The $20 strawberry.

Just three words, and you already know what I'm talking about: The strawberry from Elly Amai, which sold at Erewhon for $19.99 and went viral on social media. Ground zero was a TikTok post by influencer Alyssa Antocii, who has 221K followers on the platform. That post racked up over 18 million views to date and drove a mob of young digitally-savvy shoppers to the store to check it out and post their own videos about their experiences on social media. 

And so on.

What many people may not know is that the original poster, Alyssa, is the niece of Erewhon's owners, and whether or not this was a planned marketing post or just a happy accident, one thing is for sure. It drove A LOT of younger consumers into the store to check out the product.

Getting Gen Zers into brick and mortar stores is not easy. They are digitally native, and very comfortable shopping online. They do go into stores, but, according to NIQ's Colleen McGinnis, who spoke at ECRM's Deli, Dairy & Bakery Session about Gen Z and the Fresh departments, it's for short trips for convenient ready-to-eat meals.

In fact, they do more than 9 trips per week into stores. But they are not buying a lot. "More trips are great, but you want to get them adding more items into their baskets," says McGinnis. 

In my interview with McGinnis at the Session (see below), we discussed three key ways of driving these digital natives into your stores to fill up their baskets. Tey are:

Engage with them on social media

As Gen Zers are typically on their devices throughout the day, it's important to showcase those new and innovative products that you have for them. Retailers should make sure that brands they put on the shelves have an engaged social media following and leverage it to drive those followers into the store for their products. Retailers too, should be all over social. As we saw with the Erewhon example, regardless of whether the original post was panned by the retailer, it shows how effective a post about a unique offering can be.

Don't forget, most retail store associates typically skew younger, and each has their own following on social media. You can tap into that as well -- encourage them to try out new brands and share about them.

Leverage technology in the store: 

Younger shoppers may not pick up circulars or read much signage, but they will scan a QR code. This is another way you can entice them to interact with products.

Don't forget the people part

Leveraging tech to get Gen Zers into the store is one thing, but once they are inside, nothing beats having a fun and engaging staff to keep them there longer and to get them coming back. A store associate that is excited to talk about a new product and make informed suggestions for other products can go a long way to helping fill up a basket!

Watch the full interview with NIQ's Colleen McGinnis below, and download the slide deck from her presentation here: Capturing the Gen Z Fresh Shopper ECRM.pdf