In the winter season of our Produce Artist Award Series, we saw many displays that clearly went above and beyond everyday merchandising, and many of them were created for supplier-led or commission-led sales and display contests.
We're big fans of using events to create theater in the department and boost sales (not just for the period of the contest but going forward as well), and we wanted to hear from our panel of industry veterans during the recent Produce Artist Award Series Winter 2021 Results Webinar what their observations were about the plethora of contest displays submitted for our series.
Curious who the big winners were for our winter season? Read about the top entries here.
Joe Watson, former director of produce for Rouses Markets and now vice president of membership and engagement for PMA, noted that the added spotlight on citrus and immunity in the past year provided the perfect background for contests focused on branded items like Halos, Peelz, Sumos and others.
Produce Artist Award Series Showcase — Super Citrus Displays
Mike O'Brien, former vice president of produce for Schnuck Markets and now president of O'Brien Innovations, described display contests as an overall positive. They're exciting for produce managers, good for boosting category sales, and can be used to introduce consumers to new items, he said. O'Brien did offer a caveat, however.
“The concern that I would have sometimes is we overorder and overexpose something and you create additional shrink,” O'Brien said. “Or I'm not a huge fan of too much pomp and circumstance … that overtakes the freshness of what you're trying to accomplish in your produce department in itself. But it is a plus overall.”
Watch the full recording of the winter wrap-up webinar here.
Armand Lobato, an industry veteran who's held positions ranging from produce manager to supervisor to buyer and who's now on the foodservice side of the business, noted that the power of contest displays or other show-stopping creations is in communicating to shoppers what they should be buying.
“I've overheard consumers say a lot that they're not quite sure what to buy in a produce department because they're not really sure what's good,” Lobato said. “Well, I think when you build something like this, it's a huge message that this is what's good, this is what's seasonal right now, this is a great price right now.
“Also, building these displays, it builds camaraderie in the crews and it's something exciting,” Lobato said. “Day-to-day life in a grocery store isn't always that exciting, but you do something like this and it's like, ‘Hey, did you see what Joe and Lisa did in the produce department? Did you see that they're entering some big national contest?' And it's a big deal. It's something that really creates a lot of excitement and interest.”
O'Brien noted that, as with day-to-day merchandising, the key to a successful event is making sure that the look is bountiful even though the product on display is limited.
“The great produce managers, it's an art to make sure it looks like you have a lot of product, but you don't necessarily have a lot of product,” O'Brien said. “You want the consumer to think that ‘Man, this whole bin is completely full of potatoes,' but it's not necessarily because the top of the bin is dummied up and you're showing the fresh product that you have.”
Another consideration is to limit the amount of cardboard so it doesn't overwhelm the fresh image of the department, O'Brien said.
While limiting shrink is always a priority, it shouldn't be the only factor.
“To get the sales that you want, you have to be aggressive, too,” O'Brien said. “You have to take some risk.”