10 Great Promotional Ideas: Confections

As any retailer who is facing stiff competition (and aren't they all?) will tell you, having the right product at the right price does not always translate directly to sales. Since the beginning of retail, merchants have strived to find interesting and innovative ways to display, merchandise, and promote their goods in order to increase sales and draw customers to their side of the street. In this segment of our ongoing series, we will explore one of America's favorite categories, confections. Drawing on discussions we had with retailers around the country, plus tapping into the imagination and experience of The Gourmet Retailer staff, we believe we have come up with some great ideas — ten of them in fact — for making your confection sales, well, a little sweeter.

Sweets for the Sweet

Incorporating candy, chocolate, and other confections into gift baskets either for the holidays or for everyday occasions throughout the year is one of the easiest and most popular ways to promote them. Mary Lentini, president of Some Other Nuts in Libertyville, Ill., specializes in gift baskets, and particularly in ones filled with chocolates. Though they assemble many types of baskets for different occasions, chocolate is the constant that ties them all together.

"We usually include chocolate with gift items," said Lentini. "For example, for Mother's Day, we offer a gift basket with personal care items, along with chocolate truffles. We try to make the gift boxes interesting, even using something like a hatbox for instance. It's been working for us for the 20 years we've been in business."

Chocolate Fantasy

Community events provide a great venue in which to promote your confections and your business. Temptations in Wilmington, N.C., a store that specializes in confections, participates in a event dubbed 'Chocolate Fantasy,' a fund-raiser for the senior center in which several merchants are invited to set up booths to display their chocolate decorated any way they like. The attendees buy tickets or coupons that are redeemable at the booths for samples of the different chocolates.

"We have the best selection of chocolates there," boasted Temptations owner Sue Cause. "We bring three times as many kinds of chocolate, all high-end, mostly European brands, and even some very good sugar-free chocolate. We also have the most visits of anyone there. People keep coming back to us after going around to the other booths to sample more of ours."

In the end, not only does everyone have a good time, but Temptations also becomes firmly etched in the attendees' minds as the best place in town to buy chocolates.



It's Okay to Indulge

An interesting by-product of the previously mentioned Chocolate Fantasy is a clever display of chocolates that insists it is okay to indulge a little. Cause decorates her booth with chocolate facts, 40 in all, covering all kinds of health and nutrition data, as well as chocolate trivia. Following the event, they set up a similar display in the store, adding facts as they go, and in a take on the popular milk ads, entitle the promotion "Got Chocolate?" The facts are gleaned from books, confection and diabetic associations, and various Web sites. They include the recent studies indicating that chocolates can help prevent cancer and heart disease, help dissolve blood clots, and are an appetite suppressant. They also debunk derogatory myths about chocolate, such as it being a cause of tooth decay and acne. Bits of trivia include the fact that it wasn't until 1847 — 350 years after chocolate went to Europe, that an English company came up with a solid eating chocolate.

"The whole display of chocolate facts," says Cause, "is an attempt to make it comfortable for people to enjoy chocolate. As long as you consume it in moderation, you shouldn't be afraid to eat chocolate."

Bed, Breakfast, and Chocolate

Small inns, hotels, and B&Bs are very popular these days, especially with newlyweds and couples celebrating an anniversary. Contact a few local establishments and ask them if they would be interested in a joint promotion featuring your confections. If they know a newly married couple is coming to stay at their establishment, they can let you know in advance, and then you can provide them with a congratulatory sampling of your best confections, complete with your calling card and a coupon for savings on their first purchase of confections from your store. What a fantastic way to reach out to newly combined households with buying power. In exchange, you can put out literature for the inn/hotel/B&B in your store. You can arrange similar promotional swaps with florists, caterers, and even limousine services to have a little sweet waiting on the seat for the happy prom couple or newlyweds.

The British are Coming!

The English are as well known for their collective sweet tooth as we Americans are, and from them we get many fine, traditional British confections. Chelsea Market Basket in New York City, which imports several lines of sweets from the U.K., has used this knowledge, as well as our fascination with all things English to promote their selection of English goodies. They do it by having a British section where all the products from the U.K. are arranged together for more impact. This includes preserves, chutneys, and biscuits, as well as confections, but the overall impact draws people in, especially those for whom England holds some appeal. Many of the British confections have the added attraction of arriving in decorative tins that can be used long after the confections are just a sweet memory.

