Spotlight On Spices And Seasonings

Location and education are critical to merchandising store brand spices and seasonings.

A dish prepared without the proper spices and seasonings is like a person without a desirable personality: unpleasant and not worth bringing to a dinner party. And with many cash-strapped Americans entertaining at home more frequently, it's more important than ever for them to have the right spices and seasonings on hand.

To meet these consumers' needs and budgets, retailers will want to offer a good selection of quality spices and seasonings under their own brands. And they also will want to merchandise the products to communicate their value and maximize exposure.

To learn what retailers are doing well and not so well here, we visited the spices and seasonings sections of three stores: a Wegmans Food Markets near Harrisburg, Pa., a Mariano's Fresh Market (a banner of Milwaukee-based Roundy's) in Chicago, and a Whole Foods Market in Chicago. The Wegmans visit took place on a Thursday morning in late February, while the visits to Mariano's and Whole Foods took place on a Friday afternoon in early April.

Wegmans Food Markets

General observations: The spices and seasonings section at this Wegmans store takes up most of one side of the baking aisle, which is located at the back left-hand quarter of the store (looking into the store from the front entrance). Foot traffic was pretty strong throughout the store, and at least one shopper was browsing the aisle at any given moment while we were there.

Most of the facings represented brands from Baltimore-based spice leader McCormick & Co. Store brand products received fewer facings than in the other two stores, limited mostly to national-brand-equivalent (NBE) salt and pepper shakers and grinders (all under the Wegmans brand). However, we did spot five unique seasoning blends in the Wegmans Seasoning Shak'r line: Garlic Herb, BBQ, Cracked Pepper, Curry Salt and Orange Ginger.

The upside:

• The shelves were clean, organized and well-stocked.
• The store placed all of its Wegmans brand grinders together at eye-level, making them easy to spot.
• One side of a display near the meat case cross-merchandised the Wegmans Seasoning Shak'r line with stocks, oils, finishing sauce and other products under the Wegmans and Wegmans Food You Feel Good About brands. The other side featured an array of pots, pans and other cookware. The products were tied together with a sign that read "Be Your Best" — the theme of Wegmans' Menu magazine's Winter 2012 issue (which featured recipes containing almost all of the food products in the display.)
• No more than 40 feet from the display, the store placed a three-tier stack of the five Seasoning Shak'r products atop the meat counter.

The downside:

• Even though the store placed some NBE products next to their national brand counterparts, it did not communicate price gaps via "compare and save" signs or shelf tags.

Whole Foods Market

General Observations: The spices and seasonings section in this Whole Foods store takes up a quarter of one side of the baking aisle, which is located in the back right-hand quarter of the store (looking into the store from the front entrance). Foot traffic was fairly strong throughout the store.

Here, the dominant brands were Frontier and Simply Organic, both from Norway, Iowa-based Frontier Natural Products Co-Op. The three private brands we found on shelves were 365 Everyday Value, 365 Organic Everyday Value and Whole Pantry.

The upside:

• The shelves were organized, clean and fairly well-stocked.
• The store gives a large number of facings to store brand spices.
• The store merchandises spice bottles on a special display of wooden shelves, giving the section a natural feel. The top three of the eight shelves were dedicated to Whole Pantry spices, 365 Everyday Value spices and 365 Organic Everyday Value spices. The other five shelves were populated by Frontier and Simply Organic spices.
• The store cross-merchandised a number of meat rubs at the meat counter, including Whole Foods' four 365 Everyday Value meat rubs (Southwestern Grille Seasoning, Toronto Steak & Chicken Rub, Caribbean Barbecue Seasoning and Mediterranean Rotisserie Seasoning).

The downside:

• Although the store merchandised its 365 Everyday Value meat rubs at the meat counter, it did not merchandise them with the rest of the products in its spices and seasonings section. We found the same situation during a trip to another Whole Foods store in Chicago.

Mariano's Fresh Market

General Observations: At this Mariano's store, the spices and seasonings take up a small part of the baking section, which is housed in a long aisle at the back left-hand quarter of the store (looking into the store from the front entrance). Of the three stores we visited, foot traffic in Mariano's was the heaviest, with multiple people browsing the aisle at any given moment.

Scanning the section, we spotted mostly McCormick's brands. But we also spotted many facings of private label products under the Roundy's, Roundy's Organics and Clear Value (a Topco Associates brand) brands. We also spotted five unique seasoning blends under the Roundy's Select brand: Backyard Barbeque, Beer Bacon & Cheddar, Midwestern Steak, Zesty Lemon Pepper and Kick It Up Cajun.

The upside:

• The shelves were well-stocked, neat and organized.
• The store merchandises several Roundy's brand products next to their McCormick brand counterparts. During our visit, we also spotted bold "Compare/Save" tags under the Roundy's brand products.
• The store also hung "Everyday Low Price" tags with the Clear Value logo under select Clear Value products.
• The Roundy's Organics products stood on shelves at eye level, making them stand out. A shelf tag with the Roundy's Organics logo and the "USDA Organic" logo hung below each product and communicated a 10 percent discount.

The downside:

• While the Wegmans and the Whole Foods stores we visited cross-merchandised their own-brand seasonings in other areas of the store, the Mariano's store we visited did not.
• The store merchandised the Clear Value products in the bottom right-hand corner of the section, making them difficult to notice.

Location and education

Merchandising store brand spices and seasonings is all about "location, location, location," says Greg Antonetti, vice president of Gurnee, Ill.-based Acacia Spice Co. Therefore, retailers should make sure they place products in strategic areas outside of the spices and seasonings section.

For example, he says retailers should consider placing crushed red pepper and oregano near the frozen and take-and-bake pizzas. They also could merchandise garlic salt near the bread aisle — and rosemary near the potatoes.

But proper placement only does so much. Antonetti says offering educational materials that detail how to cook or bake with the products is critical in winning a sale. He recommends placing a tear pad with step-by-step recipes alongside the products.

"We came up with four steps of perfect barbecue" for one particular tear pad, he points out. "And it educates the consumer in the proper way of cooking the meat: Marinate the meat, put the rub on the meat, put the mop sauce on the meat, and put the finishing sauce on the meat."

Gabrielle Coriaty, director of foodservice sales with Castella Imports, Hauppauge, N.Y., also sees the value in providing recipes to customers — especially if the recipes are for easy-to-prepare meals that can be enjoyed on a regular basis. The more often a person uses a particular spice or seasoning, the more frequently he or she will have to purchase it in the store.

George Christodoulou, director of retail sales with Castella, agrees, adding that retailers could create a whole educational program based around a "spice of the month" deal. In the deal, a retailer could offer a particular spice at a discount alongside recipes incorporating the spice and other store brand ingredients. The spice then could be cross-merchandised with the other ingredients and any necessary cooking tools.

Of course, retailers could get carried away with cross-merchandising and not put enough focus on placement within the spices and seasonings section. Coriaty says retailers will want to make sure they first create a "destination spice shop" in their store that houses all their store brand spices and seasonings.

"[Set up] a spot that has high traffic where you're creating a destination place with signage and a full offering," she explains. "You'll want to add not only spices themselves, but also an array of seasonings for anybody — whether it be a Canadian steak seasoning, a fajita seasoning or a taco seasoning."