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We wanted to give you a head start on planning those inspiring marketing and demonstration ideas for 2008. This year, it was my turn to rack my brains for concepts for merchandising and displays throughout the year. I don’t envy retailers who have to design these programs every year; it’s a daunting task. But with lots of logged air miles behind me this past fall, I found a dozen hours to settle in and write just on this topic. Happy New Year!

January
New Year’s Celebration. In mid-January, schedule a celebration for customers providing them with a host of product on sale in honor of the New Year. Clear out slow-moving inventory that you can either mark down to $20.08 or discount by 20.08 percent. Design flyers for the promotion and hand them out to your customers right after Christmas, advertising the dates for the sale and the sale prices. Be sure to mention the sale on your Web site and in newsletters to inspire those post-holiday sales.

Get ready for the Super Bowl (February 3) with a tailgating display that calls on customers to think not only about indoor celebrations, but inspires those tailgate grilling events as well. The Big Game will be hosted in Arizona this year, so celebrate the Southwest with a spice-driven and colorful display. Pull out your entire portable grill inventory, coolers, picnic baskets and unbreakable tableware, and match with simple-to-prepare foods such as tapenades and crackers. Include rubs and barbecue sauces for those eager chefs. Build your display near your meat or deli case. Kitchenware retailers can create cross promotions with local specialty grocery stores offering discounts on select items with the purchase of $50.00 or more from their own in-store display. Host a contest for customers to pick their winning team. Each customer who fills out an entry form (including their contact information) with their Super Bowl pick garners you additional names for your mailing list (be sure to require e-mails). Draw a name from the group that selected the winning team and award them with a tailgating kit you design.

February
Mark the Chinese New Year, Thursday, February 6 (U.S. time zone), with a 15-day celebration that includes classes, tastings and demonstrations showcasing Chinese foods and decorations. The Chinese take three weeks to prepare for their festival and 15 days to celebrate it. Design your own by inviting local restaurants to participate with lunchtime demonstrations and samplings of the sauces and equipment you stock. Serve up lettuce wraps — a sign of good fortune and luck. Demonstrate woks, bamboo steamers, portable woks, Asian-inspired serving dishes and specialty foods. Create an area where customers can select their own tabletop, cooking equipment, serveware, condiments and decorations to design their own parties at home. Order décor you normally would not stock from your vendors to include Chinese-themed party décor. Be sure to create a festive setting with glowing lanterns and paper dragons throughout the store to keep customers motivated. 2008 is the year of the Rat; in 2009, the Chinese will herald in the Year of the Ox on January 26. Great Asian-inspired recipes can be discovered at www.visitsingapore.com.

March
Easter is upon us this month, and next month heralds Passover. Be sure you have your merchandise ordered for both events. For Easter, design colorful displays filled with egg-shaped platters and pastel giftware. Schedule a cooking class to prepare home chefs for the holiday with a simple Easter Brunch menu including brown-sugar bacon, tortillas, fresh-baked ham, warm potato salad and wilted spinach salad. The class menu should be designed so that home chefs recreating the dishes at home can prepare foods beforehand and serve at room temperature when their guests arrive. Include buffet design as part of your class, demonstrating how to set out a great buffet using bricks or books to add dimension and height under tablecloths. The beauty of room temperature buffets is that they don’t require chafing dishes. Set out your in-class menu on beautiful serveware from your inventory, and complete the presentation with decorative candles and decorative Easter/spring items.

Tax Relief Week — Discount your entire inventory by the amount your state charges for sales tax to give your customers a break during tax season. Advertise the discount in local papers and on your Web site.

April
This month represents the most stressful time for Americans. And now that tax season is nearly over, plan a celebration for National Stress Awareness Day on April 16 with a post-tax-season VIP event. Host a “Stress-Relief” party for a select list of your clientele — guests could be comprised of your most recent cooking class attendees, or design a raffle invitation. Choose from American wineries and provide your guests with a cross-selection of varietals. Be sure to have your wine expert on hand to explain the nuances of each wine selected, and to match with proper wine glasses. This is also a good time to demonstrate wine preservation techniques and the necessary tools for wine serving and storage. With the popularity of specialty beers on the rise, incorporate regional U.S. brews into the mix to help customers discover their favorites.

