Kansas City Freelance Writer Liz Craig

I like shopping at the Price Chopper near me. It’s clean, well-lit, and has a wide selection of products and wide enough aisles you don’t find yourself doing The Bump with a chunky fellow shopper. The produce is the freshest and most beautiful I’ve seen anywhere. And, as its name suggests, the store does chop prices.

So I was delighted when I went in and was offered a new Price Chopper Rewards card to replace the battered Chopper card on my keyring. Now, if I buy X dollars’ worth of groceries between now and June 22, I can accumulate enough points to get $50 worth of groceries free!

But that’s not all. Because I registered for the card, they sent me a link to their new website, where I can find store specials, get quick, easy recipes, and even make up my shopping list and print it out to take to the store.

Has the quality of their products changed? Nope. They already were pretty great. What has changed is the way they are reaching out to me and letting me know they care about keeping me and even expanding their relationship with me. They’re claiming more space in my brain — the space that used to be occupied by other grocery chains.

Not sure who’s behind this new marketing effort, but it’s a great example of how marketers can build strong relationships with customers. It gives us a reason to pay more attention to Price Chopper and get more involved via the website. It’s clear they’re thinking about and offering what shoppers want and need — good prices, convenience, and helpful ideas. And the rewards program means we’ll be doing more of our shopping there, rather than spreading it out among several chains.

Soon, I imagine you’ll see similar programs from Hen House and HyVee. That is, if they’re smart. Hen House’s prices are generally higher than those of the other area grocery chains, though they do have a discount card good on special items. HyVee isn’t particularly cheap, and they don’t have a discount program at all, except for a couple of cents off gas at their gas station. Big whoop. The reason I go to HyVee at all is that they have a lot of gluten-free products, and the prices on them are lower than at Whole Foods, a.k.a. Whole Paycheck.

Side note: Gluten-free is one area where the other chains have dipped in a toe but not really committed to diving into offering a full line of products. As awareness of gluten intolerance grows, so will this market segment. Retailers eventually will realize that gluten-intolerant people are willing to pay more for the products they need and go out of their way to shop where they can get them.

So the key to marketing today is not “tell and sell,” but true customer service. Letting customers know you really want to help them out with better products, better ways to shop your store, and time-saving, value-added services. Online is the new grocery marketing frontier. Wagons ho!

About 1% of people in the world are gluten-intolerant or have celiac disease. That means they can’t eat any products containing wheat (also rye, barley, and sometimes oats), or their intestines’ ability to extract nutrients from foods can be destroyed. That leaves the sufferer open to the possibility of malnutrition, anemia, osteoporosis or cancer. Nice, huh?

I found out I was gluten-intolerant a few years ago, when the KC Star ran a full-page story about the condition. Before that, I had been eliminating various foods from my diet, one by one, trying to detect which was the baddie causing my intestinal problems. It never occurred to me that my favorite foods — pasta, bread, crackers, cookies and bagels — could be the culprits. I eliminated wheat products from my diet, and wonder of wonders, the symptoms disappeared.

How did I go all my life without symptoms and have them suddenly appear? That’s a mystery to me. It’s a hereditary condition, but maybe, like cancer, you can have the “X factor” for it but not get symptoms unless stress sets them off. I can tell you, being a freelancer has its share of stressors.

Now I buy gluten-free bread (though I have made some in my breadmaker), pizza, cookies and crackers, as well as gluten-free frozen dinners. But lately, I’ve been cooking more because of the high cost of gluten-free foods.

Actually, it’s not too hard or expensive to cook gluten-free. You just have to avoid the middle aisles in the grocery store (where processed foods, most of which contain wheat, barley or rye, are shelved) and learn to read the mouse print on food packages.

The items around the perimeter of the store — fresh fruit, vegetables, fish, chicken and beef — are gluten-free. So is tofu, which is a good protein source. Rice and potatoes are gluten-free and cheap. You still have to buy expensive gluten-free pasta, though, and there is no such thing as a good gluten-free bagel, darn it. But with a little extra effort in planning and cooking, you can eat well and healthily without smashing your piggy bank.

As it turns out, you may get a tax deduction for the extra amount you have to pay for gluten-free products versus non-gluten-free products. And if you have a cafeteria plan at work, you may be able to sock money away in it to pay the difference.

Truly, I believe more than 1% of the population is gluten-intolerant; they just don’t know what is wrong with them. As this article points out, there are no medications to treat celiac disease, so doctors, who receive most of their information from pharma reps, don’t know much about it. Gluten intolerance often goes undiagnosed or is misdiagnosed as irritable bowel symptom, Crohn’s or other disorder.

If you suspect wheat may be causing you problems, find out more here, even more here. And everything you can imagine wanting to know about the disease and its symptoms at Celiac.com.

All that’s needed to diagnose celiac disease is an inexpensive blood test. So if you suspect you may have it, get thee to a doctor for the test.

Or, if you want to try gluten-free living first and see if it makes a difference, you can find loads of gluten-free recipes online. Just Google. And good luck and good health to you.