Although its trademark is the drive-through experience it offers its customers, Swiss Farms is in the process of re-branding its position within the marketplace, writes David Bennett for Convenience Store Decisions magazine.

The Broomall-based retailer has been operating for nearly 48 years, and is now growing its business to include nutritious food offerings, digital upgrades, and plans for future expansion.

Swiss Farms currently has 13 drive-through locations throughout Delaware and Chester counties.

New CEO Scott Simon’s planning team understands that one of the biggest challenges to achieving a healthy lifestyle anymore is time and convenience. To ease those challenges, the company is engaging customers by providing more viable shopping solutions, including healthier food offerings.

“There has been a shift toward more health information being available, which means more people looking to take better care of themselves,” said Simon. “We all have to eat and we all have choices. At Swiss Farms, the friendly, relaxed personal shoppers are set up to make the experience seamless, fun, easy, and memorable.

“We want to up the ante of the Swiss Farms convenience factor, which has already existed for so long, by starting to implement newer prepared, packaged, and private label foods along the way, and swivel outside the lines of what is typically expected of convenience-store offerings.”

That means some popular items have remained and others are getting a fresh look.

“We certainly have our staple core products, milk and teas just to name a few,” Simon said. “We currently sell fresh fruit, fresh hoagies, fresh macaroni and cheese, fresh pasta salad with a full line of meal replacements starting sometime in mid-August, including a fresh food entrée for under $10 nostalgic of something your mom would have made with a protein, a starch and a vegetable all freshly prepared.”

At Swiss Farms, criteria for what’s fresh and healthy go deeper than just the presentation of the product. Other considerations include origin, naturalness, safety, and price.

Since Simon came on board, there has been a more stringent requirement from suppliers that prepared food offerings — as much as possible — be free from artificial flavors, colors, preservatives and sweeteners, GMOs, high fructose corn syrup, and trans fats. Also, dairy products are free from hormones and antibiotics.

Click here to read more about Swiss Farms in Convenience Store Decisions magazine.