Simple Truth "Organic" redesign

[storewanderer]

It appears Kroger is doing a redesign of Simple Truth Organic's packaging.

The familiar round green Simple Truth logo remains. However now "Organic" is in bigger letters below/outside the round green Simple Truth. There is also some additional color around the product description. I suspect this is being done so this can serve as an immediate replacement for O Organics in the merger, as the round green Simple Truth logo with "Organics" in larger letters below presents more similar to how the branding presents on O Organics products.

Currently this packaging is showing up on some bagged citrus. I do not see it yet in center store.

This seems like a positive improvement as sometimes I felt the "Simple Truth Organic" all in the green circle, sometimes the "organic" got lost in the green circle. Now it is much more obvious.

[HCal]

Are they doing the same with the non-organic Simple Truth items?

I always thought it was shady that they had "Simple Truth Natural" things with a similar logo that people might mistake for organic if they weren't paying attention.

Ideally they should make it an organic-only line.

[storewanderer]

Are they doing the same with the non-organic Simple Truth items?

I always thought it was shady that they had "Simple Truth Natural" things with a similar logo that people might mistake for organic if they weren't paying attention.

Ideally they should make it an organic-only line.

I have never seen "Simple Truth Natural." What items have that designation? Or do you mean the plain "Simple Truth" label? But is that a natural label? I thought it was just a banned ingredients list label? I know they market it as a "Natural and Organic department item" but there are a lot of branded items in that department too. They describe Simple Truth as an "Organic and Free From" label here https://www.supermarketnews.com/organic ... -year-mark

Simple Truth did replace the old Fred Meyer Naturally Preferred brand (formerly Natural Choices - that line dated back to the 80's or very early 90's) so maybe they used "natural" language as a bridge. Naturally Preferred was the same way some items were Organic and some were not, Natural Choices I don't think had Organic SKUs since the brand existed before Organic was even a thing in the US. Kroger was also running some Private Selection Organic items and Kroger Organic items before they went to Simple Truth Organic so I think their program was a mess and they pulled it together under Simple Truth and have had absolute success with it. This product line is extremely successful at most of the Kroger divisions I visit (I don't think it is very successful at Ralphs though).

The logos are very clear- if it says Simple Truth or it says Simple Truth Organic it is really clear. Their advertisements advertise both product lines. There are other brands who also have Organic and non-Organic versions of their products on the shelf too though I think we see less of this as the big CPGs are buying up the "little independent looking" Organic brands and keeping those instead.

Ideally what would happen is the Kroger label would become the clean label and Simple Truth would be 100% Organic but I don't see that happening. Only Trader Joe's and Whole Foods run clean label for their entry level private label items.

[HCal]

I meant the plain "Simple Truth" label, although many of those items (particularly meat and eggs) have "Natural" prominently stated on the label, such as https://www.kroger.com/product/images/l ... 1111087023

If I were Kroger, I would keep "O Organics" as the USDA-certified organic label, and use "Simple Truth" for stuff that is "natural", "free from" or whatever other meaningless buzzwords they are throwing around.

[rwsandiego]

I meant the plain "Simple Truth" label, although many of those items (particularly meat and eggs) have "Natural" prominently stated on the label, such as https://www.kroger.com/product/images/l ... 1111087023

If I were Kroger, I would keep "O Organics" as the USDA-certified organic label, and use "Simple Truth" for stuff that is "natural", "free from" or whatever other meaningless buzzwords they are throwing around.

Given "O Organics" was not sold to C&S, my guess is "O Organics" would be the Krobertsons organic line and Simple Truth the "natural"/"free from" line. That's assuming the merger happens, of course.

[storewanderer]

I meant the plain "Simple Truth" label, although many of those items (particularly meat and eggs) have "Natural" prominently stated on the label, such as https://www.kroger.com/product/images/l ... 1111087023

If I were Kroger, I would keep "O Organics" as the USDA-certified organic label, and use "Simple Truth" for stuff that is "natural", "free from" or whatever other meaningless buzzwords they are throwing around.

Given "O Organics" was not sold to C&S, my guess is "O Organics" would be the Krobertsons organic line and Simple Truth the "natural"/"free from" line. That's assuming the merger happens, of course.

I do not see Kroger eliminating Simple Truth Organic. It does not make sense to eliminate a product line that is highly successful across 2,750 stores and replace it with a product line that is not overly successful as it is and a much more limited mix of products at present in 2,200 stores (300+ of which are going to be sold). That would be a very serious mistake. Kroger has put a LOT of money into marketing Simple Truth/Simple Truth Organic.

