Sales and Marketing | Edible-Alpha® Learning Center

Angela Mavridis Of TRIBALÍ Foods On Resonating With Your Tribe

45 minutes of Free audio by Edible-Alpha®

TRIBALÍ's clean, simple packaging communicates their organic, grass-fed and Paleo certifications, stands out on the freezer shelf and helps communicate their brand's promise to that tribe. Angela Mavridis, TRIBALÍ's founder and CEO reflects that the investor pitch process forces you to learn every single aspect of the business.

Podcast about Business Models for businesses that are Growing and Scaling

Build The Brand, Build The Food Business Ecosystem

10 minute Free read by Edible-Alpha®

Good brand building is built on an understanding of your target customer and what problems you are solving for them. While it is not the only thing that is needed to build a successful business, those consumer relationships are the lifeblood of all food businesses.

Article about Sales and Marketing for businesses that are Growing and Scaling

How Union Kitchen’s Ecosystem Helps Build Profitable Food Businesses

50 minutes of Free audio by Edible-Alpha®

Union Kitchen is a shared-use kitchen and food business accelerator in in Washington D.C. While having a shared-use kitchen eliminates the need for capital for kitchen equipment, there are many other things food businesses need to raise capital for, which is why they have distribution and retail outlets as part of their model.

Podcast about Business Models for businesses that are Pre-Venture | Startups

When Your Food Business Should Go Online

10 minute Free read by Edible-Alpha®

Food businesses should know the role that online sales will play in their revenue stream and in their business model. Consumers are starting to become omnichannel in their food shopping expectations. Like most things in food entrepreneurship, it is best to let your customers lead the way, and if they expect to find you online, go online and conquer.

Article about Business Models for businesses that are Pre-Venture | Startups

Farmers: Let’s Build A Brand!

10 minute Free read by Edible-Alpha®

Food consumers have been seeking more "premium" experiences from the food they purchase, including better connections with their food and understanding where it comes from. Developing brands for agricultural products can help farmers produce products that earn them a premium and are meeting a real consumer demand.

Article about Business Models for businesses that are Pre-Venture | Startups

Seal The Seasons Blueberries Berry Blend

How Seal The Seasons Matches Mission With Scale

1 hour of Free audio by Edible-Alpha®

Seal The Seasons began production in one of the partitions of a shared-use commissary kitchen facility where they installed an Individually Quick Frozen (IQF) production freezer, later partnering with a co-packer in 2017 and almost doubled their gross margin contributions as a result, passing more money to their farmer suppliers.

Podcast about Operations for businesses that are Growing and Scaling

How Top Note Tonic Pivoted Beverage Categories and Understood Their Market

50 minutes of Free audio by Edible-Alpha®

Top Note has pivoted away from syrups towards niche ready-to-drink, already mixed sparkling tonics, using their foray into syrups to further understand the mixer category and build their brand. Mary reflected that having a good bank as a partner is important and that learning about money has been the most useful thing that she has picked up as an entrepreneur.

Podcast about Business Models for businesses that are Growing and Scaling

MobCraft Beer’s Creative Sourcing of Recipes and Financing

45 minutes of Free audio by Edible-Alpha®

MobCraft beer is a brewery and taproom with a unique business model of crowdsourcing ideas for beer recipes from their customers. Knowing how much equity they needed vs. debt to finance their facility build out and equipment needs helped them pitch specific asks to both banks and investors, including for their $2 million tap room and production facility.

Podcast about Business Models for businesses that are Growing and Scaling

The Customer Is Always Right (Or, At Least They Are The Ones Who Pay...

10 minute Free read by Edible-Alpha®

Food businesses should align their products and branding with their target consumers and should use market research to understand what the marketplace is asking for. Acquiring and keeping customers is what drives successful businesses and customer preferences must be met in order to have a financially viable business.

Article about Sales and Marketing for businesses that are Pre-Venture | Startups

Jonny Hunter Of Underground Food Collective On Thinking Bigger in the Food System

1 hour & 30 minutes of Free audio by Edible-Alpha®

Jonny Hunter of the Underground Food Collective talks about his wish that values around local and sustainable food could be used to create systems that have scalable efficiencies that are affordable to consumers. He advocates for working together to build and sustain the infrastructure that would support processing and other means to scale up the local food system.

