The newest Green's Discount Beverages outlet is the 7,500-square-foot store located in Myrtle Beach on the South Carolina coast.
Green's six stores include two in Atlanta - the afore mentioned 8,500-square-foot Poncey unit and the chain's original 7,500-square-foot establishment; two in Columbia in the center of South Carolina - a 13,000- square-foot store, and the 16,000-square-foot ware- house; a 12,000-square-foot store in Greenville, in northwest SC; and a 7,500-square-foot store in one of the country's best-known Atlantic coast playgrounds, Myrtle Beach, SC.
he Poncey Highland neighborhood Atlanta store and the non-warehouse Columbia unit are Green's best performers, with the Atlanta store bucking economic trends and growing in sales daily. But whatever the store, Green's focus is to make certain that their heavy foot traffic is rewarding.
Appealing To All Shoppers T
"When we have 7,000 people a week come through a store, we feel we have just about everybody coming – we've got the high-end shopper, the low- end shopper, the African American shopper, female, male, gay, lesbian, straight, everyone. We have a tremendous cross-section of the community and if you can get the right products in front of people at a price that's been discounted, usually you're going to have a success."
While the traffic is steady in all six stores, calibrat- ing what to offer each set of customers is influenced by regional differences. "In our South Carolina areas, there's more of a blue-collar mindset because that's what South Carolina is," says Reddic. "In the middle of the state where we operate, there's not a lot of consumer wealth."
In the wine business, for example, the Poncey Highland store, post-recession, has seen customers grav- itate back and forth between the $12–$15 price point and up, in general slightly lower but not significantly down from pre-2008. But in South Carolina, "We're still trying to get them from $8 to $12; it's a very different mindset," he says.
These differences keep Reddic and his buyers on their toes, especially with constructing the proper product mix. While some retailers have sought to weather the economic storm by going all out discount, or dramatically reducing their position in higher-end wines and spirits, Reddic has continued to take Green's down an old and once obsolete road: private label.
Developing Private Label R 14 • Beverage Dynamics • www.beveragedynamics.com • May/June 2012
eddic, grandson in law of the company founder, has been president of Green's since 1994, and as an active member of the Wine and Spirits Guild, has put considerable energy into developing a contemporary and sustainable private label program, building a partnership with various distillers willing to
