Promoting Authentic Cheese Experiences
In this issue, we explore your ability as retailers to elevate the experience of your consumers and help them have a more authentic one. Being the curator of the authentic experience will strengthen your bond with your patrons and endear the customer to your retail brand. In this issue, James Mellgren identifies a couple of strategies for improving the overall experience while enhancing store merchandising and boosting sales.
Cross-merchandising complementary products is a key strategy for generating add-on sales, which will help your customers complete their cheese experience while increasing your store’s bottom line. As simple as it sounds, it’s often overlooked, as it involves the cooperation of more than one department in the store. Working together with team members from other departments will lead to creative experimentation that just might yield a combination that increases the rate of sale of all products involved.
Another way that your store can aid your customer in having a more authentic cheese experience is to up-sell or offer a good, better, best merchandising scheme that will expose your customer to favorable alternatives and foster sampling of some of the world’s great cheese brands. A prime example of turning your customer on to the best in the grated cheese category is Pecorino Romano, the focus of this month’s Passport to Fine Cheese, page 5.
I declare Pecorino Romano to be near the proverbial “top of the heap” of Italian hard cheeses because of the popularity of the cheese as an ingredient in authentic Italian cooking. This cheese is the key ingredient in our Italian family recipe for meatballs and is the perfect finishing touch on our traditional Sunday family gathering that usually involves a meal of pasta and tomato sauce. I swear it will make just about anything taste better, and you can’t ever sprinkle on too much. The problem is, if you don’t get the real deal, you’re just missing out. Do you remember the grated cheese that used be sold in green cardboard tubes and marketed by a famous food brand? It tasted a little like cardboard too. Let’s inspire our customers to demand better.
If there is one take-away from this issue, I hope that you will remember that completing the experience is a win for everyone. The consumer is steered toward a more rewarding experience that strengthens your brand. The retailer makes more money and earns the reputation for providing an outstanding customer experience.
David Spencer
Publisher, Gourmet Business
President, HousewaresDirect, Inc.
dspencer@gourmetbusiness.com