Barilla Product Sampling at Morrisons: Cooking up a storm in 2025

At the start of 2025, we launched a product sampling campaign that quickly became one of our standout sampling moments of the year. Partnering with Link Communication, we helped bring Barilla’s UK sampling tour to life—and a big part of that meant securing the strongest Morrisons external sampling venues across the country.

What began as a simple idea soon turned into something incredible, eventually earning a spot on the shortlist for The Most Effective Retail Experience of 2025. And we’re thrilled to have played a role in securing the Morrisons external sampling locations that helped make it all possible.

Product Sampling At Morrisons – Why This Campaign Worked So Well

The pasta aisle is competitive — brands, deals, and prices are all competing for attention. Instead of battling it out on the shelf, Barilla took a different approach: bring the experience out into the open. Live cooking, the smell of fresh pasta drifting through the air, friendly conversations — suddenly, it wasn’t just a product; it was an event people wanted to be part of.

Our job? Make sure LINK had the right Morrisons sampling spaces where their event could really come alive. That meant high-footfall stores, strong demographics, and outdoor areas that could comfortably host the Ape van and a superbly branded setup.

Ambitious Goals from Day One

Barilla and LINK came in with big targets:

• Engage around 500 shoppers a day

• Serve 350 samples

• Hit a 10% trial-to-purchase rate

• Deliver a major uplift in sales

Reaching numbers like that starts with choosing the right supermarket sampling sites—and selecting the strongest Morrisons locations sets the tour up for success before the first pan even hits the stove.

Bringing the Energy On-Site

LINK and Barilla created a brilliant activation setup: branded Ape vans with built-in catering facilities, gazebos, and bold props that shoppers spotted from a distance. Fresh pasta bubbled throughout the day, and you could see people’s interest increase the closer they got.

Placing these builds in the busiest Morrisons external sampling venues meant the team had a steady flow of curious customers from the moment they opened.

On the Road Across the UK

The tour ran for eight weeks, visiting 80 supermarkets, with 40 being Morrisons.

As always, our team supported every single stop, ensuring each activation landed smoothly, and the chosen Morrisons external sampling locations delivered the visibility the campaign needed. Running Wednesday–Sunday helped the team catch the busiest trading periods, too.

Winning Friends In-Store

Barilla was fantastic, offering freshly cooked lunches to Morrisons store colleagues, a lovely gesture that created genuine goodwill among staff, increased awareness in-store, and made the whole operation feel collaborative and fun.

With good planning and close coordination between Access Point, LINK, and each Morrisons store, every campaign ran smoothly from start to finish.

Engagement That Hit Every Target

The engagement figures were seriously strong:

• 823 shoppers engaged daily

• 579 samples served

• 70% acceptance rate

• 10% trial-to-purchase

And again, a lot of that came down to placing the campaign in the right Morrisons external product sampling spaces where footfall matched the ambition.

Sales That Took Off

Here’s where the numbers jump off the page:

• Sales increased from 1.2 to 120 units per day (+9,900%)

• Peak uplift reached +19,773%

This is exactly what’s possible when sampling takes place in the right environment.

Momentum That Didn’t Fade

Even after the tour moved on, sales stayed high. In Morrisons:

• Rate of Sale rose from 0.8 to 1.8 units (+125%)

• An +84% uplift was still in place eight weeks later

Year-on-Year Growth to Celebrate

Participating stores saw long-term benefits too:

• 4.8 units (2024) to 9.8 units (2025) — a 104% increase

So this wasn’t just a short-term bump — it changed shopper behaviour.

Joel Kaufman, Managing Director of Link, said, “The Morrisons store selection and booking process was quick and easy, with the support from APUK. They were able to act quickly to help prioritise stores based on footfall and aligned audiences. Then each chosen store was locked in for the tour schedule, with all localised store managers aware of our sampling team’s arrival on each event day ”.

Looking for Morrisons External Sampling Venues?

If you’re planning a sampling tour or a supermarket activation, we can help you secure the best Morrisons external sampling venues and locations from day one. With decades of experience and strong retailer relationships, we make it easy to find supermarket spaces that help your brand shine — and deliver results you can measure.

Whenever you’re ready, we’ll help you find the perfect spot. (All figures provided by LINK.)