Dive Brief:

• Food Lion remodeled 47 stores across Greenville, Jacksonville and New Bern, North Carolina in an effort to streamline the shopping experience for customers, according to a Monday press release. 
• The renovation’s $77 million capital investment included updates to product assortment, more meal solution options, enhancements to e-commerce, additional self-checkout lanes and more. 
• These updates continue a store remodeling drive Food Lion has been carrying out in the Carolinas as owner Ahold Delhaize modernizes the grocery brand.

Dive Insight:

Food Lion’s remodel focuses on bolstering the shopping experience with an enhanced product selection and services. Renovated stores are equipped with Food Lion To Go, the grocer’s pickup and home delivery options, allowing shoppers to place orders either online or through the grocer’s app. 

Most stores also have added self-checkout kiosks based on customer and associate feedback the grocer received, the announcement noted. Stores provided additional training to staff, as well, to improve the customer experience. 

Food Lion installed energy-efficient overhead LED lighting as well as refrigerated cases with doors to offer solutions that “enhance fresh product assortment and reduce energy costs” that help lower the chain’s environmental footprint, the press release stated. 

The expansion to Food Lion’s product assortment includes more organic, gluten-free and plant-based items, such as the grocer’s private label brand, Nature’s Promise, which consists of products with no artificial flavors, preservatives or synthetic colors, according to the announcement. More fresh produce, quality meats and ready-to-eat, -cook and -heat options also have been added. 

Through its Local Goodness program, the renovated stores offer a wider selection of regional goods sourced from local growers and manufacturers. 

In addition, the grocer is collaborating with local organizations in the Greenville, Jacksonville and New Bern areas to address food insecurity. Food Lion has contributed $150,000 through Food Lion Feeds, its hunger-relief platform, to help East Carolina University and its Farm-To-Clinic initiative. The partnership supports a mobile teaching kitchen as well as a food distribution unit designed to better healthy food access and improve nutrition and health for uninsured, low-income diabetes patients in the state’s rural eastern region, according to the press release. 

Food Lion has completed dozens of supermarket upgrades across the Carolinas in recent months. Over the past several years, the grocer has updated hundreds of locations — a move that has significantly lifted sales.