U.S. supermarkets are trying to snare more seafood sales from restaurants on Valentine's Day by taking a page from restaurateurs' book.
Pittsburgh-based Giant Eagle is offering to make gourmet dinners that customers can pick up in their stores for Valentine's Day celebrations on Sunday. "Choose from three different, delectable entrees — each comes with vegetables, salad, bread and dessert," said the supermarket chain on its Web site.
Giant Eagle's "Surf and Turf Dinner," featuring lobster and steak, retails for USD 60 (EUR 43.82) per couple. Giant Eagle also offers customers the choice of Beef Wellington or Cornish game hen.
Bristol Farms in Carson, Calif., is also offering a variety of dinners for couples, and is partnering with JetBlue Airways to promote the Valentine's Day meals.
Customers who buy the dinner for two, which includes a choice of filet mignon, salmon fillets, or one filet mignon and one salmon fillet, will be entered into a drawing for two round-trip tickets to any non-stop destination JetBlue serves. The meals are priced at USD 49.99 (EUR 36.51) per couple.
In a different twist, upscale grocer Dorothy Lane Market in Dayton, Ohio, is making a Valentine's Day meal at its Springboro in-store restaurant, offering a four-course dinner paired with wines and live entertainment for USD 65 (EUR 47.48) per person.
Dorothy Lane Market's menu includes seared scallops, duck confit, Madagascar prawns, steak and dessert.
Heinen's Fine Foods, a 17-store operator in Warrensville Heights, Ohio, is offering a surf-and-dinner promotion, featuring Canadian coldwater lobster tails and steaks. Smartly, the chain has Valentine's Day displays at the front of its stores.
"We are pairing the two [lobster and steak], and we have fine wines to complement that," said Marty Gaul, seafood buyer and merchandiser for Heinen's. "They can just come in and grab and go."
February 11, 2010
For retailers, love is in the air