O Organics has been running on fumes basically ever since the Albertsons/Safeway merger. Safeway put a lot of effort into O Organics and heavily marketed/built up the brand, but as with everything Safeway their outrageous pricing hindered potential success (the big problem was Whole Foods and Trader Joes private label organics were/still are priced drastically cheaper than O Organics stuff), and since then the line has been completely running on fumes. There is little to no marketing, little to no promotion, items come and go too often, the line feels incomplete and like a complete afterthought.

Kroger could take O Organics and market the brand better and probably get it going into something good again but why disrupt what is working in 2,750 stores (Simple Truth program) and replace it with a broken program from a smaller group of stores? The better solution is to immediately roll Simple Truth Organic out into the Safeway units with the larger line and stronger pricing to better compete with other chains. The bigger problem is Safeway's entire price structure is so screwed up that in many cases in center store (not so much in categories like dairy) the base "Signature" item (non Organic) often has a higher retail than the Simple Truth Organic item at the competing Kroger division. So that also would need to be addressed.

This is the type of thing where they will save costs. It would cost them more to "fix" O Organics and disrupt their 2,750 stores that experience success with Simple Truth Organic, than it will to scale the already very successful Simple Truth Organic program into the 1,900 or so Safeway/Albertsons units that they are even keeping. The key will be to ensure any SKUs that exist in O Organics and have decent sales volume that do not exist in Simple Truth Organic, are immediately added to the Simple Truth Organic product line. I don't think there are many such items. I would guess it would be less than 100 items. And if they are managing the Simple Truth Organic brand properly there are probably well below 100 such items that they lack but O Organics has.

But to get O Organics line up to the SKU variety of Simple Truth Organic they would have to add many hundreds of items to that product line.

My guess is C&S does not want to pay for O Organics. Topco provides a better Organic line to C&S in Full Circle anyway (it has more SKUs at more competitive prices than O Organics). They have no reason to buy O Organics. I also doubt they'll even use Open Nature, Waterfront Bistro, or Debi Lilly Designs. That is all a token move to make it look like C&S is getting "product brands they can use." Yeah, brands the average Safeway/Albertsons shopper doesn't even know exist.

Also that Open Nature line is shrinking. The last of the Open Nature yogurt just got discontinued a couple weeks ago. They also got rid of a couple of the frozen pizza flavors in Open Nature within the past two months.

The floral program is pretty strong at Safeway, ironically, that Debi Lilly branding one thing I'd have tried to keep. But I guess Kroger likes its Bloomhaus program.

[storewanderer]

I was thinking more about this since I find Simple Truth to be perhaps the most successful program Kroger has ever implemented.

Once they have these additional stores from Albertsons/Safeway selling that label I think they can do national ad buys and basically market the brand as if it is a national brand. They will have enough stores and reach, plus it is being sold on Vitacost.com too, that they can probably justify doing that type of a campaign.

Also having a single Organic and/or "free from" label is easy for the customer to identify and trust the label once marketing is done to educate the customer about the label. The average customer is not very engaged with a store. Does the average customer even know what O Organics or Open Nature mean? Do they even know they are a Safeway/Albertsons-exclusive brand? I doubt they have a clue or care. Simple Truth has been heavily marketed as Organic and/or "free from", website is active with product assortment/brand information/product descriptions/coupons/shop online, Kroger logo on the back of many packages so it is clear what chain sells this stuff, etc.

Kroger had expertise in selling Natural/Organic category product from Fred Meyer who was very effective at those categories, but other divisions were not as successful with these categories.

I believe a significant portion of how Kroger designed the Simple Truth program was watching how the Organic program progressed and then went nowhere with Safeway. Safeway was heavily rolling out O Organics in conjunction with Lifestyle remodels in their best markets (bay area, SoCal, etc.), marketing it heavily, and was having decent success with the Organic category at the time despite outrageous pricing. That was also a time when Whole Foods was doing heavy unit count expansion (and merging with Wild Oats), and you had these upstart things like Sunflower/Sprouts/Henry's doing quite a bit of expansion which were "budget focused" stores with a lot of Organic products.

