Topco Awards Retailer, Wholesaler Members for Outstanding Partnerships

Topco Associates LLC has honored several members and suppliers that demonstrated exceptional partnerships throughout 2016.

The recognition took place May 23-25 at the Elk Grove Village, Ill.-based buying cooperative’s 2017 Super Show. Categories and companies honored in each one included:

• Outstanding Cause Marketing: Brookshire Holdings Inc. – Tyler, Texas-based Brookshire partnered with the East Texas Food Bank and Cans Get You Cooking to build the world’s largest canned-food pyramid over a four-day span. At the end of the promotion, 36,000 cans were donated to the East Texas Food Bank to provide meals for 30,000-plus families in a 26-county region.
• Outstanding Cross-Promotion: K-VA-T Food Stores Inc. – Abingdon, Va.-based K-VA-T teamed with Topco to redesign the logo and packaging of its Terry’s Chips brand, then joined forces with Coke and Kellogg to create a consumer and associate contest to drive sales of Terry’s snacks.
• Outstanding Promotion: Golub Corp./Price Chopper Supermarkets – To help promote local maple producers in the Northeast, Schenectady, N.Y.-based Price Chopper held the Maple Event, which spanned entire stores and included new and existing items. The grocer coordinated the launch of its Pics brand during the promotion.
• Outstanding Merchandising Event: Affiliated Foods Inc. – The "Ocean of Savings" theme for the Amarillo, Texas-based wholesaler's spring food show featured custom displays and showcases highlighting private label, and hosted more than 1,600 attendees and retailers. Some 25 percent of the show-day-only specials featured Shurfine and other key own brands.
• Outstanding New Item/Category Launch, Wholesale: Associated Food Stores Inc. (AFS) – Salt Lake City-based AFS recently replaced its nonfood and general merchandise items with Simply Done, Topco’s nonfood mega-brand. Extensive in-store and external cross-channel marketing helped drive awareness of the launch.
• Outstanding New Item/Category Launch, Retail: Stater Bros. Markets – In 2016, San Bernardino, Calif.-based Stater Bros. launched the Pure Harmony brand to develop a best-in-class premium private label pet food assortment that meets the needs of today’s shoppers. The grocer introduced the brand with 30 SKUs and provided extensive marketing through weekly circulars, half-page ads, competitive retail offers, coupons, trial sizes and in-store point-of-sale displays.

Suppliers honored included Cameron’s Coffee, Cascades Tissue Group, First Quality Consumer Products, Versa Marketing, Byrne Dairy and Presto Products Co.