Full Transcript

 

Sari 0:00
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Sari 2:05
Welcome to your Food Business Success. This podcast is for early stage entrepreneurs in the packaged food industry ready to finally turn that delicious idea into reality. I'm your host, Sari Kimbell. I have guided hundreds of food brand founders to success as an industry expert and business coach, and it's got to be fun. In this podcast, I share with you mindset tools to become a true entrepreneur and run your business like a boss, interviews with industry experts to help you understand the business you are actually in and food founder journey so you can learn what worked and didn't work and not feel so alone in your own journey. Now let's jump in!

Sari 2:53
Hello and welcome back to the podcast. This is so fun to get reunited with someone from my past and to help you guys understand data even better, or maybe at all, this might be brand new to you, so I'm really excited to welcome Benji Fitts with Spins Data. He is the director of customer education at Spins, and so we're really excited to welcome you today. Hey, Benji!

Benji 3:23
Hey, thank you. It's great to be here. I'm super stoked to be here for the podcast today.

Sari 3:27
Well, I've been saying for a long time I really want to have you on the podcast. And then we were at a Naturally Boulder event, and I was like, okay, enough of like, someday. We're going to do it, and this is such a perfect time to have you in, and I know your role has been changing. It's fun we were just reminiscing about, so Benji and I actually worked together at Whole Foods Market. We were friendly competitors. You were always my friendly nemesis. So we were both marketing team leaders for larger stores in the Rocky Mountain region, and so I was at Fort Collins. You were at Santa Fe?

Benji 4:14
Santa Fe, right. And you know, Whole Foods love to do competitions, but you were always somebody that I really admired. I mean, it was very like I was, like, always gunning, like, what's Benji doing over there? He's the guy to beat.

Benji 4:32
It was a different world back then, you know, like I was kind of thinking about this earlier. I mean, do you remember what your monthly budget was for marketing stuff? Mine was like, 10,000 bucks a month or something like that.

Sari 4:43
Yeah, it was, I don't remember the numbers, but I remember always feeling like, wow, I have a lot of money.

Benji 4:51
Yeah, we got to do some cool things back then, you know, some cool events and like, sponsorships and things like that. So those are fun time.

Sari 4:58
So much community engagement, and, yeah, we did some really fun stuff. So it's a little bit of a different world now. But now I was reading over your LinkedIn bio, and because I was like, you know, I took the layoff in fall of 2015 but you stayed on and evolved your career into the more of the marketing analysis and data and so eventually, then hopping over, switching companies to Spins Data, which is what we're here to talk about today. So let's just jump into maybe a little bit about why data you were actually sharing, how you got into that whole foods and some of the ahas. But you know, why is data important? I actually think a lot of people don't really use data very well when they first start. They just kind of have a hunch, right? Like, I think this would work, but you know, when you're just starting out, how do we use data? What's it all about?

Benji 5:59
Yeah, that's a great question. So, I mean, well, there's a couple ways to answer that. I'd say, you know, like a lot of food companies are founded by people who, you know, maybe they think that there's, like, a perceived, you know, lack of something in a market, and they want to create something to kind of fill that gap or need, you know, or that opportunity. And, you know, the cool thing about data in a lot of cases that you can kind of like test your assumption about whether or not that's actually true, right? You know, you know you could think yourself, yes, the world needs a FODMAP friendly, you know, pre workout drink or something, right? You know. And, but you know, you can actually, like, kind of use syndicated data, so that's what Spins provides to food brands to kind of figure out, like, does anybody make that stuff? If they do make that stuff, is it doing good? Is it doing bad? Like, what's it made with? And you know that, what's it priced at? Like, where do they sell it? Like, all those sort of questions you know, that are honestly pretty hard to answer if you're just, you know, if you don't have access to that, you know. And I don't think like every founder, especially at the beginning, needs that, you know, like, it'll come later, and you'll know when it's time, right, you know. But once it is time. It can be really handy to, kind of, like, learn how this sort of stuff works, you know, and how to make sense of all this stuff. Because, you know, the fact is that every brand, once it reaches a certain size, and especially the big, you know, million and billion dollar levels of revenue, like everyone is using this stuff. So if you're not, you're really kind of out in the cold a little bit.

