The Startup CPG Podcast

00:00
Daniel Scharf
In terms of designing the actual packaging, what do you think is important? Because it's not necessarily consumer facing, but I imagine you guys at simulate, make sure you do an extra good job given how cool your branding is, what do you think are the important things to put on the actual packaging?

00:21
Jenna
Yeah, that's a good point. I would say in food service, keep in mind this is often going back of the house, sitting in a freezer, sitting on a shelf. Not a ton of people will be looking at it. But you want to make sure your branding is there. So when people are pulling it out, you want to have your beautiful sticker. It's going to be a corrugated box. So it's going to be a corrugated box with a sticker on it. So anything you can put on that sticker that captures attention, branding, product, photo, cooking instructions. And then you also want to make sure your inner pack is labeled in some way, which can be hard because the inner pack is usually plastic and going through temperature changes so things will rub off.

01:02
Jenna
But for us at simulate, all of our boxes are white and the text is black, which is. I have a thing right here. So our food service cases look very similar to this. It's just a box with like minimal branding. So you can still have branding on your food service box that is eye catching and looks good without spending a ton of money. It's just going to be on a sticker.

01:25
Daniel Scharf
Okay, makes sense. So I think that's a pretty good view of thinking about designing your packs, your materials, your pricing. Now what? All right, you've got all your stuff. You're ready to know. Let's say you're based in the west coast, which you are. So now you have the stuff that you need. Probably you already started reaching out to warm people up even before you had all that finalized. So what's your plan now for your new brand?

01:54
Jenna
Yeah, so at this point there are a few things you could do. I would probably do a channel analysis. So kind of like I mentioned before, a food service is super massive. How I look at it is basically non commercial versus commercial in food service. And commercial is basically anywhere you go for a dining destination. So, like, if you go out on date night and you're sitting down, you're enjoying the meal, you're going there to eat, or if you're going to sweet green for lunch, you're working and you want to grab a salad really quickly, or you just go through the drive through and you get like a McDonald's breakfast sandwich, all of those things fall under commercial and then non commercial is basically everything else. So it's a place that isn't necessarily only for food.

02:41
Jenna
For example, if you're a college student and say you're going to the college cafeteria, people are probably not walking down the street and going to eat at Harvard, but if you're a student there, you're part of the meal plan. So you eat there. Or if you're staying at a hospital, there's food there. If you go to a theme park and you want to grab like a corn dog or a slushy or something like that, there's food there. So if it were me, like kind.

03:04
Daniel Scharf
Of captive audiences for the non commercial space.

03:07
Jenna
Yeah, exactly. If it were me, I would probably do a deep dive on the landscape of food service and try to determine where my product fits. So if I make plant based burritos, I'm probably not going to be selling into a ton of bulk places or like a fine dining establishment, but it could be great for a college campus cafeteria. So I would probably pick like one to three areas.

03:37
Daniel Scharf
Why is that, by the way? I think that's a really good example. Why is it a plant based burrito would be great for a CNU, but maybe not as good for those other.

03:46
Jenna
Yeah, that's. That is such a good question. So just picturing a chef, I'll use my favorite brewery here. They actually have beyond burgers on the menu. I live in petaluma. They have amazing food. I don't think if I was selling plant based burritos, I would approach the chef there with my frozen, already made plant based burrito and ask him to put it on the menu. Because they're usually sourcing ingredients from scratch, making their own, putting their creative spin on it. They may make their own burrito, but they probably wouldn't use my pre made burrito that's already in its own packaging. So just trying to identify where your product would fit and where it probably wouldn't fit. And kind of like identifying those top three categories. Let's just say for a plant based burrito, college campuses, markets grab and go cafes and coffee shops.

04:38
Jenna
They're turbochuffing that burrito. And then maybe some interesting regional chains that don't have a ton of cooking equipment, I would say. So just depending on what your product is, pick a couple of segments in food service and start from there because you don't want to do everything all at once, or it's going to be super overwhelming.

04:58
Daniel Scharf
Okay, makes sense. So you've now completed your channel strategy and you figured out it sounds like, let's say three areas you really want to focus on. What's next?

05:08
Jenna
So after that, and we've already talked about pricing and sell sheets, so let's assume we've got that. We've got a beautiful deck. After that, you want to start getting contacts, and you can get contacts in a number of different ways. I love my LinkedIn premium membership. I use it to sleuth potential buyers and catch up with people all the time. In food service, people move around a bunch. So LinkedIn is really helpful to see who's current, where they've gone.

05:33
Daniel Scharf
What do you actually do? How do you find the people you need to talk to on LinkedIn? What do you click on? What do you type? Who do you follow?

05:40
Jenna
I follow as many people as I possibly can, but obviously places I'm interested in getting my product into. But I will first look at the company, then I will look at the people. Then I'll probably look at the location, because depending on how big they are, where they're headquartered, I'm targeting LA or New York, and then I'll do a search term. I usually look at culinary in food service because the culinary product innovation, that kind of team is usually making the decisions, and I go from there.

