Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: WEDNESDAY, February 10, 1993 TAG: 9302100100
SECTION: EXTRA PAGE: 1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: BETH MACY STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: LENGTH: Long
SAMPLE SHOPPING
ALERT shoppers get so they can sniff them out.The smell of Gunnoe's sausage wafting out from aisle No. 7, the aroma of Tombstone Pizza from aisle No. 4.
Alert shoppers also know better than to go to the grocery store on a full stomach; and that Friday and Saturday mornings are best.
We're talking about free food, of course, samples handed to you on paper napkins and toothpicks by friendly women who look like your mother.
So you know you can't turn them down.
At least not when ace sampler Norma Creasy's behind the electric skillet full of Gunnoe's sausage patties, as she was at Kroger Tanglewood on a recent Saturday.
"Whose brand you peddlin' this morning?" a passing customer asks.
"Well, I didn't know there was any other," Creasy shoots back.
"How come you don't have Jimmy Dean?"another man asks.
"Who's that?" Creasy deadpans.
A retired school cafeteria cook, the 69-year-old Creasy has been peddling sausage, pizza and other food samples for six years - long enough to learn plenty about area shoppers and their food-buying habits. Such as:
Vinton shoppers, and most men, are heavily linked to spicy sausage.
Vegetarians, who don't care for sausage at all, can be found in droves at the University Mall Kroger in Blacksburg.
Pizza samples are easiest to give away. "You can work yourself to death with it," Creasy says.
And you can't please everyone. "All I hear is `cholesterol, cholesterol,' " Creasy says.
"Well, one time I worked at Winn-Dixie, and I was giving away frozen yogurt. Now there's no cholesterol or fat in that, so I thought, `Boy I've got it made.'
"But I decided by mid-morning that half the people out here have sugar" diabetes.
It's a tough job rubbing elbows with the grocery-shopping public. A man once cussed at Creasy because she wouldn't give his daughter a sixth free piece of pizza.
Standing up for eight hours, trying to sell the product, being friendly till it hurts to smile - Creasy has mastered the art of sales chitchat.
Spend a few minutes with her, and you're running back to put back that other brand of sausage and picking up Gunnoe's to ease your guilt.
"They all say, `My sausage doesn't taste as good as yours,' especially these old fellas. A lot of times the men talk to me while their wives are shopping," she says.
"One man told me all about his family and how much he made. And another man told me about his wife having Alzheimer's."
Creasy's chitchat is a marketing executive's dream. Point-of-sale advertising, it's called. That means the sales message is being delivered live - usually with news of a sale on the product being given away.
"It's gotten to be a great big thing," says Mary Wilson, a demonstrator and subcontractor who connects demonstrators like Creasy with food companies. "I can be standing there before they even mark down the price and sell more just because I'm standing there."
Retired women are naturals for the job because they have the time to give on Fridays and Saturdays, and need the money. "When you're on Social Security, that $80 dollars a week extra helps out a lot," Wilson says.
They also have that extra special charm that makes what they say believable - the mother/grandmother factor.
Demonstrations are particularly effective for new products, says Shirley Lowder, a Botetourt County woman who sets up area demonstrations for Act Media of Richmond. Last week, Lowder was supervising coupon giveaways for a new shampoo, Pantene Pro-V, at West Salem's Harris Teeter.
"It ties in with the new marketing strategies," Lowder says. "They'll have the product on the shelf for a little while, then have advertisements, then have coupons or samples at the stores."
Coupon giveaways can be touchy, though, because some people shun coupons - either they consider them a hassle to organize, or they simply don't care about - or need - the savings.
"Some people get almost offended if you try to give them coupons," Lowder says. "And then there are some people you'll see who love them. If somebody has their 3-by-5 card thing in the baby seat, you know they're a couponer." She's been particularly surprised by the number of men who collect and use coupons.
While store demonstrations seem to have grown in popularity in the past couple years - with an estimated 10 to 12 demonstration services or subcontractors working in the Roanoke Valley - some companies, like Gunnoe's, have been relying on them for years.
"That's how we got the business up and going" in 1965, says Cynthia Gunnoe of Gunnoe's Sausage in Goode. "Stores like it because they can offer customers something extra without actually having to do anything."
Meaning: The giveaways come from the product companies, not the grocery stores.
"It's one of those things. You can influence the decision-making right there at the point of purchase," Gunnoe says. "The people are right there in the store tasting my product."
Indeed, Mary Davis of Heninger Enterprises in Salem had people sampling - and then buying - Lo-An egg rolls who didn't even know they liked Chinese food.
Her breathless sales pitch at Cave Spring Kroger on a recent Saturday: "The shrimp and pork egg rolls are regularly $2.97, only today they're down to $2.19, and with a coupon that brings them down to $1.94, which is a savings of $1.05."
Eight-hour shifts can wreak havoc on aging legs, Davis says, but the part-time job has helped her to overcome her shyness around strangers.
"People will tell you all about their diets," Davis says. "And then the next thing you know, you've got a conversation going about bypass surgery, or your teeth. You'd be surprised what people will tell you."
Conspicuous Consumption is an occasional column about the way Western\ Virginians are eating, drinking and cooking.