H-E-B STORE CONNECTS TO CUISINE, AND SALES COOK

ROSEANNE HARPER

AUSTIN, Texas -- H.E. Butt Grocery Co. is pushing slow movers like portabella mushrooms, eggplant and shrimp deveiners into the fast lane at a new store here, where the mission is to educate and sell, officials said.

The 90,000-square-foot store, with a philosophy that stands apart from that of other H-E-B stores -- indeed, from most supermarkets -- opened June 27 in Round Rock, an Austin suburb.

The company has hired a team of seven experts with culinary training who are charged with cooking samples of product all day long and offering tastes to customers. They hand out recipes, too, but they talk to customers about the ingredients and about how to serve their creations. They also concentrate on introducing customers to products they may not have tried before.

"We made the decision that we wanted this store to be a selling environment. If we don't get people back into cooking, then we [in perishables] are going to be out of business," said Michelle Krzywonski, the store's perishables director.

The culinary team includes two chefs dedicated to the produce department, one chef assigned to the service meat department and four to The Cooking Connection, a separate department located between the perishables departments in the first traffic aisle.

The chef in the meat department answers questions and offers serving suggestions. The others are actively cooking and sampling from 10 a.m. to 7 p.m. every day, Krzywonski said.

"This is new in H-E-B land," she said. The 242-unit, San Antonio-based chain has 25 stores in Austin, including Central Market, an innovative format unveiled three years ago which features a cafe.

The culinary team in the new store is not cooking food to be sold; there is no cafe here or seating available.

Prepared foods will be sold chilled, prepacked in a separate section of the store, with its own entrance, but that section hasn't opened yet. Most of the fare there will be sourced from outside, according to a local source.

Krzywonski said the culinary team's aim is to re-educate customers about cooking fresh foods.

"We want to get people to recognize that they can cook good- quality, nutritious, home-cooked meals in a reasonable amount of time," she said. The recipes handed out here were specifically developed for entrees that take no longer than 20 to 30 minutes to make, she added.

The 225-square-foot Cooking Connection area includes preparation and cooking equipment and merchandising cases. The idea is to cross merchandise items from all over the store, Krzywonski said.

It is also H-E-B's idea that such education will sell more fresh food. Between demos at the cooking center and chefs whipping up such exotic fare as portabella mushroom pizza in the produce department, the store sold 2,000 pounds of portabellas in five days, 450 pounds of eggplant over the Fourth of July weekend and 100 shrimp deveiners in one day.

The portabella ring-up was by far the biggest success, because normally in five days, a core H-E-B store could expect to sell no more than 20 pounds, Krzywonski said. The portabellas were also retailed at a special price that week, so it's difficult to determine one factor that sent them over the top of sales expectations, she added. They were offered at $2.99 a pound, down at least $3 from their regular retail.

The eggplant wasn't on special, but the department did set up an endcap display of the product, Krzywonski said. So she attributed much of the eggplant sales, which tripled normal movement, to the produce department's cooking and demo efforts. Every day the chefs demonstrated different recipes featuring eggplant. There was an easy-to-make eggplant parmigiana and some innovative combos such as a sauteed vegetable medley featuring eggplant.

At The Cooking Connection, a recipe has a two-day run. All departments that will supply ingredients for the recipe are notified what the recipe is a week ahead so they can order adequate supplies from the warehouse, Krzywonski said.

Four-foot, back-to-back, refrigerated cases display the ingredients already packaged up so customers can grab them right there for the recipe that's being showcased.

"For example, when we had the chefs cooking grilled, stuffed shrimp there, we had 1-pound packages of shrimp wrapped in butcher paper and scale-labeled in the case. We piled them in the well of the case and then, on the tiers, we had the other ingredients," Krzywonski explained.

That recipe called for splitting the shrimp's back, then stuffing it with a thin strip of jalapeno pepper and a thin strip of mozzarella cheese. It was then wrapped in a piece of bacon and skewered, ready for the grill, Krzywonski said.

"Whatever it is we're using at The Cooking Connection or at the produce cooking station, we see a definite [sales] lift on the item," she said.

In the case of the stuffed shrimp, the deli sold out of mozzarella, and the seafood department sold 1,500 pounds of shrimp over a weekend. That's five times the normal movement.

What astonished Kryzwonski, however, was a sellout of high-margin shrimp deveiners, 100 of them in a day.

"That is unheard of. I don't know what the movement usually is, but I have no doubt that you could go 30 days without selling one," Krzywonski said.

The chefs at The Cooking Connection preparation counter showed customers how to devein shrimp. All of the demoing and educating at the station accounts for some of the shrimp sales success but so does a special at $4.99, Krzywonski noted.

Whatever the combo of promotions, total seafood sales at this store "have been phenomenal," she said.

The first week the store was open, seafood accounted for 8% of total store sales. That's in contrast to a norm of 1% to 3% at H-E-B's core stores, she said.

She attributed the booming seafood sales here to a number of factors, but variety and presentation stand near the top of the list, she said.

"We have 75 varieties of fresh seafood on 28 feet of ice tables. That's triple what we have in some of our stores and it's the most except for Central Market, which has 80 to 90 varieties," she said.

"We also have mussels and clams, which we don't have at our core stores, and a variety of whole fish, which we don't typically carry," Krzywonski said. Like the seafood department, the produce department here prides itself on variety.

"We won't go under 700 varieties and we can go up to 800 or more, depending on availability. There's so much variety just in citrus, for example. And we have 100 varieties of organics, three or four times what you'd find at our other stores," Krzywonski said.

"We have 66 tables which is about double than at our typical stores," she added.

That's one of the reasons the produce department employs two part-time chefs and has installed a cooking and demo station in order to educate customers about the products there, Krzywonski noted.

"In produce, it's particuarly important to educate customers to choose the right product [for their needs], how to store it properly and how to use it, so it will be satisfying to them. That's why we have a major push in that department," she said.