06:13
Daniel Scharf
Okay, got it? Yeah. Let me just stop the interview for a second and ask you, are you okay going over?

06:20
Jenna
Oh, yeah. I feel like this is just so fun to talk about.

06:22
Daniel Scharf
I love it. I like the pace that we're going at where I can ask just tons of questions. I can actually see this may end up being like a two part podcast if we keep going, but I just want to make sure you didn't have, like, a thing to run to or anything.

06:36
Jenna
No, I think my next call is at. Let me just check. I am free until fourth.

06:44
Daniel Scharf
Perfect.

06:44
Jenna
All right, we're good.

06:46
Daniel Scharf
Okay. And so one question I wanted to ask you about the materials as well. So probably for retail decks, let's say people are somewhat familiar with creating those stories. Obviously, you're going to have the story about the brand and the founder and then feature on the product attributes, hopefully some kind of data as well, to convince any doubtful buyers. What would be different about a food service sales deck that you want to make sure you incorporate?

07:21
Jenna
Yeah, that's a great question. I think in food service you do still leverage data, so you definitely want to showcase how your brand is bringing in new foot traffic, especially in food service, how you're bringing in those millennial and Gen Z consumers, how your product is a little bit different, and unique in the space. But in addition to that, you're also going to want to show recipe pictures, if you have any chef quotes or partnerships, how it's being used on menu, what people are eating it in. If you're targeting college campuses, it's really easy to survey campus students. If you do a big tasting event, you use a QR code, goes to a survey, and you say, hey, 98% of students at UT Austin want this product served on campus.

08:09
Jenna
And I know you're super familiar with those surveys, Daniel, but, yeah, sprinkle in all of those nuggets of data that you can, and then really focus on the product, the attributes and recipes versus retail. You want to make people hungry. When you're showing them a presentation, you want them to leave being like, wow, I really want to eat.

08:31
Daniel Scharf
Yeah, I remember working with you on some absolutely killer slides where we had an early opportunity with one of the CNU locations to go and demo some product. And then we surveyed the students who were getting to try it and use those survey results to tell a really incredible story about how much they were going to care about having this product, how they were going to come to this dining location instead of other campus dining locations if they were able to get access to it. Those were some really powerful slides I remember.

08:59
Jenna
Exactly.

09:01
Daniel Scharf
Awesome. Okay, so now you're doing the outreach, and let's say if you're not Jenna, with all of the contacts pre built in, so then you're hitting the ground and you're hitting people up on LinkedIn. What do you usually say? Let's say, first of all, how do you even come up with that list of outlets to potentially reach out to, like, figure out where to even start? I feel like retail, it's a little bit more known. You can probably google who are the top retailers. We're more used to walking into grocery stores. But how do you come up with that list of who to look for?

09:35
Jenna
Yeah, that's such a good question. And again, food services broad, but you can start by segment. So let's just say you're targeting cafes and coffee shops. I usually would start by region. Say you have a lot of presence and even retail presence. If you have a lot of presence in LA, the Bay area, New York, Texas, maybe start there and start with the cafe or coffee shop chains there. Just being in the space for so long, I'm super familiar with the players, so I feel like I might be a little biased in just kind of, like, knowing off the top of my head who people, you know, if you're targeting coffee shops. I would reach out to Blue bottle and Phil's coffee and Pete's. I wouldn't necessarily start with Starbucks. Starbucks is amazing.

10:22
Jenna
I love their offerings, but it's a really long sell cycle and everybody wants to get into Starbucks. So I would start with the kind of like higher end curated regional chains. Just on the topic of cafes, the La Columb acquisition that just happened is really interesting to me too, but I'll.

10:41
Daniel Scharf
Reach out to them on our slack channel. I've also seen people say things like, hey, I'm getting into 50 or 60 independent coffee shops in my local area. How do I get into more? Like how do I scale this? That's not a chain approach necessarily. It's more of like an indie strategy. But what would you say to people who probably are, maybe let's say they're more resource constrained but working on more of a local strategy who are trying to go after that kind of an approach?

11:09
Jenna
Yeah, I would leverage your existing partnerships. So if you're already in 50 or 60 local coffee shops, get those menu mentions, incentivize your operators to market your product and brand it. Send them swag, send them marketing materials, toothpicks for your breakfast, sandwiches, et cetera. And then put that all in your decks and survey people. So as much as you can get from your initial partnerships, whether that's a chef quote, a beautiful photo, brand ambassador, event activation, put that in your deck and then bring it to the bigger players in the category.

