10 Great Promotional Ideas: Ethnic Foods

The dictionary defines ethnic as relating to a population that shares common traits and customs. Of course, when we refer to ethnic foods, what we really mean is food stemming from customs and traditions differing from our own. That also means that to someone from Southeast Asia, ethnic food could be meat loaf and mashed potatoes. For the sake of discussion, however, we will consider ethnic foods as anything outside of mainstream culinary American traditions, such as the traditional cuisines of Europe, Asia, Africa, or Latin America. In this, our ongoing series devoted to in-store promotional ideas, we conversed with several retailers across the country who contributed some excellent ideas on how to showcase the delicious array of foods from across the seas and across our borders. Ethnic foods comprise a very large part of the specialty food business, and yet they are often lumped together as fancy foods with little regard for neither their genesis, nor the traditions and the indigenous cuisines that spawned them. Following then is a compendium of exciting ways to promote your selection of ethnic foods, which just may include meat loaf.

Recreate the Exotic

There aren't many better examples of how to promote ethnic foods than a group of stores in Massachusetts and New Hampshire called All Things Sicilian, which feature, guess what, foods and ceramics from Sicily. Owner Alfred M. Zappala, a Sicilian-American himself, imports a variety of items from Sicily. Through the talents of his visual consultant Christine Leone, he has created a store that as he says, could have been lifted right off of the streets of a Sicilian town and plopped right down in the good 'ol U.S. of A. It features tasting stations at every point-of-sale station - among the products that may be sampled are olive oils, vegetable preserves, marmalade, honey, and pates, all displayed on authentic Sicilian hand-painted ceramics.

Says Leone, "We always receive great feedback from customers who have been to Sicily. We also research authentic Sicilian recipes and we write recipe cards and information sheets to help people use our products."

Also gracing the store is a cultural artifacts room that includes maps, books, and other displays that show the history of certain foods and Sicily's culture in general. With Sicilians being the largest segment of Italian-Americans in the United States, Zappala and All Things Sicilian are filling a void with their products and innovative merchandising. Although most stores can't devote themselves to a particular industry segment, such as this one does, they can provide educational materials and make an attempt to recreate an atmosphere that romances the products.

Item of the Week

An idea came to us from Williamstown, Mass., that could work equally well for almost any category of merchandise in the store. At Green River Farms, they hold a promotion called Item of the Week in which a product is highlighted in various ways for sampling, in prepared foods, and in displays. Right now, as they move into the grilling season, they use the grill, as well as their excellent meat department to promote special items, often ethnic foods, and then heavily stock those items. For example, they recently used the grill to spotlight an upscale line of Asian sauces. They grilled pieces of their special grain-fed, free-range chicken to sample out the Asian sauces.

"A nice piece of grain-fed chicken and a nice sauce," mused General Manager Ray Arsenault. "People love it and it stops them in the aisles. We're very big on sampling, and this is a great way to promote other products, as well as our meats and vegetables."

Reaching Out to the Community

Often the best customers for all sorts of ethnic foods are the people who belong to an ethnic group themselves. Try contacting various cultural groups in your community to see if they would be interested in participating in a special promotion wherein you would build a display of ethnic food products in their center relating to that group's cuisine and offer special discounts to members. What a great way to inform such groups that your store is the source for the foods that they love and perhaps have been seeking. You can also contact language schools and travel agencies to involve them in the same type of promotions. Students can come in and show their cards or receipts from the schools, or travelers can show their itineraries from the travel agencies. Reaching out to the community can generate sales outside your store's walls, or literally thinking outside of the box.

As Seen on TV

The profusion of television food shows can provide terrific piggyback opportunities for selling ethnic foods. One store, The Spanish Market of Middletown, Ohio, pays quite close attention to what's happening in TV land in order to ensure that they stock those items for their customers who will come looking for them after viewing TV cooking shows. The Spanish Market specializes in the foods of Mexico, South and Central America, Spain, and Portugal, areas whose foods have received a lot of press recently. For example, according to Manager David Fisher, Emeril Lagasse who is of Portuguese descent recently had a segment in which he used Portuguese linguica sausage.

"We were the only ones in the Ohio area who carried this type of sausage," maintained Fisher. "Ours is made for us by a Portuguese family and is very authentic. People came from all over to buy it, including Dayton and Cincinnati. We began carrying smoked paprika from Spain because The Food Channel talked about the importance of using it in traditional cooking."

Be hip - stay abreast of what is happening on these shows either by taping episodes or reading our "Trade Winds" column. By getting a heads up and then promoting the foods in the store, you can make sure you're miles ahead of your competition.

