HoneyBaked Ham off to its seasonal start

When you sell a premium-priced product and do 70 percent of your business during the three major holiday seasons, then busy doesn’t really describe your November and December.

Nevertheless, Chuck Bengochea, of HoneyBaked Ham Company of Georgia, took time to talk about the privately held company headquartered in Norcross.

MY OPINION: THOMAS OLIVER
• Send an e-mail

RECENT COLUMNS

• It's time to focus on true crisis 
• New rules frustrate recovery 
• Reforms fail reality check 
• Signs of rebound showing 
• Students should avoid debt 

• More Thomas Oliver

The company has just emerged from the first of three holidays, Thanksgiving, and is in the middle of Christmas. (The third big holiday is Easter week.)

So, how did the recession affect HoneyBaked sales?

“With an 80 percent brand awareness and 60 percent brand preference, we are as inelastic as any premium product out there during the holidays,” the energetic chief executive said.

Still, HoneyBaked retail store sales were flat this Thanksgiving compared to last year, said Bengochea, who isn’t complaining with what many CEOs would consider envious numbers.

Company-owned stores’ sales represent 60 percent of HoneyBaked’s $200 million in sales. Franchises and catalog/Internet sales bring in 20 percent each.

Bengochea can tell that businesses are pulling back because sales are down in the catalog segment, which relies heavily on business-to-business “gifting.”

Internet sales are slowing for everyone, even Google. And HoneyBaked is not immune. “We’ve begun to see a flattening in Internet sales this year.”

While Bengochea’s operational side stays focused on the holidays, his strategic responsibilities are tuned to the future for what in reality is an old-fashioned product.

Like other consumer-oriented businesses, HoneyBaked sees the customer making more and more decisions based on convenience.

No one has to tell Bengochea that shopping at his standalone stores doesn’t exactly define convenience.

“Our big push is to open new channels that fit our brand and the customers’ need for convenience.”

The Ohio-based division is testing an in-store kiosk selling branded HoneyBaked hams in Kroger stores.

“We’ll never be sold in the bins alongside the other hams,” Bengochea says of his hams that sell for two to three times the price per pound of grocery store brands.

And HoneyBaked is working with a major meat supplier to develop a deli line.

The Georgia-based division (one of four, founding family-owned divisions) operates in the contiguous Southern states from North Carolina to Louisiana and then branches oddly into Missouri, Utah, Nevada, Colorado and on to Oregon. It operates 117 company-owned stories and 70 franchises.

Nothing better illustrates Bengochea’s drive and energy than that the 51-year-old competed and completed the most recent Iron Man competition in Arizona, where he swam 2.4 miles, biked 112 and ran 26.2 on Nov. 23 — four days before the company’s first big holiday.