Sari 7:42
When people are first starting, I think it depends on how big they're going. In my opinion, is like, if you're starting at a farmer's market cottage food, you know, very low level of investment. Just get started. You can prove it out. You know, you can prove it to some extent, with a minimum viable product at the market and get feedback real time, feedback on pricing and packaging and taste and all that stuff, right? Flavors. But you know, some people launch with like, I'm going straight to a co packer. We're going to be running, you know, 10,000 units, 50,000 units. I do think the bigger your launch, the more investment than making an investment in some data can be very useful.

Benji 8:27
Yeah, well, you know, they say that, like, getting on the shelf is, like the easy part, right? And, like, is it hard not to belittle it is very hard to get on any retailer shelf, you know. But once you're there, you know, you need to kind of jump off the shelf and into people's carts, you know. Like, that's what people say, right? And, you know, there's a lot of ways that you can, like, help make that happen, but like, you know, a couple that are really data heavy or related, or, like, having a good promotional strategy, you know. So, you know, people do promotions to drive trial of a product, you know, and so you can look at data, and I'll give you answers to questions like, How frequently should I discount? How deep should I discount? Like, when should I discount? Should I sell? Should I put my guacamole on sale before the Super Bowl and Cinco de Mayo? Or should I not do that? The answer is, don't do that. But like, repeatedly, we found the answer is, do not do that. Yes, that's a terrible time to put something on sale, because people are going to buy it anyway, right?

Sari 9:34
Those are things I wouldn't have necessarily thought of. I actually have. It's kind of a personal question for I'm going to just get my own question answered so I have like, three chocolate bars, three different chocolate brands that I rotate around, based on what's on sale. Sure, yeah, I'm that person, and, you know, at Whole Foods, and I'm always so curious what their promotion strategy is, right? Like, why they choose to go on sale when they do? How frequently does it tie into certain Holidays or not? And then, even I'm sure that the Spins help with like, deciding how much to discount it as well?

Benji 10:22
Yeah, yeah, yeah. So I've actually worked with a couple of chocolate brands, you know, out there, and you know, so when you're, well the first thing to consider is that promotion strategy is very retailer dependent, right? So like, for example, Walmart, they don't do promotions, really at all. They're everyday low price. Okay? Publix, you know, they're famous for the Bogo, you know. So everybody has kind of like their thing, right? But, you know, most retailers do something, what's called the TPR, or temporary price reduction, right? And so TPR is a price change is temporary. That's generally greater than 5%,f you know. And for you know, a window of time, you know. And so what we help brands kind of understand is like, okay, so when you look at the chocolate bar, kind of set and category, who's doing well and who's not doing well, you know. And then if you look at the brands that are doing well, are they gaining like, market share, you know? And if they are gaining market share, you also look and see if their velocity is up, because velocity and promotional activity are kind of interrelated in a lot of cases. And so if you see that they're gaining market share, their velocity is up. They're spending more money on promotions, you know, then you can kind of look at, okay, what are they doing and win. So you would trend out their chocolate bars, for example, sale activity over 52 or 104 weeks, like one or two years, and you say, and you look at this chart, it's kind of like a heartbeat, okay, goes up and down, and, you know, like an EKG, like is it pretty rhythmic? Does it kind of like hue to seasonality concerns, you know, like a candy and, like Halloween are very, like, you know, intimately tied, right, you know, or other kind of, like, you know, it's a cold food, cold weather food. So, you know, you could see, kind of like, well, what are they doing? And then, you know, over these time periods. And then also, how long is the promotion? Is it two weeks? Is it four weeks? Is it eight weeks? Is it 12 weeks? You know, are they going, like, a measly 10% off, or is it like 40% off? And then also, what's the lift from each of those kind of like events that kind of happens over time? And so, you know, we're able to give brands advice on like, well, this brand that's crushing it, you know, is doing this frequently, this discount. And so if you want to, like, compete with that, well, a) you should know what they're doing, right? And then b) I mean, how can you out think them a little bit. You know, the best time they say to go on sale is, like, right before your competition. Oh, that's awesome. You can really make it work for you. And unfortunately, you know, there are a lot of brands and clients out there that kind of put this stuff on autopilot. They run the same playbook year after year, you know, right? And then that can be kind of rough, and then you're, you have to question yourself, Am I just kind of like wasting money or giving away margin at that point?