11:44
Daniel Scharf
And for people who are interested in trying to go after more local stuff like that, what's a typical setup? Because it may be a little bit less like desk sales, like you're doing with these major chains, but for that kind of scrappy, onesie, twosy kind of approach, what do you typically recommend for people? Because obviously it's a lot of work if you want to just go out and hit up all of them individually. But what are some approaches people can try?

12:08
Jenna
Yeah, I do cold outreach all the time. If you're near them and you're able to go see them in person, that's always great. It's not going to be realistic all the time, especially if you're a team of one or a team of two, you can't be everywhere all at once. It's just not realistic. But usually in my outreach I try to keep my communication short and sweet, kind of light hearted, and also not waste people's time. So just quick, offer to send samples, see what they think and then go from there. I know that sounds simple. But if you just do that and be kind and professional and highlight your product, I think you'll get wins.

12:52
Daniel Scharf
And you might just be picking up the phone and calling the store in this instance and asking to talk to the manager or the culinary person.

12:59
Jenna
Yeah. And if you're doing that, make sure you don't call during busy times because then you're going to end up ruffling some feathers. So if you're calling during the peak of lunch hour, if you're not placing an order, maybe call later.

13:10
Daniel Scharf
So maybe like middle of the afternoon or late morning?

13:13
Jenna
Yes, definitely.

13:15
Daniel Scharf
Great. Okay, great tips. And then so back to kind of the more chain sales approach. So let's say you're reaching out to somebody that you found on LinkedIn who is a culinary director or r and D person for a specific chain. What are you actually saying to them in your initial message? Like maybe you're adding them and hitting add note on the intro and saying something. Or maybe you get to connect with them and you're setting them as something. What do you try to get across in that first kind of message when you're warming them up? Like, are you already sending them materials or asking if you can send them samples? What's your typical approach?

13:50
Jenna
Yeah, so me personally, I usually don't send attachments in cold outreaches. I don't think you can in the note, by the way, but with LinkedIn premium, you get something like maybe like 50 free emails, basically. But I usually never send attachments via LinkedIn. In the first outreach, I try to keep it really short and sweet, introduce myself, introduce the product. And not just like, hey, this is a chicken nugget. That's plant based. Do you want to try it? I try to showcase how it's different really quickly. So whether that's like a women founded company, it's using upcycled products. It's locally made. We're based in California. We've got a huge Gen Z following. Whatever your top three attributes, don't throw the whole book at them, but just try to make your product stand out using words.

14:39
Jenna
And then you don't have to offer samples right away, but just see if they're interested. Usually they'll kick it over to email if they are interested. And if they don't respond right away, don't get offended. I usually wait at least a week to do any follow up because I don't want to be annoying. But usually after a few outreaches, I have some level of success.

15:00
Daniel Scharf
Obviously, follow ups are just so important in this industry. What are you doing to manage your own work and make sure you remember to follow up with them on a basis? Are you using a CRM or using Excel or sheets or something? How do you manage your work?

15:15
Jenna
Yeah, I think as a young company it's totally fine to use a spreadsheet, a shared Google Doc. If you have multiple team members using it, you can tag each other, put a tab in there for samples. Just keep everything really centralized. As you get bigger. You could use a CRM. I just put simulate onto HubSpot, which my first time using it, I'm enjoying it so far and I put everything in my tasks and calendar. So if someone tells me to follow up in January, I put it on my calendar right away so I don't forget. I totally live by my calendar but that definitely keeps me on track. And then I also found out about this cool platform called first bite. I don't know if you're familiar, Daniel, but it's kind of like a food service.

15:55
Jenna
CRM meets data central, which is an industry kind of like menu insights platform that also has contacts. We're not using it yet, but I think it looks promising. One of the former founders or former ops leaders I believe at impossible started it, but it looks cool.

16:15
Daniel Scharf
Yeah, super cool. And so when you get over to email, let's say you're using HubSpot. Now at this point you have kind of your template that you usually use for first outreach. So you might just send that first email right through HubSpot.

16:27
Jenna
Yep, you can send it right through HubSpot. I also downloaded the HubSpot mobile app, so I'm a little crazy, but if I see someone opens my email and especially if they respond to it, even if it's at like 07:00 at night or something, I try to get back to them right away. The mobile app is great because you get like immediate notifications.

16:45
Daniel Scharf
Yes, I know some people say like they'll see someone open their email and then they'll just give them a call. Oh, you're just looking at my email. What a coincidence. So great to chat.

16:59
Jenna
Oh yeah, I do that all the time. As long as it's business hours, I have no problem picking up the phone. I don't want to bug someone if I know they're on the east coast and it's like late and they're probably just doing their late night emailing. But yeah, I will do that all the time.

17:11
Daniel Scharf
Okay, so let's fast forward then to. Okay, they're giving you some interest. One of these chains let's say, and now you're starting to talk about things like pricing and distribution. What are the things that they're going to start asking and what are you going to be looking to do? Let's say you really don't have a lot of distribution at this point. So you may be thinking about like, okay, what's best for me as a brand to try to set up some distribution. Who would I be trying to help unlock using the demand that maybe I can get from them? How are you thinking about it?

