Competitive Retailer Wine Category Report: First Person Singular - 'How I Sold 37 Bottles of Wine in 45 Minutes at Trader Joe's'

The Trader Joe's store in New York City's Palladium building in Manhattan has two entrances on the same street. The entrance pictured above, which leads directly into the store's wine department, is designated as Trader Joe's Wine Shop. The other entrace, which is just a few feet down the way and leads into the store's main grocery section, has traditional Trader Joe's grocery market signage. The Manhattan Trader Joe's, which opened in 2006, offers wine delivery to homes and businesses. The Manhattan store also is the first, and one of just a few, Trader Joe's markets that offer home wine delivery.

From the Fresh & Easy Buzz Editor's Desk: Specialty grocer Trader Joe's, which currently operates about 312 stores located throughout the United States, has become one of the premier wine retailers of any format in the country.

The grocer's $1.99 a bottle ($2.99 in some states) Charles Shaw proprietary-blend California wines, called "Two Buck Chuck" for short, took the U.S. wine consuming public and the wine industry by storm when they were introduced in the stores over a decade ago.

The Charles Shaw wines are produced for Trader Joe's by Ceres, California-based Bronco Wine Company.

The wines took the wine industry by storm again in 2007 when Trader Joe's Charles Shaw Chardonnay, which sells for $1.99 a bottle in California where the grocery chain is headquartered, won the grand prize medal in the prestigious California State Fair Wine Competition, beating out wines that retail for ten times the price for the Double- Gold Medal.

Tesco's Fresh & Easy followed Trader Joe's lead in the $1.99 a bottle ($1.99 in California, $2.99 in Nevada and Arizona) wine segment. It sells an Australian proprietary-blended wine, "Big Kahuna" brand, for the same prices in its Fresh & Easy grocery markets in Southern California, Nevada and Arizona.

Trader Joe's stores sell lots of other brands and varieties of wines besides "Two Buck Chuck," which comes in numerous varieties. And the stores sell lots of wine in general.

Trader Joe's sells this high volume of wine in its stores by merely putting it on the shelf (self service), pricing it right and regularly featuring various varieties in off-shelf displays with colorful signage.

Of course, the grocer is able to do this because it has built a strong brand as a retailer that offers quality wines at discount prices over a multi-year period of time. The retailer also puts lots of effort into the wine category.

But it appears with the help of a wine and food specialist, Mike Samii, conducting a professional experiment, a Trader Joe's grocery market in San Diego, California sold even more wine, in a very short period of time, than the chain's already strong reputation for wine sales would otherwise even permit. In fact, we think it might be a world record of bottles of wine sold in a single store in a 45 minute period of time.

You can read the first-person account by chef and wine specialist Mike Samii about how he sold 37 bottles of wine in 45 minutes at a San Diego Trader Joe's store by just walking and talking to shoppers in the store. It's published below.

We think Mike Samii's experiment suggests having store employees who have wine knowledge helps increase wine sales. It's also a strong argument for those supermarkets that employee wine experts or wine stewards in-store. And in Mike Samii's case, he might want to hire himself out to wine retailers at a day rate.

Mike Samii's first person piece:

How I sold 37 bottles of wine in 45 minutes at Trader Joe's
By Mike Samii
Special to Fresh & Easy Buzz

My name is Mike Samii, and I am a Cordon Blue Chef. I have an extensive background in gastronomy and wine.

I shop at Trader Joe's regularly, and I always see people going up and down the aisles looking for a bottle of wine and not knowing what wine to take home. Frankly with the many choices, available, and not knowing what’s what, it is not always easy to choose the right wine.

So I decided to do an experiment one day. One Saturday this last summer, I walked in to one of the Trader Joe's stores in San Diego, California with a clipboard in my hand, pretending that I am writing down a list of wines I like to get for an event. I walked up to every customer that came to the wine section and started looking at the wines for a minute or two, and told them, without introduction, about how good certain wines were in the section and how they tasted.

