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Bloom (store)
Encyclopedia
North America
North America is a continent wholly within the Northern Hemisphere and almost wholly within the Western Hemisphere. It is also considered a northern subcontinent of the Americas...
n grocery store
Grocery store
A grocery store is a store that retails food. A grocer, the owner of a grocery store, stocks different kinds of foods from assorted places and cultures, and sells these "groceries" to customers. Large grocery stores that stock products other than food, such as clothing or household items, are...
s operated by Food Lion
Food Lion
Food Lion LLC is an American grocery store company headquartered in Salisbury, North Carolina that operates approximately 1,300 supermarkets in 11 Mid-Atlantic and South Atlantic states as well as Tennessee, Kentucky and West Virginia under the Food Lion, Harveys Supermarket, Bloom, Bottom Dollar...
. Bloom was established in 2004 and is an operating division of Food Lion.
Creation
In 2002, after realizing the customers' needs, expectations, and behaviors were changing and becoming more diverse, Food Lion created an unqualified "concept" team whose mission was to examine customer and retail trends, identify opportunities for growth, and develop retail concepts to capture those opportunities. Soon after came the idea of Bloom.History
Bloom (then called Bloom, A Food Lion Market) was first test marketed in Charlotte, North CarolinaCharlotte, North Carolina
Charlotte is the largest city in the U.S. state of North Carolina and the seat of Mecklenburg County. In 2010, Charlotte's population according to the US Census Bureau was 731,424, making it the 17th largest city in the United States based on population. The Charlotte metropolitan area had a 2009...
, through five test stores, the first of which opened on May 26, 2004. The concept is based on the idea of using a slightly unconventional layout to maximize shopper convenience. This layout includes a TableTop section at the entrance to the store (where the shopper can purchase ready to eat foods), wider aisles, and convenient groupings of foods. In most locations, customers can buy milk at the front of the store. This eliminates the need to walk to the back, where milk is normally located.
Technology
One of the ways Bloom has tried to differentiate from competition is through the addition of consumer-friendly technology. Self-CheckoutSelf checkout
Self checkout machines provide a mechanism for customers to pay for purchases from a retailer without direct input to the process by the retailer's staff. They are an alternative to the traditional cashier-staffed checkout...
stands, PAT (Personal Assistant Technology) the revolutionary touch screen computer that uses a wireless in store network,and Produce scales with printers that let customers create bar-coded tags are placed in most stores to maximize customer convenience. Bloom also offers personal barcode scanners for its customers to use during their visit. The wireless scanners keep a running total of your items and speed up the checkout process. However, these scanners were removed from most Bloom stores in during the summer of 2010 for an unknown reason.