17:45
Jenna
Yeah, so I usually try to take as much of the communication away from them or as much as the work. So of course send samples first, get their feedback on the samples. They'll say they love the product, they may want to order it. So I always ask them who they work with instead of waiting for them to tell me like who do you order from? I'll give them some suggestions too. I'll say, hey, we're fully stocked at dot so we can work with any distributor, but then they'll usually list a few options. Most operators don't have one solo distributor these days. Sometimes they'll have a preferred, but at least for simulate, which is a more established brand, we will probably have something at one of their distributors.

18:27
Jenna
So I try to know where we already have something set up or if they're big enough and I think they can force stock, then I'm like, amazing. They can help us get a us foods code that we previously didn't have, which unlocks all these other operators that were maybe too small. So yeah, I just try to ask for as much information as possible and get on a call with them. Like after you send the samples, don't wait for them to respond back to you via email. When you send the samples, ask to get on the call as you send the tracking email. So then you can go over the samples, you can ask about distribution. You can get way more information than just waiting for them to get back to you.

19:07
Daniel Scharf
Okay, so you send them over some samples, say let's set up some time once you get it, which probably also helps to avoid them just sticking the sample in a freezer somewhere and forgetting about it.

19:17
Jenna
Yes.

19:17
Daniel Scharf
So hopefully they try it out. Okay, great. So let's say then at this point, hopefully maybe they can help you unlock your first kind of distribution. And once they do that, you've got to get on the phone with a distributor. Right. And work something out with them. Figure out if it's going to be open coded, closed coded. Any programs you need to sign up for what's ideal for you? Let's say the distributor is super open to working with you however you want. What do you want to ask them for and what are you hoping to pay for it?

19:46
Jenna
Yeah, so if it's a great regional distributor that has, let's just say like us food Seattle or something like that, it's a new market. We have some operator interest, but we haven't had distribution. I will tell know here are all the operators we have that are interested and make it worth their while. So I'm sending you all this business that previously we haven't been able to unlock. So they really appreciate that. Any new business. And for a distributor, I want to get in front of their team. I want to be invited to their trade show, may or may not do it. Distributor trade shows can be hard to manage if you're a small team, but it's always good to be invited and some of them are really worthwhile. But then also you want to get access to their email lists.

20:30
Jenna
You can do targeted email blasts with them quarterly, you can do email list.

20:37
Daniel Scharf
You mean an email list of the distributor reps?

20:40
Jenna
Yeah, I mean, they won't give it to you, but you can get on their email marketing. So they'll be like, hey, this product is now stocked there and you can send them product photos, lifestyle photos, a snippet of what you want them to say. And that's a really good way to reach new customers. And a lot of distributors are open.

20:58
Daniel Scharf
To doing like, I know with Kehi, for example, in retail they will have accessible on the portal a list of all of their account managers. UNfi does not do that, but with Khee, I'm like, all right, let's go. I'm treating them all like buyers and we're emailing them. I remember early on I think I made the mistake of really emailing literally all of them. And my sales guy made fun of me for saying that I was emailing even the janitors over there. So I might have gone overboard, but it sounds like probably you don't get access to a list like that for some of the food service distributors, but at least hopefully have a way to get your message out to them, at least through the distributor itself. And then you mentioned trade shows.

21:39
Daniel Scharf
What are those distributor trade shows like as compared to an expo or a unify or Khi show?

21:47
Jenna
Yeah, they're really have their, I've been to so many of them, but they'll have their little local distributor show. So you come in with other brands, you'll have a table, you can cook your product and then they invite not only their team members, so they're in charge of different areas of the business. Commercial, non commercial, CNU, et cetera. They'll come and try the product, be like, oh, I have XYZ account. That would be a great fit. They'll bring in local operators too. So it's a great opportunity to grow your regional business. And if you have the bandwidth to attend them again, don't do all of them, but you can do them strategically and you can get really good accounts from that. I've had amazing regional chains come from local distributor shows.

22:33
Daniel Scharf
Amazing. And let's say conversely, you don't have that operator demand already. Is it even worth trying to go to us foods, Seattle or Shamrock or whoever to try to open it up? Or are they just going to say, come to me when you have some business?

22:47
Jenna
Yeah, I wouldn't necessarily start there, but you could start with someone who only services one area. So maybe not like a shamrock or a Cisco or us foods, but possibly like a buyright. I love buyright here in the Bay Area. You could even start smaller with a vegan distribution. Sharon is awesome and she brings in all the vegan mean. She won't bring in everything, but if she sees an operator fit for it, she'll bring it in.

23:15
Daniel Scharf
Any others around the country. I think people are going to be super interested to hear any tips that you have for really early friendly distributors or people that people should be trying to reach out to.

