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In our May column, we revealed fun and easy ways to keep your customers shopping, smiling and spending (happily). Summer is upon us, and in this merchandising tip, we hope to heat up your store sales to match the June temperatures by encouraging you to merchandise meals as opposed to individual ingredients.

I travel extensively, and lately I’ve seen an increasing number of meal preparation and meals-to-go retailers in cities across the country. Several times in the past month, I have returned to my room to note the need to write a column about how gourmet food retailers and supermarkets need to take advantage of this marketplace trend before consumers begin habitually going elsewhere to have this need fulfilled.

Consumers are starved for time in an unprecedented way. We suggest helping them save time by merchandising meals as opposed to the individual ingredients that comprise the meal. Today, there is a growing trend of meal preparation and meals-to-go retailers at which consumers either purchase or prepare meals that are ready to eat (or close to it) when the food is brought inside the home. Consumers pay a premium price for these quick meals and are willing to do so because it saves them significant amounts of time. We think there is room for supermarkets and gourmet retailers to take advantage of this trend by thinking more like the customer. If there are particular meals that can be merchandised together each week, then we think it would be wise to promote them as a bundled unit. The psychological need to cook or prepare a meal for the family is met by selling all of the quick-to-prepare ingredients together.

For example, you could plan a Taco Tuesday. On Tuesday, which happens to be many supermarkets’ slowest day of the week in terms of traffic, have a tantalizing taco sign (remember to have signage as we pointed out in our February 2007 tip – any fun sign that draws attention and adds excitement), and under the sign, place your store-label salsa, have coolers of the store-brand shredded cheese and sour cream in addition to cans of baked beans and boxes of four tortillas and taco shells. The word “FRESH” seems to be a magical one to food consumers, so use it in your signage liberally around the meal merchandising centers (and your entire store) as much as possible. This taco stand can be present on other nights of the week as well, but each night, plan one or two meals for the customer so that many on-the-go parents can literally walk in and pick up dinner as opposed to stopping at a fast food establishment. By offering planned meals, your store enables a meal to be prepared in the home, and it is likely to be a more nutritious meal than that purchased on the way home.

Other ideas for meals that can be merchandised together are Spaghetti Saturday (ground chuck, pasta, tomato sauce, mushrooms, garlic, canned tomatoes and spices), Megaburger Monday (ground sirloin, tomatoes, lettuce, onions, mayonnaise, cheese, buns and chips), Surf Sunday (shrimp, Old Bay seasoning, horseradish, Worcestershire sauce, ketchup and lemons) — you’re no doubt picking up on my preference for alliteration in the branding of these events. Again, any type of meal that can be purchased in one area in less than a minute will add tremendous value for customers because they will not need to walk the entire store to find each specific ingredient. This strategy would work well for fill-in shopping visits. Obviously, when customers are stocking their cupboards for the week, we want them to be able to not only purchase merchandised meals, but we also want them to cover as much square footage as they can happily stand, to be exposed to the wonderful products we are offering and the various promotions inside the store for that period of time. You may even consider having small cooking stations with costumed chefs present to emulate the experience of the increasing number of fast and easy meal preparation retailers. I think this activity inside your store is more apt to take place on the weekends, but it would be another outstanding way to enhance your top line.

By merchandising via meals as opposed to individual products in their normal locations, you are innovative in that you are solving consumers’ needs for convenience by saving the time needed to go to six different aisles to select the six necessary ingredients. Many customers also feel tremendous pressure to prepare something for their families inside the home, so this type of innovative food merchandising permits quick preparation of relatively nutritious foods for the family. I would also include two bottles of wine with a sign that reads how the particular wine goes well with spaghetti (or the specific merchandised meal of the day) and relaxation when the kids have been tucked in for the evening.
In this way, you have merchandised in a way that saves time, enhanced your top line, and allowed a parent to both cook for the kid(s) and indulge in a $10–$15 bottle of wine. You have won some of the share that was slipping to the meal preparation retailer now serving (or at least under construction) on the corner.
Our shopper traffic research will unveil some quick and manageable tactics that could have a profound impact on your customer’s satisfaction, loyalty, and on your top line. For more information on how to purchase our traffic research or on how I can cater our traffic research to meet your specific needs, please
e-mail me at Kenneth.Herbst@mason.wm.edu. Alternatively, feel free to visit my Web page at www.mason.wm.edu/Kenneth.Herbst. I can also be reached via phone at 757-345-1205. I look forward to speaking with you about the research in order to prepare a traffic study designed for your specific needs.

Dr. Kenneth C. Herbst, in July of 2007, will return to his alma mater to serve as an Assistant Professor of Marketing in the Babcock Graduate School of Management at Wake Forest University. For the last two years, Dr. Herbst has been an Assistant Professor of Marketing in the Mason School of Business at The College of William and Mary. Prior to his arrival at The College of William and Mary, he spent three years as an Assistant Professor of Food Marketing in the Haub School of Business at Saint Joseph’s University. He earned a Masters and Ph.D. from The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and a B.A. from Wake Forest University.

Dr. Herbst has been interviewed about his food research and industry expertise by, among others, The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, The Philadelphia Inquirer, the Washington Post, the Chicago Tribune, the Ottawa Citizen, the Montreal Gazette, the San Francisco Chronicle, USA Today, and Woman’s Day. Recently, Dr. Herbst conducted several supermarket shopper traffic studies to provide an in-depth analysis of how the customer shops the store and to help managers know what they can do to increase the average ring at the register. He has presented his supermarket shopper traffic research findings and private-label studies at the FMI and IDDBA conventions.

Harold Lloyd was the President and CEO of a 14-unit retail organization for 10 years. His practical, exciting ideas and dynamic presentation style have combined to earn him a highly regarded reputation reflected in his top ratings at numerous appearances at such prestigious events as the Food Marketing Institute convention and the IDDBA convention.

For almost two decades, Harold has worked very closely with small and large businesses to provide a “powerful push in the right direction!” His mission is to provide qualified, executive-level assistance to companies on a “temporary basis,” eliminating the need to add permanent top management overhead. To further assist his clients, Harold authored the book It’s About Time, focusing on time management.