Smart & Final said Wednesday it has a “robust slate” of initiatives planned for 2015 to support ongoing same-store sales growth.
“We’ve been listening to our customers and testing targeted expansions in our product assortment to meet their needs,” Dave Hirz, president and CEO, told analysts during a conference call.
The Los Angeles-based non-member warehouse chain has already conducted a pilot test at 14 Smart & Final Extra stores involving 1,000 natural and organic center store items— encompassing cereal, sauces, condiments, canned vegetables, frozen fruit and other merchandise — “and the response has been encouraging,” he said.
As a result, the company plans to expand the 1,000 items to more than 50 additional Extra stores this year, Hirz noted.
Smart & Final also plans to increase the number of organic produce sections, he said — boosting the offering from less than 40% of its 98 Extra stores to almost 70% by year’s end; and it plans to expand the number of Extra stores with bulk food departments from 22 to more than 60 during the year, he added.

Other initiatives being planned include the following, according to Hirz:
• Smart & Final will continue to expand its private label offerings, which account for 29% of sales at its Smart & Final banners and 14% at its Cash & Carry locations.
• It will increase the number of stores featuring rotisserie-style chicken from 37 to 70 locations.
• It plans to increase its use of digital media “as a means to generate additional brand awareness,” following "encouraging results” in a test in Sacramento, Calif., where it reduced print and increased digital.
• It will seek to attract more business customers to its consumer-centric Extra stores following a test that offered local businesses the opportunity to preview new stores before they open — a program that company plans to incorporate into all Extra store openings in 2015.
• Smart & Final is investing in a project to migrate its point-of-sale devices “to a more secure, chip-enabled card platform,” which will also provide the company with the capability to accept smartphone-enabled payments.
• It plans to move the produce sections at its Cash & Carry stores to the front, following a successful test at a store in Burlington, Calif., late last year. The move of produce up front in place of gadgets, equipment and supplies worked so well “that we’re remerchandising existing Cash & Carry stores to move produce to the front-end,” Hirz said.