Free food samples make shoppers hungry for more

SACRAMENTO, Calif. -- Lois Gutierrez has handed out bite-size samples of virtually every kind of meat during her 11 years as a Costco "demo dolly." On a recent Saturday, for instance, she was cooking Ling Ling chicken potstickers.

But forget about lamb. She hasn't and won't serve lamb, and whenever a co-worker is frying it, she tries to position herself as far from the smell as possible.

She explains: "I had a lamb for a pet. There's no way I'm going to do lamb."

Such qualms are rare among the demo dollies, or food demonstrators as they're formally called, who don hairnets and aprons before offering thousands of samples of a score of different foods to Costco shoppers on any given weekend.

It turns into a veritable banquet for hungry customers. (On a recent Saturday, we sampled 24 different items at four Sacramento- area supermarkets.) For retailers and vendors, it's a high-return investment.

Shopper Mark Nguyen, 47, grabbed a large bag of the frozen potstickers after tasting a sample. He liked the sale price but said he probably wouldn't have bought the potstickers without trying them first.

"The sampling was great. It aids in my buying decision," he said.

The Promotion Marketing Association found in a 2002 survey that being able to sample foods is the most influential factor when customers decide to buy a new product. And seven out of 10 shoppers said they would occasionally or usually buy a product they sampled.

"It's a win on all sides: for consumers, retailers and manufacturers," says Meg Majors, a writer for the trade publication Progressive Grocer. "A lot of people do choose to visit stores more frequently when they have an opportunity to try new things."

Now, a clarification: The demonstrators do not work for Costco or for the food companies whose products they hawk. They are hired and trained by Warehouse Demo Services, a company based in Washington state that supplies demonstrators to 134 Costcos in the Western states. Women make up 90 percent of the WDS demonstration staff; many are retired and have the time and the desire for a part-time job, said WDS president Ted Koehn.

That the pay is only about $7.50 an hour is of no concern to Mozette Miles, 70, a retired legal transcriber who sees the stream of shoppers as a daylong opportunity to do what she loves: talk.

"It's an information highway here. I get all kinds of opinions from people," she says. Shoppers can't walk within 10 feet of Miles' stand without hearing her coo charmingly, "Want a sample, doll?"

On this particular day, she's handing out small cups of Bear Naked Banana Nut Granola -- the name makes her giggle. Part of the job is to be able to tout an unfamiliar product. As a customer tries the granola, Miles recites its virtues: no cholesterol, no wheat, no trans-fats.

The friendly allure of the demo dollies is made more attractive by the free nourishment they give in such quantities; company policy is to let shoppers have as much as they want.

Shoppers rarely take it to extremes, say the sample ladies. Marjorie Barnes, who used to be a Costco demonstrator and now supervises them, recalls a time when she demoed rib sandwiches by slicing them into eighths, and how customers would find eight different excuses to approach her station.

Tracy Tovar, who has worked for WDS for about a month, believes shoppers have to try a product more than once before buying it. Still, she says, it becomes a workout when serving something universally popular, like brownies topped with ice cream.

"People were coming so fast I couldn't keep it up," she says. "The technique is not to be rude but to keep it in supply."

Dishing out food fast -- up to a thousand samples a day per station -- is one requirement of being a sampler, along with being outgoing and approachable. On top of that, WDS employees have to become certified food handlers, which requires a four-hour course and exam. Having an outside company do the hiring and training of demonstrators is a headache saver for retailers.

Five Star Demonstration Services, a Sacramento-based company, began 20 years ago when Lynn Sargent watched a Tony's Pizza demonstration and decided to show Tony's how to do it better. What began out of Sargent's garage today supplies 2,400 in-house demonstrators to grocery chains such as Safeway.

And proof that the service is valuable, says Roger Sargent, Five Star's CEO and Lynn's husband, is that sometimes the stores poach their employees. Deli departments in particular like Five Star employees because they are already trained food handlers.

"It's a necessary evil that goes with the business," Sargent says. "They only hire your best people."

Specialty grocery stores also have made sampling part of their act.

Though they don't use a third-party company like WDS or Five Star, Trader Joe's, for example, hires staff specifically to provide food samples.

At 10 a.m., Marilyn Aubuchon is in a tiny kitchen at the back of a Trader Joe's. Today's recipe is a not-so-typical grilled-cheese sandwich. Aubuchon is using buttermilk bread and two kinds of cheese: sharp cheddar and havarti, a tangy white cheese that melts easily.

The eyebrow-raising ingredient is mango chutney, which she dabs onto the bread with a fork before closing the sandwich. It's a twist she made up before starting that morning.

How did she know mango and grilled cheese would work?

"I can taste it in my mind," she says. "I know people, and I know what they like."

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