Grocery Outlet wants to create the next Two Buck Chuck. Here's how it tastes
The prices are outrageous: $1.49 for laundry detergent; 99 cents for a box of Cheez-Its; $5.99 for a pound and a half of fish. They could only come from one Bay Area store.
Grocery Outlet Bargain Market, headquartered in Emeryville, has always done brisk business with sub-$10 wine. But the chain never had a wine of its own until April, when it unveiled Second Cheapest Wine. The initial lineup consists of five bottles — a Sonoma Sauvignon Blanc, a Sonoma Chardonnay, a Napa Chardonnay, a Willamette Valley Pinot Noir and an Alexander Valley Cabernet Sauvignon — all $4.99.
Before launching Second Cheapest Wine, Grocery Outlet was already in the midst of a private label tear, releasing proprietary versions of pasta sauce, bottled water and other products for the first time. Stephen Beckner, the import and private label wine buyer, knew that wine would be on the agenda eventually.
'The Second Cheapest concept fell into my lap serendipitously,' Beckner said. 'My wife and I were having a conversation one night and she said, 'Steve Beckner, you need to create the next Two Buck Chuck.''
He zeroed in on 'second cheapest wine' because the concept had been 'a viral trend for years,' Beckner said. 'You want to avoid looking cheap,' Beckner said, 'so you never want to buy the cheapest wine on a wine list or in a retail store.'
Millennials of a certain age (me) may primarily associate the term with a brilliant 2012 College Humor video. ('Outside of the cheapest, it's the cheapest.') It's recently experienced something of a revival on TikTok. Clearly, the idea endures transgenerationally.
The wine industry's current downturn has been a boon for Grocery Outlet, which works by buying excess product that suppliers are willing to part with at a steep discount. (By the way, it's always a good idea to double-check the expiration date of the store's dairy products.) 'The current climate right now is very advantageous for us,' said Beckner. 'There's an excess of wine in the marketplace.'
Because so many wineries are desperate to move inventory, Grocery Outlet was able to snatch up relatively high-quality wine at a perilously low cost. Notably, these bottles don't merely carry the California label but come from prestigious appellations like Oregon's Willamette Valley and Sonoma County's Alexander Valley. A $5 California Chardonnay is one thing, but $5 Napa Valley Chardonnay is unheard of.
What shocked me — and what really drives home the apparent panic in the marketplace — was how not bad the Second Cheapest Wines were. I was pleasantly surprised by the 2023 Sonoma Sauvignon Blanc, which was lemony and bright — if veering a touch toward the cat-pee end of the Sauv Blanc spectrum — and by the juicy, tropical Napa Chardonnay. It was remarkably lean for an inexpensive Chardonnay, which tends to get more buttery as it gets cheaper.
That's not to say there were any 100-pointers. The 2023 Sonoma County Chardonnay was all oaky flavor; the 2023 Willamette Pinot had a cherry note that I could only describe as rubbery. The 2022 Alexander Valley Cabernet had an enjoyable potpourri-esque nose, but tasted chalky and crumbly on the palate.
They are also, for the most part, literally the second cheapest wines at most Grocery Outlet locations, where the wine prices tend to bottom out at $3.99. Some stores also sell $2.99 bottles, which would make Second Cheapest Wine the third cheapest wine. However, 'we've been moving away from the $2.99 tier; $3.99 just seems to be a price category that we excel at,' Beckner said. 'Those wines just sell really well.'
But $4.99 may be the new $3.99, because Second Cheapest Wine has been flying off the shelves. The label quickly became the company's bestseller when it was introduced in early April during Grocery Outlet's annual spring wine sale (when all bottles are an additional 20% off). The Cabernet is now the top-selling Cab across Grocery Outlet, Beckner said.
Grocery Outlet may eventually create other private label wine brands, possibly even a 'premium' brand at $9.99. Beckner said that he's motivated by finding astonishing values. In a previous job, he sold Domaine de la Romanee-Conti, the world's most expensive wine. 'But the most fun I ever had was selling close-out lists — those wines that were $5, $6, $7 that just blew your mind with how good they were.'
There are plans to release an additional seven wines under the Second Cheapest label. Beckner doesn't envision any difficulties finding more wine that meets their standards. More and more wineries keep reaching out to express interest in selling their leftovers to Second Cheapest Wine.
