D&W PLANS TO OPEN COOKING SCHOOL

LYNNE MILLER

GRAND RAPIDS, Mich. -- In its latest effort to stand out in this competitive market, D&W Food Centers will open an in-store cooking school, featuring local restaurant chefs as teachers, consumers as cooks and a new food expert coordinating the whole operation.

Scheduled to open this month, the school is being constructed in a 1,600-square-foot space that was formerly a cafe inside the Grandville store, which itself is being remodeled. A suburb of Grand Rapids, Grandville is a thriving, upper-middle-class community, with lots of new family homes and shops.

The school will resemble an extremely well-appointed kitchen, with high-end, stainless-steel residential appliances, ceramic tile floors in light earth tones and solid-surface countertops. Unlike a home kitchen, though, the school will have seating for up to 24 students, and six mobile work stations. The instructor will work behind a two-burner gas cooktop, with a TV monitor on either side allowing students to observe. Student cook stations, four gas cooktops with six burners each, are located behind the instructor.

The D&W is giving its cooking school a high profile -- it will be visible through the large windows customers pass as they enter the store from the parking lot.

The initiative fits in with the company's ongoing mission, a marketing official with D&W told SN.

"We'll continue to position ourselves as the food experts in our market," said Ron Cox, vice president of marketing for the 25-store independent in western Michigan.

A new member of D&W's team is playing a key role in that mission. Newly named retail culinary coordinator Sue Dow brings cooking and marketing experience to the job. She previously operated as a personal chef, taught cooking classes, and held sales and marketing positions at TV and radio stations.

Soon after she started in early May, Dow expanded the D&W Chef's Kitchen Program, hiring four new chefs to staff the action stations set up in six stores. Located across from the meat and seafood departments, the set-ups look like small kitchens on a stage, with cooktops and mirrors that offer consumers a view of the chef during food preparation. They're equipped with small refrigerators and sinks, refrigerated cases and other space for creating product displays. The company's chefs conduct product demos at these stations, cooking quick and easy dishes using convenient, gourmet products.

"What I'm trying to accomplish is a structured calendar of recipes that reflect what customers want, and ultimately sell more product in the grocery store," Dow said. "The other goal would be to educate customers, and have D&W be a good food resource for all of our customers."

Those stations pay off and, in the same way, the cooking school should pay dividends, too, she said.

"Whatever our chefs are sampling, we sell more of that product," Dow said. "You can track definite increases in sales whenever a chef is demoing a product."

Officials say the cooking school should have a similar impact.

"I think people who come to these classes will shop at D&W as well," she said. "It's a marketing vehicle."

Cox agreed, noting the school should set the regional retailer apart in this increasingly crowded market, which in recent years has seen everything from an increase in national drug store outlets to additional Wal-Mart supercenters.

"To our knowledge, we'll be the first food retailer with a cooking school in our market," said Cox. "We want to introduce people to new and different foods, and introduce them to new skills, too."

Two types of classes are planned: three-and-a-half hour evening and weekend classes that give consumers a chance to cook, and 45-minute daytime classes that follow a traditional format, with students learning by observing the pros at work.

The class menu is long. Choices will include "Bistro Style Cookery," "Hearty Soups That Make a Meal" and "Cooking with Wine." Also available will be classes that teach consumers how to prepare a particular dish, like San Francisco's signature cioppino, and the Italian rice classic, risotto.

"Our classes will range from gourmet, to easy-to-fix meals, to classes parents can take with their kids," Dow said.

Fees are $25 for the 45-minute courses, $65 for the more intensive sessions and $55 for classes parents can take with youngsters. Child care will be available in the store for mothers and fathers enrolled in the classes.

To sell the community on the school, D&W is launching an aggressive marketing campaign. The company last month distributed a course catalogue to 100,000 homes via the Sunday newspapers, and promoted the school on TV and radio spots. When she talked to SN, Dow was in the midst of creating a brochure with a calendar, registration information and biographies of all the chefs scheduled to teach. Online class registration will be available.

Even when restaurant chefs are not sharing their secrets at the school, it will be used for other purposes. In addition to classes, the school will be a site for store chef training, recipe testing, vendor presentations, and even parties and corporate events.

"We don't want it sitting there empty," Dow said.