Podcast about Business Models for businesses that are Growing and Scaling

Focus And Discipline Are Key To Food Business Success

10 minute Free read by Edible-Alpha®

Focus is what gives food business owners clarity about their strategy and about the tactics needed to carry it out. Tools like the business model canvascan provide focus and clarity to their business model and the strategic implications of choosing a particular business model path or going after a particular target customer.

Article about Operations for businesses that are Growing and Scaling

A Steady, Slow Growth Path For Quince and Apple’s Niche Domination

1 hour & 10 minutes of Free audio by Edible-Alpha®

Because Quince and Apple has labor-intensive, artisanal products, the best strategy was not to compete on quantity or price. Instead, they chose to compete by dominating an emerging niche (pairing their products with specialty cheeses) while telling the defensibly unique story of their artisanal processes.

Podcast about Business Models for businesses that are Growing and Scaling

How Love The Wild Built A National Brand For Frozen Farmed Fish

1 hour & 5 minutes of Free audio by Edible-Alpha®

Within six months of launching their company they got their product out in front of consumers, trying out 127 product variations over an additional 18 months in just two stores. Once they honed in on their product, they rapidly expanded into distribution and raised multiple rounds of funding to support their growth.

Podcast about Business Models for businesses that are Growing and Scaling

Food Business Brands Evolve With The Consumer

50 minutes of Free audio by Edible-Alpha®

Originally branded as Ethnic Spicery, Flavor Temptations changed their brand to fully communicate the joyful, family-building experience of making memories through Indian cooking so that their brand resonated more deeply with their target consumer. They also changed their packaging to better share their values and to stand out on grocery store shelves.

Podcast about Business Models for businesses that are Growing and Scaling

Kill Your Darlings: Food and Beverage Business Evolution

10 minute Free read by Edible-Alpha®

Some entrepreneurs are uncomfortable with their business idea or product evolving as their business develops. However, most entrepreneurs start out trying to implement one idea, only to get feedback from consumers that the real business opportunity is in a different product, category or maybe even a different business model.

Article about Business Models for businesses that are Growing and Scaling

Your Place Can Shape Your Business Model Path

10 minute Free read by Edible-Alpha®

Different business models have paths i.e. divergent roads that entrepreneurs can choose to follow to achieve their business goals. Choosing one means saying no to another, at least initially, as each path has different scale requirements and requires different levels and sources of capitalization.

Article about Business Models for businesses that are Growing and Scaling

New Product Development and Rollouts For National Food and Beverage Brands: A Process

1 hour & 10 minutes of Free audio by Edible-Alpha®

Big food and beverage companies start the new product development process by focusing on their target consumer and the value proposition they are offering that consumer through their brand promise. Discovering and defining a consumer driven product is much harder to do than making a food product.

Podcast about Operations for businesses that are Growing and Scaling

What’s Your Story? Speaking To Your Audiences’ Needs

10 minute Free read by Edible-Alpha®

With consumers, entrepreneurs should develop in-depth personas about their target customer and use the language that speaks directly to their unmet need. When speaking to funders, entrepreneurs need to tell the story of their business model, their revenue model and their brand positioning i.e. the story they reinforce with consumers.

Article about Business Models for businesses that are Pre-Venture | Startups

Direct Sales of Farm Food – USDA 2015 Local Food Marketing Practices Survey

44 pages of Free report content + lots of excel data by USDA

From the USDA 2015 Local Food Marketing Practices Survey: In 2015, farmers produced and sold $8.7 billion of edible food commodities directly to consumers, retailers, institutions, and a variety of local food intermediaries such as distributors and wholesalers that market and sell locally branded products.

Books or Guide about Operations for businesses that are Growing and Scaling

Are You Ready to Start a CSA?

8 pages of Free report content by University of Tennessee Extension

Marketing is vital to the potential success of a direct marketing enterprise, including that of CSAs. Marketing is also inherent to many drivers of profitability including managing costs, production quality and efficiency, pricing for profit, achieving some minimum level of sales volume, building repeat customers, and managing risk.

Books or Guide about Business Models for businesses that are Pre-Venture