Retired Celebrity Chef Looks to Make Triumphant Return

By Bernice Hurst, Managing Director, Fine Food Network

Television cooks, especially longtime British heroine Delia Smith, can massively increase product sales for retailers. Since her first version of How to Cheat at Cooking, published in 1971, Ms. Smith has sold some 19 million books – along with hundreds of thousands of the many ingredients and implements required for reproducing her dishes.

This time around, she is endorsing packaged and processed shortcut foods and ingredients for the first time. Her argument is not just that people are busy, busy, busy with far more important things to do and/or have simply not been taught how to cook. She also believes that they are intimidated by too many food shows on television with chefs doing things that mere mortals can’t even begin to contemplate attempting.

Ms. Smith’s focus, as she told virtually every newspaper in the U.K. last week, is to ensure that even the poorest can cook quickly, easily and cheaply. Organic, seasonal and locally grown produce? Concerns for the environment? Not for her. Just plain, old fashioned cooking. Even if the mashed potatoes come in frozen disks rather than being made from real, old fashioned potatoes. Once the doyenne of basic techniques, Ms. Smith taught millions exactly how to mash potatoes. Now she admits that modern life sometimes makes buying them already prepared and frozen more sensible.

Britain’s grocers are frantically stocking their shelves with products mentioned. The publicity machine around the book, which lists some 100 “hidden servants,” is in full swing. The publisher has sent the relevant producers handy stickers labeling them “A Delia Cheat! Ingredient.”

The book itself will be pulling customers into supermarkets as they start discounting it and selling copies alongside the products endorsed. Based on past experience, when sales of items as varied as an omelet pan, pizza stone, lemon zester, shallots, eggs and cranberries justified a dictionary definition of ‘the Delia effect’, opportunities to jump on the bandwagon abound. Faithful fans know that they must follow instructions faithfully, without deviation. Hence the determination of grocers to prove their organizational skills, getting ingredients out where they can be seen and purchased with as little effort as it will take to cook them.

Discussion questions: What do you think has been the impact of celebrity chefs and cookbook authors on U.S. grocery sales? Has the effect become more pronounced with the explosion of cooking shows on channels such as the Food Network? How can grocers capitalize more on their popularity?

• Food suppliers poised to cash in on the new ‘Delia effect’ – Guardian
• Delia rails against organic and the ‘politics of food’ – The Times