“What’s in a name?”

Town Crier with

Justin Tunstall

Retail consultant, shares with us his cheese selling experience

• “Sticky fingers”
• “Everyone’s a winner”
• “Myths and legends of Turophilia”
• “When ‘cheese’ is not cheese”
• “Don’t disrespect the Cheddar”

How do you describe your shoppers? Recently I participated in a marketing workshop where I was asked how I defined my customers, both actual and potential

Rather than opt for the socio-economic clusters of ABC1 etc, I started listing the segments to which my marketing efforts are directed: Full-time local residents, second-homers, holiday-cottage renters, holiday-makers without refrigeration, day-trippers etc., all of whom have different behaviours and requirements. Clearly this went further than the point that he was trying to make and he suggested that ultimately they were all ‘foodies’. Well, up to a point Lord Copper (i.e. no!).

While some of my shoppers could certainly be defined as foodies, we’d soon go broke if we addressed ourselves solely to that tribe. Our shop front is open during the warmer months and we’re a point along the tourist trail, attracting the simply curious and people just passing time as well as the dedicated cheese fiends who have sought us out. We need to convert those who might be intimidated by a specialist retailer selling produce that’s not pre-packed for grabbing off the shelf.

While the blizzard of media coverage for food and its provenance has helped prepare the ground for more discerning shoppers, it’s only at the front line of retail that conversion can occur. Customers need to see how our shop could be relevant to them, feel welcome rather than excluded, and be listened to rather than preached at. We sell a lot of cheese that’s destined to be a gift for dog or cat minders and plant waterers back home. For these purchases, our cheese is an alternative to a stick of rock or a piece of local pottery. Often they opt for a whole small waxed cheese, but with the upsell of biscuits and preserve, their basket value is not inconsiderable – and so far we haven’t had to cut and wrap! We always offer these shoppers tasters of other local options – our PDO Dorset Blue Vinny is an attractive addition to a gift pack, and if we can get them to take a cut cheese we’re on the way to converting someone to the slow food shopping ethos.

Naturally, we love it when a cheese aficionado comes in and we can discuss the finer points of seasonal variation and the results of the latest cheese awards, but bringing a newcomer into the fold has its own satisfaction.

Some townsfolk describe our current wave of visitors as the ‘Nearly Dead and Newly Weds’, an old local catch-all for those not tied into school holiday times. Sometimes free-spending and sometimes on a tight budget, we try to cater for them all. It’s at this time that we encounter a particular kind of shopper whom we describe as an ‘Atom-Splitter’. Not feeding a large family gathering, they want the smallest piece possible of a variety of different cheeses and will have tasted three varieties for every purchase that they make. Of course, they are most noticeable when they come into the shop a couple of minutes before closing time.

We draw the line at one type of shopper – the ‘Brie-Prodder’ – who, regardless of purchasing intention, feels that soft cheeses need to show how much they can yield to touch and then to bear their fingerprints. Our signs proclaim “Brie-prodders may be tazered,” and thus far I’ve only had to wave my temperature recording ‘gun’ once or twice this year. Hopefully it’ll continue to work as a deterrent.

I wonder what new tribes, market-segments (or whatever you wish to call them) we’ll encounter this year?