And, except for a few of the customers, most of them looked at me like I was a god sent. Almost, everyone of them grabbed a bottle or two of the wines I suggested, and thanked me for it. One guy even took 9 bottles of wine and filled up his hand basket. Keeping track of how many bottles people took, my tally read 37 after 45 minutes. I was so gratified to be able to make a difference in some people’s lives by making them a little easier

[Fresh & Easy Buzz Editor's Note: Mike Samii is a Washington state-based chef, wine expert and consultant. For more information about Mike Samii you can go to: www.tastefullyamerican.com , or call him at 425-299-5819.]

Resources:

Related posts from Fresh & Easy Buzz:

Trader Joe's:

>July 22, 2008: Obituary: Innovative Trader Joe's Head Wine Buyer and Popularizer of Value Wines Robert Berning; 73

>March 4, 2008: In Vino Veritas: Fresh & Easy Store Brand Wines Win Two Silvers and Lots of Bronze Medals; Trader Joe's 'Two-Buck Chuck' Chardonnay Wins a Double-Gold

>July 9, 2008: In Vino Veritas: Fresh & Easy Announces 63 Wine Awards to Date; Will Face Off Again Against Wine Award Winning 'Big Kahuna' Trader Joe's at State Fair

>September 22, 2008: Monday, September 22, 2008: Fresh & Easy Buzz Strategy Session: Trader Joe's and the Key to Enlightenment?

>November 6, 2008: Serendipitous Marketing & Cooking With the Trader: Trader Joe's Hits A Marketing Home Run Without Doing A Thing

Tesco's Fresh & Easy:

>November 11, 2008: Wine Category Report: Tesco's Fresh & Easy Kicks Off New Merchandising and Promotional Efforts Designed to Grow Wine Category Sales

>October 27, 2008: Category Management Report: Fresh & Easy Conducting Wine Category Review and SKU Rationalization; We Offer Some Analysis

>October 27, 2008: Southern California Market Report: Beverages & More to Join Trader Joe's and Fresh & Easy to Form Manhattan Beach Food and Beverage Retailing Triangle

>March 22, 2008: In Vino Veritas: No Whining About This 'Parker-Point' Rating for a Fresh & Easy Proprietary Spanish Wine

>April 25, 2008: April 25, 2008: Tesco's Fresh & Easy to Launch A Marketing-Oriented, Brand-Building Consumer Public Relations Campaign For its Store Brand Products and its Wines

>April 30, 2009: April 30, 2008: Raising Arizona and Getting Local in the Neighborhood: State's First 100% Locally-Produced Wine Offers Win-Win for Tesco's Fresh & Easy Arizona Stores

>July 14, 2008: Breaking News & Analysis: CA Assemblyman Introduces 'Tesco Fresh & Easy Law' to Ban Stores With Self-Checkout-Only From Selling Alcoholic Beverages

Wine Category Report: Tesco's Fresh & Easy Kicks Off New Merchandising and Promotional Efforts Designed to Grow Wine Category Sales

In this October 27, 2008 story,"Category Management Report: Fresh & Easy Conducting Wine Category Review and SKU Rationalization; We Offer Some Analysis," in Fresh & Easy Buzz we reported exclusively that Tesco's Fresh & Easy Neighborhood Market has been and is in the process of conducting a wine category review and sku rationalization, along with planning to further increase it efforts to promote the wine departments and wines in its stores.

The grocery and fresh foods chain started that increased wine category promotional efforts today, just two weeks after we wrote and published our piece.

Fresh & Easy Neighborhood Market introduced five new wine blends priced under $9 a bottle, today, along with offering a new promotional discount of 10% off on six or more bottles of mix and matched wines, except for the Arbor Mist brand and those wines it already sells by the case.