Sari 13:39
I would think in that example, because every now and again, there'll be two of the three that are on sale at the same time, and they're probably like, oh, now we're both competing, and we're both on sale, right? We don't even get to.

Sari 14:01
This whole becoming a CEO thing can be a little daunting, especially if you've never done it before and you are just so focused on being the maker of your product. But your business requires you to step into the role of a CEO, but if you want help, I have a CEO checklist that you can go and grab for free. Go to foodbizsuccess.com/CEO. This will help you to understand what you need to be doing each week when you put on your CEO hat. The more you can make time to work on your business and not just be in your business, the faster you will be able to grow and scale and create the business you love.

Benji 14:57
Well, yeah, it gets complicated. I mean, it's like, you know. For example, would be like, a National Ice Cream day or month, or whatever, you know, like, for whatever reason, you know, retailers are always like, oh, we got to put our ice cream on sale. They're on for this week or two that, you know, it's National Ice Cream day. And so, like, every brand kind of does it and like, is ain't really a good use of money, you know, like, because everyone's kind of doing the same thing at the same time. It's really like, it's almost if nothing moves on sale at the same time. You know what I mean?

Sari 15:27
So interesting. Anyway, that was a little bit of a tangent, not all in our topic list, but very fascinating. How you can use data to help, again, drive, I think, make decisions? And we've been doing a CEO series on the podcast all about making decisions. And how do you step into the role of CEO and really look towards the future of like, your long term visions. And I think as you scale, as you grow as a brand, data becomes more and more important. Can you take us like, let's take a step back and just tell us what Spins is? And like, where do you guys get the data? What is it like? What do you offer? Because I am sure a lot of people listening, this is probably their, maybe their first time hearing even the word.

Benji 16:14
Absolutely, okay. So Spins is, we're a data provider, and there are for consumer goods, full of food, CPG, right? There's three data providers out there, so there's Spins, and our specialty is in the like the natural channel, the natural sector, right? We also cover conventional data as well, because we have a partnership with one of the other data providers, which is called Circana, and it formerly was IRI. They changed names last year. And then there's a third one called Nielsen, which a lot of people have heard of, like Nielsen TV ratings, which is actually the separate business from Nielsen, although they were the same at one point. But, so there's Nielsen, Circan, and Spins here. And so what we do, what all of us kind of do to get data is that we have partnerships with like retailers. Okay, so in our case, you know, it's natural grocery stores like Sprouts and the fresh market and, you know, NCG and Infra and the co ops and all this sort of stuff. All these like retailers, and they, at the end of every week, they send us their basically, receipts, okay? And these receipts contain like, a couple pieces of information, you know, they contain, like the UPC, the number of sold, you know, the price, like, essentially, that sort of stuff, and the location, right? And from this, it goes into a, like, big Google Cloud type thing, and we're able to kind of populate categories and products, you know. So for example, Cliff Bar, or whatever Luna bar, they're in, wellness bars, you know, the wellness bar category. So we build these categories and departments and subcategories and all this stuff that have all the brand performance, you know, within each category, and we're able to look at not just things like dollars and units sold, but also other measures like pricing and velocity and distribution. So we can tell you with like, very high degree of confidence, oh, well, at, you know, Sprouts or whatever. Cliff bar is sold at 99.9% of the stores over the last year. And it's, you know, retail price as a brand is, you know, 381, or whatever. And they move like 10 units per store per week, you know, for the chocolate chip flavor and whatever. And on top of all that, the thing that really makes Spins unique, beyond our partnerships with, like, Great retailers like Sprouts, for example, is that we have really deep attribution. So, you know, products have like, claims on the label, like gluten free or organic or, you know, keto or vegan or whatever, right? There's a lot of them. We have over 200 attributes that we track for a variety of products. So, you know, you can look at like the kombucha category, and look at which flavors are really driving, you know, in the marketplace, and which flavors aren't doing that well. Oh, Ginger is growing at 2% but persimmon is up 150% or something like that. So you can use that information to kind of like say yourself, gosh, well, you know, you got to have a ginger flavor if you make kombucha, right? You know, it's like the vanilla of ice cream, you know. But I should think maybe about making a persimmon, you know, or something with persimmon in it, because that seems to be popular in the marketplace.

Sari 19:45
Yeah, that makes sense, and I'm curious. I remember at Whole Foods, man, I wish I still had access to some of that data, but we had all of those shopper personas and profiles. Does Spins help to kind of build out some of that stuff, or is that through something different?