Hashtags
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
New York Post
2 hours ago
- New York Post
Why TikTok will likely get another lifeline as sell-or-ban deadline looms
Bipartisan critics of keeping TikTok operating in the US simply have too much other stuff on their plate to muster a fight should President Trump once again extend the deadline for the Chinese-owned app to divest in the US, On The Money has learned. That's the word from sources close to the White House and key figures in Congress who have debated whether TikTok should go dark in a couple weeks over concerns it's essentially spyware for the Chinese Communist Party in its quest for global domination. As On The Money reported on Tuesday, here are the scenarios of TikTok's short-term fate: A Wall Street banker involved in the deal to sell the app to US investors said Trump could be persuaded to let TikTok 'go dark' and disappear from app stores on June 19 if he believes it will give him a strategic advantage in the complex and at times acrimonious trade deal negotiations with the Chinese. Trump really loves the app (he thinks it helped get him elected in 2024 no matter how much it's spying on us). Jack Forbes/NY Post Design But more likely is that he throws TikTok yet another lifeline, sources say. Trump really loves the app (he thinks it helped get him elected in 2024 no matter how much it's spying on us). He is poised to extend the TikTok ban deadline – for the third time – as the White House and China prepare to hold trade talks, which are in their nascent stages with Trump speaking directly with China President Xi Jinping by phone on Thursday. Plus, there might not be that much pushback as there was in the past. Another extension could happen without much of a fuss because Congress – including its bipartisan TikTok haters – is probably too distracted with the Big Beautiful Bill, pruning excesses amid criticism from none-other-than Elon Musk, extending the Trump 1 tax cuts and the China-US trade talks to really lose that much sleep if Trump does extend, they say. 'There's an 80% probability it gets a 75-day extension and stays lit up,' said one Wall Street executive who is part of the on-going Trump-led negotiation to save TikTok from disappearing through a deal that will transform its ownership to majority US hands. 'Apparently, it dropped to the list of issues on the China negotiations, and the tax bill has sucked the oxygen out of the room.' The White House had no comment. Trump and Chinese President Xi Jinping in 2019. REUTERS TikTok, through its Beijing-based parent company ByteDance, has long denied it is a surveillance tool for the CCP, but doubts abound. Trump, of course, wasn't always a TikTok lover. He sought its ban back during his first term. The app went dark for a few hours after the divest-or-ban law, signed by former President Joe Biden, went into effect Jan. 19. But it got a reprieve when Trump signed the first extension with an executive order after returning to the White House. He then gave TikTok another lifeline in April as a deal to put TikTok into the hands of a majority-owned US company was nearing the finish line, as On The Money previously reported. However, that was throttled by Trump's 'Liberation Day' tariff war that was particularly tough on China, one of our biggest trading partners, but a global adversary that doesn't open its markets to US companies looking to sell stuff on the Mainland and tap into its growing consumer market. The consortium of private sector players, if the deal is completed, will be led by tech giant Oracle, founded by Trump friend and supporter Larry Ellison.
Yahoo
3 hours ago
- Yahoo
Walmart's army of bakery decorators take the cake when it comes to hourly store pay
NEW YORK (AP) — Inside a Walmart store in New Jersey, a worker puts the finishing touches on a cake with an edible ink Sponge Bob on top. A colleague creates a buttercream rosette border for a different cake, while another co-worker frosts a tier of what will be a triple-deck dessert. It's graduation season, the busiest time of year for the 6,200 employees the nation's largest retailer trained to hand-decorate cakes per customers' orders. The cakes themselves come, pre-made, frozen and in a variety of shapes and sizes, from suppliers, not Walmart's in-store bakeries. But there's no sugar-coating the importance the company places on its custom cake business. Its army of icing artisans are the highest paid hourly workers in a typical U.S. Walmart, excluding managers. Cake decorators earn an average of $19.25 per hour, compared with $18.25 for all non-managerial store workers, a company spokesperson said. Melissa Fernandez, 36, started working in the electronics area and then the wireless services department of the Walmart in North Bergen, New Jersey, before she transferred to the deli area in search of better pay. But Fernandez had her eye on a cake decorating job and after spending two months getting trained by a store colleague, she picked up a piping bag full-time in 2021. 'I love baking at home. I love painting,' Fernandez said. 