23:26
Jenna
Yeah, there's one in. Oh man, the names are so funny. But I think it's called. There's a produce one. Testa. Testa. Produce in Chicago is amazing. They're known for bringing in very chef focus exclusive products. There's Greenleaf in San Francisco. I think that's what it's called. Yeah, Greenleaf, San Francisco is awesome. Rocky Marin, I think he's still there. He leads their sales team. I've done a lot of trainings with them. They're amazing. There's also like Ace Endico in New York. There's sunbelt natural in Florida and Texas. There is. Oh gosh. Eco vegan down in San Jose. There's one in LA that if I can't think of it, I'll have to send it. But there's a really good regional one down in LA that's great to work with. If I remember it, I'll just shout it out.

24:21
Jenna
But if not, I'll send in the follow up. But yeah, those regional smaller ones can be much easier to work with.

24:27
Daniel Scharf
There are some that do pull through Unfi. Like I just was thinking of alta food service when you said that's based in LA. That will pull through the UNFi DC. So if you're in retail, you may actually already have that open. And then also there are places like canteen that services corporate headquarters that also pulls out of Unfi. Right?

24:47
Jenna
Yeah, unify actually has a ton of food service pull too. I know I talk about dot a lot, but if you're in Unifi and you're trying to easily break into food service, Unfi services a ton of food service outlets and that's know different airmark and sedexo accounts, canteen lots of colleges and universities, bona petite micromarkets and yeah, there's a lot in there. I have a full list actually, if you want to see.

25:15
Daniel Scharf
Yes, yes, we all want to see that. Yeah, please do. Okay, we'll make that available in the notes here in the podcast if we're able to share it. Cool. Okay, perfect. Well, that's pretty helpful. So that gives a sense for how do you start reaching out to operators? How do you start reaching out to distributors? Because you mentioned kind of the chain approach, like maybe small chains, maybe smaller distributors. How are you going to balance the resources to actually do all of this work? Because let's say you're retail focused at this point, but moving into food service, you don't have unlimited people. And so probably it's fractional, it's part of somebody's time to start doing this stuff. What would you say are the. Absolutely, make sure you do this.

26:05
Daniel Scharf
And then, okay, maybe this other stuff can wait until you have more resources later on.

26:12
Jenna
Yeah, I mean, I think obviously the basics. So you want to make sure you do your pricing, your presentation, your sell sheet, kind of the strategy work that we outlined, the product market fit, pack size, kind of all those basics I think you can handle on your own. And then let's just say you've got a retail footprint. Let's just start where your retail footprint is geographically. Maybe leverage your retail distribution with Unfi like were just talking about. As you get bigger, you may want to bring on an industry expert or consultant, not necessarily a broker, but you could bring on like a CMU expert or a convenience store channel expert to help you fill those gaps. But I think the initial stuff you can probably manage solo until you start getting a few wins.

26:56
Jenna
And then you might want to bring in someone to help you, whether that's a broker or an internal person.

27:02
Daniel Scharf
How have you typically found those internal people. What's the water cooler for? All of those good food service people, I feel like I know retail pretty well and I still just haven't even scratched the surface on food service.

27:16
Jenna
There are a lot of good people out there. I will say companies reach out to me with open roles almost every day for food service specifically. So I'm not saying there's a lack of talent, but it can be hard to find that first food service hire that's ready to bootstrap and has connections. And in food service especially, I feel like there's this big gap between people who have a ton of experience and they're connected, may not necessarily want to work in a startup space, may not thrive in a startup space, and then people who are really mission aligned and don't necessarily have the connections. But I feel like early on it's fine to have someone who has a little experience and a lot of mission aligned or something like that.

28:03
Daniel Scharf
Sounds like a very promising career path. Then maybe instead of having everyone have their kids be studying engineering for the jobs of tomorrow, maybe food service sales is the next budding frontier.

28:15
Jenna
Yeah, I don't disagree.

28:17
Daniel Scharf
So let's say erase your, all of your knowledge about food service and you don't know all this stuff. Who are you going to hire? Like what are the kind of things that you're looking for? Let's say you find some people to interview. What are the absolute things that you're going to go crazy for if they can demonstrate certain traits and what are the big watch outs?

28:34
Jenna
Yeah, in food service, I think humility is number one. You can be in a fancy boardroom and doing a beautiful presentation with the C suite and your executive team and it's like very polished. But often you're going to be in a kitchen and throwing things into an oven and deep fryer, potentially burning your hands. Thus definitely happened to me. And just talking face to face with the chef and trying your product too. So I think humility is number one. And also just being a good people person and being able to talk to anyone, establishing those relationships and not being afraid to just get your hands dirty, those are probably my two biggest attributes. And then also if you can bring some sort of knowledge, because food service is so complex, some sort of knowledge or understanding about the space and willingness to learn.

