Dive Brief:
- Raley's has finished converting a store in El Dorado Hills, California, into its healthy-foods-focused O-N-E Market format, the grocery chain announced. The redesigned store, which opened on Saturday, April 17, following a closure from April 12-16, is the first time an existing Raley's location has been turned into the new format.
- The newly refreshed location, which is Raley's second O-N-E Market, includes a natural beauty store-within-a-store stocked with health and beauty products that are made without artificial preservatives, are hypoallergenic, and are Cruelty Free- and Rainforest Alliance-certified.
- Raley's plans to open additional O-N-E stores as part of a multi-year campaign to brand itself as a health-oriented food retailer.
Dive Insight:
The new O-N-E Market represents an effort by Raley's to further prioritize health and wellness in its stores and across its product assortment.
The newly converted 39,000-square-foot store features what the grocer describes as a "highly curated" array of items that are fresh, nutritious, minimally processed and sustainably sourced. Many of the products in the store, which is located just a few miles down the road from a Whole Foods Market, are also organic.
Raley's also stressed that the items in the O-N-E Market are free of ingredients like high fructose corn syrup; artificial preservatives, flavors and sweeteners; and hydrogenated fats and oils. In addition, the store includes a cafe with coffee from local coffee seller Chocolate Fish Coffee Roasters, an organic juice bar and prepared foods like sushi made from 100% sustainable seafood.
Like Raley's first O-N-E Market, which opened last June in Truckee, California, the new store offers education programs, tours, nutrition coaching and other services led by a registered dietitian. Raley's has tied its free nutrition services to its loyalty program called Something Extra.
Raley's also plans to convert an existing store in Reno, Nevada, into a O-N-E Market, with the goal of reopening it on May 1. The grocer is also building a new O-N-E Market in Roseville, California, and has its sights set on opening it next spring.
In a statement, Raley's President and CEO Keith Knopf said the grocer plans to convert additional stores into O-N-E Markets, but did not offer further details. "The pace of transformation will be guided by our purpose and aligned with customer preference," Knopf said. "This is mind, it is our intent to be ahead of the consumer curve and inform customer choice through a commitment to education and transparency."
The expansion of the O-N-E Market format ties into the grocery company's efforts to focus on boosting its health-conscious image. In recent years, Raley's has taken steps to cut out sugar-sweetened sodas from its private label lineup, remove tobacco products and launch in-store and online icons to increase the transparency of healthy products. In February, Raley's unveiled plans to sponsor a food lab within the Lab@AgStart incubator in Woodland, California, that will allow the grocery chain to develop and test new products that it could potentially bring to its stores.
