Founded in 1957 in Salisbury, N.C., Food Lion has spent over six decades delivering fresh and affordable products to its customers. With over 82,000 Food Lion associates serving more than 10M customers each week, the brand’s 1,108 store locations span a 10-state operating footprint in the Southeast and Mid-Atlantic regions of the U.S.
A part of the Ahold Delhaize USA family of brands and supported by partners at Peapod Digital Labs, Food Lion prioritizes listening to customers in order to deliver fully on its brand strategy while celebrating its “Count On Me” company culture. All efforts are designed to improve Food Lion customers’ emotional connection to the brand.
The company also places an emphasis on serving local towns and cities through Food Lion Feeds and its partnerships with community food banks, working to alleviate hunger as part of the brand’s commitment to corporate social responsibility efforts. The brand’s current goal is to provide 1.5B meals to individuals and families experiencing hunger by the end of 2025.
Mark Johnson, CEO of Loyalty360, spoke with Neil Norman, Director of Loyalty & CPG Marketing Partnerships at Food Lion, about its dynamic MVP Program, the brand’s “Count On Me” culture, and keeping efforts focused on the customer experience.
Founded in 1957 in Salisbury, N.C., Food Lion has spent over six decades delivering fresh and affordable products to its customers. With over 82,000 Food Lion associates serving more than 10M customers each week, the brand’s 1,108 store locations span a 10-state operating footprint in the Southeast and Mid-Atlantic regions of the U.S.
A part of the Ahold Delhaize USA family of brands and supported by partners at Peapod Digital Labs, Food Lion prioritizes listening to customers in order to deliver fully on its brand strategy while celebrating its “Count On Me” company culture. All efforts are designed to improve Food Lion customers’ emotional connection to the brand.
The company also places an emphasis on serving local towns and cities through Food Lion Feeds and its partnerships with community food banks, working to alleviate hunger as part of the brand’s commitment to corporate social responsibility efforts. The brand’s current goal is to provide 1.5B meals to individuals and families experiencing hunger by the end of 2025.
Mark Johnson, CEO of Loyalty360, spoke with Neil Norman, Director of Loyalty & CPG Marketing Partnerships at Food Lion, about its dynamic MVP Program, the brand’s “Count On Me” culture, and keeping efforts focused on the customer experience.
Good afternoon, good morning. This is Mark Johnson from Loyalty 360. I hope everyone's happy, safe and well. I want to welcome you to another edition of our leaders in customer loyalty series. In this series, we speak with leading brands about what they are seeing and hearing on the front lines of customer channel and brand loyalty. Today, we have the pleasure of speaking with Neil Norman. He is the director of loyalty and CPG marketing partnerships at Food Lion. Thank you very much for taking the time to talk with us, Neil. How are you today?
Neil Norman:Yes, thank you. Great to be with each of you.
Mark Johnson:First off, can you tell us a little bit more about yourself, your role at Food Lion, maybe jobs you had before? And a fun fact or a passion? You have something you enjoy doing outside of work?
Neil Norman:Sure. I oversee the loyalty shopper marketing and CPG partnerships marketing teams at Food Lion. I've been with Food Lion over 30 years, holding various roles in retail operations, merchandising, customer insights, category management and in marketing. So my passion is serving our customers with a differentiating experience that really sets them up and their families up for success in life. My personal passion is really traveling to new areas of the world and seeing as much as we possibly can, as well as leveraging our location here in North Carolina to travel frequently to the mountains of beach.
Mark Johnson:For those who may not be familiar, can you give us a brief overview of Food Lion, your history, how you guys were founded and what you guys focus on?