As part of the new promotion, the grocery and fresh foods chain also introduced for sale today a canvas wine bottle tote bag for $1.99 each, which we wrote Fresh & Easy would be introducing in this story on October 17. The new, reusable fresh & easy canvas wine bag holds up to seven bottles of wine, according to the retailer. Additionally, the canvas wine tote can double as a reusable grocery bag by turning the wine bottle compartments inside out.

Below are the names and per-bottle prices of the five new varieties of wines Fresh & Easy is introducing today:

>Corvina-Merlot Cantina di Merlara -- $8.99
>Ca' Miani Garganega-Pinot Grigio -- $4.99
>La Parra Loca Tempranillo-Shiraz -- $6.99
>Lancewood Cabernet Sauvignon -- $8.99
>Roslyn Family Vineyards Cabernet Sauvignon -- $6.99

A major merchandising focus of the new wines is to keep them under $10 a bottle.

We've been told by our sources that as part of its wine category review process and sku rationalization, Fresh & Easy arrived at the conclusion offering wines under $10 a bottle is a good price-point range for its stores.

The wine category is very important to Tesco corporately. The global retailer (third-largest internationally) is one of the top wine importers and sellers in the world. Wine sales at the U.S. Fresh & Easy stores haven't met the retailer's expectations to date. Therefore, the category review, sku rationalization and increased promotion are all part of its plans and hopes to juice up wine sales in its California, Nevada and Arizona stores.

Second wine category promotional effort

Fresh & Easy also launched a second promotional effort today as a way to gain further attention to its stores' wine departments and proprietary wine selection.

This effort is a public relations one though.

The grocery and fresh foods chain today distributed a press release touting sales of sparkling wines more than doubled at its 97 Fresh & Easy stores in Southern California, Nevada and Arizona for Election Day, 2008, which was Tuesday, November 4.

As we wrote about in this piece on November 3, Fresh & Easy launched an election day promotion in its stores that featured food items and beverages, including sparkling wines.

Fresh & Easy stores carry 11 different bottles of sparkling wines, including five that are proprietary varieties, according to a company spokesperson. Seven of the 11 sparkling wines retail for under $10.

The best selling sparkling wine in the stores for Election Day was the Fresh & Easy Montcadi Cava which retails for under $7.00, according to Simon Uwins, Fresh & Easy Neighborhood Market's director of marketing.

What Tesco's Fresh & Easy Neighborhood Market didn't mention in its press release today regarding the election day doubling of sparkling wine sales was what its pre-election day average sales of sparkling wine is. In other words, what was the average number of bottles sold each day in all the stores before election day, compared to sales on election day? That would have been an interesting figure to include in today's press release in our analysis and opinion. But then we are numbers wonks when it comes to such things.

For example, lets speculate the average sales per day for all of the Fresh & Easy stores combined is one bottle of sparkling wine. In that case, that would mean the stores sold on average two bottles of wine on election day, for a doubling of sales. That's not much in terms of a total dollar sales increase, although it still is a 50% increase, which is nothing to sneeze about even though it wouldn't amount to much of a gross sales increase.

On the other hand, lets speculate on average each store sells five -- or even 10 -- bottles of sparkling wine per day. Then a doubling, to 10 or 20 bottles on election day, would amount to some nice additional gross sales numbers.

Alas, that information isn't available.

And of course, we must merely take the retailer's word that the sparkling wine sales actually doubled on election day over pre-election day sales of the bubbly. We give them the benefit of the doubt and believe them of course. But it would be interesting to know the numbers behind the doubling, for the reasons we describe above, anyway. It would just add some realism -- and additional news weight -- to the doubling factor.

But it is interesting sales of sparkling wine increased at all since Americans aren't known to celebrate Presidential elections with sparkling wine or champagne, or really to celebrate elections much at all in general. Therefore, from a macro political participation sense we see this as a very good sign.

