FOOD LION IS ON THE PROWL TO HELP PEPSI VOLUME HOWL

RICHARD TURCSIK

SALISBURY, N.C. -- Food Lion here is among the retailers doing some "stuff" to increase its Pepsi sales this year.

The chain has taken out newspaper ads and built extensive in-store displays to promote "Pepsi Stuff," a new continuity program that rewards Pepsi drinkers with free Pepsi Stuff items, including hats, T-shirts, hacky sacks, leather jackets, denim jackets and mountain bikes through "Pepsi Points" proofs-of-purchase.

"We have displays in all our stores with point-of-sale materials that include banners, signs, displays, danglers and the Pepsi Stuff catalogs," said Chris Ahearn, Food Lion's corporate communications manager.

"We are also running the Pepsi Stuff logo in our ads when we feature Pepsi products," he said, adding that other events are scheduled to be implemented during the summer months.

"Right now, the point-of-sale materials are scheduled to be up through October, although we will be participating through the end of the promotion" should it be extended, Ahearn said.

Other retailers across the country are also participating in the promotion to varying degrees.

For example, in Atlanta, Cub Foods devoted the top third of a full-page, four-color newspaper ad to the program, and is also having weekly drawings for Pepsi Stuff, with 12 winners per store, per week. In addition, a 12-pack of Pepsi was featured at $1.98 for customers with a frequent shopper card.

On New York's Long Island, Waldbaum's, a division of A&P, Montvale, N.J., simply mentioned the program in a block on one of the pages of its weekly circular.

In the promotion, consumers save their points, available on 24-pack, 30-pack, bottles and fountain cups of Pepsi, Diet Pepsi and Wild Cherry Pepsi products, and send the required form to a fulfillment agency.

The program began in April and is scheduled for a seven-month run, but Jon Harris, a spokesman for Somers, N.Y.-based Pepsi-Cola Co., said that deadline is subject to expansion based upon the program's demand.

"We tested this in the Northwest late last year and early this year," he added. "The popularity of the higher-end items really exceeded our expectations, and the average order contained enough points to obtain three-quarters of the individual items in the catalog. We gave away more than 10 times the bikes we expected and three times the leather jackets. So not only were consumers saving points, but they were saving a lot of them," he said.