LUNDS ADDS SEAFOOD TO READY-TO-COOK MENU

ROSEANNE HARPER

EDINA, Minn. -- Lunds Byerly's has expanded its successful Chef's Market ready-to-cook meat and poultry menu to include an extensive variety of upscale, value-added seafood. The new items hit the case just in time for Lent, though the retailer began teasing customers' taste buds as early as January.

"Demos are a very big part of this. We started doing some a couple of months ago just to let people know what's coming, and now we'll have demos every week, in some stores, three days a week," said Dave Barber, executive chef, meat and seafood operations, for the 19-unit Lunds Byerly's, which is owned by Lunds Food Holdings here.

The retailer rolled out 16 value-added seafood items to all stores at once and will add to the selection as grilling season approaches. Kabobs and stuffed fish are featured in the new program and Barber has developed recipes for unique entrees. Some have been built around input from associates who have a favorite seafood recipe, Barber said. And other items had their roots in the original Chef's Market lineup.

"For example, we had Cajun pecan chicken in the Chef's Market program, and now we're using it on fish. One of our seafood managers, who particularly liked the chicken recipe, applied it to fish one day and loved it. Everybody did. The day we demoed Cajun pecan catfish the stores sold tons of catfish," Barber noted.

While some of the chain's stores previously had offered a very limited selection of value-added seafood items such as fillets in a lemon-pepper marinade, this is the first chainwide, uniform program.

"We have nine marinades now and a whole variety of stuffings and items prepared, ready-to-cook. This is right up-to-date, what customers are looking for. These are the types of entrees they'd order in a restaurant, but we're saving them the money they'd spend in a restaurant," Barber said.

The retailer is also looking to save on money and labor, and enhance quality, by installing a marinade station in stores, Barber said.

"We'll have three or four of [the marinades] in stainless steel condiment pumps and the customer can choose which he wants as he buys his fish," he said, adding that the inspiration for the marinade pumps came during a visit to a fast-food restaurant that had a similar station.

Unlike steak or chicken, seafood is much more delicate and should not be marinated too long. Here, seafood department staffers would package the fish in a zip lock bag, and then pump the customer's choice of marinade into the bag. By the time the customer arrives home, the fish is sufficiently marinated.

"I think this is the best way to do it. It's so fresh," Barber said.

The number of value-added seafood items offered each day depends on the store and the size of its seafood/meat department. Some could have as many as 18 items on display at a time, while others may only put out four or five, intermingled with their plain, fresh seafood, Barber said.

The products will sometimes get a place in stores' "What's for Dinner?" bunker displays as well. There, each week, the components of a different fresh meal are brought together for the convenience of customers. They can go to that one refrigerated case and get an entree from the Chef's Market program, a salad from produce, a ready-to-heat side dish from the deli, and a dessert from the bakery department, Barber explained.

He expects the value-added seafood to be a particularly welcome addition in Lunds Byerly's stores right now as customers look to seafood and other meat alternatives to fill out their Lenten menus.

"We've done so well with our Chef's Market program [with meat and poultry items]. The demographics are right for it. But typically our meat departments slow down during Lent. This should take up some of the slack."

Bag stuffers and colorful posters helped prep customers for the introduction and associates in the meat and seafood department began telling customers about the products way ahead of their debut. That notwithstanding, the demos perhaps were the most effective way to preview the selections. In fact, one demo early this year, unrelated to the new program, resulted in an unplanned addition to the new line.

"In January we had brought in fresh Norwegian salmon; we flew it in ourselves from Norway. It was the feature. Larry Long, our director of seafood and meat operations, arranged that. Just to introduce customers to that great-tasting fish, we cooked some of it with a florentine stuffing and demoed it. Customers loved it so much we decided right away to put salmon with florentine stuffing on the [Chef's Market] menu."

Cajun pecan catfish got rave reviews, too, when it was demoed to whet customers' interest earlier this year. And that has encouraged Barber to give Cajun pecan tilapia a trial run as well.

The success of the chain's Chef's Market menu of ready-to-cook poultry and meat items helped spur the addition of seafood, Barber said. The program has been so successful that the menu has grown from 40 items when it was introduced three years ago to a roster of 140 now. Much of the drive for expanding that menu to include value-added seafood has come from Lunds Byerly's seafood/meat managers and others who work in the department, Barber said.

"They think it's been long overdue. We're one of the biggest retailers of fresh seafood, in terms of sales volume, in the Minneapolis area. Our customers already know they can come to us for the best seafood around and [this value-added program] just enhances the way we can bring it to them. Our seafood managers could hardly wait till we got this going."

Barber added that full-service seafood and meat departments, offering top quality product, had been hallmarks of both Lunds and Byerly's before the two companies merged. Still, he expects the value-added products to boost total seafood sales.

"I think it will draw more attention to our seafood departments," he said, and added that the ready-to-cook items could also encourage people to try types of seafood they may not have tried. Tilapia, for example.

"They know walleye and catfish and salmon, but they're a little wary of tilapia just because they're not so familiar with it."

The seafood entrees, like the value-added meat and poultry entrees, come with cooking and serving instructions. Most are displayed in the service case. Associates pack them up on black styrofoam trays or in upscale-looking, aluminum trays that are black on the outside and gold on the inside. Some stores may also offer a limited variety in self-service, but that's up to the discretion of the seafood manager, Barber said.

The seafood entrees are prepared at store level, but most of the stuffings and marinades for them come from the company's central kitchen.

"Having the stuffing and marinades done centrally is the only way the departments could keep up with it and that also ensures consistency from store to store. They're fresh. We can get a delivery every day from the central kitchen," Barber said.

Many retailers have demurred when it comes to handling seafood, especially value-added product, and have chosen to outsource such items, if they carry them at all. Outsourcing was also a point of discussion at Lunds Byerly's, but management decided that the company could keep a better handle on freshness, appearance, and consistency if it kept preparation in-house, Barber said.

He leads training sessions designed to get all the chain's stores on the same page when it comes to the preparation and appearance of the products. To get everybody ready for the new program's kick-off, Barber brought all the seafood/meat managers together at one of the chain's units that has a cooking school. There, in a half-day session, he showed them how to prepare all items on the menu, including how to cut, butterfly and roll various fish for the best presentation.

The salmon florentine, for example, is rolled, and then sliced into pinwheels, Barber pointed out.

"The aesthetics are important for a great display. We have the best-looking seafood displays around."

And showing managers and associates how to make displays look appealing in a relatively short amount of time is key, he said.

"I think training them at one location is the best way to do it, too. To teach one person and then have him or her go back to the store and teach the other people in the department is effective. Previously, when we first introduced the Chef's Market program, I trained store by store," he said.

Even with the switch to central training, Barber follows up constantly with store visits, he said.

While it's too early to analyze sales of the items, Barber said he expects salmon florentine to be a bestseller, and based on what the customer favorites are in the meat/poultry segment of the Chef's Market program, salmon dijon is bound to be a hit, too, he said. Chicken dijon has led sales in the Chef's Market program for the past year. Barber's personal favorite, though, is the company's fresh crab cakes.

"Our crab stuffing, too, is great. It's so versatile. We'll not only be stuffing fish with it, but also mushrooms, and we'll sell it by the pound."