Passover (April 20) is not only an important Jewish holiday, but a good opportunity for retailers to accent their existing inventory with Judaic products in categories from tabletop to specialty food. Cookbooks are another great area to help support the holiday with a large number of new and innovative kosher cookbooks in the market. Design a cooking class around one of these new gourmet kosher cookbooks providing new twists on the traditional Seder menu. From the whimsical tabletop designs of ceramic manufacturers to the more intricate patterns of well-established tableware companies; there is a wealth of great designs available today including children’s sets for Seder services. Specialty food stores can capitalize on the holiday by expanding their kosher inventory and also including items such as Gefilte fish, chopped liver, and sweet and sour meatballs.

May
May provides a great collection of holiday promotions from Cinco de Mayo (May 5) to Mother’s Day (May 11). Combine the two celebrations with a Mother’s Day Fiesta on May 5 (Monday) providing shoppers a head start on Mother’s Day gift items. Offer a 5 percent discount on a select group of Mother’s Day gifts that any mom would drool over and also provide a Kids Korner of $5.00 items that children can wrap up for mom. During the celebration, serve up non-alcoholic margaritas demonstrating specialty drink machines or blenders, and sample easy-to-make breakfast burritos kids and dads can prepare for Mother’s Day.

Honor your local law enforcement and join in on Police Week, May 11–17. Design a special weeklong promotion that gives back to your local law enforcement charity through a donation from sales during the week. The charitable promotion would provide a percentage of the week’s profit from your store to be donated back to local law enforcement activities such as school drug-education programs and police benevolent societies. Advertise the program with local civic organizations, police departments and the media to gain community support.

June
The Summer Solstice is this month, which also marks the start of winter in the Southern Hemisphere. Celebrate with a sneak peek of winter items you discovered during this past show season. Call on vendors to demonstrate new items in your store with a daylong Midsummer’s Dream Vendor Event. Ask vendors to come to your store and showcase their newest items as well as preview items they plan to market during the 2008 holiday season.

Open your doors to Take Your Dog to Work Day on June 20 with a canine party fit for a king. Sample gourmet doggie treats and set out the best in dog day china. Have staff on hand with Polaroid cameras to give pet-owners their own keepsake of the party.

July
The Newlywed Game premiered July 1, 1966. Have some fun this summer and invite 12 of your recently married bridal registrants for your own newlywed contest. Your weeklong event could be held each night with three couples competing Monday through Thursday. The winners of each night’s competition would appear in the Friday Night Finals with the final four couples. Each night’s winner should be awarded a $50 discount toward completing their registry, with the winner of the final competition receiving $500.00 toward their registry’s completion. Advertise the event in local papers and in your newsletter, sparking not only additional bridal registries but encouraging family members to come, watch and shop. Be sure to schedule demonstrations and tastings during each night’s event, and provide shopping promotions for audience members and guests.

Honor Peru’s Independence Day on July 28 with displays showcasing products and cuisines of this ancient culture. It’s also interesting to note that 2008 will mark a year when the Peruvian government will be marketing gourmet tourism in the U.S. and hopefully sparking interest in consumers. For those who can’t make the journey, it might be fruitful for you to market cooking classes and products to them. Peruvian cuisine is influenced by a variety of cultures — from its Inca/Spanish roots to influxes of African, Chinese, Japanese and Italian. The Incas provided the staples of Peruvian cuisine — potatoes, yucca, corn and chili peppers — centuries ago. Spanish conquistadors who arrived in the 16th century brought citrus fruit, wheat, rice, cattle and pigs, as well as European-style desserts. Africans introduced spicy, vinegar-marinated beef and fish on skewers. Then came the Chinese who introduced soy sauce and fresh ginger as well as stir-fry cooking. Japanese arriving in the early 1900s to work on sugar and cotton plantations brought their love of seafood and techniques for preparing it simply and beautifully. It is the cuisine that legendary French chef and culinary writer Auguste Escoffier called one of the best in the world — after only French and Chinese. Considering its status, it’s also a cuisine that has been relatively overlooked. Bring it to the forefront of your own cooking class schedule. With a little research, you’ll discover a wealth of recipes and cookbooks available. A simple starter class would be one on Ceviche (considered to be Peru’s national dish) — you might even design this class with a “Round-the-World” flavor, demonstrating the differences in Ceviches from Spain to Cuba to Peru. Additional support for promotions can be found at www.peruvianembassy.us.

August
Let’s Make a Deal! It’s Monty Hall’s 85th birthday on August 25. Have some fun and host your own deal-making promotion. Allow any customer purchasing $50 or more to buy an additional mystery item for 85 cents. Ring up their merchandise and let them pick behind “Door #1,” “Door #2” or “Door #3” for their mystery prize.

