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