Please register to participate in our discussions with 2 million other members - it's free and quick! Some forums can only be seen by registered members. After you create your account, you'll be able to customize options and access all our 15,000 new posts/day with fewer ads.
I have a friend that makes terrific marinara and wants to market it. Suggestions?
Hopefully, since she is already thinking about "marketing", she has already covered all of her bases health/business-wise ( licenses, commercial kitchen rental, packaging etc).
I think the Food Show and local farmers' markets are a good start. A way to pass out samples and put a face behind the brand.
Also, don't forget the power of social networking. Facebook, twitter, a blog. Shoot some youtube videos of "Creative Ways to Cook Using Hot Mamma's Marinara" or whatever. She should have them all and be actively self-promoting.
I thought of another venue s/he should be look to for advise, the Fancy Food Show which showcases hundreds of small specialty food purveyors. Many national chains like Trader Joe's & Whole Foods send reps to scout products. Plus it's a great place to network & get advise & see what your competition is.
There's at least 100 of these types of convention/trade shows in the country each year ... which may ... or may not yield viable leads and sales prospects to a new product company entering the market. You'll typically find that you'll need to attend more than just one to get responses of merit.
This type of marketing can be expensive for a small company to start with.
Consider that a 10'x10' space is $3,300 for the basic space and backdrop set-up, and that you can only get 200 lbs of display booth and product in on-site (at this show) before you are charged union rates for loading-dock to booth delivery. By the time you get additional fees tacked on to a trade show like this, it's not uncommon to spend $5,000 on the trade show itself ...
And then you have your costs of a professional backdrop (I spent over $4,000 on mine which has now been to over 100 tradeshows), advertising/sales literature, pictures of your product and packaging, etc. You'll be paying for shipping your sample products to the show, literature, etc. If you are going to standout in this environment, it's not enough that you have a "GREAT" product ... you've got to be able to convince many of the attendees that you are the booth to stop at and sample the product, and aggressively seek to qualify who is a decision maker and a capable buyer.
Add to this your travel costs, lodging costs,
Additionally, you've got to have more than just the concept of product and a wonderful idea to sell. If you're going after a national (or regional) account, you've got to have proven production ability to meet their supply chain requirements ... at your sole expense. You don't get to approach them and demand money up front for your product so you can produce it in the quantities they need ... you've got to show them that you've got the product that has appeal to their buyers, packaging that is in conformity with their shelf/display/receiving requirements, and that your company has the financial wherewithal to be in the game long enough to supply their initial orders and their projected sales restocking in a timely manner.
A lot of those production hurdles are staggering in costs to a start-up company. It's one thing to supply a few hundred bottles of your product to a local Farmer's Market or specialty grocery store ... it's a whole 'nother universe to get an order for a couple thousand cases to have an initial inventory at the retailer's warehouses and the ability to ship more in a timely manner so their shelves don't run out. I've seen more than one company go down this route and go broke trying to fulfil the orders, pay their suppliers and production overhead, and then die waiting for payment from the national account ... and that was for a product that had good sales and fast turn times.
Oh, you didn't know about that aspect of the food biz, did you? It's not uncommon for the big national retailers to take 60-90-120 days to pay net on their accounts, and they're big enough to demand that you set your price schedule to them at a very minimal profit structure. Do you want their exposure and business/sales volume, or don't you? You'll play their game, not the other way around. You'd better be well captialized and solvent to be able to enter this arena or they'll have you for lunch.
Your suppliers for packaging, labels, raw goods, kitchen, processing, labor (and the taxes to be filed and paid for that labor) ... all will need to be paid sooner than you'll get paid. Do you have this much line of credit or money on hand?
True anecdote: I was at a trade show in Chicago, where the unions control everything that happens inside the building. I own my own very portable trade show display booth/backdrop, which takes me about 15 minutes to set up (it's packed into a rolling case that's about the size of two big golf bags). It's intended to be very fast to set up and take down by one person, although two can make it even easier. But the union rules in Chicago require that only the union staffers can touch the booth to set it up/take it down ... in fact, I can't even roll the case in to the convention hall, they have to use their porters to do that. So it's an hour minimum billing time to set up my booth, and they require two people to do it ... $225.00. OK, that's the cost of being there. But wait! I had a burned out bulb in one of the lamps on the overhead portion of my display. A simple replacement, right? just stand here on this chair and uplug the bulb and stick a new one in there and put the little cover lens back on it ... a matter of a minute or two. Nope, can't touch that. Union rules say that only a qualified electrician can do it inside the convention center. OK, that's again a one hour minimum billing for an electrician, at $85. Oh, I had sales literature and samples to bring in ... nope, you can't bring anything in that you can't carry in a briefcase; you can't bring in a rolling tote or use a handtruck (the little folding one) for your materials. No problem ... that's another one hour minimal billing for the porter.
Booth tear-down is the reverse process. One hour minimum billing for two guys to take my booth down and pack it into the shipping/storage case ... which they'd stored in their spaces for a nominal fee while I did the show. Oh, left-over sales samples and literature? gotta' pay their union porter to take it to the loading dock from the convention floor.