Perhaps with all the attention the historic campaign, and now historic election, of Barack Obama generated, we will see a new era of participation and celebration by American voters in the political process. That would be something well worth tipping a glass of sparkling wine to in celebration for sure.

And good for Fresh & Easy Neighborhood Market, which is owned and operated by the British retail chain Tesco, for launching and conducting an election day promotion. We didn't see very many U.S.-based and owned grocery chains hold election day promotions for example. It's not the Superbowl we suppose, an event every chain seems to promote heavily.

And searching for further Tesco Fresh & Easy synergy with election day, were it not for the defeat of the British centuries ago by men who were primarily a bunch of former British nationals who became Americans, America not only wouldn't have elections at all today, there wouldn't be a United States of America, let alone blue states (Democrat) and red states (Republican).

Additionally, were it not for the two countries forgiving and forgetting, and becoming close friends and allies, Tesco wouldn't have been able to come to America with its small-format Fresh & Easy grocery and fresh foods chain.

Therefore, we see a certain synergy, beyond merely trying to sell more food and wine, behind the Tesco Fresh & Easy election day promotion.

Meanwhile, it should be interesting to see what further efforts Fresh & Easy does to follow-up on its multiple efforts today to gain increased attention for and to build sales in its wine category. Wine category sales are extremely competitive in California, Nevada and Arizona, where the grocer has its stores, after all.

Fresh & Easy Buzz will be the first to report these efforts, like we have been with the other Tesco Fresh & Easy wine category developments. And of course, like in elections, it is up to you, our readers, to decide.

Category Management Report: Fresh & Easy Conducting Wine Category Review and SKU Rationalization; We Offer Some Analysis

Tesco's Fresh & Easy Neighborhood Market has been conducting a category review and sku rationalization in its wine, craft beers and liquor category, Fresh & Easy Buzz has learned from sources involved in the process. The focus is primarily on wines, which is a key product category for the Fresh & Easy stores.

All of the current 96 Fresh & Easy stores, except two in Southern California we are aware of (Hollywood and Van Nuys), sell wine and craft beers. A number of the combination grocery and fresh foods markets sell hard liquor along with wine and beer. Not all of the units offer the spirits for sale however. The Hollywood and Van Nuys stores don't have permits to sell alcoholic beverages of any kind.

The wine category sku rationalization process is being led by category manager Karen Fletcher, who came to Fresh & Easy Neighborhood Market USA from Tesco in the United Kingdom as part of the start-up team. Ms. Fletcher is a native of Britain.

The category review also comes not to long after Fresh & Easy Neighborhood Market went through a series of changes in its grocery merchandising department, which found former director of grocery Charlotte Maxwell, also a British national, leaving Fresh & Easy corporate headquarters and her position to return to Tesco in the UK to accept a director position at corporate headquarters there, as we've thus far been the only publication to report.

Ms. Maxwell was replaced as Fresh & Easy's corporate director of grocery merchandising by Sean McCurley, who previously was director of fresh foods. That position was equal to Ms. Maxwell's in terms of the company structure. Mr. McCurley also is a British citizen.

As part of the wine category review and sku rationalization, Fresh & Easy is looking at reducing the overall number of skus the stores carry in the category, focusing on fewer items and maximizing total sales per item count, according to our sources. Some slow moving wine skus have already been discontinued.

There also has been some merchandising-related discussion as part of the category review involving flipping the wine and beer aisles towards the store's freezer case sections from their current locations, although our sources said they aren't sure of the current status of this previous discussion.

When Fresh & Easy Neighborhood Market USA was first organized, the wine and beer department was under the grocery department, which is normally the case with food retailing companies. However, sometime later category manager Karen Fletcher requested her category be placed in the fresh department and that she report to Sean McCurley, who ran fresh at the time, rather then Ms. Maxwell, who then was in charge of grocery.

