We ran a marketing campaign in Charlotte, NC, this past summer and asked consumers to imagine pushing their shopping carts down the aisles of their local grocery stores only to find one brand choice of breakfast cereal, one brand choice of candy bars, or one brand choice of yogurt. The fact is, that one-choice-only model is what Sarasota, FL-based deli meat supplier Boar’s Head demands in service delis across the country.
For more than a decade, Boar’s Head has kept silent, never discussing the exclusivity issue publically. But virtually everyone in the industry knows about it. For example, during our Charlotte campaign, Meg Major of “Progressive Grocer” wrote: “Although Boar’s Head’s longstanding all-or-nothing game plan that is common knowledge in the trade and has arguably served as a key ingredient for helping it achieve its top-ranked premium deli supplier status, rival Dietz & Watson president Lou Eni is taking the former’s ‘anti-choice’ practice public in the wake of being given the boot in recent weeks by Harris Teeter.”
Well, something very interesting happened in early December. Our company was holding its national sales meeting in Fort Myers, FL, with more than 150 of our people and supporting a new distributor there. Part of our time during our week there was dedicated to a series of hot dog sales at several of our customers in the area to raise money for Susan G. Komen for the Cure (breast cancer research). After seeing our advertising and promotion of these events, Boar’s Head distributors sent a fleet of nearly 40 large box trucks and vans to cause overall chaos and intimidate our employees, event staffers and store personnel. There was a huge media and public backlash against Boar’s Head for their actions, but the really interesting thing was that Boar’s Head issued a very rare statement to a processor trade publication.
To read the rest of the story, please go to: Deli Business
