'Part of our family:' Longo's execs talk Garden Foods acquisition on two-year anniversary
On June 22, Longo’s celebrated the second anniversary of its purchase of Garden Foods in Bolton, Ont. with cake, Sicilian cannoli, a watermelon eating contest and gift card giveaways. Longo’s CEO Anthony Longo and president Deb Craven spoke to Canadian Grocer about how the acquisition has gone, in an interview that has been edited for length and clarity.
Why did you acquire Garden Foods?
Anthony Longo: Our family has always loved the Bolton area—a fast growing market—and just could never find the right real estate there. The opportunity presented itself when (Garden Foods' former owner) Piero (Carbone) spoke to (Longo’s founder) Gus Longo, letting him know they were thinking about a sale or exiting the business, and that’s really how the conversation got started. From there, we thought it was a great opportunity. Garden Foods has a very strong reputation. For 43 years they were in business there and we thought we could build on that and make it part of our family.
Why did you keep the Garden Foods name?
Deb Craven: It has such strong roots in the community, whether it’s supporting teams, whether it’s charitable events, and I think it just made sense to stay with that strength and then augment it with the things Longo’s could add, but that name has such great recognition in the marketplace because of the community links.
What changes have you made at Garden Foods since the acquisition?
Craven: We’re trying to augment it with things that Garden Foods wouldn’t have had in the past, like a loyalty program. We offered membership to our Thank You Rewards program to our Garden Foods guests. That’s been very popular. We’ve had a very high takeup rate on that. We’ve added other services that they didn’t have before, things like sushi, custom cakes, our freshly squeezed orange juice, our freshly made in store guacamole. We’ll be adding a hot table in the next couple of weeks in the store as well.
READ: Longo’s president Deb Craven on leadership and growing the business
How have sales been since the acquisition?
Longo: We’re happy with the store and how it’s performing. We’re pretty well on target in terms of where we wanted to be. We always want to do more business, of course, but we’re happy with the results so far.
Do you have any concerns that the Garden Foods in Bolton might be taking sales away from nearby Longo’s stores?
Longo: We view it as two different markets. It’s probably a 15-to-20-minute drive roughly from our closest store in Vaughan to the Bolton store, so we don’t see that as they would be competing. I’m sure there is some overlap, but not very much.
How many Longo’s products are you selling at Garden Foods?
Longo: We don’t have the entire lineup there because the store is smaller than our traditional stores. We are represented in most of the grocery category. Our bestsellers are there for sure.
Have you maintained the staff that was there prior to the acquisition?
Craven: Yes. In so many ways it was a similar culture to Longo’s, that family culture. They had a number of team members that had been part of the team for many years, so we were very excited about the opportunity to maintain those key members as part of the team.
READ: How Longo’s leads with local
Why did you hold the second anniversary event?
Longo: It was really about bringing the community together and letting them know we’re here for the long run and we really appreciate their patronage. It was a way of saying thank you to our guests, similar to what we do in many other stores when we have anniversaries. This one was special because it is a longstanding store and it’s one that we purchased versus one that we built from the ground up, so we wanted to make sure the community knew that we were appreciative of their support.
