Refreshments served at the Trig’s Floral and Home holiday party spurred guests to purchase food items and provided good fodder for December Facebook posts.
If you’re hosting a holiday party at your shop this month, it pays to put special thought into your refreshments.
Sandy Schult Buss, owner of Trig’s Floral and Home, which has five locations in central and northern Wisconsin, is getting a lot of traction out of the food and drink she served at her open house the weekend before Thanksgiving.
For starters, almost everything guests sampled was also available for sale. (The lone exception: Buss’ family recipe for Irish cream.) Approximately 400 people turned out for the party at the company’s Rhinelander location and “many” went home with cake mixes, peanuts, homemade pumpkin bread loaves, mulling spices and dips — sold after having a taste.
Secondly, the food has helped Buss continue the momentum of her event.
“A lot of people asked for recipes for the homemade stuff, so I decided to share them on Facebook,” she said. “People freakin’ love recipes!”
The recipes give her a fun way to reach out to customers.
“Social media can’t have many sales pitch posts, or else customers just unfollow you,” she said. “The million dollar question is how to make them want to tune in and not tune out. I’m forever trying to think of ways to engage them.”
On her latest post, the secret to making Irish cream, Buss invited customers to share their own family recipes. At press time, the post had only been live for one hour, but had already been shared once.
