Mmm ... samples!

The other day, a very, very big bag of Terra Chips followed me home from Costco. It wasn't on my list, but I had succumbed to a subtle ambush by a particularly persuasive demonstrator. True, I had skipped lunch and was hungry, but they were really good chips, flecked with sun-dried tomato and tangy with balsamic. I had a second helping. Company's coming, I rationalized, and into the cart they went.

Everywhere from specialty food shops to farmer's markets, savvy sellers are enticing buyers by going straight to their taste buds.

Good luck dodging the demonstrators.

At Costco on a high-traffic day, more than 20 might vie for your attention, proffering muffin bites or paper cups of soup, tempting you with the newest snack, salsa or microwaveable entree.

Grazing in the grocery aisles is so commonplace that food shopping sometimes seems like the retail equivalent of a fancy restaurant's "menu degustation." Customers nosh their way through grocery stores and hover around cooking kiosks waiting for a bite of whatever the demonstrator might be whipping up.

Samples = sales surge

Food purveyors have learned that point-of-sale sampling is a cost-effective way to introduce new products, educate consumers and generally add to the pleasure of the overall shopping experience. Demos reach the buyer directly and can generate a considerable bump in sales.

"The fragmented media market makes it harder to reach people via traditional outlets, so one place vendors can get direct access to the consumer is through demos," says Brent Ellis, CFO of Warehouse Demo Services (WDS), one of two companies nationwide that provide demonstrators exclusively to Costco.

Every Costco store has a WDS supervisor on site just to coordinate demos. Vendors pay for the service, but Costco, WDS and the vendor decide what to sample.

In a no-frills warehouse, sampling helps create the kind of product differentiation that regular retailers achieve through product placement and point-of-sale displays, says Ellis. But making a product stand out from all the others can be a challenge in a traditional grocery store that carries many thousands more brands than a Costco.

"With in-store sampling, the effect on sales is immediate and easier to measure than the effect of an ad," says Brian Clearman of New Concepts in Marketing, a North Carolina-based company that handles product demos for QFC stores.

"Retailers want to enhance the shopping experience and add in-store excitement. Manufacturers want to introduce new products and support retailers," says Clearman. "Sampling can offer feedback, which is important to the manufacturer, and the bump in sales is important to the retailer. Typically, we expect a lift in sales of 300-400 percent from a focused, six-hour in-store demo on a weekend."

One-day sales are important, notes Ellis, "But hopefully you've also converted customers to buying your product more than once. The investment over time is harder to measure."

Personality's a plus

Much of a demo's success can depend on the demonstrator. "People are all of our assets, and our success depends on our ability to attract and keep the right kind of person," says Ellis.

Demonstrators typically make about $9 an hour in this area. They need stamina to work the six-hour shifts, a lively personality and considerable people skills, but they don't need to learn much more than basic knowledge about a product and don't have to deal with money or learn the till.

"Demonstration businesses have long attracted a nontraditional work force — homemakers, students, retirees — interested in part-time work, short hours and flexible schedules," Clearman says. Part-time demonstrator jobs often lead to full-time supervisory positions with benefits at WDS, whose demonstrators often come from Costco's membership ranks. "People who shop there think it looks like fun," says Ellis.

Educating the customer

Sometimes the goal of sampling is to educate the consumer. That is especially true with organic and natural products. Last August, 7,000 people attended PCC's annual "Healthy Living Fair" in Issaquah, where 175 food and nonfood vendors sampled their wares.

But PCC merchandising director Paul Schmidt says, "At any time in any store in any department, our staff has the ability to let customers try a product. We want our customers to try things they've never tried before, and we don't want to limit our employees."

Rather than hire outside demonstrators, he prefers to use growers or producers of the product, or PCC's own staff, because they have the most intimate knowledge of the product.

When PCC invited seven ranchers up from Oregon Country Beef for a Saturday afternoon barbecue at each PCC store, Schmidt says, "They came with their families and cooked hamburgers and talked about how they grow the beef. The ranchers enjoyed it as much as the customers."

Usually, when deciding what to sample, Schmidt will choose something unique. "With grass-fed beef, for example, the flavor is so different from regular beef that I felt people had to try it."

"Sampling, along with an instantly redeemable coupon, is the best way to get people to try new things," he says. "Regular coupons typically have a response rate of 2 percent or less. In a face-to-face demo, when you can hand the customer an instantly redeemable coupon, the response rate jumps to 10 to 15 percent. You just get more bang for the buck."

Tempting the shopper

At Trader Joe's stores, demonstrations go on all day, every day, from 9 a.m. to 9 p.m. "Demos can start a snowball effect for new products in terms of demand," observes Micheal Krause, team captain at the University Place store in Pierce County. "Many of our items are unique and need to be sampled for people to become familiar with them."

Three Trader Joe employees work in shifts cooking or doing "soft demos": sampling cookies, candy or other prepared foods. They also have coffee brewing all day.

"Just the smell of food cooking usually entices buyers," says Krause, though on one occasion that backfired. They were sampling fondue, and the stinky cheese smell wafting through the store grew so powerful, he had to stop the demo.

Trader Joe's samples what customers say they would like to try. Perishable foods and frozen foods are used most often because "that's where we are growing as a company, and because people often come in looking for what to eat tonight. They'll buy something they have no intention of buying because they tasted it."

Providence Cicero: providencecicero@aol.com