Now You’re Cookin’: Heating Up Sales with In-Store Chef Demos

Early Sunday morning I found myself watching “Lidia’s Italy,” a popular cooking show on my local public broadcast television station featuring Lidia Bastianich’s cuisine. The result was not just unexpected hunger but also a strong desire to re-create the delizioso Italian dishes that were skillfully conjured up while I sat there taking notes.

One of Lidia’s brand sponsors is Colavita olive oil. I wondered if any brand of olive oil might produce the same scintillating results I witnessed—but why take chances: Lidia said it was the very best for authentic Italian dishes, and it is the brand she prefers. I may be in brand marketing, but I am first a typical American consumer, and I found myself strongly persuaded by this culinary expert to purchase the exact ingredients she used.

Let’s face it, chefs are hot. From national celebrities like Rick Bayless and Rachael Ray to local heroes such as David Maish, we love to watch cooking demonstrations by professional white-coated chefs. We are inspired by what they do, and we are influenced to buy what they use to create their culinary magic.

So how do live cooking demonstrations affect brand sponsors’ product sales? The results are amazing, but the effect is even greater when that live culinary action happens in the same place where consumers make most of their buying decisions—in the grocery store.

It’s no wonder that Sargento’s Bistro Blends Cheese reported a 232% sales increase in stores that hosted chef events compared with a 69% sales increase in the sampling-only demos in grocery stores (all results reported as compared to the average six weeks prior). To really understand these results, keep in mind that a normal in-store sampling demo is a full six hours, yet a live professional chef in-store event is typically only three hours.

Our PromoChef program results continually show how powerful recipe-driven culinary demonstrations executed by professional chefs can be for consumer brand marketers who want to take their in-store sampling programs and “kick it up a notch.” For example, the average unit sales for Alaska Wine Distributors’ Edna Valley Chardonnay is 16-18 bottles a month per store. But during one of our live PromoChef in-store events we averaged six to eight bottles sold just during the three-hour cooking demonstration. And Bronco Bob’s grilling sauces, which move an average two units a week per store, sold an average of even or eight bottles per store during a three-hour PromoChef event. Even sales of basic produce such as potatoes got a big boost through a recent in-store cooking event: MountainKing Potatoes’ culinary demo resulted in an average sales lift of more than 35% over same store/same day sales one week prior.

By the way, the Colavita olive oil is still on my shopping list—but I can guarantee that if the professional culinary demonstration I had watched had been live, in the grocery store, that bottle of oil would already have been off the shelf, into my cart, and sitting on my stove waiting to be used.

CHIEF MARKETER columnist Laurie Carlson McGrath is director of marketing with Schaumburg, IL-based marketing services firm PromoWorks (www.promoworks.com).