Mid-Morning Munchies
May/June 2000
Winning
ways for your business
While breakfast, lunch and dinner may seem obvious
possibilities for convenience food, the mid-morning snack urge should
not be overlooked. ASS&CSN
talks to those in the know about the potential for extra sales.
Hunger is a very funny thing. You never know quite when
it will hit. So it makes sense to do the boy scout thing and be prepared.
Snack attacks can be particularly tricky. According to
the experts, different foods sell at different times, so you need to
manage your offerings to maximise their appeal and minimise the chance
of waste.
"Many people who buy our products don't actually
plan to buy them when they walk in the door," says Ian Kerr, National
Operations Manager for Australian Convenience Foods which produces a
range of savoury items such as Daily Express and Connoisseur sandwiches,
Aussie Hero and Microeasy microwave rolls, and Aussie Snacks microwaveable
pizza.
"Often snack food is a spur-of-the-moment purchase
so it's important for the operator to plan accordingly. That means having
plenty of products on hand, and having it ready to go. This sort of
food is not something a customer wants to wait around for, so it has
to be ready, literally, for them to grab it and run."
Arguably the easiest products to promote are on-the-spot
bakery items - the smell makes them sell themselves. It's an appeal
that has worked well for companies such as Delifrance Wholesale, which
handles bulk sales of products made by the breads and pastries retail
specialist.
"The aroma is a winner. There's no doubt about it,"
says Mark Fell, National Sales Manager for Delifrance Wholesale.
"People walk in and smell it and really want to buy
something. The trick is to have the right product baked, attractively
presented and ready to go, and that's a matter of knowing your customers
and the sort of product they like, and your peak selling times."
Sara Lee Bakery has picked up on the importance of the
C-store audience when it comes to mid-morning snacks, launching a brand-new
range of individual-serve muffins and cakes.
The products, which are sold to the operator frozen and then thawed
for on-selling fresh, will be followed later this year by a wider range
of sweet and savoury snacks.
According to Jane Wyatt, Sara Lee's New Business Manager,
the new range has been packaged carefully to make it bright, stand-out
and instantly appealing.
"This range has been designed exclusively for convenience
stores and their customers who tend to dash in and out. It won't be
available in general retail like our other products.
"Naturally we're relying on the fact that people recognise the
name and have confidence in our quality, so they'll give it a try. The
whole range has been designed to suit the immediacy of this type of
customer - the products are ready to eat at room temperature, or straight
from the chiller or pie cabinet. There's no waiting around as there
is with other products in our range which just wouldn't work with this
audience."
When it comes to attracting snack dollars into the till,
the experts suggest that the biggest hurdle is being organised to cater
for the mid-morning munchies.
"Track your sales every hour to see what you're selling, and when,"
says Australian Convenience Foods' Ian Kerr."Do it with the computer
or simply take notes by hand, but once you can see a pattern, it makes
it easier to be organised and have the right products ready at the right
time.
"It's important to remember to change the products around to suit
the time of day and the demand, according to your tracking. There's
no point having the same product there all day not moving," Mr.
Kerr says.
Delifrance Wholesale's Mark Fell agrees with the importance of keeping
an eye on customers' specific interests.
"We notice a difference in demand for different products
according to the demographics. Certain items sell better in certain
areas and on certain days. Breads are always popular but some varieties
work better than others.
"Pastries will work well in the CBD during the week
and in other areas on the weekends, when people have more time for a
coffee and a nibble while they're reading the paper or out and about
generally. You have to know what works in terms of customers and stock,
and manage it, otherwise you'll have stock sitting around and not making
you money.
"With a par-baked product like ours, which requires
baking to finish off, there's a little more organisation involved than
simply stocking the shelves as you can with other products, but every
product has to be managed properly if you want to do well out of it."
"With Sara Lee's product, preparation is simply a
matter of thawing the product and displaying it. We have display baskets
and point-of-sale material and we would suggest putting them on the
payment console, or next to the coffee machine," says Ms. Wyatt.
"We're talking an impulse buy here, a quick-fix,
so have it where they'll see it and be tempted. We're talking about
a product they're already familiar with and feel they can trust."
Ms. Wyatt has an information kit available (tel: 02-4329
8272) and says she's happy to work with operators to build the success
of the product.
"I think it's important to have a variety of the
product on display at the appropriate times of the day, and because
freebies always work, why not have a taste-testing session or do a special
offer with coffee to encourage people to try the product? Once they
have, they'll buy it again."
Ian Kerr is another one in favour of special offers, saying
food-and-drink combos are a proven winner.
"It's not an expensive arrangement for the operator to offer something
like a toasted sandwich with a coffee/soft drink deal, but the customer
perceives it as good value and they'll come back.
"But if you're making such an offer, you have to
make people aware of it. Position your snacks in strategic locations
so people see them as soon as they walk in, or as they move around the
store, and if you're doing a special deal, promote it.," Mr. Kerr
says.
Delifrance Wholesale's Mark Fell is another firm advocate
of the 'meal deal' concept. "We often do national promotions with
our big clients and we're more than happy to work with our customers
to give them a better unit cost if they want to do a value-added offer.
They can set up the deal to suit them.
"Tasting is a great way to get people into something
new, but even something as simple as cluing up the staff so they will
ask if the customer has tried a certain product. The idea is to make
the product irresistible and there's nothing like a quality item, clever
positioning and enthusiasm to do that." A recent survey produced
some very interesting findings on Australian snacking habits that may
prove useful to both manufacturers and operators alike.
The study on Australian Food Purchasing Habits as carried
out by Good Business Sense, provides manufacturers, marketers and retailers
with a valuable insight into Australian food buying habits and where
there are opportunities for better promotion, customisation and education.
Among the findings, the survey discovered that while all
Australians 'snack' at least once a day, adults are spending less on
their snacks while high school children are spending more.
Interestingly too, while adults are more interested in health and buying
more healthy snacks (fruit, cheese and yogurt are very popular), 'children'
on their own - perhaps not surprisingly - have less healthy preferences,
with chocolate, chips and lollies still popular.
Anne Roze, head of Good Business Sense which is a leading
marketplace analyst group, says the perception of nutrition or health
is interesting too: "people perceive something as nutritious if
they can see the product in the package, as opposed to something that
is enclosed in an opaque packet.
"One message for marketers is the need to promote
the benefits of nutritious snack products to parents and also design
more appealing packaging and promotions for healthier snack products
to high school kids."
The annual survey, which for 2000 studied 1800 participants
in four states, also found that 70 per cent would prefer to have nutrition-related
information on all food products and 71 per cent said that such information
definitely affected their buying decisions.
However Ms Roze points out that such information
needs to be written so it is easy to understand.
For those interested in finding out more, Good Business Sense offers
the full report along with workshops which help develop strategies for
improving business. More information is available on the company's website:
www.good-business-sense.com.au