Brooklyn Delhi founder Chitra Agrawal, maker of Indian condiments, has often considered where in the grocery store her products might sell best.
“Positioning her premade sauces alongside pasta sauce, she imagined, might encourage spaghetti lovers to make Indian food. On the other hand, she could be setting her products up for removal from the aisle, as they probably wouldn’t sell as well as pasta sauce. Then there’s her mango chutney, which is essentially a fruit condiment. Would placing it among other jams and jellies make sense, or confuse shoppers?” according to the report.
Despite wanting to incite trial amongst experimental shoppers, Agrawal’s products have always been most successful in the international aisle, which seems to group foods from non-white cultures.
“Consumers are trained, if they want Indian products, to go to that aisle,” Agrawal said. “Do I like the fact that that is the way it is? No.”
While food retailers such as Kroger have accelerated the movement of products from the ethnic aisle to other parts of the store and chains like Food Bazaar in NYC have sections dedicated to specific countries like Pakistan and Ecuador, for others, eliminating the ethnic aisle isn’t necessarily easy or popular with shoppers.
Doing so, might also create challenges for small food makers who often lack the money needed to get the prime placement that only big corporations can afford.
