Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: WEDNESDAY, October 26, 1994                   TAG: 9410260024
SECTION: BUSINESS                    PAGE: B-8   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: SANDRA BROWN KELLY
DATELINE:                                 LENGTH: Medium

FREE LUNCHES ABOUND, BUT THEY'RE ALL ON TOOTHPICKS

Yes, there is a free lunch; it's just parceled out in bite-sized portions on toothpicks or nestled in doll-sized cups.

Last weekend, between Wal-Mart Stores' Sam's and Kroger's supermarkets, a Roanoke-area shopper had a choice of nibbling on maybe 20 different food items. Even if chasing low-cal roast beef with peach-flavored sparkling water is not your menu of choice, it was there for the grabbing.

Food demonstrations are an increasingly popular marketing technique.

"A lot of people come here for lunch," said Charlie Wagoner, general manager of Sam's Club.

Sam's offers food samples every day. It makes certain that employees taste a new product, and the warehouse store uses sampling to remind its largely institutional clientele of new as well as old items. The store even has a supervisor of demos, Wagoner said.

Taste marketing has many advantages beyond the obvious one of making shopping "less monotonous," said Archie Fralin, public relations manager for Kroger in Roanoke.

Kroger, which has been averaging 50 demos per store per year, is upping that to 100 per store next year, Fralin said.

One reason the marketing method appeals to retail stores is that food manufacturers and brokers usually provide the products to be given away. And food giveaways make consumers bite at the checkout, too; 37 percent of the people who taste a sample buy the goods, according to New Concepts in Marketing.

The Charlotte, N.C., company runs food demos for manufacturers and retail chains such as Harris Teeter, Kroger and Winn-Dixie Stores. It handled Kroger's event over the weekend, which means it provided the workers to hand out and promote the food, determined how much more inventory of each product should be stocked at each supermarket and gave the companies follow-up data on how the event affected sales.

Food manufacturers like the demos because they get almost-instant market research, said Michael Stern, an owner of NCIM. Almost as soon as samples are distributed, product makers learn how much of the product sold as a result.

"We count the product before and after and give immediate feedback, within 24 hours," he said.

The amount of product sold as a result of the tasting is called "sell-through." Based on industry research from NCIM, an average of 350 people will sample a product in a day and 84 additional units of the product will sell as a result. That is a 24 percent sell-through.

Demos are an especially good way to draw attention to heavily competitive products, such as pizza, because they increase brand awareness, he said.

But this method of marketing is a whole lot more complicated than frying up battered catfish or dishing out a cheese doodle and two popcorn kernels in a cupcake paper. The workers who hand out the product are salespeople. Comments such as "Why don't you grab a carton of those mushrooms while they're on sale?" or "I told my son here is finally a frozen pizza with a crisp crust, and I'm bringing some home" aren't just small talk.

"Demos result in selling extra product," Kroger's Fralin said. "Customer are often impressed enough by the product's taste that they buy it even though it was not on their original shopping list."

That's certainly how I ended up with Campbell's mushrooms and then had to buy a steak to eat with them.

So, yes, there is a free lunch, but only if your resistance is strong.