Grocery-store loyalty cards, it turns out, are good for more than a 40-cent discount on a package of Oreos. Retailers such as King Soopers and Safeway increasingly are using data from frequent-shopper cards to notify customers of product recalls.
Card information even has been used by federal agencies to help investigate the sources of food-borne illnesses.
Contacting customers and mining data from their food purchases were key investigative tools that allowed the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention to crack the source of a recent salmonella outbreak.
“We definitely have benefited from contacting grocery-store customers,” said Laura Bettencourt, an epidemic intelligence-service officer with the CDC.
The agency initially had been unsuccessful in tracking the origin of the salmonella case, which sickened at least 272 people nationwide, including five in Colorado.
“It’s often difficult to find the implicated product. People don’t remember what they ate, and it’s hard for them to remember actual brand names,” Bettencourt said. “But the card data helped us track the product.”
The CDC determined that many of the sickened people had shopped at Costco. Information from Costco membership cards allowed the CDC to identify common products that afflicted customers had purchased.
After receiving permission from Costco customers to be interviewed by CDC investigators, the agency discovered that the salmonella came from black and red pepper in salami from Rhode Island-based manufacturer Daniele International.
Privacy advocates OK
Privacy advocates who have been critical of grocery stores for collecting information on customers’ purchases say that using it for food- and product-safety notifications may be the only valid purpose for the cards.
“This is actually a legitimate, very good use of loyalty-card data,” said Rainey Reitman of the San Diego-based Privacy Rights Clearinghouse, a nonprofit advocacy group.
Michael Dwyer, a systems administrator from Thornton, is among the customers who have been notified of a recall based on his purchase history.
Dwyer said he received a letter indicating that toy cars included in some Kellogg’s cereal he bought at Costco were being recalled because the tires could pose a choking hazard to small children. More recently, he received a recall notice for some LED lights, which he also bought at Costco.
“I found it to be a little creepy that they remembered everything I ever bought from them, but I guess it is a useful service,” Dwyer said. “Still, it is like any other data. It is nice if it is used for you, but it is always scary to think how it is being used against you.”
King Soopers, which along with City Market is part of Cincinnati-based Kroger Co., uses loyalty-card purchase records to notify customers of Class I recalls — the most serious level in which consumers could be harmed or sickened by recalled products.
King Soopers shoppers who had purchased various types of Spike seasonings recently received automated phone messages and printed notices at the bottom of cash-register receipts, notifying them of a Spike recall because of possible salmonella contamination.
Store officials said that since implementing the notification system two years ago, they have sent up to 25 notices to loyalty-card customers of Class I recalls.
Jolene Acevedo Erickson of Denver said she was notified by phone of a recall on cookie dough she had purchased at King Soopers.
“It’s nice to know that they can contact us to let us know about recalls like this,” she said. “Unfortunately, we didn’t get the phone call until after we had already used the product.”
Costco said the notification process is more effective for membership-warehouse customers because they are required to give retailers detailed contact information when they renew their memberships each year.
By contrast, frequent-shopper cards at nonmembership grocery stores can be issued with little or no customer information.
Phone calls, letters
“We know everything every member has bought for the past several years, and we know how to contact them,” said Richard Galanti, chief financial officer of Costco.
For Class I recalls, Costco can use automated calling equipment to leave phone messages with 500,000 customers an hour.
The chain follows up on the calls with letters to shoppers.
Safeway uses a combination of phone calls, printed messages on receipts, in-store signage and website postings to notify customers of recalls.
“Even though most of our customers use a Club Card, they may not use it 100 percent of the time,” said spokeswoman Kris Staaf. “Each recall is different. We look at what information we have and consider how best and most quickly to provide information to our consumers.”
Keychain-size loyalty cards have an additional benefit beyond discounts and recall notifications.
“Customers lose their keys,” said King Soopers spokeswoman Kelli McGannon. Using loyalty-card contact information, “I’d say we return 10,000 keys a year.”
Steve Raabe: 303-954-1948 or sraabe@denverpost.com