Where I think Safeway went fatally wrong with O Organics and its entire Organic program was how they handled it in rural stores. Safeway and its "all the stores have to be the same" thing meant Lifestyle stores in rural areas got the same sized Organic produce area as in a bay area store, and same Organic center store mix, and same outrageous (too high for the rural areas to afford) pricing. These items did not sell, produce sat spoiling, center store items sat and sat, dairy got outdated. Since Safeway never wanted to mark stuff down and would rather throw it out. Suddenly what was a major cornerstone of the Lifestyle program (due to its success in the initial set of Lifestyle stores) turned into a shrink creating machine in the rural stores. So then enter Albertsons and their common sense approach to things and you start to see the line shrink, you start to see some stores lose Organic produce entirely, but where Albertsons went wrong is they just cut things back when what they needed to do actually was fix the pricing then promote that fact...

Enter Kroger and Simple Truth. Years later Kroger had strong knowledge of markets and competitors. Kroger put the SImple Truth products into all stores center store but had very abbreviated SKUs in rural type settings. Little Organic produce in Kroger in rural settings (and if it is there not selling they will mark it down to sell it before letting it sit spoiling for days as the old Safeway did). Same goes for those Simple Truth meat and dairy items- if they don't sell, Kroger marks them down... this gets people to try them. Some will like the product and buy it again. If stuff is marked down too much Kroger will discontinue it at a given location. Additionally Kroger's pricing on these items (often lower than name brand counterparts) helped get customers to try these items who may have otherwise bought a name brand item. So Kroger has seen success with Simple Truth in all settings. Even the Ruler Foods Stores have a good assortment of Simple Truth items.

So I think Kroger can scale Simple Truth into the Safeway units and be successful with it very quickly, no differently than the success they had with the line roll out in their own stores. It will keep customers more engaged with center store at Safeway than the unpredictable mix and wildly overpriced O Organics label and increase basket size from customers who otherwise would have gone to Trader Joe's/Whole Foods to complete their basket with a better selection of Organics.

[veteran+]

Agreed!

But I still wish they would distinguish the packaging design for organic!

[storewanderer]

I meant the plain "Simple Truth" label, although many of those items (particularly meat and eggs) have "Natural" prominently stated on the label, such as https://www.kroger.com/product/images/l ... 1111087023

If I were Kroger, I would keep "O Organics" as the USDA-certified organic label, and use "Simple Truth" for stuff that is "natural", "free from" or whatever other meaningless buzzwords they are throwing around.

I wonder how they get to describing those eggs (which cost 3.49 in Reno) as "natural." Like, aren't all eggs "natural?" I think they should clean up that sort of thing from the labeling. The identical SKU in Open Nature at Safeway (which cost 5.99 in Reno) does not say "natural" anywhere.

There also is some "Simple Truth Organic Seltzer Water." Again how do you do that? When it first came out it was Product of Canada, I think it is a different source now. They have some good flavors, but I don't know how you get "Organic" Seltzer Water. I bought for the flavors, not for the "Organic."

What is strange also is when Albertsons announced the O Organics redesign, they claimed the line had 1,500 SKUs. Yet when I search for "O Organics" and put the store location to the unit in Reno on Steamboat which is a new store that opened during COVID and is heavily merchandised (way better selection than the other local Safeways is my perception- maybe that is not reality) it only shows about 700 O Organics items available. The other two locations have the same number of available SKUs. Some smaller locations in NorCal have ~650 O Organics SKUs but most have more than that, and none have more than about 700. So the SKU range is pretty consistent regardless of store size/rural vs. not rural setting. Safeway still doesn't get it. Also of those SKUs I notice around 125 of them are "fruits and vegetables" SKUs. This brings some stores down to not much over 500 items in meat/baby/dairy/center store as O Organics. This is why the brand seems barely visible as you shop the store. I have seen numerous items discontinued in O Organics over the years. Bottled Tea, bagged snacks, some dairy items... and I don't see many (any) new items being added.

