FUTURE INVESTMENTS

JACK ROBERTIELLO

When is a cookie not a cookie? When it's a marketing tool.

In fact, just handing out a few cookies seems to be one of the primary methods supermarket bakeries use to attract children -- and, more importantly, their parents -- into the department, according to bakery retailers.

Kid's clubs -- sometimes called cookie clubs -- have been around for a while, long enough for some retailers to be trying them out for the second or third time. Sometimes bolstered by the distribution of membership cards or pins, the clubs at their most basic offer kids a chance to pick up a free cookie every time they visit the store.

Like the old-fashioned neighborhood barber who gave out lollipops to make a child's haircut tolerable, bakery retailers have hit upon this method as a way to simultaneously make shopping more fun for the kids, easier on mothers and potentially more profitable for themselves.

"Bakery is an impulse department; people don't have to go there," said consultant Rob Doehler, a former bakery executive at Hannaford Bros., Scarborough, Maine, and head of the Maine-based Food Friends. "So supermarkets need to have events like cookie clubs to draw people into them. One out of 13 people put a bakery item on their shopping list, so any of these programs is a success if it gets the shopper into the department."

Many retailers do much more than just pass out cookies under the auspices of a club, however. Those stores working to capture family business use techniques like offering specially-priced or free cakes to club members on their birthdays, setting up frequent in-store special events that involve kid participation, customizing their giveaway cookies for the holidays or taking part in integrated storewide programs that involve children in events held throughout the store.

Whatever the extent of a bakery's kid's program, like any other continuing promotional effort, it needs careful tending said those who employ them. And retailers may not be easily able to see a direct correlation between the kid's clubs and sales, according to retailers who spoke with SN, although one says his cookie sales have doubled as a direct result of the re-inauguration of a kid's club.

But either way, any program that increases both customer traffic and product familiarity in a department which consumers frequently skirt can be a big step toward increasing business and consumer loyalty, retailers said.

Doehler compared marketing bakery products to children to the cola wars of the 1950s. To break Coca-Cola's hold on the market, Pepsi promoters launched a program to give their product away at Little League baseball games. "Basically, they focused on kids because they knew children were the future of their business. Supermarketers need to know that they're not just giving their stuff away; this is something that gets the kid's attention," he said.

The best reason for running a kid's club program is that it makes the shopping experience easier for children, and consequently, easier for their parents, said Ruth Mitchell, a spokeswoman for the West Des Moines, Iowa-based Hy-Vee chain.

Kid's club programs differ from store to store at Hy-Vee, she said, and the details are left up to the store-level personnel. Some stores just give out cookies, while at others a first birthday cake order is automatically supplemented with a smaller baby's cake, similarly decorated and meant to be used as the baby's own, "to eat or play with, however they like," she said.

Mitchell says she knows, anecdotally, that some customers who favor Hy-Vee do so at least partly because of the attention paid to children. "But we mainly look at this kind of thing as a way of making the shopping experience a little more pleasurable for mom or dad and the kids," she said.

"I can't say enough about our cookie program," said Darryl Bruff, deli and bakery supervisor for the 17-store, Union City, Tenn.-based James & Sons. He restarted his cookie club program about 16 months ago and couldn't be happier with the results: cookie sales have almost doubled at all stores since the club was restarted.

The program, which was allowed to lapse after first starting at James stores about 10 years ago, now offers children a .67-ounce cookie whenever they come to the store. "We'll probably need to come up with something new pretty soon, because things like these eventually run their course, but it's unreal how many cookies we sell; the club really works," he said.

And he's never heard a negative response about the cookie club, even though some mothers complain about James' policy of offering youngsters lollipops at the cash registers. The same cookies James gives away -- a selection of sugar, peanut butter, oatmeal raisin and chocolate chip -- sell for $2.50 per package of two dozen.

Bruff's intuition tells him other department sales get a boost from the cookie club, although he doesn't have the data to back this up. "When the time comes that a customer needs other items from the bakery, we've already developed credibility from the cookies. This helps us establish a good rapport with the parents."

It's a belief Doehler echoes. Operators shouldn't become bogged down in the planning details, like whether to provide kids with a card, and how to police the program to insure against abuse. "Don't worry whether a kid has already had a cookie or is too old to participate -- just get them in the department."

James & Sons stores also offer club members $1 off a birthday cake. Parents turn in the child's card, get the discount and receive a new card. This can continue until the child turns 12 years old.

Bruff also swears by cookies he buys that arrive packaged in a school bus-like cookie box, which provides children with a toy after eating the cookies. It's especially popular with 3- to 5-year-olds, he said. "It's amazing how well they do."

And the stores have recently gone beyond strictly in-department marketing, introducing their own life-sized mascot, called Chef Cookie. The mascot attends each new store opening and special event, handing out cookies and cookie club cards to kids. At a recent store opening, Chef Cookie outdid Barney the dinosaur, the Kool-Aid Kid and the Pillsbury Doughboy in popularity with children, Bruff said. "Chef Cookie was the smartest investment we've made in a while, and he's paid his way many times over."

At the two Dorothy Lane Market stores in Dayton, Ohio, the kid's club is a well-established part of a storewide program, but they also provide a generous birthday cake program, said Scott Fox, director of bakery operations. "We give the kids a 5-inch cake during their birthday month. It's priced at $4.75 per cake, and at the register, they show their kid's club card and the parent shows their frequent-shopper card, and they get the cake for free."

"On Father's and Mother's Day, we invite the kids in and provide them with tables set up with 6-inch iced cakes and decorating tubes of various colors. We have people there to help them decorate the cakes, and when they're done, we take their picture with the cake and they take that with them, too."

Dorothy Lane Market is known for providing lots of entertainment for children, Fox noted, including nature talks by guests who bring in wolves and snakes, and events like karate demonstrations. The stores provide baby shopping carts for small children, complete with tall warning flags to increase visibility on the crowded shopping floors and a sign reading "Shopper in Training."

Fox credits the storewide program and a strong customer relations person who pushes him on children's promotions, "because it's probably one of the last things on my list, what with 45 employees in two bakeries and our drive for profits," he said.

But he'd still like to do more. "I would like to start doing school class tours of the bakeries. That sort of thing can be fascinating for children -- they don't know how a bagel is made."

Many of the 500 independents served by cooperative wholesaler Spartan Stores, Grand Rapids, Mich., attract children with everything from donut holes on a stick, to displaying items popular with kids on lower shelves, to designing in-house specialties for them, according to spokesman Gary Evey. One such specialty has been donut hamburgers, made by slicing a Bismarck in half and adding chocolate cake donut and icing to replicate the meat, mustard and ketchup.

Doehler warns retailers to be careful not to cross an invisible line that may signal parents to stay away.

"Be careful when marketing and merchandising to kids, because if mom and dad think you're trying to take advantage of their children, you're in trouble.

In fact, you don't really have to market to them; just cater to their needs so that the kids have a good time and don't get grumpy, which will help mothers have a good shopping experience."

It's the little things that safeguard against alienating parents, according to Kathryn Lowe, director, marketing-public relations for Russo's Stop-N-Shop, Chesterland, Ohio.

"We have a special, smaller-sized cookie that doesn't have any chocolate chips, so they won't melt and get all over the kid's hands and clothes, and we sometimes cut them into different shapes, like hearts and teddy bears and other animals."

To compliment this program, in the summer the Russo's deli department whips up special seasonal packed lunches with items like peanut butter and jelly sandwiches cut into teddy bear shapes.

Russo's plans to start giving out kid's club stickers as well.

"We believe in events that promote business and we want people to know that we care about families," Lowe said.