pivoted and began working with restaurant suppliers so when its regular vendors were sold out, they could buy the items through restaurant supply companies in bulk. She said that worked well for the grocery store, especially in the beginning of the pandemic when people where searching for toilet paper, rice, pastas and other necessary items.
Shemirani said the shopping experience is everything to Barons.
“We really believe that good food and fresh produce and an exciting customer experience should not be expensive,” she said. “We kind of married the idea of Sprout’s, Trader Joe’s and Whole Foods into one different kind of grocery concept. We love what we do. We are all about fresh produce, grab and go entrees, kind of changing the way, the way our customers’ habits have been changing. We’ve created a 15-minute shopping experience and most of our food is organic or all natural.”
We have around 40 employees in this store and most of our stores run around 25 to 30 employees.
Our ideal is the customer experience, we are not alone in that. Really in any kind of retail industry customer experience is so essential, to have customers choose you over competitors. We really pride ourselves on creating this really unique, quick, easy experience. We have salad bars, soup bars, hot food bars and it is very engaging for all your senses. Even with all of the changes that we have made to these bars due to COVID regulations.
“All of our products have been tasted at our weekly food panel meeting. This is where about 35 of us from different managers and different stores all get together with some of the buyers and we taste anywhere from 80 to 120 products. We wear elastic waistbands that day and make sure we’re up on our heartburn medication.
“We taste all of these products and we evaluate, we vote, we talk about the label, ingredients and, of course, the price. We end up choosing about five items, then bring them onto our shelves and discontinue some lower selling items. That way it keeps the selections limited but exciting. No one wants to go into a supermarket and see 60,000 items. Our stores have around 9,500. So it is so much an easier shopping experience for the customer.
“We worked with a retail designer from Michigan on all of our stores since 2006 and it is a beautiful store in a beautiful shopping center in an incredible neighborhood so we couldn’t be happier.”
