Morning Brew - ☕ Gotta hand it to them

Ace Hardware’s handyman service.
July 09, 2024

Retail Brew

It’s Tuesday, and Walmart Canada is kicking off what it’s calling “sensory-friendly hours” from 8am to 10am at all its stores. During that period, the retailer will reduce excess sounds and stimuli, such as music or advertisements, with the goal of creating a calmer shopping experience.

In today’s edition:

—Alex Vuocolo, Katie Hicks, Cassandra Cassidy

STORES

Helping hand

Ace Hardware store Sundry Photography/Getty Images

Over the past five years, Ace Hardware has rapidly expanded its handyman business to 48 states and 5,000 zip codes as of June. And behind this growth is a seemingly simple insight about its customers: Not everyone wants to do it themselves, Karen Bloomfield, VP of marketing of home services at the chain, told Retail Brew.

As customers who previously would have picked up a wrench for a quick repair job are getting older, and new generations are never learning basic home repair skills in the first place, “there’s a huge opportunity for do-it-for-me,” she said.

To meet this demand, Ace Home Services is now available in 400 locations, and while each location varies in its offerings, the range of services include handyman, painting, plumbing, electrical work, heating, cooling, and general home maintenance. 

Ace Hardware has been on a hot streak lately, competing directly with larger rivals, and now services are shaping up to become an important segment of the hardware store’s business well into the future.

  • Bloomfield said she sees it as a “growth avenue for us” that is “going to become a large part of Ace’s next 100 years.”

Here come the handymen: Breaking into services in the span of five years, however, required a spree of M&A activity starting in 2019 with the acquisition of Handyman Matters, a Colorado-based franchisor of home repair and maintenance services.

Keep reading here.—AV

   

FROM THE CREW

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The Crew

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MARKETING

Tomato juice

Hand holding a tomato Anna Kim

After the phrase “tomato girl summer” emerged last summer, you best believe that fashion brands took notice.

Clothing retailer Lisa Says Gah partnered with Hunt’s on tomato-shaped earrings and a line of apparel, and designers like Rachel Antonoff and Tyler McGillivary are selling tomato-print pants and shirts. Most recently, Staud unveiled a version of its Tommy purse with a beaded tomato print on the front in partnership with the New York-based Italian restaurant Monte’s at the Manor and food brand Monte’s Fine Foods, which has since sold out (but will be restocked in mid-July, per the brand).

“We always love being playful with our designs of the Tommy [bag] and being opportunistic with fun trends that are also on brand for us,” George Augusto, co-founder and artistic director at Staud, told us in an email. “Tomato girl summer,” he added, was the “perfect inspiration” for the design.

PJ Monte, founder and CEO of Monte’s Fine Foods, told us his brand was working on tomato-inspired apparel long before tomato girl summer. Monte’s branched into DTC in 2020, Monte told us, and since then has sold merch and struck up collaborations with apparel brands like Noah NY and Ignored Prayers.

While fashion collabs may seem “untraditional” for an Italian-food brand, he said, the (tomato) juice has been worth the squeeze, leading to press attention and sales for Monte’s.

Keep reading here on Marketing Brew.—KH

   

FOOD & BEV

Salad days

Customers paying at a Sweetgreen Dixie D. Vereen/For The Washington Post via Getty Images

While salad chains may owe some of their recent surge in popularity to rising prices elsewhere, it’s no secret that the Chop’t, Sweetgreen, and Just Salad aren’t where you go for lunch if you’re trying to save a buck. It’s easy to think that these places—often criticized for offering an $18 salad—are raking in cash by overcharging you. But the reality is that salad is expensive, no matter how you slice and dice it.

Take Sweetgreen, for example

Despite a flashy IPO, the Holy Grail of fast-casual stops loses millions of dollars every month. For every $15 Sweetgreen makes in revenue from hangry email writers and other desk-salad eaters, it incurs $17.50 in expenses, according to Sherwood Media.

The CEO attributes its high operating costs to two things: ingredients, which the chain sources from farms rather than large-scale food companies, and labor.

Why are salad ingredients so expensive? You can blame nature and the government.

  • Salad tends to be pricier than fried food because the ingredients are more delicate than frozen meat.
  • But there’s also the problem of the US federal government’s favorite legislation: the Farm Bill, which subsidizes corn, soy, wheat, dairy, sugar, and meat—but not the components of a good salad, such as leafy greens, fruits, and vegetables.

Zoom out: Given these market realities, Sweetgreen plans to get profitable by staffing up with robots.—CC

   

TOGETHER WITH PARTNERIZE

Partnerize

Make it a win-win. Influencers are not often super excited about affiliate-only partnerships—they usually want deeper, meaningful collabs. Fortunately, Partnerize has the scoop on how to make everyone happy. Their new e-book offers a definitive playbook on how to seamlessly combine influencer and affiliate programs. Give it a look.

SWAPPING SKUS

Today’s top retail reads.

Flour power: Karen Colberg, CEO of King Arthur Baking Co., talks about building trust with customers and staying relevant. (the Associated Press)

Bubbly mix: Beer giant Carlsberg has entered an agreement to purchase soft drink maker Britvic. (Reuters)

Going underground: Shops that operate underground as part of New York City’s subway system are reportedly struggling, with nearly 75% of locations currently vacant. (the New York Times)

Exclusive financial conversations: Listen now to MoneyWise with Sam Parr, featuring interviews with successful entrepreneurs about spending habits, burn rates, portfolios, and more.

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