Interval Management

SITUATION

A prominent grower had seen his sales in the foodservice market shrink substantially due to the incursion of Chinese products, selling at less than half his price. He felt his product had superior flavor and quality, but had little real supporting data and no concept of how to communicate those differences.

PROBLEM

The company had no knowledge of the foodservice market and how chefs and other buyers thought and operated. Their sales force worked solely through distributors and they had no brokers providing any type of market information or feedback. Additionally, the company’s marketing department was feeble, at best, and again knew nothing about foodservice.

SOLUTION

We began working with them, educating them to concepts such as retaining a chef to do a sensory evaluation of their product and the Chinese competitors, calculating the average incremental cost per serving of each product and developing a slogan, which is now used company-wide.  We also developed a communications and marketing plan that identified the key target segments within the market, allowed them to address these targets with an advertising and exhibition schedule. We became their foodservice marketing department to implement all of the activities required which they were untrained to do themselves.

BENEFITS

The client received well-trained and experienced advertising and marketing counsel at a fraction of the cost of employing a comparable full-time executive.  We preformed all of the functions of an in-house foodservice marketing department, including direction of their public relations efforts. The resulting advertising, trade show selection and promotional materials were all developed to essentially create a branded product out of a commodity.