Fresh & Easy's senior corporate directors approved of the change. Following Ms. Maxwell's departure back to Tesco in the UK and Sean McCurley assuming her grocery director position, the wine, beer and spirits category was moved back over to grocery with Ms. Fletcher's blessing, according to our sources.

Wine primarily, but also beer and spirits, is a major focus for Fresh & Easy, as it is internationally for Tesco. Karen Fletcher was brought over to the U.S. to build the category as an integral part of the Fresh & Easy merchandising mix. Part of that strategy includes having numerous proprietary, specialty-blended wines produced for the grocery chain, including numerous wines from Australia. Tesco is among the leading retail buyers of Australian wines in the world.

Wine category analysis

The wine category hasn't yet been all that Tesco has expected it to be at the Fresh & Easy stores. Our analysis is this has to do with a number of factors, most notably the fact California wines, which Fresh & Easy stores are short on compared to its competitors, are much more popular than foreign wines in California, Nevada and Arizona, where the current 96 Fresh & Easy grocery and fresh foods markets are located.

Even more so, it has to do with the highly competitive nature of wine, beer and spirits retailing in each of these markets. Not only are major supermarkets like Safeway Stores, Inc. major wine retailers in the Western U.S., for example, but there are category killer retailers like Beverages & More and Cost-Plus World Market, along with Trader Joe's and many others (including scores of independents), that have been selling wine in these markets very successfully for decades. These retails know the market, the customer base, and the wine producers almost as much as they know their own family members in many cases.

As a result, Fresh & Easy has far more competition in its Western U.S. markets than say Tesco has in its home market of the UK when it comes to wine retailing.

The wine category product mix at Fresh & Easy also lacks proper regionalization, sub-regionalization and localization. Perhaps this has been recognized and is one of the reasons for the category review and sku rationalization?

Like it has done with its entire product mix, Tesco basically has tried to merchandise its Fresh & Easy stores in many ways like they are British small-format stores (read Tesco Express) in the UK, merely transplanted to the Western U.S. This has resulted in lots of failures, lost sales and missed opportunities.

Additionally, when it comes to the wine category, there arguably isn't a category that it's more important to regionalize, sub-regionalize and localize. Wines that do extremely well in Northern California, for example, often sell poorly in Southern California. The same regional differences hold true in Nevada and Arizona. Wine brands in the U.S. are regional and even sub-regional. What sells well in San Francisco often isn't what sells well just 80 and 90 miles away in the Central Valley cities of Stockton or Modesto, for example.

Further, since Fresh & Easy has so many proprietary brands, wine brands consumers have never heard of, they have had to hope shoppers might merely like the price or how the bottle looks and give them a try. That's a tough way to sell wine, especially in California.

A number of the proprietary Fresh & Easy wines have done well though, particularly its $1.99 a bottle ($2.99 in Nevada and Arizona) Big Kahuna brand, which is a clone of Trader Joe's famous and super-successful "Two Buck Chuck" value-priced wine brand and line. Big Kahuna is an Australian wine. TJ's "Two Buck Chuck," which last year won the top award in the California State Fair Wine Competition, is a California wine. It's produced by Ceres, California-based Bronco Winery.

In terms of the wine category review and sku rationalization, Fresh & Easy needs to add more California wines, sub-regionalize and localize its wine brand and item selection and merchandising program if it wants to be a successful wine retailer in its respective markets, in our analysis.

This is especially true in California, which is a bigger wine sales market than Nevada and Arizona combined are. (Southern California alone and Northern California alone are both respectively even bigger than both states combined. Since California is the major U.S. wine-producing state, as well as one of the top wine regions in the world, consumers are much more familiar with wines then elsewhere in the U.S. The state also has the highest per capita wine consumption in the U.S.

It also follows that the state has the most competitive and generally the best wine retailers in the country.

California wine consumers are big on sub-regional differences. For example, consumers in Southern California want lots of wines from the Santa Barbara region (a major local wine producing region) want lots of wines in stores from that region, along with from elsewhere in California, the U.S. and the world.

