Consumer Trends and Food Costing Help Needed

www.feedmybottomline.com is a best practice example of supporting brokers and DSR’s with on-trend product information as evidenced by this Technomic study

Tip ‘o the hat to Rick Abraham who organized another informative FSMA top2top Broker summit.

A compelling presentation was this Technomic Study on The Future of the Independent Operator, which he has kindly allowed me to share.

Among the key recommendations:

“Independents are under real pressure. They are willing to listen, so bring them solutions and best practices: menu pricing strategies, cost reduction, margin optimization, waste and yield management.”

Discussions at the conference highlighted how tricky that is to do when you’re relying on the traditional method of telling your Regional to tell his Broker Principal to tell his BSR’s to tell the Sales Manager at the house to tell his MA’s to tell their customers. If you’ve ever played Chinese whispers, you know what we mean.

Interestingly, Todd Hauser, a leading Martin Brothers DSR and panel member, spoke about how he prefers to receive .PDF files describing products so he can e-mail them on to his clients. In fact, there were audible gasps in my row as he referred to a traditional printed marketing materials as “trunk trash.”

If you want to see a best-in-class example of how to capitalize on the operator need for information and the BSR’s and DSR’s desire to deliver it efficiently, take a look at the superb job Leslie Chase and Sara Lee have done with:

www.feedyourbottomline.com

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Easy as Sliced Pie

Here’s a great Sara Lee example of a new product introduction promoted via an eblast and custom landing page…

Here are all the ingredients of a successful nonbuyer trial promotion:

a solo eBlast to a select audience, combined with a custom landing page, describing the labor-saving, waste-reducing, consistency-improving benefits.

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Sara Lee + Healthcare

“This only strengthens our commitment to use Sara Lee Products…”

“To Ray Smith, Foodservice Rewards and Sara Lee,

Thank You for informing me today that I was a runner up in the Sara Lee Bakers Sweet Stakes Promotion. The 100,000 points came at the best time possible as our employee summer appreciation party is coming up and due to budget restraints this year we are not able to purchase prizes and give aways for our crew !!! Actually all we had was our former points saved and were going to use them the best possible way to obtain at least a small amount of prizes…Thanks to Sara Lee our employees will get what they truly deserve for all their hard work this year a outstanding summer appreciation party.

This only strengthens our commitment to use Sara Lee Products as we use a large variety and amount in our operation. This promotion truly shows Sara Lee’s commitment to give back to their customers.

A 5 star rating to Sara Lee and Foodservice Rewards!!!”

Thank You,

Chef Bill O’Brien, Executive Chef
Elkhart General Hospital, South Bend, IN

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Procter’s NRA Concert

While Jackson Browne was a big part of the draw, the way P&G positions their NRA concert as exclusive attracts more customers than a booth featuring Mr. Clean…

Procter & Gamble’s Jackson Browne concert at the 2007 NRA show was a superb alternative to exhibiting. It allowed P&G’s customers to sample products, salespeople to interact 1-on-1 with hundreds of selectively invited customers and prospects and produced a better ROI than trolling for random booth traffic on the show floor.

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Pictured left to right: Leslie Chase, Manager, Marketing Communications, Sara Lee Foodservice; Jody Dubuque, Chicago Account Executive, BI; Patty Duffey, SVP Marketing Development, UniPro; John Neupauer, Coalition Manager, FSR; Todd Crane, Division Vice President, FSR.

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Sara Lee Launch Collateral

Sara Lee’s cleverly named 1,000,000 point sweet-stakes give away supported their integrated launch campaign…

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Ask Amy: How are DSR enrollments doing?

“I am gathering rep lists from Distributor Program Managers and attending distributor sales meetings” writes Amy Bisek about our progress in growing the DSR incentive program…

63 houses have enrolled 345 385 DSRs. The number of linked customers is 245 293 (Updated: 5/18/06).

I’m often asked how we are promoting the DSR incentive program. In addition to running ads in ID Report, I am gathering rep lists from Distributor Program Managers and attending distributor sales meetings (Feeser’s last week, Cash-Wa in May) and based on the success of exhibiting at Ginsberg’s food show, we will now actively staff booths at other distributor food shows.

I am also building processes to improve DPM and DSR engagement. Soon distributorships will receive:

1) A post-registration How to Get Started Kit including a welcome letter, DSR enrollment fliers, How to Promote FSR at your Food Show flier (in development), and an Operator Enrollment Form.

2) Report samples that illustrate how DPMs can view real-time DSR enrollment progress online.

3) DSR enrollment notification via eMail (which cleverly acts as a reminder to follow up with the DSRs who are not yet enrolled.)

4) Monthly DPM and prospective DPM postcard mailings – this month’s announces the addition of Unilever Foodsolutions, Barber Foods, Basic American Foods and Sara Lee Bakery.

Please contact me with recommendations to improve our marketing efforts so that we can continue to create raving fans like Dan Reilly (32 customers linked) who enthuses:

“As a sales rep for Ginsberg’s Foodservice, our main marketing focus is to promote quality name-brand label manufacturer products at competitive prices. The big box chain foodservice distributors promote their own labels and incent their sales force on that fact. Ginsberg’s and I use Foodservice Rewards to give incentives to our customers through name-brand purchases. It works!!!

My customers now ask for products with the Foodservice Rewards yellow Reward Code labels attached. Any manufacturer that is not part of Foodservice Rewards is missing out on case sales and should consider signing up!”

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Sara Lee Foodservice Sweetens Rewards

We’re thrilled to announce that Sara Lee Foodservice’s Bakery Division has joined Foodservice Rewards…

Sara Lee’s bakery brands join the over 65 national brands already participating in Foodservice Rewards.

That’s great news for operators like Karen Lancaster, Owner, Busy B’s Bakery in Joshua, TX who writes:

“I have been a member of other food service reward programs, but none of them even compare to Foodservice Rewards. It is so simple – you tear off the yellow reward code label, go online to your account and enter the codes. The points add up really quick!!

I would recommend any food service operator, no matter how small, join this rewarding program. I am going to try to save all of my points and buy Christmas gifts this year. There really is something for everyone! Check it out!!”

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