Andrea Halperin is going against the consumer trend wave with her F3 Fat Free Foods store, but does challenging mainstream demand make economic sense?
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Her New York store has been open for 15 months and is still unprofitable, carrying over 7,000 fat-free food products for that minority of consumers who are not backlashing against diets with richer foods. During the course of 2000, retail sales in the US plummeted by 33% for fat-free potato crisps, 22% for fat-free ice cream and 12% for fat-free cookies and fat-free margarine, according to AC Nielsen. Nevertheless, Halperin plans to expand the store, with its 12-year lease, into a chain of similar ventures.
According to a marketing professor at a major US university, this ambition may well become viable if it is pitched as a small specialist market. This is increasingly necessary as many processors are moving away from manufacturing fat-free foods.
Rather than attempting to reconvert consumers who long ago decided fat-free meant tasteless, Halperin appears to focus on that minority consumer who wants it at whatever cost. “For people who want fat-free food, there has been no ideal place to get it. You had to go to multiple stores,” she said, “And I knew that the selection was shrinking in regular, standard stores.”
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