BOTTLED SALAD DRESSINGS GET BIG PLAY AT WAKEFERN

RICHARD TURCSIK

ELIZABETH, N.J. -- Wakefern Food Corp. here saved members of its ShopRite Price Plus Club frequent-shopper program some greenbacks with an unusually extensive promotion of bottled salad dressings.

ShopRite offered its Price Plus Club members $1 off the $1.99 sale price of up to four of any variety of 16-ounce bottles of Wish-Bone salad dressings, with the exception of Healthy Sensations. In addition, shoppers buying two bottles of dressing received a Checkout Cou-pon for $1 off their next ShopRite order, compliments of ShopRite.

The salad dressing sale was advertised via a full-page, four-color newspaper ad that appeared on the back page of a news section of the Sunday Newark Star-Ledger. "A dollar saved! A dollar earned!" read the headline in three-inch high letters. The ad ran in addition to ShopRite's regular weekly newspaper supplement.

Officials at Wakefern declined to comment about the Wish-Bone promotion. A local industry observer told SN that the promotion was apparently a big hit.

"I've got to believe they moved about 100,000 cases of salad dressings. It was probably the biggest single salad dressing sale that the New York area had seen in years," he said.

"The ad was great in terms of taking an item that doesn't normally make anything more than a small section of the front page of the weekly circular, and giving it extensive play," the source said.