29:27
Jenna
Yeah, those are probably my top three.

29:29
Daniel Scharf
In terms of specific experiences or connections. Like if you're an early brand and you don't necessarily, let's say as the CEO, know so much about the space, are you comfortable bringing in a gunner who maybe doesn't have as much experience, but is all of the things that you're talking about and you trust them to be resourceful and kind of figure it all out versus the opposite extreme of just getting somebody super experienced. Maybe you're picking them up from, let's say, a legacy company in the space and you feel like they have a lot of warm connections as well. How do you think about that? What are some of the pros and cons?

30:07
Jenna
Yeah, I think you can always bring someone in who's willing to bootstrap it and just has a great personality and can kind of learn as they go. I think that's totally fine. You definitely will run into roadblocks and have some learning struggles along the way, just learning what not to do by experience. And then if you're bringing in someone who has that experience and has the Rolodex, it can be hard to flex down into a startup. So you can always try with a consultant or something like that and then just see how that goes and then say they do an amazing job with the consulting work. You want to bring them in full time. They may or not. May or may not be at a position to do that, but you can always try something like that, too.

30:50
Daniel Scharf
I've been at companies where I've seen it be tough in some instances, maybe hiring somebody who on paper seemed like a great fit, like they have tons of experience and they tell you about all the connections they have, but then they come in and, well, the sales cycle can be very long and you don't see a lot of movement. Have you had that experience and are there any things you feel like you could have identified or questions you could have asked them to understand? Like, okay, yeah, maybe they're not going to really help us get off the ground as fast.

31:17
Jenna
Yeah, I mean, that's so hard to gauge in an interview because everyone's putting their best foot forward, but I have absolutely seen that happen for every single startup that I've worked for where you bring in someone who has a ton of experience and says they can do x, y and z for the brand and bring it to the next level, and then it just doesn't pan out. Yeah, I think it's just about for that person, for bringing in someone with a ton of experience who may not have worked in a startup yet. As much as you can sense, check their ability to roll up their sleeves and do the busy work and the grunt work and the logging things into the CRM. I'm not saying they don't exist because they totally do. But yeah, it can be hard.

32:03
Daniel Scharf
And then that's if you're bringing someone internally, obviously you have brokers in this space as well that you can work with. How do you think about that? What do you typically expect to pay for that kind of stuff? What are some options you think are worth exploring for early brands and in retail? Everybody's dream would be like, oh, I want an amazing broker. And they'll be commission only, which is very hard, if not impossible to find. So what's it like in the food service world?

32:30
Jenna
Yeah, commission only is obviously a dream. If everybody could just be commission only. But at the same point, if you're a young brand and you don't have distribution and it's really hard for operators to order your product and it's commission only, that's kind of a tough pill to swallow for the broker, too. They're looking at a paycheck that's like months down the road. So I think a lot of brokers out there who are on the smaller side and willing to kind of bootstrap and build a brand from the ground up will have a retainer sometimes. They're not crazy. It kind of varies all across the board, depending on the size of the team.

33:02
Jenna
What I would recommend, once you're ready and at that stage to kind of launch bigger in food service, you want a broker, you kind of like need a broker at the end of the day because it's feet on the street. But I would suggest a smaller strategic broker that has, let's just say like fewer than 20 employees or even like five to ten employees that can help you start building your brand of business all over the country or in key markets that you align with. And then also providing obviously great training samples for all the reps. Staying on top of them, I think is paramount. And then also just with any broker company, you'll have kind of like your star brokers and then people who don't necessarily care as much about your brand. And that's just how it is.

33:53
Daniel Scharf
That's a nice way of saying also people who are not that good, maybe they just don't care as much about your brand. So how do you find these, let's say, smaller, regional specialty brokers? Are you meeting them at trade shows? Are there any that you've worked with that you think people should check out? Any examples or just way to make it kind of more actionable for people?

34:15
Jenna
Totally. I think I've met all of my brokers from word of mouth recommendations, maybe trade shows, but I've worked with a ton of them over the years. You could always start hyper local. There's one here in the Bay Area. They're called herspring Gibbs. I've worked with them in the past. They've done a pretty good job. There's one down in Southern California. Daniel, I sent them your way. A claim. They're like, specifically regional. And then there are kind of more strategic brokers that probably know the plant based space pretty well and kind of like, that's their forte. I've heard really good things about Avalon, the Avalon group, but I haven't worked with them directly in the past. The reason being is because we had a competitive product.

34:57
Jenna
Like I said, there's a lot of chicken out there, so we couldn't work with them at the time. Avalon group. I've worked with green nature marketing at two roles in the past. Nick Dion's awesome. They've got a really small nitty gritty team. There's another one called advanced natural group. John Hines. Amazing. I think they're pretty saturated at the moment, but have also had good experiences with.

