~ Seriously Curdled ~: December 2018

Barre Hannaford's

Grand Re-opening

Headed out from Home about 4:45 Roads were a little icy when I left but the town plow had just gone by so the road wasn't bad & by the time I got to Hardwick they were mainly just wet, so smooth sailing on down to Barre.

Arrived at Hannaford's about 5:45 and there was already a line waiting to get in so I was thinking oh boy! this is going to be a big one.

Froggy 100.9 was just pulling in as well.

Got inside and did my running around to find my contact Graig and introduced myself, and he said we already have you a table set-up with a table cover & Balloons. I said thats great Thanks, I asked him just tell me where and I'll go get set up. He directed me to the Produce aisle, which I wasn't fond of, but I went on over and found my spot.

It was about a 3' table right in front of the entrance to the produce supply room. I wasn't real happy when I saw it but I kept smiling and went back and asked him if I could use a bigger table since I was doing 4 samples and he said they were cramped for room maybe I could just do 2, so I asked about something near the dairy aisle and he said they had their Promo Co. working over there and it was cramped for space so I just did the best I could with what I had.

You can see where the doors are to the back room so when they went in and out with their carts I was in their way.

When they opened for business it was a deluge of people they said 350 people inside the 1st hr came in. Including Ole St Nick.

After that things slowed down and people were just walking by me and not stopping to I boogied back out to my rig and I had an old Plastic Cabot Table Mat that I draped around my table which helped me to get noticed.

Then things had slowed down to a normal volume for customer flow.

Craig came by a couple of times and I told him things had slowed down quite a bit and I guess he could see that himself so he arranged to move one his demos over to my spot and we moved my table and gear over to the dairy aisle.

Which I appreciated very much, It was still a cramped spot but 3 or 4 times more traffic flow over there.

They (Hannaford's) were passing out lots of coupons worth $2.00 on promoting Local goods so the Cabot bars were flying out.

I very much appreciated my move since I had a lot more meaningful interaction with customers being in dairy now right near our products, and right between two aisle end cap's, which increases traffic greatly

So after that it was clear sailing the rest of the way, although still not real busy, but much better than being next to tofu and veggies.

Hung out till 1:00 and packed up to head home, clean-up was much easier with my mini-setup which is usually much more elaborate.

Used only one box of toothpicks, but I was only sampling two flavors and lots of people still insist on using their "fangers"..

All in all it was pretty decent day and I passed out about 200 coupons,

Glad I could be a part of it.

Jim Ovr'n Out

1st thing I saw when I hit the road Friday morning in Simsbury was a Hot Air Balloon, which probably had no trouble getting airborne since it was in the low 20's when I left.

Had a lengthy but enjoyable commute to work other than going thru Waterbury which was like driving in a French Le`Mans race with rude people who can't drive. But it improved once I turned off 84 onto Rt. 8

The rest of the drive down was nice and quite Scenic when I arrived in Wilton, which looked like a really nice place to live, if you could make everyone else but me leave.

Arrived at the store pretty early it was my 1st drive down so I wanted to make sure I would get in on time, I introduced myself to the manager and he referred me to the grocery manager Ray, and he gave me a place to get all set up.

The shelves were fairly well stocked so that was good so I proceeded to get ready get going.

I was at the turn of the dairy aisles which were huge.

Tried to make my table as hospitable as possible and get everyone in the Christmas Spirit and say what a great stocking stuffer CC's would make.

1st couple of people who stopped asked where the Wine and Crackers were ?

so I provided some pretzels and told them the wine was on aisle 12.

If I have to go to the bathroom just ring my bell for service.

Bring it on I'm ready

I could see at the end of the day Friday that it was going to be close on CC's

So Saturday I started cubing up the bars.

These stores were slow and understaffed as far as I was concerned I offered to keep the shelves full if they brought me out the stock which they did once, but only once, I offered to go and get it myself but they did not except that offer.

Saturday we ran out of Pepper Jack , so I started with the Colby Jack.

The Cheese went on Sale Saturday and Sunday down to $3.89 then with the dollar coupon $2.89 so even though the store was slow sales were brisk.

Ran out of SS CC's and the Pepper Jack was already gone, so on Sunday someone asked about the Habanero so I cubed up one of those so satisfy the spicy palates in the crowd. It was pretty popular too.

There was a another section I found Sunday that I was not even aware of that had some other Cabot stuff among other brands also, no one mentioned it to me and it was not on the main dairy aisle or the Deli dept.

I had a few left over shred coupons so every time I saw someone with some other brand of Shreds in their cart I gave em a coupon for Our Shreds so our Shreds row got kinda sparse as well.