A luggage set is perched above the cheese in the dairy aisle. Patio furniture is on display beside the Easter candy. Boxer shorts are next to the checkout counter.
These days, major grocery chains are trying hard to put more "super" in the supermarket.
While nonfood items have been on the shelves since the days when the groceries were delivered from the mom and pop store on the corner, today's supermarkets are confronting problems the corner groceries did not.
They're facing increased competition from big discount stores, Internet food purveyors, specialty food stores and even restaurants for consumers' food dollars. Customers are fickle as to the stores they patronize, and increasingly, folks want to do all their shopping in one place.
In response, "Supermarkets are branching out," says Greg Ten Eyck, a spokesman for Safeway, which began a program about three years ago to boost the number of nonfood items in the store.
Now along with the flowers, cosmetics and medicine, Safeway sells lawn furniture, lamps and DVD players, toys and department-store gift cards. It also has teamed up with a Web site specializing in overstocked merchandise to sell clothing, electronics and housewares online.
Giant also is pursuing the busy customer by offering seasonal items such as barbecue grills, hammocks and wicker furniture in its aisles. "The industry has gotten very competitive," says company spokesman Barry Scher. "It's important for us to develop something new in the store."
The goal, he adds, is to give customers more one-stop shopping opportunities. "It adds a little excitement to the center core of the store," he says. "It really is for everyone. So many people are time-starved."
Industry experts have a name for this new trend: "channel blurring." What it means is Wal-Mart is looking more like your grocery store, and grocery stores are looking more like your Wal-Mart.
The changes began decades ago, says Todd Hultquist, spokesman for the Food Marketing Institute, an industry trade organization. Giant put pharmacies in its stores in the 1960s. In the 1980s, many supermarket chains added flower shops and in the 1990s, banks.
Meanwhile, discount stores have expanded their food line from chips and soda to include, in some cases, entire grocery stores with bakeries and produce sections.
As a result, consumers are scaling back on the number of trips they make to the grocery store, says Todd Hale, a senior vice president at ACNielsen U.S., a company that tracks retail trends.
