A Spooktacular Opportunity
I love Halloween. As holidays go, it’s tons of fun, and a tad bit creepy at the same time. It’s also a low-pressure occasion — no worries over gift-giving or which family dinner to attend. Just costumes, candy and a license to scare the living daylights out of the ones we love.
Consumer spending on this “spooktacular” holiday seems to increase every year. But not all of that money is spent on candy and costumes. Halloween also means party time for many folks — creating a market for foods and beverages with a weird or scary spin.
According to a 2008 National Retail Federation survey (conducted by BIGresearch), 31 percent of U.S. consumer respondents said they planned to throw or attend a party last Halloween — despite the lousy economy. And this year should be no different.
Many retailers cash in on this reality with their own Halloween-themed baked goods. But for party planners, the best ideas come from creative party recipes available in-store or online. Loblaws, for example, shares its recipe for “Halloween Soup of Horrors,” which features mini white cheese blocks topped with green olives as floating “eyeballs.”
But even better are recipes that specify the retailer’s own products as ingredients. Raley’s “Vampire Spritzers” do just that, calling for Raley’s own club soda as the base for this bloody-looking beverage. And H-E-B’s “Coffin in a Canoe Sandwiches” rely on H-E-B brands for all six ingredients.
Such creative recipes obviously help boost sales of retailers’ private label food products. Retailers also could benefit here by using Twitter to create some buzz for these recipes (and reap the advantages that come with multiple “retweets”).
Although it might be a little late for this year’s Halloween celebration, it’s never too early to start planning for the next!
No Fair!
This year’s PL Buyer Private Label Packaging Awards saw a record number of entries. Overall, the judges were impressed by how much private label packaging has evolved in recent years. But, as instructed, they ultimately chose only the “best of the best” as this year’s winners. The winners were notified, and PL Buyer will feature the winning product packaging in a special report within our November issue.
I’d like to say, “Enough said for now.” But I can’t. You see, a couple of irate entrants took us to task for excluding their products from the winners’ list. To prevent this from morphing into a Kanye West/Taylor Swift situation, I’ll explain how the judging works.
The judges — packaging experts, not PL Buyer editors — first take quite some time reading each entry form and scrutinizing each product’s packaging. After that initial review, they compile a “short list” of the clear standouts, narrowing the field down to the top 35 or 40 entries. They then revisit each of these short-listed products, debating the packaging’s worthiness. Only the packaging that clears this final hurdle wins.
It’s a subjective process, we admit, and it’s not perfect. But it is very fair.