Between inexpensive hotel, local transportation, roundtrip travel to Chicago, materials/sales aids, convention booth/fees ... I spent almost $9,000 for a two day trade show. Others told me that I got off cheap ....
A fellow I worked for was the importer for a line of high-end lighting from Italy. He went through the same rigamarole in Chicago and NYC for lighting industry trade shows, trying to find retailers (and new reps) for his line. His budget for those shows and the Dallas and Las Vegas shows the first year was in excess of $65,000. The most expensive was in Chicago where the laborers couldn't put his display fixtures together and get the lights to work in them ... they spent hours assembling lamps that your typical lighting showroom clerk could assemble in 15 minutes. All at the union electrican rates to put them together and take them apart for shipping. Not included in his budget was the obligatory wining and dining of prospective new reps ....
Unless you've done this stuff at a manufacturing/rep level for bringing a product to retail ... you don't know what the expenses are to do so. Passion and a great product won't substitute for hard cash (and time and effort) when it comes to doing business. And that's a fact .... been there, done that ... successfully, with a number of consumer and industrial products through the years. (I'd also mention that I've done more than a number of trade shows where the traffic was terrible ... either low numbers or the folks coming through weren't decision makers ... and the time/cost was a total loss; I was lucky to get a couple of small leads from these shows, not anywhere enough sales volume to recapture my expenses).
There's at least 100 of these types of convention/trade shows in the country each year ... which may ... or may not yield viable leads and sales prospects to a new product company entering the market. You'll typically find that you'll need to attend more than just one to get responses of merit.
This type of marketing can be expensive for a small company to start with.
Consider that a 10'x10' space is $3,300 for the basic space and backdrop set-up, and that you can only get 200 lbs of display booth and product in on-site (at this show) before you are charged union rates for loading-dock to booth delivery. By the time you get additional fees tacked on to a trade show like this, it's not uncommon to spend $5,000 on the trade show itself ...
And then you have your costs of a professional backdrop (I spent over $4,000 on mine which has now been to over 100 tradeshows), advertising/sales literature, pictures of your product and packaging, etc. You'll be paying for shipping your sample products to the show, literature, etc. If you are going to standout in this environment, it's not enough that you have a "GREAT" product ... you've got to be able to convince many of the attendees that you are the booth to stop at and sample the product, and aggressively seek to qualify who is a decision maker and a capable buyer.
Add to this your travel costs, lodging costs,
Additionally, you've got to have more than just the concept of product and a wonderful idea to sell. If you're going after a national (or regional) account, you've got to have proven production ability to meet their supply chain requirements ... at your sole expense. You don't get to approach them and demand money up front for your product so you can produce it in the quantities they need ... you've got to show them that you've got the product that has appeal to their buyers, packaging that is in conformity with their shelf/display/receiving requirements, and that your company has the financial wherewithal to be in the game long enough to supply their initial orders and their projected sales restocking in a timely manner.
A lot of those production hurdles are staggering in costs to a start-up company. It's one thing to supply a few hundred bottles of your product to a local Farmer's Market or specialty grocery store ... it's a whole 'nother universe to get an order for a couple thousand cases to have an initial inventory at the retailer's warehouses and the ability to ship more in a timely manner so their shelves don't run out. I've seen more than one company go down this route and go broke trying to fulfil the orders, pay their suppliers and production overhead, and then die waiting for payment from the national account ... and that was for a product that had good sales and fast turn times.
Oh, you didn't know about that aspect of the food biz, did you? It's not uncommon for the big national retailers to take 60-90-120 days to pay net on their accounts, and they're big enough to demand that you set your price schedule to them at a very minimal profit structure. Do you want their exposure and business/sales volume, or don't you? You'll play their game, not the other way around. You'd better be well captialized and solvent to be able to enter this arena or they'll have you for lunch.
Your suppliers for packaging, labels, raw goods, kitchen, processing, labor (and the taxes to be filed and paid for that labor) ... all will need to be paid sooner than you'll get paid. Do you have this much line of credit or money on hand?
True anecdote: I was at a trade show in Chicago, where the unions control everything that happens inside the building. I own my own very portable trade show display booth/backdrop, which takes me about 15 minutes to set up (it's packed into a rolling case that's about the size of two big golf bags). It's intended to be very fast to set up and take down by one person, although two can make it even easier. But the union rules in Chicago require that only the union staffers can touch the booth to set it up/take it down ... in fact, I can't even roll the case in to the convention hall, they have to use their porters to do that. So it's an hour minimum billing time to set up my booth, and they require two people to do it ... $225.00. OK, that's the cost of being there. But wait! I had a burned out bulb in one of the lamps on the overhead portion of my display. A simple replacement, right? just stand here on this chair and uplug the bulb and stick a new one in there and put the little cover lens back on it ... a matter of a minute or two. Nope, can't touch that. Union rules say that only a qualified electrician can do it inside the convention center. OK, that's again a one hour minimum billing for an electrician, at $85. Oh, I had sales literature and samples to bring in ... nope, you can't bring anything in that you can't carry in a briefcase; you can't bring in a rolling tote or use a handtruck (the little folding one) for your materials. No problem ... that's another one hour minimal billing for the porter.
