CHAINS PROMOTE PRODUCE WITH VEGETABLE FRIENDS

RALPH RAIOLA

Some retailers are luring children and their parents into the produce department with a newly developed toy merchandising program that promotes fruits and vegetables.

Vegetable Friends, developed by Toybox Creations, based in Poway Calif., are stuffed dolls made to look like vegetables.

Toybox offers entire promotional kits featuring the dolls, which retail at about $4.99, along with a wide variety of point-of-purchase materials.

"This is a program we put together for the supermarket industry," said Jim Olson, executive vice president at Toybox Creations.

The six-week-long promotion has already appeared in more than 2,000 stores of several different retailers around the country, including Grand Union, Genuardi's, Penn Traffic, Danny's Foods and Supervalu.

Olson said Harris Teeter, Charlotte, N.C., and Fleming Cos., Oklahoma City, are also set to begin the promotion.

"It was one of the best promotions we've ever had here," said Thomas Tucker, a buyer for Danny's Markets, the Inkster, Mich.-based retailer who owns 12 Danny's Foods units. While Tucker declined to share any sales figures from the promotion, he did acknowledge that sales were positively affected, and that the promotion brought shoppers into the department.

"It was very successful. We know we had a great response," he said.

Toybox first introduced the promotion to retailers last November, but Olson said it has changed quite a bit since its inception.

"It was an in-and-out program, but it's now a continuity program, which has a lot more to it," Olson said. The continuity program includes several more items and events, and also gives retailers a bit more flexibility in the promotions.

"In the continuity program, retailers feature a different character at a special price each week," Olson said. Toybox suggests taking a dollar off the featured character for the week. "With the in and out, they'd just keep all the items at one price, and keep them out there for about two months."

Danny's ran the program from the end of February until about the beginning of April.

"They ran some great ads for the kids," Olson said. "They took an illustration and ran it in their ad. All the kids had to do was cut it out, color it and return it and they got free stickers."

Danny's also featured one of the characters on sale with a free storybook during the first week of its promotion.

Olson said he urges retailers to merchandise the Vegetable Friends products in their produce sections.

"We do better if it is in the produce department," Olson said. "What a lot of the retailers are doing is cross merchandising -- if mushrooms were on special, they'd put the mushroom character on sale."

Danny's offered 12-ounce packages of whole snow white mushrooms at $1.48 when the mushroom character was on sale, and extra large red ripe tomatoes were priced at 88 cents per pound. Ads in Danny's circulars featured recipes for each sale item.

"We had a recipe each week for each vegetable, and we put up the displays," said Tucker.

Due to the success of this year's promotion, Tucker said the chain plans to be involved with Toybox in the future, and is looking forward to a similar promotion with fruits that is being discussed.

The Wayne, N.J.-based Grand Union offered a different character each week at the $3.99 sale price to shoppers using the chain's Grand Savings Plus Card. Grand Union ran the promotion from the end of March until the middle of May.

Olson is also encouraging retailers to offer shoppers hand-outs at the front end, which children can take home, color and return to the retailer to get free Vegetable Friends stickers. Those fliers are also made available, in most cases, at the point of sale.

The promotional kit comes with several floor displays, handouts, window banners and T-shirts, which retailers may use as prizes in raffle promotions. A 32-page coloring book and 52-page storybook are also available for promotions.

"We encourage the stores to contact the local schools to see if they're interested," Olson said. "We'll send fliers to the school. In Genuardi's case, they're contacting the schools." An official at Genuardi's, Norristown, Pa., said the program is currently in stores and is "doing very well."

Olson said one shopper at a Supervalu store began reading the stories in several classrooms in the Minnesota area.

A produce associate at a Marche's Supervalu in Minneapolis said he did not see department sales increase as a result of the promotion, but he did notice that shoppers enjoyed the novelty of the characters.

"The customers had a little bit of fun with it," said the produce manager at Marche's. "But as far as people driving out of their way to our store to pick up one of those Vegetable Friends, I didn't see that. There may have been one or two."