CABLE'S QVC AIMS FOR BITE OF CONSUMER'S FOOD DOLLAR.

Byline: Carol Lawson The New York Times

Bob and Lisa are going crazy over a pair of apples - gooey, jumbo-size apples thickly coated with caramel and pecans.

Bob: "Mmm, good!"

Lisa: "So sweet!"

Bob: "We're talking major chewy caramel!"

Lisa: "Oh, it's good!"

It's not Noel Coward, but it works: In four minutes, they sell 1,400 boxes of Mrs. Prindable's old-fashioned caramel apples, each box containing two apples, to customers watching on the QVC home-shopping cable television channel. At $19.55 each, that's $27,370 in sales. Eight hundred more customers are on the phones.

QVC, the live, round-the-clock electronic mall of jewelry, clothing and household goods, now has another typical mall attraction: food. The edibles run from steaks and olive oil to candy, cheese, fudge mix and asparagus. Food joined the lineup a year ago and is only a small part of the channel's $1.6 billion business, but QVC expects food sales to grow nearly 40 percent this year.

"We are competing with everybody who sells food, from catalogs to department stores," says Danielle Rudolph, the QVC food buyer. "Instead of shelf space, we have air time."

Maximizing air time is what television retailing is about. On this night, the prime-time hour from 7 to 8 p.m. is devoted to sweets. Bob and Lisa - Bob Bowersox and Lisa Robertson - are the hosts, QVC's equivalent of network anchors. Seven minutes into the show, they are still touting the apples. Sales reach 2,100 packages.

Tom Okuniewski, the line producer, acts as ringmaster and store manager for the program, which like all QVC shows is unscripted and unrehearsed. It is his job to decide how long a product stays on the air.

Okuniewski, who likes to say that he has worked more hours of live television than Milton Berle, sits in front of computer screens that keep track of sales, inventory and customers on the phones. He stays with the apples, a $1 million product for QVC last year, because sales are strong, and inventory is still high.

"Bite into it, Bob," Okuniewski says into his headset, which transmits into the hosts' ears.

Bob follows orders and goes, "Mmmm."

At 11 minutes, 2,700 packages of apples have been sold, and more than 500 callers are on the line. "We're moving on," Okuniewski tells the hosts.

Next item: Junior's New York raspberry cheesecake for $23.34. In just under 4 minutes 535 are sold.

Selling food on television is not like selling jewelry or a mop. Hosts have to do more than talk up a product. They have to eat and emote. They need a talent for making what Rudolf, the food buyer, calls "a yum-yum face." In other words, they have to communicate what food tastes like.

"The facial expression, more than anything, is what sells food," says Bowersox, who was a singer and a chef before joining QVC, where his weekly show, "In the Kitchen With Bob," runs each Sunday.

"With candy, you want to look sort of dreamy. Your eyes roll up in back of your head and close a little bit. You sell angel-hair pasta with garlic entirely differently. Your face is more open."

"Making people hungry" is the mantra of Bill Lane, the QVC vice president and former Bloomingdale's executive, who put food on the channel. He is undeterred by the fact that teleselling lacks the real-life tastes and smells that can work up an appetite in the supermarket or deli.

"If you didn't get hungry from food you couldn't taste or smell, there wouldn't be food in every woman's magazine," Lane says. "But we're not like a magazine, where they paint the food and make it look delicious. We show real food, right out of the oven, and we have to be experts in how we describe it."

He thanks Bloomingdale's, where he was merchandise manager for gourmet food, for teaching him the power of presentation.

"We are always looking at how food will translate to TV," he says. "Will the colors work? Gooey or moist always looks more appetizing."

The setting is also important. Tonight's set is a cozy room that looks French countryish - lots of warm woods and white curtains. "It's a luscious, upscale set, a room for entertaining at home," Rudolf says. "It's like dressing a store window. There is a theatrical aspect: Food has to look great on TV."

QVC's most successful food effort was a two-hour holiday show last November that brought in $772,000. Among the products were Perugina chocolates, Mrs. Prindable's apples, chocolate-covered pretzels, jelly beans, Joseph Schmidt chocolates and a seven-meal sampler from Extended Family, a meals-to-go company started by playwright Gretchen Cryer.

One of the most popular food items is Mrs. Bateman's low-fat baking butter, $15.61 for a five-pound tub.

"It sounds weird, but it's fabulous," Lane says. "We have an enormous baking customer, and we always sell out."

Another favorite is the Cajun Injector, discovered in Louisiana, for $18.84. It is a large syringe that comes with marinades for poultry and beef. "If you saw it on a store shelf, you would say, 'What?' " Rudolf says. "But on television it's a great demo."

Other best sellers are a clam chowder from Massachusetts and crab cakes from Maryland.

QVC is still experimenting with selling food on television. Besides shows devoted entirely to food, the channel also offers food in shows that sell cookbooks and cookware.

Most food shows take place on weekends and are scheduled sporadically. Lane says that soon he expects them to run every six weeks. The shows are listed in a monthly program guide that is sent with all QVC purchases. QVC shipped 55 million packages last year.

QVC's food customers are 80 percent women. Lane says they are a diverse group - young working mothers who watch particular shows and older women who watch all the time. "Our customer buys food for herself or for home entertaining," Lane says. "She wants to know what she is going to do with it, how she will make it, how she will serve it and wThat she is going to tell people about it."

Rudolph and three others taste new foods for QVC. What ends up on the air, she says, "is a consensus." She goes to trade shows in search of new products, and she looks for trends in magazines and in her own supermarket. The goal, she says, is variety on the air.

Before each program, she meets with the hosts to explain the foods. They take notes, which are shown on the host information system, a large video monitor on the set. That is as close as they get to a script.

This show ends with sales of $181,000. Bob and Lisa leave the set and wipe their hands, sticky from candy, with big towels. They have sold seven high-caloric products and have been eating nonstop.

"I can't keep eating like this," Lisa says.

Bob, with nine years' experience and the status of senior host, advises a newcomer to television selling, "Learn to take little bites."

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Photo Senior QVC host Bob Bowersox, left, Gail Robinson, Michelle Robinson and show host Lisa Robertson sell caramel apples on the 24-hour cable network, which has increasingly turned its attention to food products. Bill Cramer/The New York Times