Random, Whole Foods Partner to Promote Memoir

by Lynn Andriani, PW Daily -- Publishers Weekly, 3/12/2007

Random House is teaming up with Whole Foods, the world's largest retailer of natural and organic foods, to promote a spring memoir, Dinner with Dad: How I Found My Way Back to the Family Table. The title, which goes on sale May 22 with a first printing of 25,000 copies, is Cameron Stratcher's memoir of how he, a "lawyer-commuter-father," realized his children were growing up without him, and vowed to be home five nights a week to make dinner with his family for a year. It's his third book.

Random's marketing campaign includes a promotion with Whole Foods, whose employees "love" the book, said Carol Schneider, Random v-p, executive director of publicity. Stracher will do signings at three stores in Connecticut and New York's Westchester county, and Whole Foods will display shelftalkers for the book next to the ingredients required for one of the recipes the book mentions. Local booksellers that report sales to the NYT will sell books at the Whole Food events.

The campaign also includes a contest, called the "Dinner with Dad Challenge," wherein contestants commit to getting home in time to cook a healthy meal and eat with their families. They then submit a brief essay about the experience. Whole Foods will provide Random with a $500 gift certificate and two $250 food baskets as prizes for the best essays. To promote the contest, the publisher will hire people to wear "Dinner with Dad" aprons or T-shirts and pass out postcards at transportation hubs in New York, Boston and Washington, D.C. Stracher will also promote the contest through his blog, www.dinnerwithdad.com.