Cooking Vegetables

Varieties
Sales Strategies
- Many consumers only think about vegetables in terms of side dishes, but cooking vegetables make a tasty addition to many entrees. Offer recipes for stuffed peppers, stuffed potatoes and stir fries.
- Root vegetables have recently been lauded for their health benefits and their versatility in being a carb replacement. Play on those strengths in signage and sales. You can also cross-merchandise them with soup fixings.
- Grilling season offers up a fresh opportunity to promote cooking vegetables as many of these veggies go great on the grill. Cross-promote potatoes, peppers, artichokes and onions with grilling utensils, spices and rubs.
- Samples can help familiarize consumers with lesser-known vegetables.
- Include cooking vegetables in all of your holiday promotions. Asparagus is a favorite around Easter, and broccoli and green beans are a popular side dish for Christmas or Thanksgiving. Don’t forget pumpkins, sweet potatoes and cranberries for those fall holidays. Memorial Day and the Fourth of July are a great time to promote a mix of vegetables that consumers can grill.
- Let your consumers hunt for their own great pumpkin in a pumpkin patch them while using pumpkins to boost the sales of other fall vegetables, like squash.
- During the winter, create a soup vegetable display. Include leeks, celery, potatoes root vegetables and fresh herbs.
Dynamic Displays
- The cooking vegetable category is best displayed in small groupings of similar vegetables. Potatoes and onions are a natural pairing while broccoli, green beans, asparagus and artichokes often find themselves grouped together as they can be served as a stand-alone side dish. Squash, turnips and rutabagas make an eye-catching display when grouped together.
- There is some cross-over with salad vegetables, so decide where those cross-over vegetables work best in your store. Tomatoes and peppers may move better when grouped with the salad vegetables.
- Don’t let your greens get lost in your lettuce display. Give them some space and offer up recipes and cooking tips to get consumers thinking about the many uses of greens.
- Include garlic in your tomato and herb displays to get it moving along with these popular items.
Perfect Pricing
- Because of the variety available within the category, combination pricing promotions are difficult for this category.
- Most vegetables in this category can be priced by the pound or by the piece, whichever works best for the target consumer base.