PAK'nSAVE is a New Zealand discount food warehouse chain owned by the Foodstuffs cooperative. Founded in 1985, PAK'nSAVE was the last of the three major New Zealand supermarket chains to be founded. As of September 2017, there were 57 PAK'nSAVE stores operating across the North and SouthIslands of New Zealand. PAK'nSAVE's key policy is to provide everyday food and groceries at low prices, which they state in their current slogan ‘Our Policy: NZ’s Lowest Food Prices‘. Stores are large and have a no-frills environment, often with unlined interiors and concrete floors. Customers are left to pack their own bags, however plastic bags are no longer sold at checkout. Customers are instead expected to supply their own re-usable bags. Many stores offer boxes set on or under a large desk where customers can pack their groceries for easier convenience. As of 2015, PAK'nSAVE was consistently the cheapest supermarket in New Zealand during several years of surveys.
History
PAK'nSAVE was developed following a trip by a group of Foodstuffs executives to the United States in 1985. On that visit they saw Cub Foods, operated bySuperValu, Pak 'n Save operated by Safeway, and other box warehouse supermarkets. Foodstuffs then copied this format in New Zealand. The original PAK'nSAVE format was almost an identical copy of Safeway's Pak 'n Save chain in northern California. The first store, styled "PAK 'N SAVE", opened in June 1985 at Kaitaia in the North Island.
Operations
As of September 2017, there were 57 PAK'nSAVE stores across New Zealand. The name probably originates from the cost-saving practice of leaving customers to pack their own groceries, with checkout operators simply placing the products purchased back into a trolley. PAK'nSAVE provides the cardboard boxes used for shipping products to the store, but customers are encouraged to purchase longer-lasting bags or to bring their own. The stores are laid out as supermarket aisles, but with minimalistic design, and often perpendicular to the checkout lanes rather than the traditional parallel found in other New Zealand supermarkets and retailers. Extra products that are not on shelves are stacked above the shelves on the pallets they were delivered in. meaning that the floor space can be used for retail and storage. The stores are supplied daily from their co-operative distributor Foodstuffs. PAK'nSAVE stores often buys stock in bulk. This process means that stores don't offer a wide variety of brands and pack sizes as full-service supermarkets, with products often restricted to market leaders and store brands. A 2009 Consumer magazine survey noticed the lack of range especially in the pet food and toilet paper categories. Most stores have self checkout and some have self scanning facilities. Self-checkout facilities are small checkout for express purchases, where customers scan and bag their own groceries, with several self-checkouts monitored over by a single staff member for assistance and to clear any restricted transactions. Self-scanning facilities are where a pre-registered customer scans each item with a hand-held scanner as they put them in their trolley. This reduces waiting time at the checkout, with most customers only requiring to pay for the groceries, although random rescans do take place. All stores have conventional checkout operator scanning available.
PAK'nSAVE Mini
On 13 September 2017, Levin's Write Price supermarket was rebranded as PAK'nSAVE Mini. PAK'nSAVE Mini is a small format store that stocks around 2,500 products. In comparison, standard PAK'nSAVE stores stock approximately 8,000 products.
Competition
PAK'nSAVE's main competitors are Countdown, owned by Woolworths NZ, and Foodstuffs' full-service supermarket, New World. In the annual Consumer magazine survey of supermarket prices, PAK'nSAVE has been named the country's cheapest supermarket in all eleven surveys since the current survey methodology was adopted in 2003. The latest survey was conducted in May 2013, which was based on the purchase of forty common products, including food, non-alcoholic drinks, personal care and cleaning items. In the survey, PAK'nSAVE was named cheapest in six of the seven centres surveyed, and was named second-cheapest in the remaining centre behind Countdown. PAK'nSAVE also came out the cheapest supermarkets in the 2001 and 2002 Consumer magazine surveys. These surveys were paper surveys where prices on 140 items were recorded by surveyors visiting the supermarket and recording the shelf prices. However, the method was prone to supermarkets cheating by temporarily marking down shelf prices while the surveyor was in store, and the method was scrapped in 2003. Since then, the survey is conducted on only forty items, purchased by undercover surveyors through the checkouts and the prices taken from the till receipt, with the food purchased donated to local food banks.
Marketing
PAK'nSAVE is well known for its "cut price" television and print adverts utilising a stick figure, named "Stickman", in black on a yellow background. The television adverts are voiced by comedian Paul Ego. In 2011, the Stickman adverts were one of the finalists for Best Ad in the annual Fair Go Ad Awards, but ultimately lost to the New Zealand Lotteries Commission's "Wilson the Dog" adverts.
Fuel discounts
PAK'nSAVE offers fuel discounts to shoppers for spending a qualifying amount on shopping. PAK'nSAVE stores with on-site PAK'nSAVE fuel filling stations offer vouchers to use at these stations. The PAK'nSAVE fuel vouchers are unique in that they can only be used at the fuel site associated with the store of purchase, whereas all other New Zealand supermarkets' fuel discount vouchers operate at any participating station across the country. Stores without on-site Pak'nSave fuel filling stations offer vouchers for use at Mobilservice stations. Competition for fuel discounts has grown in the past few years, with cases of offering discounts of 50 cents per litre to customers when they spend at least $400 in store. The standard fuel price at the PAK'nSAVE pump can often be higher than that of neighbouring service stations, thereby partially negating the PAK'nSAVE discount.
Fuel sites
In December 2002, the first PAK'nSAVE fuel site was opened at the PAK'nSAVE in Tamatea. It was originally owned by BP New Zealand and Foodstuffs. More fuel sites were opened in more PAK'nSAVE stores and New World joined for the fuel sites later. In 2012, when BP New Zealand ended its contract with Foodstuffs, they changed ownership to Mobil and Foodstuffs.
Fundraising
In November 2015 PAK'nSAVE stores around New Zealand participated in the annual Movember fundraising effort, raising NZ$106,000 for . This was the largest sum ever raised by a New Zealand company for the charity.