In Northern California (which is the main wine-producing region in the state) consumers expect to see lots of Napa and Sonoma-produced wines on store shelves, along with wines from the coastal region and the Central Valley and Foothill regions. Farther up north it's important to add far Northern California and even some Oregon and Washington State-produced wines.

In fact, in the Central Valley, a good wine retailer also merchandises as many wines from that home region and the nearby Sierra Nevada foothill region than he or she does from Napa and Sonoma.

And in coastal Northern California (the Monterey-Big Sur wine region), good wine retailers there will put a major focus on wines from that wine-producing area.

It's all about localization -- and California is full of local, micro wine regions.

Having a basic selection of proprietary, branded wines is fine for Fresh & Easy. However, as long as that is the major focus in the stores it won't be a top wine retailer in its respective markets. There are too many good wine retailers doing the right things for that to happen.

However, if as part of this category review the retailer focuses on the three things we outlined earlier, it has a far better chance of improving its current wine category sales and eventually joining the ranks of the top wine retailers in the markets it has its stores in.

When it comes to wine merchandising and retailing in the Western USA, especially in California, everything is local, despite the fact imports have an important place in the overall category product mix.

Raising Arizona and Getting Local in the Neighborhood: State's First 100% Locally-Produced Wine Offers Win-Win for Tesco's Fresh & Easy Arizona Stores

Maynard James Keenan (sitting with hand on the wine bottle) and Eric Glomski (long hair and standing) conduct an in-store bottle-signing event last week in a Sportsman's Wine & Spirits store for their new, 100% Arizona-produced Tazi white wine. (Photo: Scott Jungman/Yuma Sun.)

Today's issue of the Yuma Sun, a daily newspaper in Arizona, reports on the first 100% Arizona-produced wine, which has been created by a pair of winemaker partners who are trying to gain distribution in the state's supermarkets and wine and spirits stores.

The 100% Arizona-made wine, a white wine blend named Tazi, which is a combination of Chardonnay, Sauvignon Blanc, Riesling and Malvasia Bianca, is being marketed by Eric Glomski and Maynard James Kennan, the winemaker partners in Arizona's Stronghold Vineyard, which is located near Wilcox, Ariizona in Chochise County.

There are about 24 wineries in Arizona, but Stronghold Vineyard is the first and currently only winery to create 100% made-in-Arizona wine with its Tazi white wine blend.

Tazi, which the partners just started pitching to retailers a couple weeks ago, is currently being sold in three supermarkets and two wine stores owned by Arizona-based supermarket chain Bashas, two Whole Foods Market natural foods supermarkets and a number of independent wine shops.

More Bashas'-owned stores (both the Basha's banner and its upscale A.J's Fine Foods banner) are looking to carry the local wine as well. The two wine superstores currently seling Tazi are part of the Sportsman's Wine and Spirits chain, which is owned by Basha's.

Read the article from today's Yuma Sun about Tazi, the first 100%-made in Arizona wine here.

Partners Glomski and Keenan are introducing the local, 100% Arizona-produced wine in retail stores personally, conducting bottle-signings and other in-store special events.

The Fresh & Easy angle

We called Stronghold Vineyards to find out if Tesco's Fresh & Easy grocery stores in Arizona were carrying the locally-produced Tazi wine. A spokesperson told us the grocer was not currently selling the local wine brand.

It would be a smart and savvy move for Fresh & Easy Neighborhood market to call Arizona winemakers and marketers Glomski and Kennan and order five or six cases of Tazi, 100% Arizona-produced wine for each of the 17 Fresh & Easy grocery stores currently open in Arizona, along with booking the partners for bottle-signing promotional events in the stores.

Why?

First, as we reported on April 25, a major element of the marketing-oriented public relations campaign Fresh & Easy Neighborhood Market is currently developing with its new PR firm invloves a major campaign designed to position and publicize the grocer's Fresh & Easy store brand fresh foods and grocery products, along with the stores' proprietary and overall wine selection. The grocer's goal: make the foods and wines known and famous.