Happy Chinese New Year

"We don't do theme events per se," said David Rondini of Miles Farmers Market in Solon, Ohio. "However, we do a promotion at Chinese New Year where we offer Asian dishes in the prepared foods section, stock up on Asian fruits and vegetables in produce, and highlight certain grocery items."

Many other special holidays throughout the year can help you promote ethnic foods. Keep a calendar of various holidays from other countries, whether or not they are celebrated here. Among them are Ireland's St. Patrick's Day, France's Bastille Day, Vietnam's Tet, Germany's Oktoberfest, and of course, Mexico's ever-popular Cinco de Mayo. Collect flags from around the world to spark up the displays, and be sure to incorporate the prepared foods section in the promotions.

Scenes from a Simpler Life

End-cap displays are nothing new but when creatively planned, they can be very effective ethnic foods promoters. Thomas Wagner, grocery buyer for Taorello's Marketplace in Brighten, Mich., uses his end-cap displays to sell a variety of ethnic foods, and rotates them regularly. He will feature pasta sauces and pastas for instance, or a line of Provencal sauces. One display of a particular line of Indian products gave us a great idea for a promotion. Their vendor provided a looping video that showed an assortment of product uses. Intrigued customers would stop and watch it while shopping. Expand on this theme by finding different videos that reflect scenes from products' origins. Numerous promotion agencies that represent products from Europe and elsewhere distribute tapes that depict the manufacturing methods used to produce products, the recipes in which they are used, and actual scenes from the origins, which are usually highly romanticized. You could also use foreign films for the same effect during a promotion. The films can simply reflect the origin or the actual food, depending upon what you can obtain. Such films as "Eat, Drink, Man, Woman," "The Big Night," or "Like Water for Chocolate" are all excellent examples of movies that can enhance a food event.

Cooking Up a Sale

It's always disappointing to see how seldom retailers use their own prepared foods to promote other merchandise in the store, especially the category of ethnic foods. At Village Food Market in Ogunquit, Maine, Store Manager John Cavaretta regularly cross-merchandises ethnic food products with prepared food selections.

"Our chef comes from the health food business," says Cavaretta. "She's a vegetarian, so there's definitely that slant, but she's fluent in a lot of ethnic food dishes and she does cook meat for us also."

Simply use the products in your prepared foods selection and then build a display nearby where customers can easily see the merchandise. On your case signage, mention the brand of cooking sauce, pasta, hot sauce, or whatever else the product might be, along with the rest of the dish's ingredients. Make this a routine exercise as you plan your prepared foods menu.

Cooking by the Book

Carmen Fisher, owner of The Spanish Market mentioned above, has actually printed up a small book of recipes to accent her selection of foods from various Spanish-speaking countries. Usually, the recipes tend to be those for simple, well-known dishes that strive for authenticity, thereby encouraging customers to seek out the real ingredients and use them properly. Her husband David talked about the booklet.

"Our recipe for guacamole urges people to make it fresh to be eaten immediately. We make ours to order, which is great because there is no waste for us. However, if someone does need to make a batch ahead of time, we offer tips."

"My wife likes to spend time walking through the store," added Fisher, "and telling people how to prepare the different foods they buy, how to buy, how to marinate the meat, and how to cook it."
Anytime you can entice people in the kitchen, you can enhance your business and promote your ethnic foods assortment.

Street Food

Many retailers participate in local street fairs and other events as a means of becoming involved with their communities, as well as simultaneously promoting their stores. If your town has events such as these at parks and town squares or block parties, consider taking a booth and using it as an opportunity to mount an ethnic foods promotion. Choose a theme or advertise that you are a purveyor of fine foods from all over the world. Cook several dishes for sampling that are conducive to a street fair, and be sure to provide recipes for all the dishes. Use plenty of signage and props, posters, music, etc. to accent your display.

Around the World in One Day

No matter what type of ethnic foods promotion you opt for, be sure and announce that your store is the source for an international array of fine foods. Mount a large map of the world at or near the store's front, making sure it is large enough and clear enough to be seen and read by anyone. Use pushpins or even little flags you can purchase at novelty stores and place them at the various locations where your best food products come from. Use colors or numbers next to each flag and cross-reference them to a list on the side that explains what the products are and where to find them in the store. Make the origins of Indian chutneys, Thai fish sauce, Indonesian cooking sauces, Spanish piquillo peppers, Italian balsamic vinegar, Caribbean hot sauces, and Israeli tahina easily found on the map, proudly earmarked by those nations' flags. By placing the sign up front, you announce every day, not just during special promotions, that you carry foods from all over. The pins make it easy to add and subtract items from your map as your selection evolves and expands.