Dive Brief:

• Giant Eagle has kicked off an effort to “reduce and control” prices for almost 800 grocery items and other products it carries by an average of nearly 20% and plans to maintain the reductions for approximately three months, the supermarket chain announced Wednesday.
• The “Price Lock” program, which began Thursday and will run through Aug. 9, will extend to all of the retailer’s Giant Eagle and Market District supermarkets as well as to its GetGo convenience stores.
• Giant Eagle is rolling out the discounting initiative as grocers look to demonstrate to shoppers that they are committed to helping them cope with inflation.

Dive Insight:

In announcing the Price Lock program, Giant Eagle said it is determined to provide shoppers with “meaningful reductions” on essential goods, adding that it is focusing its efforts on products that tend to be most popular during the spring and summer.

The list of items covered by the program includes meat, seafood, produce, dairy staples, prepared meals, and health and wellness products that carry the Giant Eagle brand as well as “seasonally relevant” national brands, the retailer said.

The company said it plans to highlight deals in its printed circular each week and use QR codes to direct shoppers to its website to get more information about discounts it is offering. Giant Eagle added that it intends to also continue to put items on sale on a weekly basis to supplement the Price Lock program.

In a sign that Giant Eagle has concluded that printed circulars are a key way for it to reach shoppers, the company announced last month that it would again send circulars to shoppers in Cleveland as well as Pittsburgh.

Giant Eagle said its decision to accelerate its discounting reflects the company’s sense that shoppers remain stressed by high prices despite government data showing that the rate of inflation has been slowing.

“Right now, our customers are seeking to manage their grocery expenses and telling us they need more ways to save at Giant Eagle to maintain access to the items that are most important to their households,” Bill Artman, the grocer’s newly appointed interim CEO, said in a statement.

Giant Eagle has been facing mounting competition from Walmart, which recently overtook it to become the top supermarket chain in its home market of Pittsburgh, the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette reported last month. Artman is intent on strengthening the grocer’s appeal to shoppers and wants shoppers to “think of Giant Eagle first,” the newspaper reported on Tuesday.

Giant Eagle’s effort to highlight steps it is taking to lower prices reflects an unfolding trend in the supermarket industry as grocers look to position themselves as allies in the fight against inflation.

Last fall, for example, Giant Food began offering products like bread, milk and frozen vegetables available to members of its loyalty program for fewer points than it typically requires for those items. Wegmans, meanwhile, has sought to draw shoppers’ attention to products that let people prepare meals for as little as $2 per serving, while Save A Lot launched an advertising campaign last summer that casts private label products as comparable to national brands but a lot less expensive.