Nash Finch promoting service offerings to retailers

Nash Finch is going after rival SuperValu by promoting the services it offers to retailers, including store layout and design, fixturing, and market research.

It had most of these services available previously, but they weren’t emphasized by the company or easily visible to customers, said John Paul, Nash Finch’s vice president of sales and marketing.

The effort is designed to appeal to independent grocery-store owners who may feel neglected by competing grocery distributors that are also “chasing after their own retail” businesses, Paul said. Though he didn’t identify it specifically, that’s a likely reference to Eden Prairie-based Supervalu, which gets most of its revenue from its retail chains like Cub Foods, but also supplies 2,200 third-party retail stores through its wholesale unit.