Now when I go to Smiths and search for Simple Truth Organic (not just plain Simple Truth) at the various local stores the results vary but even the lowest SKU unit has better SKU count than Safeway. Also in their case at each store around 100 "fruit and vegetable" SKUs are Simple Truth Organic. So there are still close to 1,000 Simple Truth Organic items in meat/baby/dairy/center store Simple Truth Organic.
Reno South Meadows: 1,068 results - this has a Sprouts across the street
Sparks: 1,107 results - this is a larger/busy busy busy store
Reno Lemmon: 1,069 results - high traffic store, middle to lower middle class area; competition is Wal Mart, a very sad Raleys that hasn't been remodeled in over 20 years and doesn't even have self checkout, and Grocery Outlet
Carson City: 986 results - this is a really downscale operation but a large store
Gardnerville: 881 results - this is only about a 50k square foot store so fewer items make sense.
Dayton: 1,104 results - this is a rural store so it is interesting to me it has so many SKUs.
Elko: 1,041 results - this store physically is identical to Gardnerville, but seems to have more Simple Truth Organic for some reason.
Pahrump: 1,033 results - this store physically is also identical to Gardnerville and Elko -
NOW what is also interesting to point out about the Carson City and Gardnerville Smiths is these two stores still have a Nutrition department/aisle (segregated from the rest of the store). It would appear that may really be hurting sales on Simple Truth Organic items since some are on that aisle and some are integrated into the sets throughout the rest of the store so it may be confusing people who want this line. I really liked the old segregated Nutrition departments but the sales results show (this also happened with Raleys) integrating the stuff throughout the store significantly helps sales and builds awareness of the items with customers who otherwise would ignore it (by not going down that Nutrition aisle at all).

Safeway was doing a redesign on O Organics; they announced it in early 2023. So far I do not see many redesigned products (I see a few). I am guessing movement on this stuff is so slow, they have a lot of old format packages to go through. They also claimed that O Organics is a "billion dollar brand" for them back in 2018. I wonder what percentage of that sales came from gallons of O Organics Milk. That still isn't much to brag about because it is like not even $10k per week average sales per store on O Organics.

So I still don't follow them rolling out O Organics across the merged entity and discontinuing Simple Truth Organic. I think if O Organics had more SKUs, there would be a stronger argument to do it. O Organics is just weak. The brand has been mismanaged. I suppose they could try a co-brand, like O Organics by Simple Truth or something, but why bother? That just clutters things up.

Brand awareness I also keep coming back to. You have these various territories where Simple Truth Organic is sold (OH, KY, MI, TN, NC, SC, GA, WI, KS, MO, etc.) where this Simple Truth Organic is a known brand to Kroger/Harris Teeter/Pick N Save customers. They have never heard of O Organics before.

Meanwhile with O Organics the brand is sold in some places where SImple Truth isn't sold or isn't well known, like NorCal, Acme, Shaws, and Jewel, but the brand only has a long history in NorCal (and obviously not a great one since they are down to only 700 SKUs in the NorCal Stores and 125 of those are produce SKUs). Shaws developed the Wild Harvest brand and until about 2017 or so that was the brand carried in Acme, Shaws, and Jewel (they kept that brand and the Supervalu brands longer than the divisions out west did) for this category. So in those markets there is little history and likely little to no customer connection with O Organics. Further in the other markets where customers are exposed to O Organics, like say OR/WA/AZ/CO/SoCal, since Kroger is present in those markets, the customers in those markets are already familiar with Simple Truth Organic anyway.

So by taking this inferior/smaller/more expensive O Organics line and replacing it with Simple Truth Organic, in, say, NorCal, they bring things to the table for the customer. They add more SKUs, they will cut prices, the product line will be more visible throughout the store due to more SKUs/more categories. Customers who perceived O Organics as "too expensive" or something will give this new Simple Truth Organic line a second look. I do not think an "expanded new lower priced" O Organics makes sense either. Many customers have already made up their mind about O Organics and aren't buying the line. It is time for a fresh start, new items, new pricing, and to get it right. That is where Simple Truth Organic immediately rolled out to all Safeway/Albertsons units makes sense and will immediately give them positive results/increase customer engagement.

But if they went the opposite route in, say, OH, and replacing the strong Simple Truth Organic line with this unknown O Organics line, even if they added all the STO SKUs to OO, what good does it do for the customer? How does it help the customer? It doesn't. It just confuses the customer, and for no reason. It was already an uphill climb to get customers in those markets to buy ST/STO, it took a lot of effort and marketing to build up the brand in those markets. That is not worth screwing up, just to say you "kept one of Safeway's brands."

Making bad decisions on branding is similar to the whole Albertsons/Lucky mess. Albertsons was weak in CA, had fewer stores. Didn't matter. Arrogance overrode logic. Albertsons was inferior in performance to Lucky but it didn't matter. Had everything in CA gone to the Lucky name/format pretty much everyone would have been happy and the store would have retained a lot of customers. Lucky had the superior brand/program, and more stores. I'd have abandoned the Albertsons format all over the Southwest and rebranded it to Lucky across NV, AZ, CA for sure. I see a similar thing here with O Organics. Weak brand, wrong brand for merged entity.