35:22
Daniel Scharf
Yeah, I've heard they do a really good job with corporate headquarters. I've chatted with their team. They seem very strong. And a lot of these guys will have a retainer. Right. What do you typically expect to see retainer wise, for newer brands?

35:36
Jenna
I mean, it can vary all across the board. It could be a percentage based on your sales. So they'll say, we want 3% of your existing sales. They ask for a retainer up until a certain point. For example, let's just say they want like 5000 or $8,000 a month until you hit x in revenue. And after that it's commission based. That's a similar strategy for a lot of companies. It could be.

36:07
Daniel Scharf
Have you ever negotiated a lot more a contract like that with a broker?

36:11
Jenna
Yeah, definitely. I've negotiated in the past. Sometimes you can offer. Oh, and I was going to say some brands will ask for like 15,000 a month or 20,000 a month, too, so it can get a little high. But I've negotiated with shares, so you can always offer shares for your company in a lower rate. You can offer more commission, less retainer. There are plenty of ways to navigate that, but usually if a brand is asking for a retainer, you'll probably have to pay a retainer up to a point.

36:42
Daniel Scharf
Yeah, I like the shares idea. Just to really make sure, then they know they have skin in the game.

36:47
Jenna
Totally.

36:48
Daniel Scharf
Very direct. Right? Cool.

36:51
Jenna
Okay.

36:51
Daniel Scharf
And then you also mentioned. So we're talking about trade shows. Like, maybe you can meet brokers there. What are the key trade shows? Probably it depends on what exactly your channel, strategy and products are. But just if you could give us an overview of some of the most important stuff.

37:06
Jenna
Yeah, I know I talk about college, university a lot, but I like the makeup shows. National association for Colleges and Universities in food service makeups.org, you can sign up and get a membership. With the membership, you get access to their annual mailing list. You can send campaigns out to everybody. It contains thousands of contacts within the CNU space, from buyers to chefs to purchasing managers and all kinds of things. So I would definitely do makeups. They have a national show every year. I think this year or in 2024, it's in Louisville. I've been to that one a ton of times. They also have regional shows. So if you're a regional only brand at the moment in food service, you can attend some regionals. They do east coast, west Coast, Midwest, south. Love that one.

37:57
Jenna
If you're in Dot, I would definitely do their trade show. They have a big national accounts team at this point. And it also helps you grow your points of distribution because distributors pull from Dot, so it makes it really easy for distributors to just sign up and place orders. It's a good ordering show. So I like the ROI on that one. There's a company called Winsight Media. They actually do the NRA. NRA is basically not National Rifle association, but the National Restaurant association. That's like the big food service show. It's like the equivalent of Expo. It's really pricey. So I don't know if I'd recommend that as like a first show for food service brands. But Winsight Media has some smaller strategic events that I really liked in the past. There's one called menu directions that focuses specifically on non commercial.

38:44
Jenna
So they have great attendees from cnus, like a lot of the big tens and big college universities, like Princeton and Yale and stuff. And then some good healthcare opportunities in k through twelve. And then there's another regional one that I like in long beach. So if you're targeting regional chains, it's called chain gang. It is kind of like a word of mouth only, so it's hard to sign up on their website, but it's affordable and a lot of really good accounts go to it. But it's only like 150 attendees, so it's smaller, intimate, you get to talk to everybody.

39:18
Daniel Scharf
Amazing. Okay, cool. And then another thing I meant to ask about is when you're working with some of those distributors or the brokers, what are some of the incentives you're thinking about or like marketing programs that you're going to try to run? Because I know there's a whole array of options out there. What have you seen be really effective and like high Roi and what are the costs for those kind of programs?

39:45
Jenna
Yeah, so there's obviously the distributor marketing programs that we kind of talked about already, but there are a lot of things you can do to incentivize operators and distributors for distributor reps. You can do trainings and spys and stuff like that. But when it comes to getting your product on menu, you can do all kinds of things and you can actually funnel a lot of it through distributors. So you can offer like a buy one, get one. So if you have a new restaurant partner, you offer a free case. If they bring in a case of your product, you can offer an incentive if they put you on the menu. So you'll say, hey, like Mr. Restaurant owner, if you put us on the menu, I will give you 10% off on every order or I will give you $100 or something like that.

40:31
Jenna
Some operators will even have that program ready to go and they will tell you when you start working with them that you can pay to play and get on all of their digital and in print marketing. So those are things you can do. And then when it comes to bigger kind of like national operators, they will for sure negotiate pricing with you. But you can always set that up with them directly to get your foot in the door and to get that marketing. And you can always pay to do menu takeovers too. Daniel, I think we did that a lot at just in the past know, literally get the menu reprinted with just on it. So that's the cost of getting all the menus reprinted and changing all the signage and stuff like that.