Benji 20:03
Yeah, yeah. So we're actually launching a product. We've had consumer panel in the past so, and we continue to have that, but we're launching, like a lower priced tool coming up soon in our key four. That's syndicated panel. And so panel data. How does this work is, so I just explained to you a little earlier, like, how Spins gets this data. Everybody sends us receipts. Well, there's also this thing called the National Consumer panel, and all the data companies equally participate in this. Neil sends Circana and us, right? And it's 100,000 people, you know, throughout the United States, and they have like, this little app on their phone where they scan their receipts, right? And every time they scan their receipt, it gets entered into, like a lottery, and they could win a prize or something, you know. And so we know a lot about who you know has the phone, and like, what their household demographics are, where they live, what car they drive, you know, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, right? And so from that, once a brand reaches a certain threshold of buyers, like, you can't just be like, you know, a farmer's market brand, and a lot of cases you have to hit, you know, a couple million in sales, right? Then you can tell like, gosh, you know, like, people who buy, you know, my stuff are, you know, they drive a Prius, and they make about this much money, and they live in these spots, you know, and yada yada. But you can also kind of see other things, like, well, they're buying my brand, but they used to buy Clif Bar, and now they came over to me, so I'm stealing customers away from Clif Bar, for example, you know, and putting them in, you can look at like leakage trees or sources of volume. You can really know your customer a lot more intimately, but also like who you're really competing with in the marketplace. And that information can be really fascinating.

Sari 21:56
Oh my gosh. This stuff is so wild, and we all think we're so unique and special, but we really probably like we all fall into some, there's some label of a category shopper that we each fit into. I want to be, I want to be a shopper on that. How do I get that? Would be really fun. Oh my gosh. Okay, so that's really helpful to help people understand where you guys get your data. And so how do you like at what point do you start to see brands starting to really like that? It would make sense to start using data from you guys. And I would imagine that there's different tiers, right? Because I have had brands that just go and buy one report, versus a brand that's going to be getting, like, ongoing data. So kind of, can you maybe break it down for us. Of like, when would you need, kind of that just like, oh, I need a report. And then when would it make sense to be using more data frequently?

Benji 23:00
So generally speaking, you know, once you're, if you're a brand that's in a couple main key retailers, you know, your revenue is getting north of 750k a year, or maybe million dollars, on and on and on. That's where, like, you're kind of, you want to start to do a couple things, you want to start to like, like, look at the performance of your brand in those accounts, right? You know, which you can only really do comparatively if you get syndicated data, like a lot of retailers, like Whole Foods Market is one where you get access to the vendor portal, which is cool. I mean, it's free, right? We all love free, you know. But the thing that you're missing in that is, like, it only shows your brand's performance. Like, you know, if you make a wellness bar, if you're, what's the honey bar in Colorado? Oh, maybe Honey Stinger, yeah, if you're Honey Stinger and you're like, competing, you know, in the stroopwafel category, or whatever. You know, you know how many Honey Stingers you're selling, but you don't know how many you know stroopwafels that the competition is making. And so you may think like, gosh, my business grew 20% over last year. That's great, right? And but maybe it is, maybe it isn't. You don't know until you figure out kind of what the other brands are doing. So from a revenue perspective, you know, like generally, our brands clients we end up working with are, you know, north of a million dollars in annual revenue, you know, because it's not an insignificant expense, you know. However, we have launched a platform at Expo West this year, which was called Ignite, which is a free data platform where anybody can sign up for a, it's about a six minute category review snapshot for you know, any category you choose, if you go to spins.com/ignite, and you can just sign up with your email address. Pick your category that you want to analyze. If you want another category, sign up with a different email address. Don't tell them I told you that.

Sari 25:09
It's our little secret.

Benji 25:10
You know, and you can, kind of like, see what the size of the market is and if it's growing or not, or what the main, you know, product types growing in that market are, and that information is useful to anybody. I would encourage especially small, you know, founders, to know what like the total addressable market is for whatever they're getting into, you know, because it can be really interesting to see, like, oh, well, how big is the wellness bar category? But then also dive down a couple clicks and say, like, well, you know, are there any like FODMAP wellness bars, and is like that growing or not, you know, or so on and so on. So having that kind of anchor is really good, because once you know what the size of the market is, you can say, well, one day, if I had 1% of that market, how much money would that be? You know, and then from that piece of information, you can build a lot of forecasts and models yourself. And, you know, it's like, kind of the core piece of a business plan in most cases.

