Marketing Shorts

Quick! Name three date foods—

• According to a Cornell University survey of college students, anything that makes you look healthy, doesn’t stick in your teeth, and doesn’t give you bad breath is OK. Whether habits picked up on college dates will persist into adulthood remains to be seen, but researchers seem to think those habits will morph into the ones married people will have. Right. It turns out women are more likely to pick salad and vegetables “in an attempt to appear more feminine and attractive,” while men didn’t choose the so-called “masculine” foods like proteins, but instead chose foods their dates were eating. Imagine that behaviour continuing past the first few years of marriage? Overall, neat and easy-to-eat foods were preferred, while those thought of as smelly or causing bad breath were out.

• Research from the National Restaurant Association (NRA) reports 69% of quick-service restaurants would eat there more frequently if it offered discounts for frequent dining, 66% said they go more often if offered discounts for dining on less busy days of the week, and 53% said they would eat there more often if kids are for free. Repeat customers account for 75% of QSR sales.

• The latest restaurant trend is the “pop up” eatery that is usually a temporary add-on for an existing restaurant, such as offering pizza in the evenings at a bakery café serving more mundane fare during the day. The trend started with out-of-work chefs, but may stick as diners look for more adventurous fare and different eating options.

• Safeway has expanded its couponLink program to all stores, allowing customers to load online coupons directly to their Safeway Club Card. The program is managed by Shortcuts.com, CellFireand P&G eSaver. Shoppers can log onto www.Safeway.com where there’s a link to the couponLink page with the offerings from the three coupon providers. Once downloaded, the coupons can be organized by product category or product name, and automatically redeemed at checkout. Cell phone users can download coupons from both CellFire and Shortcuts.com, even while shopping in the store. Mike Minasi, Safeway president of marketing, says “Customers don’t even have to remember to bring coupons with them to the store.”

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