LU BRANCHES OUT WITH NEW COOKIE DISPLAY

RICHARD TURCSIK

ORLANDO, Fla. -- Great Brands of Europe is in the process of rolling out endcaps for its LU line of upscale European cookies that will enable the biscuits to be sold in other areas of the store aside from their traditional in-aisle Center Store locations.

The displays feature mahogany-style wood, a red awning, slanted shelves, modular capability and room for product fit or pack-out.

"We just entered retail with the displays around Thanksgiving, and the response has been just tremendous," Daniel Gwartz, marketing director at Stamford, Conn.-based Great Brands of Europe, said, when he spoke here in December at a Branded Environments conference that was sponsored by the New York-based Strategic Research Institute.

Gwartz said the displays have proven so attractive that one upscale New Jersey supermarket chain, which he declined to identify, has placed them in its takeout deli/prepared foods department, opening up another point of distribution for the cookies.

Gwartz said the 152-year-old LU line is well known in Europe. In fact, Great Brands is the world's largest biscuit manufacturer, surpassing even Nabisco, which holds the lion's share of the domestic cookie market. LU's flagship cookie is the Schoolboy -- a butter biscuit with scalloped edges and a chocolate schoolboy figure embossed on top.

The Schoolboy figured prominently in developing the design of the display, which also incorporates "the feeling of bliss that comes from eating a LU cookie -- a sense of discovery, for consumers who have enjoyed the cookies when traveling in Europe and wanted to buy them at home -- and the look of a patisserie, or French bakery," Gwartz said.

He added that LU cookies compete more against the upscale Pepperidge Farm line than the more mainstream Nabisco products. A rectangular box of LU cookies retails for about $3.