"We import mostly British foods," says Wholesale Manager Barbara Crockett, "and a lot of English confections. We love to tell the story of British confections, such as the traditional toffee, mint cakes, or our mint balls that were originally eaten by the miners in the north because they couldn't smoke cigarettes in the mines. They have been making them for over 100 years, with just three simple ingredients — oil of peppermint, sugar, and a bit of cream of tartar. By grouping the English foods and confections together, we make a statement in the store and the display pulls people over."

Pint for a Pint

Sometimes, for a person to make a difference in their community, they need a little incentive. At Caterinas in San Clemente, Calif., Josie Rietkerk told us about a local event in which their confections played a starring role. Throughout the year when the Red Cross holds blood drives, especially at high schools, Caterinas gets involved by offering "A Pint for a Pint," or a pint of sweets for a pint of blood. The truth is they usually do it with their frozen yogurt, but Rietkerk concedes it works equally well with any kind of confections that could be portioned into a pint container. It could be chocolates, jelly beans, candy corn, or all sorts of other goodies that will entice the locals to give blood. Rietkerk also manages to get great press whenever she participates in a blood drive such as this. You could even initiate such an event by inviting your local Red Cross chapter to stage a blood drive in your parking lot. You can even make a party out of it for Halloween — a sweet, ghoulish event.

Sweets, Not Smoke

If you really care about your customers, and we know you do, encourage them to stop smoking. You can do this and boost your confections sales simultaneously with a promotion called "The Great [your store name] Smoke-out." Don't wait for the national Smoke-out Day — plan several of your own during the year. Sometimes, the way to give up smoking is to give yourself something else to do with your hands and mouth, such as having something tasty to munch on — like confections. The main idea for Smoke-out Days is to get people to throw out their cigarettes for one day in hopes that it will prompt them to quit for good. Your promotions may work like this — mount a big sign in the front of your store announcing the events, and place a large trashcan next to it. Offer a free bag of some sort of confection to anyone who throws out a full, or near-full package of smokes. Make up a selection of confections so there will be something to please everyone — everyone with a sweet tooth that is. By helping your customers quit smoking, they will remain your customers for much longer.

Birthday Greetings

Remembering someone's birthday is always flattering, especially when it's a coworker or employee, and not a close friend or relative. For an easy confections promotion and a great way to advertise your store, try contacting local businesses and offering them a special deal. Have them give you their employees' names and birthdays, which no doubt will be spread out over the whole year. On each birthday, deliver a bag of assorted confections from your store with the store logo and information attached, as well as a simple birthday greeting. The employer looks like a hero, and you have probably gained a new customer for your confections counter. You can also extend this promotion into the store by offering a free bag of candy to anyone who can prove it's their birthday, including your own employees.

Strawberries Anyone?

The combination of chocolate and fruit appeals to many people, and at Caterinas, they found a way to combine them for a special promotion. To show off their best chocolate, they offered chocolate-dipped strawberries at cost to encourage folks to try them. Says Josie Rietkerk, "We sell them on a coupon for 39 cents each, which is just enough to cover our costs. It's great, especially around Valentine's Day. We put no minimum on the deal, but ask people to call 24 hours ahead with orders of more than a dozen. We write the whole thing off to advertising."

They have used a similar promotion when opening up new stores in airports. They send out a coupon for a free 1/4-pound bag of candy to all airport employees.

"We have used it in the past," said Rietkerk, "and it is a great draw because it is free and there are no strings attached. Again, we write the product off to advertising. Several candies out there can be purchased for around $1 a pound, so 25 cents is not a bad price to get a new customer."

Urban Survival

Whether you live in a part of the country that experiences earthquakes, tornadoes, or hurricanes, or you simply want to be prepared in case of any other natural or unnatural disaster, you should have a basic kitchen survival kit at the ready. This kit would be in addition to one that includes flashlights, candles, and that type of item. This one would contain basic food items that could be eaten immediately, or with minimal preparation over a propane stove — packages of dried pasta; jarred sauces; tins of various smoked fish, tuna, and the like; and of course, confections. Though many would not consider sweets a necessity, why should you suffer while waiting for the power to come back on, or the floodwaters to abate? A good selection of confections will also go a long way to keeping the children happy as you're all trying to keep warm without the central heating system and no television. Of course, the problem will be in trying to keep the emergency ration of confections intact during the nonemergency times, but you'll always have plenty in stock to refill the survival kit throughout the year.