D&W's in-store cooking school heats up business

Nation's Restaurant News, June 9, 2003 by David Clark

Bam! Emeril throws a handful of spices into a boiling pot and minutes later it turns into a perfectly simmered sea bass pignolia encrusted with ground pine nuts. So how come yours turns out more like dry pine needles? It's the mystery of cooking -- easy to enjoy, hard to master. If only a few all-star chefs would stop by your house to provide a few pointers.

Well, they may not get house calls, but the residents of Grandville, Mich. (a suburb of Grand Rapids), are luckier than most. With the opening of D&W Food Centers' 1.600-square-foot in-store cooking school in September 2002, customers can now take classes from a roster of master chefs and cooking professionals, detailing the finer subtleties of basting and flambeing all at their local supermarket

The school, known as the Chef's Kitchen Program, offers about four classes per week in a space that resembles a dream kitchen, with stainless-steel appliances and solid-surface counters.

The local community has shown great enthusiasm for the school, which translates into full classes and rave reviews. "The ability for them to rub elbows with the chefs of the local restaurants has been great," says Ron Cox, vice president of marketing for the 25-store independent retail chain in western Michigan. "Some of [the chefs] have even gathered a following, so to speak and we've had to schedule secondary, follow-up classes as a result."

Cox says the most popular classes are more hands-on, with the instructors moving from table to table working individually with the students. Children's and demonstration classes have also been big hits. But has the school's popularity translated into more store visits and heavier foot traffic? Cox says yes.

"It's probably not that they are going to shop that day or that night," he says. "Particularly if it's a three-and-a-half hour class they'll come into the store, grab their Starbucks and they'll come into the cooking school. But we do have people after the fact come up and tell us they found something [from the class] in the store. So we know they're coming back after the fact."

Besides holding its own classes, D&W has made use of the in-store space needed for the school through various partnerships. "Weight Watchers is doing a series of 16 different classes in the school," says Cox, "That's really turnkey for us -- they come in and they conduct the classes."

In addition, the school is used by local hospitals to hold cooking seminars for diabetics and healthy eating, and corporate classes with cooking as a team building exercise.

With all of the activity at the school, D&W's foray into in-store cooking seems to be a success. "Obviously we're still going through understanding exactly what types of classes people are looking for," says Cox. "We feel very good about our success rate so far and we just continue to tweak the program. We feel very good about our future."