Rachael Ray’s 40th birthday is also August 25; specialty kitchenware stores can promote Ray’s products with promotional pricing and Rachael Ray cooking classes designed from her cookbooks.

September
Design a Fall Harvest Festival inviting local farmers to your store to promote regional products. No matter what type of store you have, you can design your own farmer’s market just inside your doors or as a special Saturday sidewalk promotion offering local farmers a place to showcase their crops. From early harvest squashes and gourds to late crops of corn and fall cabbages, promote the celebration in your local papers, and design cooking classes around the crops available in your area. Work with local elementary schools to design a “Seed to Table” program with local restaurants, farmers and your store. Find a space where students can grow their own crops and harvest them for their own recipes. Tour a local farm and have growers explain what goes into planting and harvesting. Have local chefs explain how the freshest ingredients make the best meal and provide the best nutrients.

Welcome teachers back to school with a Teacher Appreciation month-long celebration offering discounts to teachers in your local school system. Design an area of specially-priced gift items so that children coming in to buy gifts for teachers can find something both useful and within their budgets. Create the display adjacent to your Back-to-School items showcasing the latest in lunch boxes, healthy snacks, and quick-and-easy cookbooks.

October
Host a Halloween Party and call on guests to bring food items for the upcoming Thanksgiving season. Turn your store into Halloween Central for the month with weekly ghoulish appetizer ideas, home décor and the best in retro Halloween candies for kids of all ages. Call on neighboring businesses to join in the celebration by opening their doors for trick or treaters along with a costume contest and parade. This business-led community event will provide children with a safe environment for collecting candies and give parents peace of mind.

Holiday Harvest Celebration. Sponsor a pie-baking contest in your community calling for pie recipe entries focused on the season’s fresh harvest in your area. Whether it’s apples or pumpkins — whatever grows in your part of the country — encourage community members to bake up their favorite recipe and enter it into the contest — separate entries for home and professional chef categories. Develop the program along with a sidewalk sale with neighboring businesses. You might even offer a local civic organization a place to host a bake sale during the event. Have local elected officials judge the contest, awarding top honors to bakers in each category. You can honor winners with gift certificates to your store so they can purchase tools and ingredients to pursue their passion. Build additional events into the day, such as pie-eating contests, sampling and baking demonstrations. You can even invite your winners back next month to lead a pie-baking class.

November
Thanksgiving Thursdays. Throughout the month of November, plan daylong celebrations each week providing customers with seasonal discounts for holiday shopping. Each week, sample quick-and-easy appetizer ideas perfect for last-minute guests, along with showcasing holiday giftware and serving pieces. Promote the event as your way of giving thanks to loyal customers by providing them with deals for the holidays and a stress-free environment to shop.

It’s time to head west, cowboy! On November 5, celebrate Roy Rogers’ birthday with all things cowboy or western. Bring all your western-themed items into a display that speaks to the Old West. Specialty food stores can host a BBQ serving up pulled pork sandwiches and corn bread. Encourage employees to dress in their best western-ware. Invite storytellers from the community or library to come in and read western tales to kids, while their parents nibble on western-style treats and shop the store. Pick up a copy of the Roy Rogers hit “Happy Trails” for some background music in your store. You can even download the lyrics to the song at www.royrogers.com.

December
Create an all-inclusive holiday celebration this season with a month-long Holidays Around the World promotion. Each day of the week, feature a sampling of holiday foods from a different region of the world or a particular ethnic/religious celebration such as Hanukkah or Kwanzaa. Hanukkah starts early this year, so you can begin with the festival of lights serving up potato pancakes (latkes) or fruit-filled doughnuts (bimuelos or sufganiyot) which are deep-fried in oil. Global celebrations can begin south of the border with the Mexican tradition of sharing a rosca or two (a rosca is a sweet, ring-shaped loaf with a ceramic muneca [doll] representing the Christ child baked inside). Unlike a cracker-jack box where the winner takes all, whoever is unlucky enough to get the doll has to throw a party on February 2 (Dia de Candelaria) for all the others present. For your store’s event, you can turn the tables on this tradition by providing the winner with a gift certificate for the store. You might want to skip Iceland’s Kjötsúpa — Mutton Soup — tradition, but the traditional leaf bread is something you can serve up one night with some of the Yule lore from this cold continent. For more globe-trotting ideas, check out www.the-north-pole.com/around.

If you would like to comment or send us your feedback on this feature, please send e-mail to mmoran@gourmetretailer.com.