Can self-serve food make a comeback when touch is unpalatable?

It was a Friday in mid-march when things started to unravel for Sara Simply Sampling. The firm, which runs in-store sampling for some of the biggest supermarket chains in Western Canada, was operating 21 wine tasting booths in 21 Save- Onfoods stores in British Columbia. But the samplers were calling head office, saying the stores were wild with shoppers bulk-buying dry goods, but few were stopping for a free drink.

Costco had just cancelled its renowned in-store food sampling program. Tim Murphy, Sara Simply’s vice-president of sales and marketing, knew more cancellations were coming. In the grocery and liquor business, when a retailer does something, “the rest follow,” Murphy said.

And by the afternoon of March 13, his contact at Save-on-foods was calling: “Today will be the last day of demos,” Murphy recalled him saying. The 36-year-old, family-run firm hasn’t seen any revenue since.

The end of demos coincided with the end of olive bars, and salad bars, hot counters and buffets in grocery stores. Three months removed from that, it’s hard to picture going back to a time when you would touch a communal olive spoon or accept a paper cup of lactose-free yogurt from a stranger.

But the samplers, like the purveyors of salad bars, buffets and hot tables, are working on a comeback. The struggle for each is the same: How does self-serve survive when no one wants to touch anything?

At Mcewan Fine Foods, a chain of three boutique grocery stores in Toronto, the popular hot table buffet — sold by weight — has returned, except now it’s behind glass. Customers point to what they want and a staff member fills a tray for them.

“What we’re envisioning down the line — and we’re not there yet — is really that white glove French service,” said Jessica Rodrigues, director of communications for Mcewan Group. “In an ideal world, there’s a vaccine and it doesn’t have to be forever and we can go back to the way it was.”

For some major supermarket chains, it’s less clear when selfserve and sampling stations will return. In a statement this week,

Metro Inc. said it had no plans to bring back sampling or salad bars or buffets. Loblaw Companies Ltd., the largest supermarket chain in Canada, said it was “still working out the details” and exploring options on how to revive sampling and self-service.

“It’s an interesting dilemma,” said Jean-pierre Lacroix, president of Shikatani Lacroix, a firm that works on store design for Canadian supermarkets. “How do you sample products when consumers don’t want to touch them?”

Sampling in stores, Lacroix said, is a crucial marketing tool for food manufacturers, who can see huge spikes in sales whenever one of their products is sampled. And it is also a revenue generator for the supermarkets, which often charge fees for the demos, he said. Sara Simply, for instance, said one instore sampling program can boost a product’s sales by up to 350 per cent in a weekend. The Retail Council of Canada confirmed that number “is not out of line.”

“The power of trial in supermarkets is huge,” Lacroix said. “(Consumers are) easily influenced at the store level.” Consumers are also habit-driven, and right now, the habit is to recoil from close contact and high-touch surfaces.

Last week, the sampling world received reason to hope. CDS Canada, which runs the sampling at Costco stores, announced it had begun tests in two locations. Those tests involved new procedures around social distancing, as well as piloting a method that doesn’t involve eating or drinking at all: The talking food demo.

“We explain product features and uses rather than serving samples,” CDS president Don Dohanyos wrote in an update to staff.

In an ideal world, there’s a vaccine and it doesn’t have to be forever and we can go back to the way it was.