Taking Specialty Cheese To The Next Level

In the second of a two-part series, a group of leading deli executives shares their insights about the fast-growing specialty cheese category.

As consumers' awareness of specialty foods increases alongside heightened expectations for quality and interest in connecting a food maker's "face and place" with purchase decisions, specialty cheeses are cruising into a new realm with ever more grocers.

To help gain additional insights into these and other related issues, Progressive Grocer recently assembled a group of leading grocery industry executives for a candid discussion about specialty cheese sales and merchandising trends, promotions, training and more.

Moderated by PG Editor-in-Chief Meg Major and sponsored by the Madison-based Wisconsin Milk Marketing Board (WMMB), the roundtable panel featured Jim Saufl, senior director of deli/ bakery for Montvale, N.J.-based A&P; Cindy Schmidt, deli director for Green Bay, Wis.-based Festival Foods; West Des Moines, lowa-based Hy-Vee Inc.'s assistant VP meat operations, Kenen Judge; Bill Sales, SVP for Hy-Vee's specialty foods subsidiary, Des Moines-based Lomar Distributing Inc.; and James Robson, CEO of WMMB.

PG : Please discuss how promotions make a difference with specialty cheese sales.

CINDY SCHMIDT: Cross-merchandising, sampling and demos are extremely effective for new and already familiar cheeses because they slow shoppers down and give them a chance to try something new. We really play up cross-merchandising with our demos, to create displays with bakery or produce with items like sliced brie, honey and raspberry, which makes it easy for customers to re-create the experience at home with all three of the featured items at hand.

PG : Specialty cheeses go hand-in-hand with signature products, correct?

SCHMIDT: Yes, we do a large amount business with dips and spreads, and earlier this year had great success pairing one of our most popular specialty cheeses with one of our dips. We used a jalapeño popper dip made with American Grana's parmesan reggiano from BelGioioso, and just about everybody who sampled it bought that cheese! Sampling is huge, as is creativity, when developing your demo items, which makes a huge difference.

JIM SAUFL: We are also doing lots of sampling and cross-merchandising tie-ins for specific themed displays, which has also helped build sales of all the related items. We also increased the sizes of many our cheese departments to devote more dedicated space, and have also expanded demos elsewhere in the store, such as in the produce department, to cross-merchandise fresh oregano and Pecorino Romano cheese, for an Italian-themed event.

Another thing that's really helped build our sales is to marry the right cheese promotions with the right demographics on a store-by-store basis. It might only be a group of 30 stores that a certain item is right for, but we've found that when we tailor specific products to specific store clusters, it works out really well.

For instance, in our price-impact stores, which are high-volume and very ethnically diverse, feta and gouda are nearly staples for many shoppers. But it had been something that we were unable to properly promote until only a few years ago, after we found a fantastic Wisconsin cheese company for our private label line that does an absolutely phenomenal job for us.

As a result of these and other successful experiences, we have moved toward more direct sourcing for many of our cheeses, as opposed to going through distributors, especially for the larger-volume items, which really helps us leverage the overall costs as well as benefiting the consumer. That's what it's all about. Even though it has been a tough economic period, it has been a very exciting time on the specialty side of the business, and also on the deli and prepared foods side of the business.

JAMES ROBSON: The demo area is hard to separate from the promotion realm, and education is what is helping a lot of supermarket teams discover a lot of new Wisconsin cheeses. We have had retailers from all over the country come to Wisconsin and personally visit many of our cheesemakers, which has been very beneficial in helping them appreciate the quality and diversity of specialty cheeses from Wisconsin, which actually produced more cheese in 2009 than all other countries known for making cheese, such as Italy and France.

While promotions and demos are very important, education is absolutely critical. One thing I always notice when I'm in the stores is that the people working in the deli and cheese departments who have received some of the training from of us or elsewhere have a lot of confidence and, in turn, become better salespeople. When a customer asks a question about a particular variety of cheese for a new recipe, the last thing they want to encounter is a salesperson that says, "I don't know."

That's a potentially lost sale, and that's why we do so much to help educate retailers — so they have people who can help customers know the differences between one cheese and another, some of the history or background or origin of a certain cheese, and other suggested usage tips.

KENEN JUDGE: We try to light a fire with ample education for our store teams, who do the displays on their own. And while we promote our specialty cheeses in a variety of ways, we are big believers in displays and education. We encourage our people to have a lot of autonomy with the needs of their customers, and to be as creative and innovative as possible with in-store activities.

SAUFL: We try to do as much as possible in front of the customers, to pique their interest. Building demos and sampling events around whole wheels is especially successful, not only from the visual aspects, but also because you can get maximum flavors out of whole wheels that you can't always get from cut-and-wrapped cheeses, which don't hold up the same. Allowing the cheese to breathe right after it's cut also imparts a richer texture and enhances the different nuances of the flavor.

When we launched our award-winning cheeses, most of which came from Wisconsin, they all came in wheels and our stores got behind them substantially to build fantastic displays to huge consumer acceptance. It took almost six months to do our labels, just so we could show how great the product was, and it's doing phenomenal, but as far as the training aspect, it's an ongoing part of our total cheese program. We have a full-time cheese person in roughly 70 percent of our stores, and in other high-volume locations, we have a cheese person and two other support staff who are devoted entirely to cheese.

PG : Are there any other activities or events that help stimulate cheese sales?

SCHMIDT: We regularly host wine and cheese events, which have gone over very, very well. We seek the support of our distributors with our sampling activities, which is extremely helpful to the total effort. We have events going on in our stores all the time, which is what Festival Foods is all about. I can remember when we had just a handful of events, like cheese or melon fests, but they have since grown to become much larger across the whole store. Events help people get excited, which in turn creates wonderful selling opportunities.

We now do two cheese fests with WMMB, whose support is invaluable. I'm so grateful, because they have led us in such a strong direction with our special cheese events that we began six years ago, with a dairy fest. In June, we hosted a cooking and cheese fest, which featured lots of signage, with the help of WMMB. We only do Wisconsin cheese for our June dairy fest. We also host display and sales contests among store leaders, which, in addition to making it fun for our store associates to get involved with, also helps provide us with a real fair assessment of particular stores' performance.

PG : What comes readily to mind when thinking about successful seasonal and special themed events?

SALES: We initiated a program about three or four years ago for a "Cheese of the Month" promotion, which has been a proven success. Be it an import or domestic, a particular cheese is prominently featured for a solid month, such as an Irish cheese during the month of March, for St. Patrick's Day. We have done real well with the program, which we mix up during the calendar year. A dynamic promotion can be built around anything that has a nice tie-in with holidays, special times of year or seasons.

We started out with 250 pounds on our very first Cheese of the Month program, which is supported with flyers, print ads and in-store signage. We also consult store dietitians for POS materials.

PG : How important are on-ad features in the total scheme of specialty cheeses?

SAUFL: Ads drive the bus in specialty cheese, and if you don't communicate it, then sales will go down. Ads are important, not only for capturing customer interest, but also for providing guidance for our store teams.

We also have a chef on staff that only uses cheeses for our featured recipes from our Hartford Reserve private label program. Generally speaking, celebrity chefs have been very influential in raising awareness of specialty cheeses among consumers.

SCHMIDT: We do ads for special events, but they are not our main focus. We believe specialty cheese ad space is most valuable for recipes.

JUDGE: We take a position in specialty cheese based on what the customer wants to buy, and the most important tool we rely on to guide us is our people, who know they can come to us with ideas and suggestions anytime. And then, when we let them loose, they know exactly what to do to make it happen.