Festival Foods is a business worth looking at if you are hoping to better your own. I not only shop there weekly, but worked there in high school and my first years in college.
They are doing so many things right, it’s no wonder they are so popular and continue to grow.
Here are 5 reasons Festi is a favorite local business…
1. Customer Service
If you have the pleasure of shopping at a Festival Foods, take note of how your cashier talks to you. They always ask, “Did you find everything ok?” The front-desk staff is also trained to say “it would be my pleasure” after a customer request. If you walk by an employee on the floor they usually greet you or ask “can I help you find anything?”
It’s a very simple act of kindness to say hello to another person and ask if you can give them a hand. It makes the entire shopping experience a pleasant one. Doesn’t take but a few seconds of their time to show they care about their customers.
Most of the employees on the store floor wear headsets. I don’t know about you, but I usually dread being the person in line that needs a price check or needs a replacement carton of eggs. Festival speeds up the process by using headsets to communicate to different parts of the store quickly. The faster items can be price checked or brought up to the front, the faster the checkout process. Quick checkout = happy customers.
Festival Foods has this down pat.
How can you improve your customer service?
Do you know what your customer’s pain points are?
2. Cleanliness
When I buy groceries or food of any kind I want to know they are as clean and safe as possible for my family. Nothing is worse than walking into a dirty store or restaurant. It makes you wonder about the cleanliness of the products, even if everything on the shelf is perfectly clean.
Festival Foods is always spic and span. Even in the winter when you’d think it would be impossible to keep up with the dirt and salt that gets tracked in from carts and people’s boots.
Aside from a clean store, the employees always look presentable. They are required to wear uniforms and keep a groomed appearance.
How your employees present themselves when working with customers can have a big impact on how they are treated but how your customers feel when interacting with them.
Could you take steps to improve the cleanliness of your store or the appearance of your team?
3. High-Quality Products
We consume a lot of fresh foods in comparison to the items you might find in the center of the store. Festival Foods is a store that carries a great selection of fresh produce and meats. If we can’t find something we buy on a regular basis, we simply ask and more often than not it ends up being carried.
I remember specifically asking about Ahi Tuna a few weeks ago and boom, Ahi Tuna was in-stock. The meat guy (I really should know his name by now!) said it was because I had been asking every week.
While their organic product section isn’t incredibly large, they carry most of what we need. They also offer a natural/organic grocery section too so we don’t have to make another trip elsewhere to find bulk items such as cranberries and nuts.
Price isn’t always the number one factor your customers are looking at when they are looking to make a purchase.
What can you do to increase the quality of your products or services?
4. Amenities
Every business has some sort of amenity. Whether or not you have a physical store doesn’t really matter all that much. An amenity is something you provide as a bonus to your customer. It goes above and beyond the basics.
Festival Foods offers postal services, a large deli with a hot food bar and sushi station and daycare while you shop.
They have learned over the years what pain points their customers have and are doing everything in their power to make grocery shopping a great experience.
What amenities can you offer your own customers?
5. Training
I’ve held many different jobs over the past fifteen years. I have had at least a part-time job since I was legally able to work (15 in case you were curious). Before that I worked for my parent’s business learning how to make money and work hard.
Out of the many jobs I’ve held, Festival Foods has one of the most impressive training programs for their employees I have ever experienced. I started out bagging groceries, moved up to cashier and ended my time there as a front-end customer service rep.
You wouldn’t think bagging groceries would require much training, if any, but to make customers happy it certainly does.
Here are some of the things we were taught on bagging:
- Bag frozen foods in plastic and separate from perishables (don’t want any brown bananas or soggy paper bags!)
- Bag cleaning supplies separate in case it spills open
- Group similar items together to make it easier for the customer to unpack
- Ask parents with busy kiddos or elderly customers if they would like a parcel pickup
I think Festival Foods understands how big of an impact each one of their employees can make on every customer that walks through their doors.
If you aren’t training your team how to care for and treat a customer you risk projecting the wrong values.
Does your team know what is important to your business? What are your values? How can you improve your training process to instill them into every customer interaction.