Sari 26:15
Yeah, absolutely, that was the other thing I was thinking of is, you know, if you're going to have to put together any kind of business plan for a pitch competition, or you want to get loans, or even, you know, sometimes friends and family want to see that if you're borrowing money, that there could be some that would be really valuable data. And that's very cool. You guys are made that that Snapshot anyway, free, which is awesome.

Benji 26:40
Yeah. Like for investors, you know, and this sort of things, a lot of times they want to see like the size of the market, which you think you could capture, of that market. Also, they want to look at things like your velocity, you know. So velocity, simply put, you know, like in a car. So velocity, we're all familiar with, that that's miles per hour or kilometers per hour, right? So, you know, distance over time, and then CPG velocity is your sales divided by some measure of your distribution, right? So it's your, you know, units sold per store per week, or something like that, right? A lot of different ways to measure it. But, you know, investors kind of want to see like, well, or what's your velocity? How does it compare to the competition? Is it growing or shrinking? You know, that sort of thing. And that can be, that's kind of like the king metric, honestly, beyond dollars and units, that's something that retailers are very concerned with. Is kind of like the throughput of how a brand sells on the shelf. You know, how many units you're moving per week. That's a huge thing that they use to decide whether or not you're going to stay on the shelf room.

Sari 27:50
Yeah, I remember I did a social media post a long time ago where I took a photo of a brand that was like a Colorado brand that I like, that had the last chance tag on it, and it's like, oh, like, I see those last chance tags, I'm like, oh man. Like, somebody got, you know, that brand, basically, the the store, the Category Manager is reviewing the data and seeing, like, you know, the velocity just isn't there because you're this is, you know, price per square inch, right? This is how they make their money and it's unfortunate, but, yeah, if you're not moving your product quickly enough based on their expectations, then unfortunately, they start eliminating you and replacing you with something that they think will work better.

Benji 28:43
You know, like, to that point, like, I love, so there's a Sprouts near my house. I love going to Sprouts. And where do you find new products in Sprouts? There's three spots. Okay, so Sprouts, they have this thing called the Innovation Center, which is like shelf that, you know, have a lot of their new products. Great place to go. Like, if you're a foodie, like you or me, right? You know, fun place to go to shop around, often you'll see like, oh, I know that guy. Okay, which is really cool. The other place you find new products is, like, on the regular shelves, because maybe they've been launched by a brand that's like, you know, a legacy brand, or has been on the shelf, and it's a new product there, right? Third place to find new products is the discontinuation rack, which is, like, you know, the hell to the heaven of, like, the innovation center, right? You know, and it's such a bummer, you know, when you see a brand that maybe you know, or you've worked with or something, and they end up over there, and, you know, like, the honest truth is, is like, well, a lot of category managers, like, how do they make those decisions? Well, a lot of it's based on velocity. And what they'll do is they'll use something like quartiles or fists, and they'll take the category and all the items in the category, and they'll say, all right, I'm going to put them into five buckets, like the first one will be the fastest 20% moving items like those can't, like, can't get rid of them, can't touch it, you know? And as a matter of fact, I want more stuff like that, right? Then there's, like, the mushy middle, you know, the next couple of buckets, and the lower you go, the more kind of in danger that you are, right, depending on how good or bad the category is doing. And then the bottom 20% like, that's bad if you end up in that bucket, right? Because then you're pretty much ripe for this continuation, because it's a, you know, it's a fixed sum game, right? There's only, in most cases, in grocery shelves four linear feet of space, right? And they're not, you know, adding on feet to these shelves, right? So they got to just, you know, pick winners and call out the losers, and that's just kind of how it goes.

Sari
I know, it always just breaks my heart, because I'm like, there's like, real people behind this who put in all so much effort and heart and soul, but it's a weird formula, because, I mean, there's always going to be a bottom 20%. There's always going to be a top 20% like, but what if everybody you know is actually you're still doing well, I understand if you're like, not moving any, or you move one a week, or something like that, but I don't know. I feel like there has to be some nuance behind it. But that's not our, it's not either of our jobs.