Neil Norman:Sure. So Food Lion was founded in 1957 and has been focused on delivering our customer strategy of easy, fresh and affordable that you can count on. Food Lion every day. We have over 82,000 Food Lion associates serving our omnichannel customers each and every day and we provide our customers with extra low prices on products they love most across 1108 store locations in a 10 state East Coast operating footprint. We're part of Ahold Delhaize family of brands and supported by our partners at Peapod Digital Labs, our retail business services and AD Supply Chain. We have placed a significant focus over the past decade within listening to our customers' needs to deliver our brand strategy and count on me culture, all in effort to improve our customers' emotional connection to our brand. And we also place a huge emphasis on serving our local towns and cities through our Food Lion feeds local food bank connections so that no one has to choose between dinner and rent. Our current goal is to provide 1.5 billion meals to our local food bank partners by the end of 2025.
Mark Johnson:The Shop and Earn loyalty program a great program, one of the leading grocery programs in the US, if not in all industries would be great to know a little bit more about the program, how the program works, how members can engage with the program and maybe what are some of the benefits customers get from being a part of the program.
Neil Norman:So Shop and Earn is part of our overarching MVP loyalty program strategy. So first MVP delivers our weekly hot sales and price low everyday items through our pricing strategy. And then we have our Shop and Earn marketing omni-channel events that really provide additional overlay value to the customer through our MVP program. And then we also deliver weekly personalized coupons as well as our Shop and Earn program, which is our digital monthly personalized rewards program, where customers can activate at the first of every month, shop throughout the month and Earn grocery dollars on their next transaction throughout the month, earning different rewards. So we do all the work with tracking the offers, congratulating the customers when an offer is earned, and then the wallet earnings are automatically redeemed on the next transaction for our customers.
Mark Johnson:Food Lion, as you know, has been recognized as the finalist for this year's Customer Loyalty 360 Customer Experience Awards, based on the brand's performance in their personalized loyalty program and Count On Me company culture. Can you tell us a bit about the success Food Lion has championed this year?
Neil Norman:Yes, absolutely our count on me culture really is essential to the success of our brand and delivering to our strategy. So when a customer has a need, our associates are empowered and trained to handle that need in the moment and do the right thing to keep her satisfied. Each associate is trained to know what to do and how to do it with care. So we work hard to deliver this inside of our shopper marketing and loyalty programs as well. With our MVP loyalty card program, we validate delivering this through our customer surveys which indicate a 95% success and satisfaction rate with Shoppiner and our other loyalty program mechanisms.
Mark Johnson:And this is not the first time Food Lion has been recognized by Loyalty 360. In the past, the brand has received awards in customer loyalty and customer experience strategy. What resources or requirements must be in place from a foundational perspective to maintain a level of excellence in your customer loyalty program?
Neil Norman:Yeah, great question. Really, the key is listening and responding to our customers needs. My team and I think of our brand as kind of like a symphony orchestra and our customer is the conductor. We constantly stay connected to our customer insights and strategy and analytics partners to play the right notes at the right time, at the right tempo and the right volume. We use the data and insights that develop and put them into ongoing action within our campaigns and programs. So staying flexible and nimble to what our customers are telling us throughout the journey has really been key to delivering our long-term sustainable success and improving our brand's emotional connection with our customers.
Mark Johnson:Food Lion's Count on Me culture empowers employees to create outstanding customer experiences. In tandem with your award-winning customer loyalty program, this enhanced customer experience strengthens emotional loyalty with customers. How are employees engaged or trained to ensure decisions are aligned with the brand's vision and the customer's expectation?
Neil Norman:Well, during onboarding, our new associates are trained on the MVP program and provided with details on Shopin' Earn and the overarching loyalty experience, digital coupons, personalization through our email and push and other channels, so our associates really also become engaged in the program themselves and become advocates themselves and get to extract that same value that all of our customers have access to by downloading and setting up an MVP account digital account so we have monthly scorecards for our retail partners to utilize and engage with their teams. We also conduct digital and loyalty engagement training sessions periodically across our divisions and my team believes this has been the critical success component of growing our digital engagement 5x since 2018.