Booth tear-down is the reverse process. One hour minimum billing for two guys to take my booth down and pack it into the shipping/storage case ... which they'd stored in their spaces for a nominal fee while I did the show. Oh, left-over sales samples and literature? gotta' pay their union porter to take it to the loading dock from the convention floor.
Between inexpensive hotel, local transportation, roundtrip travel to Chicago, materials/sales aids, convention booth/fees ... I spent almost $9,000 for a two day trade show. Others told me that I got off cheap ....
A fellow I worked for was the importer for a line of high-end lighting from Italy. He went through the same rigamarole in Chicago and NYC for lighting industry trade shows, trying to find retailers (and new reps) for his line. His budget for those shows and the Dallas and Las Vegas shows the first year was in excess of $65,000. The most expensive was in Chicago where the laborers couldn't put his display fixtures together and get the lights to work in them ... they spent hours assembling lamps that your typical lighting showroom clerk could assemble in 15 minutes. All at the union electrican rates to put them together and take them apart for shipping. Not included in his budget was the obligatory wining and dining of prospective new reps ....
Unless you've done this stuff at a manufacturing/rep level for bringing a product to retail ... you don't know what the expenses are to do so. Passion and a great product won't substitute for hard cash (and time and effort) when it comes to doing business. And that's a fact .... been there, done that ... successfully, with a number of consumer and industrial products through the years. (I'd also mention that I've done more than a number of trade shows where the traffic was terrible ... either low numbers or the folks coming through weren't decision makers ... and the time/cost was a total loss; I was lucky to get a couple of small leads from these shows, not anywhere enough sales volume to recapture my expenses).
Your thread kinda inspired me so I got doing a little research to help out my buddy with the bbq sauce.
It's amazing, if you owned a restaurant you could make your own sauce serve it to anyone and everyone no problem but as soon as you want to start bottling it thats when things really get complicated. Gotta get your sauce analyzed, list the ingredients as well as everything else.
I did find some companys who will make and bottle your sauce for you and handle all that. Can be done for around 6k. You get to pick bottle size, how many per case, etc.
I was also surprised to learn many large sauce companies sell their sauce to tohers to basically be rebranded and sold. So when your in the say bbq sauce isle at the grocery store its possible 5 of those suaces are the exact same recipe just different anme, different bottle, different marketing.
Your thread kinda inspired me so I got doing a little research to help out my buddy with the bbq sauce.
It's amazing, if you owned a restaurant you could make your own sauce serve it to anyone and everyone no problem but as soon as you want to start bottling it thats when things really get complicated. Gotta get your sauce analyzed, list the ingredients as well as everything else.
I did find some companys who will make and bottle your sauce for you and handle all that. Can be done for around 6k. You get to pick bottle size, how many per case, etc.
I was also surprised to learn many large sauce companies sell their sauce to tohers to basically be rebranded and sold. So when your in the say bbq sauce isle at the grocery store its possible 5 of those suaces are the exact same recipe just different anme, different bottle, different marketing.
Now you're on track with the food biz. A restaurant is only regulated by the health inspection rules to the extent that they conduct their business in accordance with safe food handling where they don't even have to list their ingredients. A prepared product for resale must comply with an extensive list of other regulations and disclosures to assure the public a safe food product.
There's many companies that can do the manufacturing/bottling for you, to your recipe ... or theirs. They'll put your label or theirs on it for you to market the product. If you pick up a copy of any of the commercially targeted food industry news periodicals, you'll find ads for these companies. For example, we get several monthly trade papers that are targeted to berry production, so the ads are for outfits that will make jams/jellies/preserves to your order ... and with their recipes or yours. The label design and the product marketing are up to you. It's called "private label" manufacturing.
You are correct that many products may, in fact, be manufactured in the same facilities ... and may have the same ingredients, prep and cooking process, and essentially be the same product.
We have a discount retailer in town (a franchise chain) that sells overstocks or discontinued food products. I happen to like "hot sauce", and they have had 15 or so different brands on the shelves lately ... all competing against the big names in the biz you see on your supermarket shelf. Some of those sauces taste the same as the big names, some taste the same as each other ... only the stuff on their shelves costs 1/2 the price of the big industry names. Some of them, to my taste, are even better than the big name sauces. "Tri-Pepper", "Big Joe's", "Fat Eddie's", and a host of others you haven't heard of from Louisiana have all been pretty good ... but who knows if they'll have any more when these sell out? The owners of those small production run labels paid for a run of product, but they may not necessarily be around after paying for a batch and realizing inadequate sales/profits to stay in business.
Last edited by sunsprit; 02-08-2011 at 09:46 AM..
Please register to post and access all features of our very popular forum. It is free and quick. Over $68,000 in prizes has already been given out to active posters on our forum. Additional giveaways are planned.
Detailed information about all U.S. cities, counties, and zip codes on our site: City-data.com.
Please register to participate in our discussions with 2 million other members - it's free and quick! Some forums can only be seen by registered members. After you create your account, you'll be able to customize options and access all our 15,000 new posts/day with fewer ads.