Benji
Yeah, well, you know, it's creative destruction, you know, in the capitalist sense. And it's also like meets, you know, head first with, you know, the endless source of shareholder growth that everybody wants, you know. I mean, so, you know, like a lot of these, I mean, you remember, like looking at comps at Whole Foods, right? Like, you know, that was, like, the thing that drove business every day. There was, like, looking at comps versus last year, you know. So how can you incrementally make progress as a grocer or retailer against that? And a lot of it is having, like, you know, cool stuff that people want. And so some categories, you know, these managers will take a flyer on something that seems unique or interesting, and sometimes they just want to stick with, you know, like the the Cokes and Pepsi's of the world.

Sari
Well, and I will use this opportunity to give one of our Master Your Business coach, Danny Walsh, a little shout out, because he Peaks State coffee this month. And this podcast comes out is in the Innovation Center at Sprouts nationwide. So if you're listening, I want to give him a little love to go and pick up a bag of Peaks State coffee that we can hopefully get him on the shelf as well so permanently, which would be amazing. Take that opportunity, since it's my podcast. So well, the other thing with that that came up was, like, you as a brand also need to always be innovating and we're talking about, like, bigger brands, I think sometimes people try to innovate so early, and I'm like, whoa, whoa, whoa, let's just get your base three core products But, you know, stores are trying to make room for innovation and new, you know, fads and diets and trends and flavors and all of that. So if they're seeing a brand that's really working, and then they add another flavor, they're going to want to make room for that. That's going to do well.

Benji
You know, one thing that's interesting about innovation and retailers these days is like, so I was talking to Kim, who's a main Forager at Sprouts, like, last year at Nosh at BevNet, and she was telling me that a lot of. So she's a Forager. So foragers, you know, they bring in, like, new products to the store. You know, Whole Foods Market as Foragers, Sprouts as Foragers. Other retailers have versions of that. Cool job. Cool job.

Sari
I always love that job. I'm like, how do I get that job?

Benji
Dude? Oh yeah, there's like, 10 of them in the world. It's amazing, you know, but pretty cool. So she was telling me that it's really interesting that these days when brands pitch her or her team that they have a lot of like DTC data that they kind of show her, you know, so, like, you know, if you start a business and, you know, you sell on Shopify or Amazon or something like that, you know, yeah, you're creating your own data in a sense, and able to see whether or not your product is doing well. And she thought that was just really fascinating, because, like, you know, 10-15, years ago, 20 years ago, whatever, you know, people didn't have that option, right, and so they couldn't. It's a really great way to show off that hey, I made this thing. People like it apparently, you know, and people are responding to it in some sort of way, and that can be often a good way to get your foot in the door. And it's important to know that, you know, DTC data and retail data. Just because something was popular on your Shopify website doesn't mean it's going to crush it at Sprouts. I mean, like, you know, and it's like different languages, you know, so you really got to be careful, but it can be a good anecdotal kind of like stepping stone when you're kind of making your pitch or your cell story to kind of highlight, like, you know, yeah, we made this thing. It's got this, like, key difference from everybody else. Maybe it doesn't have huge number of key differences, you know, but it's just like we honed in on this one thing that really resonates with people, and, you know, they love it. And so we thinkthat, you know, also, you can kind of harvest your own data from those sort of portals about who's buying this stuff, you know, and kind of use that and redirect it when you're conversation with retailers say, like, well, you know, like, our customer online is like, you know, so and so, and that really, matches really well with the type of people that tend to shop at your store.

Sari
Right, I think kind of mixing the data that you might get even on Ignite, and then mixing it with your own data. Because ultimately, you know, some people might be, like, data, like, that's so boring, but like, people eat like you and I were like, oh my gosh, this is amazing, because it tells a story. And I think that's the whole point of data is for you to really validate and to be able to highlight a really great story. You know, I'm sure you know, Doug Helbig, right? Green Spoons now. Okay, so he was on my podcast a long, long time ago, or like, firstyear, but he talked a lot about building that data story, right? And even if it's just like, farmers market data like, show that you went from, you know, 10 to 100 a week. Keep that, you know, Shopify data, and then blend it with kind of national retail data as well. And you got a pretty compelling story to at least get some eyeballs on it, right? Get some interest.