'I love doing anything artistic, and I just always wanted to be a part of it.' After 11 years with Walmart, she said she now makes about $24.40 an hour. Despite their elite status within Walmart, the retailer's cake decorators have attracted detractors on social media. The company promotes its personalized baked goods on TikTok and encourages the workers behind such creations to do the same. Critics have accused Walmart decorators of stealing ideas and undercutting the work of professional cake artists with their low-priced products. After TikTok videos praising Walmart's $25 heart-shaped cakes with borders that resemble vintage lace cropped up before Valentine's Day this year, a few bakers produced their own videos explaining why their cakes cost so much more and critiquing Walmart's. Debates ensued in the comments sections over whether Walmart represented evils of capitalism or served the needs of the masses. A customized sheet cake that can be sliced to serve 96 people costs $59 at Walmart, about one-third to half the price that a nationwide sample of independent bakeries list online for similarly sized cakes. For $5.20 more, Walmart customers can add strawberry or 'Bavarian creme" fillings, which like the bare cakes, are vendor-supplied. The slice of the celebratory occasion cake market Walmart holds appears vast based on company-supplied figures. One out of four cakes sold in the U.S. comes from Walmart, and its employees will collectively decorate more than 1 million cakes during May and June, according to a company spokesperson. The number of cakes decorated each day at the location where Fernandez works nearly doubles to 50-60 when school graduations come around, compared to 30-35 a day during the rest of the year, said Michael DeMarco, the manager of the store's fresh food department. He credits the decorators' talent and promotional efforts on TikTok. "We're getting a lot of repeat customers. We're doing a lot more business because of just the viral sensations,' DeMarco said. A TikTok video that showed Fernandez designing a $24 version of a customized bouquet cake — 12 cupcakes that are individually decorated and arranged to look like a bunch of flowers — received nearly a half-million views. The bouquet design was one of the North Bergen store's most popular cakes last month, a company spokesperson said. The dressy heart-shaped cakes, as well as cakes that resemble meals like sushi or a pile of spaghetti and meatballs, are popular too, she said. Fernandez also has created 'burn away' cakes: an iced cake topped with an image printed on paper, which is set ablaze to reveal a different image underneath. 'TikTok helps me stay up to date,' she said. 'A lot of trends that I see on there, within that week or within that month, customers will come asking about it. And we're pretty up to date as well.' Jazzing up a cake by hand requires skill, whether or not someone else did the baking, she said. Funneling buttercream frosting through a bag and various sized piping tips to yield the desired design without misplaced blobs is not the same as drawing or painting, Fernandez explained. 'There's a lot of pressure points that you have to practice in order to get the borders correct and the right thickness or the right texture,' she said. Tiffany Witzke, who has been a Walmart cake decorator since July 2016 and works at a store in Springfield, Missouri, has more than 912,000 followers on TikTok. The job attracts people who "can be extremely skilled and talented,' Witzke said, adding that customers want increasingly complicated designs. 'When I first started, it was basically just borders and writing," she said. 'Now, everybody wants more and more and more on their cake.' Liz Berman, owner of The Sleepy Baker, in Natick, Massachusetts, said she's not worried about losing customers to Walmart because of her attention to detail and the premium ingredients she uses. She charges $205 and up for a half-sized sheet cake, the bouquets made up of two dozen miniature cupcakes cost $110. All the cakes are made from scratch, and Berman said she designs everything herself. 'It's just a totally different business model," she said. 'Everything I do is custom.' For Walmart, the cake decorating business delivers higher profit margins than some other areas, such as groceries and electronics, according to Marshal Cohen, chief retail advisor at market research firm Circana. But it's also resonating with shoppers looking for affordable luxuries. 'We've gone into a period where the consumer is saying, 'This is good enough,'" Cohen said. Customers interviewed at the North Bergen store on a recent weekday seemed to be satisfied. George Arango, 34, picked up two customized cakes, one to celebrate a co-worker's retirement and the other for a colleague getting another job. After researching prices on various store websites, he decided to give Walmart a try. 'The price is fantastic," he said. "I'm walking out with two cakes for $40.' Error in retrieving data Sign in to access your portfolio Error in retrieving data Error in retrieving data Error in retrieving data Error in retrieving data
New York Post
3 hours ago
- New York Post
Walmart's affordable cakes may be local bakeries' biggest competition
Inside a Walmart store in New Jersey, a worker puts the finishing touches on a cake with an edible ink Sponge Bob on top. A colleague creates a buttercream rosette border for a different cake, while another co-worker frosts a tier of what will be a triple-deck dessert. It's graduation season, the busiest time of year for the 6,200 employees the nation's largest retailer trained to hand-decorate cakes per customers' orders. The cakes themselves come, pre-made, frozen and in a variety of shapes and sizes, from suppliers, not Walmart's in-store bakeries. 8 Cake decorators earn an average of $19.25 per hour, compared with $18.25 for all non-managerial store workers. Christopher Sadowski But there's no sugar-coating the importance the company places on its custom cake business. Its army of icing artisans are the highest paid hourly workers in a typical U.S. Walmart, excluding managers. Cake decorators earn an average of $19.25 per hour, compared with $18.25 for all non-managerial store workers, a company spokesperson said. Melissa Fernandez, 36, started working in the electronics area and then the wireless services department of the Walmart in North Bergen, New Jersey, before she transferred to the deli area in search of better pay. But Fernandez had her eye on a cake decorating job and after spending two months getting trained by a store colleague, she picked up a piping bag full-time in 2021. 'I love baking at home. I love painting,' Fernandez said. 