Believing the market is ripe for an all-out fresh revolution, Faith Gokongwei-Ong, AVP for merchandising of Robinsons Supermarket Corp., asserts, "Grocery spending has always focused on basic necessities like food. Noteworthy is the fact that there’s a growing market who shops for fresh food like meat, fish, produce, chicken and the like in the supermarket because people are beginning to realize that prices of these products in a supermarket are now comparable, if not lower, than those from the wet market. Add to this our guarantee of quality and freshness plus value-added services such as fish cleaning, scaling and deboning, among others."
In lieu of a fresh conference, we were given a fresh tour of Robinsons Supermarket’s newly refurbished Fresh Department at Robinsons Place Ermita that was crawling with people on a drab Thursday afternoon.
As we enter the Fresh Department, we see red – and green, yellow, orange, etc. There are luscious red and green apples, red grapes, green and red plums, nectarines, cherries, fragrant pears, golden kiwis, lychees, longans, custard apples, peaches, persimmon, mangoes, bananas, papayas, watermelons, honeydews, guapples, and yes, guyabano, santol, lanzones, atis, tamarind, mangosteen, dragon fruit, rambutan, marang and durian, too. You’re in for quite a fruitful afternoon.
The supermarket does fruit baskets for gift-giving.
"It is in our produce department where you can find fruits that are not available in most supermarkets like peaches, plums, gokien, red cherries, persimmon, nectarine, Bangkok lanzones, Bangkok atis, rattan, durian and mangosteen," says Mary Hope Nerida, store manager-Ermita.
There are packed cut fruits ready for the picking – and eating. Our mouths water at the sight of plump green mangoes, already peeled, with matching bagoong. Luckily, no one in the group is pregnant. There’s even a watermelon bowlful of fruits, all you need is whipping cream and you have a fruity salad treat. Your salad days have just begun. Your eyes are drawn to the selection of fruit salads-to-go– buko corn salad, buko pandan, potato salad, tuna pasta salad. Also to go is the Caesar’s salad, complete with bacon bits, croutons and dressing, thoughtfully prepared and packed by Dizon Farms.
The place is vegetarian – and budgetarian – haven, too. There are greens galore: For instance, the cabbage comes in varieties we never knew existed – white, red, green, January king, savoy.
There are packed veggie mixes, too, ready to be dropped into a boiling cooking pot: Pochero mix (P29.15), nilaga mix (P30), pinakbet mix (P29.45), chopsuey mix (P34), sinigang mix (P28.05), noodle mix, menudo mix.
The street-smart people at Robinsons Supermarket Corporation (RSC) swear you can have a complete meal for less than P80. Take the menudo mix (P62 per half-kilo pack) that can serve a family of four. All you need is to throw in some carrots and potatoes and, voila, you have a great meal!
"These are some of our supersavers especially designed for super busy working moms so they don’t waste time cutting up ingredients when cooking," says Malou Torres, Robinsons Supermarket assistant vice president-operations.
Adds GM Ronnie Ong, "People are buying the basics but because times are hard, they’re either downsizing or downgrading. That’s the trend now."
Malou agrees, "Either they buy a smaller size or shift to a lower brand or purchase more often."
RSC has solved that problem by selling salable weights – instead of one kilo, maybe just 500 grams.
Also for the convenience of housewives, RSC is selling marinated (barbecue, teriyaki) products ready for cooking. There are also recipes for the day to guide housewives in preparing delicious budget meals for their families.
RSC sources its fruits and vegetables locally (mostly from Baguio and Bukidnon, and Guimaras, Cebu, Davao, Zambales and Pangasinan for its truly sweet mangoes) and abroad. "But if there’s local stuff that can compare with the imported one, we go for the local," Malou points out.
In this supermarket, you don’t smell anything fishy, literally speaking, even if you see all those live fish jumping, clams heaving and king crabs wriggling. "It has no smell because we clean the area three times a day and we observe very stringent hygienic practices," says Ronnie.
Its live hito, among its many other assorted fish, is probably the cheapest in town at P60 per kilo. Fish and assorted seafood come in fresh every day. "RSC is the only supermarket chain that has direct seafood shipment from Roxas City, Iloilo and Bacolod," says Rocel Cahilig, RSC merchandise manager for Fresh Food Group. "We adhere to strict quality control and deal only with a few but reliable suppliers who give us only their best products."
Malou elaborates, "Quality and price are our utmost concern. What’s important is keeping the cold chain, from slaughtering to delivery to supermarket. So we check even the vans of our suppliers. We take the temperature of the meat to make sure there are no microorganisms. We reject deliveries that are not within our standards. So there’s an assurance of quality. We offer wet market prices at supermarket standards."
According to Malou, deliveries come in as early as 6 a.m. and no later than 9 a.m. After that, they’re rejected. Since deliveries come fresh every day, RSC doesn’t stock up much. And since it has perfected its forecasting, there’s not a lot of leftovers at the day’s end.
Fruits past their peak of ripeness are sold at a discount. "Somebody makes a quality check round the clock every day," says Malou. "In supermarket lingo, it’s called culling – removing the damaged, bruised ones. We make sure there’s a correct temperature even for our leafy vegetables."
Soon, aside from its Japanese fish offerings, RSC will have sushi meals-to-go.
"We’ll have fresh dairy products from Los Baños and Lipa fresh buko," says Malou. "We’ll have regular special deals, promotions and interactive activities like cooking demos, raffles, instant giveaways in all branches, in line with offering added value and convenience."
Surely, these people never run out of fresh ideas.