Benji
Yeah. I mean, you know, the cell story, or, you know, retailer pitch, right? You know, it's kind of funny, because, like, you know, you would be surprised how long a brand could coast on, like, good vibes or marketing, you know, like a surprising and if they're especially they're just naturally doing well, like they can go a long time was just like a good tail, you know, before you really need to enrich it, especially with, like, syndicated data. But, you know, a lot of times they start off with a couple essential, like fundamentals, you know,and that's like, data points about who's buying this, whywe made it, why this is a need that needs to be addressed, you know, in grocery today, and that sort of thing. So it's good stepping stones or beats and kind of like this, you know, this tale that you're telling someone to kind of convince them to take a chance on you. And whether that's an investor or a retailer or, you know, your uncle who's Mr. Moneybags, or whatever, you know, like, yeah, I mean, you got to kind of be convincing, and it can be like the sort of thing that puts your message a little bit over the top, and it meshes it more in reality.

Sari
This is my fairy tale story, from my perspective, it gives a little bit more validation for people.

Benji
Yeah. And you know what? There's a lot of ways that you can kind of get free data, like, so, you know, I talked about the Ignite program, which is great, but, you know, just out there in the world, like to spend zero money, like, I love thought leadership that, like our company publishes, but also companies like Mintel, so they do a lot of like ingredients and flavoring sort of stuff. And they'll often put out decks and things like that. We'll talk about the size of a market, what's growing and who's buying it, and all that, demographics and stuff. You can really cherry pick that a lot for some great stuff. I love the Dive family of websites. You know, Food Dive, Grocery Dive, Retail Dive, Sea Store Dive, those are just amazing. Snack Shot can be a great you know, blog too, do check it out, also another shout out, like Google Trends, you know. So, like, let me talk about this for a second. So Google Trends is a free, you know, it's trends.google.com, it's free. You go to it and you put it in a search query, and you can see how popular it is over time, and that time frame can be changed from like, you know, 30 days to go back like 12 years or something. And we've actually it spins like four cell stories and other like discovery style questions. Have actually used that because it trends things out on a weekly basis, and the trending actually matches our data in weeks, right? And so, like, for example, I had a customer, they were asking me, so they made it like a healthy snack, like the thing that probably doesn't sell all that great in, you know, October, November, December, but really crushes it in January, right? Like, something like that. And this was back in, like 2022, and they had this hypothesis. And it was like, I think that the seasonal bounce that I get in the New Year was muted this year compared to other years. As his theory was, it was the delta wave of covid. And we were, like, able to kind of like test that a little bit. So we built this group of like foods that typically have a bad Q4 but then a great Q1 so, like, the example would be, like a rice cake. Like, nobody's eating that for Thanksgiving, right? But it was like stuff like that, you know, like workout supplements, you know, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, right, tofu, right. And we kind of married the trended sales of that with like people search queries on like, covid related stuff, immunizations, like, why did I lose my sense of smell, like, all this kind of stuff. And over and over, it kind of proved out that not only would you see it in like infections at that point, like there was huge wave infections, but there's all this search traffic related to this sort of stuff. And that fact was it just in January of 2022, people were just sick in bed, and they were out buying rice cakes and, you know, Clif Bars and whatever, right, you know. And it was, like, noticeably muted, not only in sales, you know, but because of that. And it was like, you know, 10% difference from the year before, so, kind of fun. So Google Trends, amazing way to kind of see like, oh, is this diet trending? Are people still searching for keto or not, you know, like, that sort of stuff.

Sari
Yeah, how often do you think, I mean, obviously it matters. If you're a very large brand, you're probably accessing data like this, daily, weekly, something like that. But if you're like, you know, sub 300k how often do you think you should be accessing kind of market data or specific retail data to be able to make decisions if you were to?

Benji
Well, you know, like some people kind of use data for a couple different, you know, reasons. And like those, generally speaking, it's kind of boils down to, like product development, like performance reporting, and then cell stories, you know. And so product development and cell stories are kind of more like, all right, I'm going to go dig into data and then create this deck, or, you know, innovation pipeline, or whatever. And kind of, you know, sort of like a one and done thing every three, six months or something, right? You know, performance reporting though, is one of those things where it's like, oh, I want to look at this every month or every quarter, depending on, you know, what's going on, right? So three sub 300k to me, that tells me that you're probably in, like, you know, two, three retailers, maybe something like that. You know, it's one of those things that

Sari
Not national. That would be.

