The bodega is the life blood of New York City. With more than 8,000 bodegas in New York City’s five boroughs*, these independently owned neighborhood stores service the ~3.9MM** people within the borough limits. And more so than in any other metropolitan market in the United States, the bodega both singularly and in aggregate, is in integral part of the retail brick and mortar landscape. An integral part that IS NOT CAPTURED BY THE SYNDICATED DATA SUPPLIERS most commonly used to measure a Consumer Brand’s performance and direct resources and investments. In fact, TDLinx, the de facto source for retail classifications, does not define bodega as a channel or subchannel. However, the New York City government does. While the entire city ground to a screeching halt to battle the pandemic, these stores maintained their business in 2020 and are benefiting from a rebound in activity. Starting in April, NRS tracked a spike in dollar sales versus the previous year.
There are many challenges with the CPG manufacturers reaching this type of retailer and multi-cultural consumer. The result? Underdeveloped brands in the largest populated city in the country.
- Information – in the past this has been a network of stores that have had limited to no visibility, leading to decisions made on hunch or national trends that don’t represent this market
- Innovation – CPG manufacturers invest a lot of funding and energy into new products for growth opportunities, often these products are slow to penetrate these stores, if at all
- Lack of category development – there is a significant amount of strategy and sophistication that goes into planograms with SKU optimization and space analysis, NYC bodegas are often overlooked leading to underperforming items
- Multi-Cultural shopper – 3.9MM people creates incredibly diverse consumer demand, targeted SKU selection and marketing can really make a difference
National Retail Solutions (NRS) supplies Point of Sale systems to Independent Merchants and has a store-level read on nearly 900 stores in the five boroughs and 2,400 stores in the New York DMA. This first-of-its kind data is giving Brands visibility into the elusive bodega with tangible and actionable insights that can be turned into a very specific call to action. Pricing for store level and UPC level reporting can be as low as $5,000.
*https://www.grubstreet.com/2021/01/nyc-bodegas-official-criteria.html
**Wikipedia