Mark Johnson:Customers actually involved in the Shopin' Earn program spend more per month than customers not enrolled in the program. I know you have surveys conducted internally by Food Lion that indicate a high satisfaction rate. You know how does Food Lion leverage voice of the customer feedback when developing new initiatives for the program, because that can be something that is very challenging for brands to do Well, we're blessed to really have and leverage many tools that are the voice of the customer.
Neil Norman:So we have the CSAT, we have MPS, we have voice of the customer surveys and specific program and experience surveys that allow us to garner a lot of feedback and we work hard to incorporate this feedback into our future product roadmap with our IT partners for enhancements, as well as our training programs with our associates and internal teams to keep and continue to improve on our customers experience with our brand. So this has been very important to us.
Mark Johnson:Are there other programs you admire, that you are loyal to from a customer perspective, and what do you like about their offerings? Are there any elements in those programs you would like to see implemented in the Stopin' Earn program?
Neil Norman:Yes, I think about programs I engage in most, but I have to say Chick-fil-A comes to mind. They do a nice job with their rewards program. It makes it easy to understand, earn and redeem, which is very critical to success. Also, I would say Costco with their membership card and program, because they provide a lot of additional benefits on services for your home, travel, car, business etc. Above and beyond the base program. So we, certainly at Food Lion, are looking at reviewing opportunities around additional gamification, badging, surprise and delight rewards programs and how we currently bring that to life for our customers, and these are some programs that inspire us.
Mark Johnson:The next question I have is as far as Loyalty 360 is concerned, what can we do to help you and your team with your customer loyalty journey, with your customer loyalty program? What resources would you like to see?
Neil Norman:Yeah, we continue to be very curious in the growing space of customer engagement with badging and rewards, gamification, ai, all those areas that create a better omnichannel customer experience and build emotional connection and loyalty with our customers. I think Loyalty 360 has the unique opportunity to provide that comprehensive kind of holistic industry view, with the partners that you have engaged to really pick into those areas and those developing trends and share them with brand partners. So I think that's proven to be successful and continues to be very beneficial to our team.
Mark Johnson:And now it's time for our quick fire questions. Please limit your answers to one word or short phrases. What is your favorite word?
Neil Norman:Rowing.
Mark Johnson:What is your least favorite word?
Neil Norman:Climbing.
Mark Johnson:What excites you?
Neil Norman:I would say using data and insights to really create a differentiated brand experience and then actually seeing from the analytics that positive outcome, from that effort over time that really brings energy.
Mark Johnson:What do you find tiresome?
Neil Norman:Yearly budgeting and program modeling.
Mark Johnson:When shopping at Food Lion, what is your favorite aisle to browse?
Neil Norman:I would say the sauces and condiments aisle is very interesting because they have great innovation in that space. But my favorite department to shop is definitely the meat department.
Mark Johnson:If you weren't in your current position, your current role, what profession would you like to attempt?
Neil Norman:I would say maybe small business advisor. I love seeing successful small businesses thrive and grow in local communities, so that's intriguing to me.
Mark Johnson:What is your favorite book recommendation to make to colleagues?
Neil Norman:Yes, I think back of a book that I've applied most in my life and gotten the most from is the 360 Leader by John C Maxwell.
Mark Johnson:Who inspired you to be the person that you are today?
Neil Norman:I would say my brother Mark.
Mark Johnson:What do you typically think about at the end of the day?
Neil Norman:How did our team benefit the customer uniquely today?
Mark Johnson:And last question how do you want to be remembered by your friends and family?
Neil Norman:Yes, a person who loved and genuinely cared about them and who they are.
Mark Johnson:Well Neil, thank you very much for taking the time to speak with us today. We appreciate the time that you gave us. It's always great to hear about your program and some things you're working on, and looking forward to hearing more from Food Lion in the coming year. Thank you, everyone else, for listening and make sure to check back again for additional episodes in our Leaders in Customer Loyalty Space. Until then, have a wonderful day.