Benji
Yeah, you know, like, you should be aware of kind of how you're doing. You should hopefully be aware of how the competition's doing. But, you know, it's, it is like, you know, it's a thing to do, you know, and like and learn, and there is a learning curve to it. So, you know, some organizations like, like Spins, for example, we have, like, people who you can book an appointment with, and they'll write a cell story for you, or do that sort of thing. So, you know, a lot of it depends on, like, have you used this before? If you have, that's great, you know, if you haven't, well, here's some education on how it works. And even if, and you know, say you go through that and you still are, like, a little, I don't know, you can rely on an expert to kind of help build it up for you, but I would say, you know, surround yourself with people who have used it before. Have a buddy that you could kind of call up and be like, what's a unit TDP mean? And then, you know, they can answer you. We also do that too, but it can be really helpful, because it is, it is a lot to learn and wrap your your brain around.

Sari
Yeah, it is all and the acronyms, oh my gosh. Thisindustry has, like, I have a whole module, just like, it's like, all the acronyms and understanding the language of CPG.

Benji
Oh my gosh, yeah, it's crazy.

Sari
We sound like office space, like the TPR.

Benji
I mean, yeah, there's, there's a lot to learn. One thing I will say, so I'm the director of customer education like you introduced me earlier on this podcast, and we are building now a better like learning website for people to kind of go to, which will be free to the public, where they can kind of learn about data, how it's collected, what you do with it. And we want to have like examples on there too, of like, well, what's what's in a cell story, or what's in an executive summary for my CEO, or whatever you know, or what should I be putting in this report? So we'll have, like, an example library there, which would be really cool and hopefully inspirational for people, you know, so they can see what they can kind of build with this stuff.

Sari
Amazing. So glad you're doing that. We're really excited to have Benji come join us for fuel VIP call in October, and you guys, people in the membership, will be able to get it, ask you questions, but you're going to be doing a really great presentation for us that we're really excited about. It's all about breaking into retail, and how you pick the right retail partner, how you build a cell story. Do a great pitch and just kind of an overview of that natural retailer landscape. So anything you want to add to that, as we were just brainstorming, everything will be in there?

Benji
I think it'll be a great time. You know, super stoked to kind of be able to kind of deliver this like content that I hope that your audience will find, like not only useful, but like inspirational. And of course, I'll be on deck to answer any kind of questions that kind of come up with it and help guide people with, you know, how they can kind of turn the stuff that we're going to lay out there into, kind of, like a good strategy.

Sari
It's so fun, like, who would have known, you know, back in 2012 when we're both working for Whole Foods, that we'd be sitting here in two totally different places on a podcast talking more about CPG? So it's so fun.

Benji
Let me ask you a question. Do you ever miss working in the store on Thanksgiving? Like I kind of do?

Sari
Well, I was going to say in the store in general? Yeah, sometimes I'm going to say that's a no. I know on Thanksgiving, certainly leading up to Thanksgiving.

Benji
lI oved, like, the frantic like, you know, so they made all of us marketing people go out on, you know, face shelves and whatever. And I just like, loved how busy it was. And then he'd, like, get all these people who are just like, oh my God, where are the French onions? And like, how do I make a pie? You know, like it helped these people out. I would go back. Sometimes. I think I still buy lately. I could just go into store and work there for free or something one day.

Sari
Benji's in there, just facing shelves, turning product like, look at that. Look at that aisle. Fast looking aisle.

Benji
Take a picture of it, send it to the regional president. You know, bam, there you go. Who is this guy?

Sari
Well, thank you so much for being so generous with your time and your insight. I think it's a great conversation. And of course, can't wait to see you soon on, well I'll see you in Colorado, because you're coming here, and then we'll see you inside Fuel VIP as well.

Benji
Awesome. Thanks for the opportunity, and it was great talking with you today.

Sari
The smartest thing you can do as an entrepreneur is to invest in a who to help you with the how to speed up your journey and help you skip the line. When you are ready for more support and accountability to finally get this thing done, you can work with me in two ways. Get me all to yourself with one on one business coaching, or join Food Business Success, which includes membership inside Fuel our community of food business founders, that includes monthly live group coaching calls and so much more. It's one of my favorite places to hang out, and I would love to see you there. Go to foodbizsuccess.com to start your journey towards your own.