What is the best way to achieve this result?
I would do it with content type using entity reference to products.
Entity reference allows you to reference other nodes in your "deal of the week" node and use this relationship in your view. No PHP should be needed.
With this setup, you can do almost anything:


only Staff is allowed to create new content of this type
view can show author name (and picture)
custom comment? no problem, just a text field in content
old content is still available