A successful food business has many components. You need great products that deliver your value proposition. You need consistent production to keep your customers happy. You need qualified people who can fulfill their role in production and the other parts of your business and you need resources dedicated to sales. 

If you hear me speak at a conference or an event you will hear me say: “Success in this industry is not just about making great products to sell; it’s about selling the great products you produce.”

Most of the producers I meet are very focused on production. Passion and depth of knowledge in this part of the business is what they see as invaluable. It is true you need great products and without them you have no business. However, you also need to ensure there is infrastructure within your business to sell all of the great products you are producing.

We have developed a process to get more of your products in more shopping carts more often. We call this process CART and over the upcoming months I will share the process to help you sell more. There are four essential ingredients in this recipe for success:

Consumers

Alignment with your customers

Retail plan to sell your products

Trust with consumers and customers

It has to start with the consumer

One of the great things about the food industry is that consumers shop regularly and they vote at the cash register every time they are in the store or shop on line. You need to understand consumers who buy your products.

You need to have a solid profile of who they are. This is the only way you can determine if your product is relevant, the right size, in the right package or perhaps even the right level of processing. How can you determine any of these things if you do not know who will buy the product or who is buying the product? 

Retailers do not have the level of depth they had about consumer insights and categories are often too broad for category managers to really understand consumers like you should. A thorough understanding of who your consumers are and why they buy your products will set you apart from many other suppliers.

Who is buying your products?

There are many questions you should ask about the consumers who are buying your products. Perhaps you have considered some of these before and incorporated them into the size you sell or the packaging you use.

You need to think about demographics such as:

Age, gender, household composition, education, income and where they live.

You also need to think of other factors that define consumers such as:

What interests do they have?

What other products would they buy?

Where would they go for information about your business or products?

When and where do they make the decision to buy?

How important are issues of sustainability to them?  Will they only buy in environmentally-friendly packaging and would information about food waste impact the purchase decision?

You can learn about many of these attributes by going to stores and watching who buys what. You can also find information in trade publications, industry associations and by participating in research projects. In my opinion these are all great resources but there is nothing better than watching consumers shop in a store. You can learn so much.

There are many factors to consider and attributes you should think about when defining your consumer. This profile should never be final, as consumers are constantly changing. You should review the profile periodically to ensure it is still relevant with consumers in the market. Challenge different people in your organization to add to the profile. They might see it a bit differently than you do.

When you have a profile of your consumer, include it in your decision-making. Certainly you have other factors to consider such as what can you afford, what can you produce, what your customers (retailers & wholesalers) want but the consumer needs a voice in your decision-making process too. When you have a solid profile you will make consumer-focused decisions, which always have a better chance of success.

If you have any questions about developing a consumer profile please give me a call at (902) 489-2900 or send me an email at peter@skufood.com.   

WHAT’S IN STORE?

Sensory-friendly shopping

Recently I visited our local Sobeys store on a Sunday evening. When I entered the store I stopped because I questioned whether the store was open for business. The lights were low and in some cases turned off, there was no music and the usual ‘noise’ of a grocery store was muted. Then I remembered that every second Sunday Sobeys offers sensory-friendly shopping.

This is an initiative Sobeys has created in conjunction with Autism Nova Scotia to provide a shopping environment more welcoming to people challenged with the regular atmosphere within the store. These are the types of initiatives you need to mention to your category manager or other people at Sobeys to show you are in their stores and see some great things happening to respond to today’s consumer. You will not get more products on your next purchase order but you will develop the relationship, which is important too.