'I love doing anything artistic, and I just always wanted to be a part of it.' After 11 years with Walmart, she said she now makes about $24.40 an hour. 8 The cakes themselves come, pre-made, frozen and in a variety of shapes and sizes, from suppliers, not Walmart's in-store bakeries. AP Despite their elite status within Walmart, the retailer's cake decorators have attracted detractors on social media. The company promotes its personalized baked goods on TikTok and encourages the workers behind such creations to do the same. Critics have accused Walmart decorators of stealing ideas and undercutting the work of professional cake artists with their low-priced products. After TikTok videos praising Walmart's $25 heart-shaped cakes with borders that resemble vintage lace cropped up before Valentine's Day this year, a few bakers produced their own videos explaining why their cakes cost so much more and critiquing Walmart's. Debates ensued in the comments sections over whether Walmart represented evils of capitalism or served the needs of the masses. 8 Critics have accused Walmart decorators of stealing ideas and undercutting the work of professional cake artists with their low-priced products. AP A customized sheet cake that can be sliced to serve 96 people costs $59 at Walmart, about one-third to half the price that a nationwide sample of independent bakeries list online for similarly sized cakes. For $5.20 more, Walmart customers can add strawberry or 'Bavarian creme' fillings, which like the bare cakes, are vendor-supplied. The slice of the celebratory occasion cake market Walmart holds appears vast based on company-supplied figures. One out of four cakes sold in the U.S. comes from Walmart, and its employees will collectively decorate more than 1 million cakes during May and June, according to a company spokesperson. 8 For $5.20 more, Walmart customers can add strawberry or 'Bavarian creme' fillings, which like the bare cakes, are vendor-supplied. AP The number of cakes decorated each day at the location where Fernandez works nearly doubles to 50-60 when school graduations come around, compared to 30-35 a day during the rest of the year, said Michael DeMarco, the manager of the store's fresh food department. He credits the decorators' talent and promotional efforts on TikTok. 'We're getting a lot of repeat customers. We're doing a lot more business because of just the viral sensations,' DeMarco said. A TikTok video that showed Fernandez designing a $24 version of a customized bouquet cake — 12 cupcakes that are individually decorated and arranged to look like a bunch of flowers — received nearly a half-million views. The bouquet design was one of the North Bergen store's most popular cakes last month, a company spokesperson said. 8 One out of four cakes sold in the U.S. comes from Walmart, and its employees will collectively decorate more than 1 million cakes during May and June. AP The dressy heart-shaped cakes, as well as cakes that resemble meals like sushi or a pile of spaghetti and meatballs, are popular too, she said. Fernandez also has created 'burn away' cakes: an iced cake topped with an image printed on paper, which is set ablaze to reveal a different image underneath. 'TikTok helps me stay up to date,' she said. 'A lot of trends that I see on there, within that week or within that month, customers will come asking about it. And we're pretty up to date as well.' Jazzing up a cake by hand requires skill, whether or not someone else did the baking, she said. Funneling buttercream frosting through a bag and various sized piping tips to yield the desired design without misplaced blobs is not the same as drawing or painting, Fernandez explained. 8 The dressy heart-shaped cakes, as well as cakes that resemble meals like sushi or a pile of spaghetti and meatballs, are popular too. AP 'There's a lot of pressure points that you have to practice in order to get the borders correct and the right thickness or the right texture,' she said. Tiffany Witzke, who has been a Walmart cake decorator since July 2016 and works at a store in Springfield, Missouri, has more than 912,000 followers on TikTok. The job attracts people who 'can be extremely skilled and talented,' Witzke said, adding that customers want increasingly complicated designs. 'When I first started, it was basically just borders and writing,' she said. 'Now, everybody wants more and more and more on their cake.' 8 Fernandez has created 'burn away' cakes: an iced cake topped with an image printed on paper, which is set ablaze to reveal a different image underneath. AP Liz Berman, owner of The Sleepy Baker, in Natick, Massachusetts, said she's not worried about losing customers to Walmart because of her attention to detail and the premium ingredients she uses. She charges $205 and up for a half-sized sheet cake, the bouquets made up of two dozen miniature cupcakes cost $110. All the cakes are made from scratch, and Berman said she designs everything herself. 'It's just a totally different business model,' she said. 'Everything I do is custom.' For Walmart, the cake decorating business delivers higher profit margins than some other areas, such as groceries and electronics, according to Marshal Cohen, chief retail advisor at market research firm Circana. But it's also resonating with shoppers looking for affordable luxuries. 8 For Walmart, the cake decorating business delivers higher profit margins than some other areas, such as groceries and electronics. AP 'We've gone into a period where the consumer is saying, 'This is good enough,'' Cohen said. Customers interviewed at the North Bergen store on a recent weekday seemed to be satisfied. George Arango, 34, picked up two customized cakes, one to celebrate a co-worker's retirement and the other for a colleague getting another job. After researching prices on various store websites, he decided to give Walmart a try. 'The price is fantastic,' he said. 'I'm walking out with two cakes for $40.'
