Recipe to Riches

I don't know if you've heard of the Food Network/Global TV show Recipe to Riches, but I have to say I am super impressed by it.  Not necessarily by the show itself (although I caught one episode and it was a decent, fun show), but more by the concept.  Like, whoever thought of the idea for the show should be promoted to the Loblaws president of marketing, stat.

The premise of the show is a cooking competition reality show, which are all the rage right now, with sort of an American Idol type audition twist - real home cooks from across the country brought in their specialties to open auditions to compete for the chance for their food to become a President's Choice product.  The judges pick a few people from the auditions to advance in certain categories (snacks, savoury pies, etc.) and then the finalists compete for best taste, marketing, etc. and then the winning food from each category becomes a PC product.

The smartest part of the whole premise is that for anyone watching the show, or who at least knows the premise of the show somewhat, if they see the product in the store they know it's something that was invented by a real person and taste tested by a ton of people before winning a coveted spot on the PC menu.  So you can feel confident that you aren't wasting your money by purchasing it because it must be good if it beat out thousands of other recipes, and if you actually watched the episode where it won, chances are you'll want to run out to Superstore and try it out.  And while you're there you'll probably pick up a few other groceries too.

Brilliant.  Ultimately this cooking competition show is just one big PC commercial (although there isn't much mention of PC other than at the end when they announce the prize and Galen Weston shows up to help judge, which is another intelligent move - keep the advertising as subtle as possible) but even though I understand that, I actually think that any company who can come up with such a smart marketing idea almost deserves my business.

Nice work, Loblaws.  I for one am actually very excited to try some of the winning recipes.