Second, as we've suggested and argued on Fresh & Easy Buzz for some months, Tesco's Fresh & Easy stores need to do a far better job of localizing the stores' product mixes to the regions, communities and neighborhoods where the stores are located. American consumers love local products--and Fresh & Easy isn't marketing and merchandising to that important aspect of U.S. shopper behavior.

Selling the local wine (Tazi) a win-win

By stocking and promoting the 100% Arizona-made Tazi wine in its Arizona stores, Fresh & Easy would be achieving two things: raising its wine retailing profile in Arizona by becoming the state's current number one retailer of the local wine brand, and enhancing it's store's local product mix.

The reason it would be Arizona's number one retailer of the local wine brand, is because currently only five Bashas'-owned stores, two Whole Foods Market natural foods supermarkets and a number of single-store independent wine shops are selling the wine, which the partners' just started to distribute a couple weeks ago.

Since Fresh & Easy has about 17 stores operating in Arizona, if it sells the Arizona-produced wine in all those stores, it would immediatly become the de facto number one retailer of the locally-produced Tazi white wine in the state.

While adding one item, the local wine brand, to the store does not a local marketing mix make, it's a key move because Tazi is the first 100% Arizona-made wine. First in such cases are good things.

As a result, Fresh & Easy can generate lots of media attention by selling and promoting the local wine in all its Arizona stores, especially by having the winemaking partners do bottle- signing events in each store.

As a result, some good positioning for Fresh & Easy's wine offerings in its Arizona stores will occur from all the publicity generated by merchandising the wine (and touting it well) and having the winemakers in-store conducting the bottle signing events. This of course goes to the strategic marketing-oriented PR campaign goal we described above. It also generates much needed general awareness for the stores.

More win-win in the neighborhood

Here are a few win-win results of bringing in and promoting the local Tazi wine in-store and through the media:

>Enhances credibility as a supporter of local agriculture
>Creates excitement in the stores around a local theme
>Generates lots of press with a positive angle, ie: localization
>Supports local entreprenuers, which helps put the "neighborhood" in Neighborhood Market
>Helps towards goal of positioning store wine selections
>Demonstrates desire to support local businesses
>Earns increased local consumer goodwill

We didn't list it above, but since we hear the local Tazi wine is selling very well in the stores its currently in--especially during the in-store bottle signing events with the partners--Fresh & Easy also is likely to obtain the added benefit of increased wine sales from bringing in the 100% Arizona-made wine.

People love products produced in the place where they live; that's one reason local foods' buying is such as fast-growing trend in the U.S. and elsewhere. It feeds into one's sense-of-place emotionally, as well as having practical economic implications: the more local products you buy the more you support your local economy.

Were we in-charge of marketing and merchandising for Tesco's Fresh & Easy, we would call the makers of Tazi white wine tomorrow and have them reserve 5 or 6 cases of their locally-produced wine per-Fresh & Easy store for delivery as soon as possible. We also would condition that sale on having them agree to do one in-store bottle-signing event per-store as a way to introduce the new 100% Arizona-produced wine in the stores.

Of course, each of those in-store events would be publicized to the local print and broadcast media, as well as touted in the grocer's retail advertising circular in advance. Local food and wine writers would be invited to the in-store events, as would other selects members of the local media.

The great thing about bringing the local wine into the stores and promoting it in-store and via the media, is that its a good thing for all of the stakeholders involved...a win-win. Doing so helps Fresh & Easy, the fledgling winemaker partners who's long-term goal it is to build an Arizona wine industry, and the state's agricultural industry.

It also generates lots of local consumer goodwill--and probably many new, first time shoppers to the Arizona Fresh & Easy stores. Such win-wins aren't usually so easy--and logical--to find.