From April 1-4, 800 food professionals will meet in Denver for the International Association of Culinary Professionals annual conference. This is the first time the conference has been held in Denver, and the local food community has been working hard to make it a success. In keeping with this year’s theme, “Pioneering a Sustainable World,” the conference’s Green Team developed a program that includes recycling, water stations rather than bottled water, use of glass, china and cloth napkins and composting of food from the conference.

For the first time ever, IACP has opened up certain conference events to the general public, so check out the options at the IACP website. For fees ranging from $40 to $180, some of the offerings are Beer Lover’s Paradise, a walking tour and local beer tasting in historic lower downtown Denver with noted local historian Tom Noel, a Colorado Lamb and Rocky Mountain Tour featuring a lamb dinner prepared by Chef Jennifer Jasinski of Rioja and a Wild and Rare Cooking Demo with Chef John Ash at Denver’s Cook Street School. This is a rare opportunity for local food lovers to rub shoulders with pros from all over the U.S.

A recent Yankelovich study proved what we’ve been saying for years: cents-off discounts and product giveaways don’t build brand loyalty. What is interesting about the Yankelovich study is that these kinds of promotions actually “damage” brands in the long run.

This makes sense when you think about it. Consumers assume that your brand has already passed the “quality” test, or it wouldn’t be on the shelf in the first place. By discounting it, you’re devaluing it in the consumer’s mind. At the same time, you’re cultivating an image for your brand that tells the consumer your product is normally overpriced. Even worse, regular price discounts condition the consumer to buy your product only when it’s on sale.

At this point, we recommend price promotions and buy-one-get-ones for our speciality food clients only during a product’s introductory phase and for a very specific, short length of time. Retailers will fight you on this, because price promotions make their job easier, but if your product is truly special and worth its retail price, you should resist caving in to their demands.

If you’re getting pressure from distributors and retailers to discount your product, do it once or twice a year, possibly in conjunction with in-store promotions that highlight your brand’s attributes. After all, the equity your brand has in the marketplace is your most valuable asset.

If you missed last Wednesday’s New York Times article about food safety, check it out at this link. One of the subjects covered by writers Kim Severson and Andrew Martin relates to consumer confusion about the meaning of organic labels on food. Some consumers believe “organic” translates into “safe,” but, as the article points out, there is no relation between the two ideas. We have encountered a similar misunderstanding related to our work for Humane Farm Animal Care and its “Certified Humane Raised and Handled” label.

Reporters and consumers make a false connection between humanely raised meat and “organic.” Because an animal is raised humanely, it must be organic, right? We explain that the “Certified Humane” label relates only to how the animal was raised, and though the HFAC standards require that no hormones or  antibiotics be administered, this doesn’t mean the meat from these animals is organic.

We hope the recent food scares related to peanut butter really do improve the way food is inspected in the U.S. At the same time, we hope more consumers will educate themselves about what food labels really mean and make better food choices as a result. One really good source for unbiased food label definitions can be found at Consumers Union’s website.