Without a bunch of custom coding, you will have to touch each product's sort order. However, there is a simple way to set it up: give all featured products a sort order of 1, medium products sort order 2 and basic products sort order 3.
Then in Configuration > Product Listing, set Display Product Listing Default Sort Order to blank. This will sort in the product listing page first on product sort orders and then by product id (oldest first). (It would take some custom coding to get the second sort to happen on product name, but this would be a desirable feature for someone to code, as it would frequently be a more useful criterion than product id.)
All products must have a sort order assigned; any without one will appear first of all in the listing.
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