PRIMAL INSTINCTS

Roseanne Harper

Retailers are realizing they'd better do some teaching to keep customers visiting their meat and seafood service cases.

Competition is coming from all sides now. It's no secret that people are cooking less, but it's not just the likes of Boston Market and Chinese take-out that are vying for their attention. Big brand manufacturers are building in convenience like never before. Frozen entrees are better than ever, and meal kits on grocery shelves now come complete with shelf-stable tuna and even cooked meat.

While research and development in the convenience category is focusing on prolonging fresh items' shelf life, the backbone of meat and seafood department sales continues to be primal cuts of beef and simple filets of raw fish. The challenge to hanging onto the sales of those items requires retailers to aggressively promote them for their freshness -- and even convenience, industry observers told SN.

Publix Super Markets and Lunds/Byerly's have stepped up programs to train their front-line seafood associates and increased the frequency of how-to demos. Meanwhile, Associated Wholesalers Inc., Robesonia, Pa., has taken the National Cattlemen's Beef Association's Beef Made Easy program and run with it to help retailers get the cook-it-easy-and-right message across to customers.

"It's absolutely vital that the retailer's front-line people interact with customers. We held a set of seminars last summer in different geographical locations to help them make the most of the [Beef Made Easy] program," said Joe Melton, meat director for AWI, a cooperative wholesaler that owns 10 corporate stores and services more than 800 independent supermarkets and c-stores in the northern Mid-Atlantic area.

The NCBA continues to simplify things for the consumer, with such things as the recent debut of its value cuts program, which focuses on single-muscle items cut from a hunk of chuck, for instance. The result is a new series of items with catchy names, such as the "flat iron" steak, Ken Johnson, consultant to the NCBA, explained.

"One of the things from a diet-health standpoint is that it's important for us and the retailer to emphasize to the consumer how lean these value cuts are. We're providing a lot of point-of-purchase materials," Johnson said.

Retailers across the country are making use of POP materials provided by such groups as the NCBA, the National Pork Board and importers of Australian lamb, among others.

But retail seafood departments have floundered a bit when it comes to consumer education, in part because they haven't had the support from suppliers that the meat department has had, and partly because retailers themselves are reluctant to invest in training seafood staffers, sources said.

"It's a constant challenge because seafood is a small part of store business, and retailers just don't allocate enough money for training. We need to make sure associates are truly informed, that they really talk to the customer," said Mike Miller, director, meat/seafood/food service, at 20-unit Clemens Markets, Kulpsville, Pa.

Miller went on to point out that because there are so many species from so many different origins, the seafood industry is disjointed compared to the meat industry.

"It's not unified so there's no generic [consumer education] program like the beef and pork associations have. We need to band together however we can," Miller said, adding that with all the good news coming from medical research recently there's a huge opportunity to reinforce seafood's healthy message.

The National Seafood Educators, Richmond Beach, Wash., does its part to help spread the word. One initiative, Heart Health Day, held at Central Market in Shoreline, Wash., has become an annual event.

"There's free cholesterol and bone density testing and demos. We also use the opportunity to give customers information to take home. This year, we had copies of an article about Bruce Gore, a pioneer in freezing at sea. His salmon are gutted, cleaned and flash frozen within 90 minutes of being caught," said Don Devan, Central Market's seafood manager.

This process, widely credited with keeping seafood at the peak of flavor, can be a tough sell if customers aren't informed about its benefits. Clemens' Miller said that "if a customer asks if a fish filet was frozen and the associate just says, 'Yes,' he'll walk away."

It's a different story if the customer is told the fish was caught, cut and frozen immediately at sea to preserve its quality, he added.

"We know that an educated associate sells more and an educated consumer buys more, and seafood has so many positive points -- health, convenience -- and the message we're focusing on right now is that people should eat it twice a week. If we could just get every retailer, everybody to gather around that simple message it would be something," said Evie Hansen, the NSE's marketing director.

She added that it's difficult to get retailers to do any long-range planning when it comes to associate or consumer education.

"It has to be a three-year, five-year, 10-year commitment. They should sit down in a planning meeting and look at exactly what they need to do to increase sales. They could take off from their strong points," she said.

For example, if they have a particularly good vendor, they could investigate promotional campaigns with them or if the company has a good produce department, maybe team up with them in some way, Hansen said.

"Schnuck Markets in St. Louis is one of the few chains I know of that takes its seafood associates off-site at least once a year for a full day's training."

One seafood processor/distributor heartily concurred that education is the key to building seafood sales. Indeed, he said offering promotional money isn't cutting it. The on-ad items simply cannibalize other sales.

"Whenever an aggressive ad goes out, it sells a lot of the featured product but there's minimal sales of anything else in the case. Even the meat buyer tells us he feels it. Education [of associates and consumers] is needed to increase sales. We as an industry don't do enough of it," said Gary Robertson, retail sales manager, at Pacific Seafood, Clackamas, Ore.

But Robertson said his company has repeatedly offered to train its retail customers off-site, but the offer is seldom accepted. The retailer doesn't want to pay the associates for a full day while they're being trained, he said. Knowing that, the company is currently producing an educational tape, complete with some cooking instruction, that targets associates and customers alike. It can be run as a continuous loop in the department, he said.

If there's any doubt that retailers are looking for help with education, just look at these statistics.

Mike Monahan, who founded Chefs USA, Atlanta, did 7,000 in-store cook-offs at retailers' request in 2002. That's almost double the 3,200 he did the year before. Most were seafood demos; the others involved less-familiar, but high-margin cuts of beef like flank steak. Chefs USA employs chefs across the country to do in-store cooking demos at no expense to the retailer. The bill is footed in part by such associations as Alaska Seafood Marketing Institute and by national brand manufacturers of spices, sauces, wine and other ingredients in the recipes.