UKROP'S LINKS UP WITH LOCAL SAUSAGE LEGEND

ROSEANNE HARPER

RICHMOND, Va. -- Ukrop's Super Markets here linked up this year with the supplier of a locally revered brand of Italian sausage and is happy with sales of the product.

Even as grilling season winds down, sales of the branded product -- Dominic's of New York -- have stayed up. The Dominic's brand sausage, available in all the chain's stores, outsells any of the other four brands of Italian sausage Ukrop's offers by three to one, said Derby Adcock, Ukrop's category manager for meat and seafood.

From mid-June to mid-July, sales of the brand are up 25% from the month before and are expected to stay up, she said.

"Sausage is a strange category in that it has different seasonal applications. Sales increase during grilling season but they don't take a big dive in the fall either. It's not like porterhouse or T-bone steaks that sharply increase in summertime and decrease in winter. This will be the first fall we had [Dominic's of New York sausage] in all our stores. We'll see what happens."

Richmonders have become familiar with the sausage via Dominic's branded mobile kiosk/restaurants. Most of them positioned in front of high-traffic Lowes home improvement centers here, the Dominic's kiosks offer a variety of hot and cold sandwiches, including sausage sandwiches.

Six units of Ukrop's also sell Dominic's sausage sandwiches at their in-store grills, which serves to expose more of the chain's customers to the brand and helps boost sales of the packaged product, Adcock said.

"I'm happy with sales and I think the product has brought recognition to the whole category in our stores. It's fresh, not frozen, and we market it that way," said Adcock.

"People really like Dominic's. We did a soft introduction last fall in four or five stores, then in eight, and pretty soon customers were calling and asking if we could put it in the store they shopped in. So we decided to put it in them all," she added.

She pointed out that using local vendors such as Dominic's fits in with the Ukrop's philosophy.

"[Ukrop's] always pays special attention to our local vendors. It just benefits us all, especially when the product is a quality one like this," she said.

While Adcock noted that the whole sausage category is a growing one, she said she's been particularly pleased with the performance of the Dominic's brand.

She explained that in some of the chain's rural area stores -- where customers generally are more price-conscious -- she thought the retail price of $4.79 for a one-pound, three-ounce package might produce sticker shock.

"But figures for those stores are equal or have even surpassed those in some of our other stores. People obviously recognized the quality. They bought it on the quality and the taste," she said.

Supplying Ukrop's was his first association with a supermarket, said John Felico, president of FoodNet, the operations arm of Dominic's. Since the rollout last winter to all Ukrop's units, the company has also begun supplying 35 units of Farm Fresh, Norf olk, Va., in the Norfolk-Virginia Beach area. And Felico said sales in both chains have exceeded his expectations.

He added that the most important thing he has learned from the supermarket sales of his product this summer is to be ready. Over the Fourth of July weekend, some units of Ukrop's and Farm Fresh sold out of his product.

"We'll be ready for Labor Day weekend and also for NASCAR weekend which is coming up. We'll make sure we have enough product for the stores and more merchandisers, too," Felico said.