Foodland Farms Ka Makana Ali‘i Grand Opening

The Challenge

Opening a wonderful new grocery store in a pandemic presents many challenges. Anthology combined with the Foodland team to create a grand opening event like no other. Anthology created a pattern for store openings with the Ala Moana store, but must make appropriate changes for each location. For the Ka Makana Ali‘i store, Anthology planned and led an extensive public relations outreach to encourage people to make online reservations for the big event. The extensive press coverage highlighted the full-service restaurant and bar inside the store and the largest organic produce section.

Our overarching goal was to successfully position the new Foodland Farms Ala Moana:

• In a manner true to Foodland’s “Food, Family, Friends and Aloha” brand while reinforcing the company’s strong local community-driven image
• As new and innovative
• To our core local audience
• To the Center’s core visitor audience
• Without adding significant additional spend to the year’s marketing budget

With a compelling story to tell, we chose public relations and social media as our lead communications tools, with support from mass and digital media. Anthology crafted a communications strategy and corresponding editorial calendar, complete with messaging, in order to ensure sustained coverage and to guide news media, social influencers, and ultimately the public through a thoughtfully curated storyline from groundbreaking to post-opening.