41:12
Daniel Scharf
Yes. Which yes, you have to pay for. Of course, people don't want to be reprinting every time some brand comes to them with an idea. So that definitely makes sense. And obviously all brands would, their dream would be to be branded on a menu and you don't see it actually happen very often. But probably with simulate and a lot of the other brands that you've worked with, you've had some success. Any particular kinds of chains like more open to it than others or what have you seen?

41:43
Jenna
Yeah, I think the regional chains are definitely open to it. The regional chains that maybe offer more plant based forward, unique menus, maybe a little bit more high end bear burger sweet green. Like a veggie grill. Trying to think the plant based forward chains, they'll usually do something even if it's just like an LTO, a limited time offering. So like next level burger, plant power, fast food. I love those guys. Modern markets. Let's see who else? Coffee shops. Like maybe like a Phil's or a Pete's. I would say in general, if you offer something that's unique and the operator wants to share about the ingredients or how it's different, it's more likely to get on menu. You have something that they want to talk about.

42:35
Daniel Scharf
Yeah, I know we talked about data a little bit earlier, but I think you and I had a lot of success. And when we did have some of those small chains, or even individual operators just giving them a phone call and saying like, hey, how's it going for you? Can you give me some info that I could hopefully turn into a little bit of a marketing story for us? Like, can you tell me how many servings did you do today or this week? Was that more than you did the week before? Can I show some growth here? And what kind of consumers are actually coming in and buying the product? I mean, you would get really interesting answers there. We would say, what's the feedback that you're getting about the product? Are you seeing people come in more often just to grab it?

43:15
Daniel Scharf
Those kind of things. Right. Like, we would get pretty interesting responses that then we could turn into a pretty nice little selling slide.

43:23
Jenna
It's great when you can build those relationships and leverage the PoS systems and get all of that great data. And I've done that in the past a lot. We had this awesome customer at Alpha called Spotless burgers. I hope they're still doing okay since the pandemic, but they had like five locations and we would do promos with them all the time and get great information. Like this person came in and bought that item five times in one week, for example, or the check size. Really interesting things like that. And then you can always offer, I call it the restaurant kit. But in addition to building those programs to get on menu, you can send toothpicks and swag and hats and stuff for the employees so that you get representation that way too.

44:08
Daniel Scharf
All right. It really always blew my mind how almost all of them are willing to get on a call with us during one of their non busy times. And if you just have a 2030 minutes conversation with them and ask tons of questions, you're going to end up with a bunch of great anecdotes and maybe add then a photo from their Instagram if you're in any of those, onto the slide, and then you've got a great selling slide. I always found that when you are telling your story to a potential buyer, they're not going to look at that as peer reviewed scientific journal data that you're giving them from one of the chains that you're talking about.

44:45
Daniel Scharf
But probably in their minds, they have an idea about your product and your brand and it will fit into a story in their mind about whether or not it's a good fit for their chain. And it's better to have that stuff proactively and let them look into the stories and to confirm what they're thinking about rather than waiting for them to ask you that question like, well, how many units are you selling? Or who is buying this? And just making sure that what you're telling should be true, factual. You're getting it from the operator. But the anecdotal stuff I feel like can be super helpful, especially because food service data is really hard to come by.

45:26
Daniel Scharf
It's much harder than if you can get a Nielsen IQ report and pull up some nice data or based on your sell in, much harder to get that kind of sell through data, even through the distributors.

45:39
Jenna
Totally cool.

45:41
Daniel Scharf
So, Jenna, I think we have covered a lot in this. I just. I really want to thank you again for giving so generously all of your expertise, which for me is mind blowing. Like I mentioned, you are my go to for any time. I really need to understand something, food service. So thank you for all that you have taught me over the years and even more so just taught our community. I know this is, I think, the second or third thing that we've done with you, and I just can't put a price on how valuable this is, especially considering how many years that this podcast will reach. So thank you again for just sharing all of your, you know, for everybody. I just want to say thank you for listening along.

46:29
Daniel Scharf
I hope you learned as much as I did from Jenna over the course of this. And, yeah, Jenna is know, upon closing, is there a good way for people to kind of stay in touch with you or reach out to, you know, follow you on know, what's a good way for people just to follow along your journey?

46:46
Jenna
Yeah. Thank you so much for having me, Daniel, by the way, and I also hope this helps everybody. LinkedIn is great for me. Feel free to message me if you've got follow up questions or you want to talk about something specific that we discussed. I'm always happy to share information. I promise I will get back to you even if it usually within the same day. But if it's two days, don't be mad at me. But, yeah, that's impressive. Great.

47:12
Daniel Scharf
All right. Well, there you have it, folks. A captivating journey through the world of food service sales with our friend Jenna Cameron. So thank you again to Jenna for sharing your wealth of insights and experiences. And if you like this episode, definitely subscribe to us. Please leave a five star review. We really appreciate it. It helps us reach so many additional people, and we look forward to seeing you again next week.