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. With In The New York Times Magazine: Organic Growth
Posted Under: Consumed
O Organics and Eating Right: Name Brand? Store Brand? Safeway’s virtue-food products aim to blur the line.
This week in Consumed, Safeway private-label lines that break with the basic rules of that category:
Both were built much more like name brands than like store brands — in fact, both were supported by national television and print advertising. And more recently, Safeway has initiated the Better Living Brands Alliance, with the highly unusual goal of selling these two store-brand lines in places other than the chain that created them — school cafeterias, foreign markets and, ultimately, other U.S. grocers.
Read the column in the July 13, 2008, issue of The New York Times Magazine, or here.
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Reader Comments
In the process of writing about Safeway’s “O Organics” brand, did you learn whether the products are indeed organic? Or what standards they are held accountable to so they can use the term? When the brand first appeared in our local Tom Thumb here in Dallas, I tried to find out online without much luck.
Your piece was interesting, but to me it was a little like reading recent articles on the primary debates that talked about style and whether the candidates’ approach would help or hurt their chances of getting elected, but did not actually address whether what was they said had any merit.
I will try again online to see what I can learn about whether O Organics is organic and/or what their definition is. If I learn anything interesting, I will pass it along to you.
Interesting that Safeway attributes its success on branding to some P&G and Nestle executives. Too many in the press swallow their PR> O Organics and Eating Right were created, designed and shipping before they arrived. Too many retailers are opting out for non-retail gray matter because it appeals to Wall Street, not because they make a difference. If you check your history and longevity of CPG executives who make the jump to retail, you will find they are short careers.