Impact Group

Entrepreneurs, startups, and small businesses in food retail face an enormous obstacle: established brand giants. Of course, that’s an obstacle faced by small businesses in any market, but it tends to be a larger obstacle for niche food brands. That’s due in part because people tend to be very particular about what they choose to ingest, which can make for extreme brand loyalty. That very personal, very particular concern about what one eats and drinks serves as an extremely powerful motivator to choose the best products on the market. This can mean that over time as different trends and health information come to light that people can be looking for products to potentially replace the brand giant they grew up with or are most familiar with. That provides an “in” from which a shrewd food retailer can carve out a sizable chunk of market share, particularly when partnered with a competent CPG marketing agency. Establish Your Ideal Customer and Take Them Away F...

So, your niche food or drink product or brand has been doing well online. You have a website with the appropriate dedicated point-of-sales landing pages and may also be offering your product through third-party vendor sites as well. This is the point at which online sellers of consumable goods face an all-important decision for their brand: Continue to sell solely online by focusing exclusively on digital marketing, optimization, ads, and expansion to seek additional internet-linked niche markets and the sites catering to them? Or, is it worth going after brick-and-mortar grocery stores and retail chains? The latter can certainly be a risk, but success would change everything. However you choose to court the grocery retail market, it’s going to require an investment of time, money, and effort. The question is: Which of those investments is going to yield the greatest ROI? Which direction offers the greatest possibilities for growth? Being Your Own Brand Amba...

A new industry trade association recently formed this September after the Good Food Institute’s Good Food Conference on UC Berkeley’s campus. The members of this fledgling organization were all representatives of the “cultured meat” industry—meat that is grown from animal cells in a lab (and therefore doesn’t require an animal from which to harvest said meat). Their first order of business was to replace the term “clean meat”—which, it was argued, might imply that traditional, live animal-based meat was less clean by comparison. The association settled on the phrase “cell-based meat” to resolve the issue, though it’s certain there will be more hurdles on the road ahead for this association and eventual product. Despite science fiction authors, futurists, scientists, and even world leaders having predicted the arrival and even takeover of cultured meat for years (Winston Churchill declared that it would make the current practice of animal-based meat production a...

It may feel like kombucha (pronounced kom-BOO-cha) is the latest health craze to hit supermarket shelves, but it’s experienced a great deal more than 15 minutes of fame. In fact, kombucha has been popular in China as a health elixir for more than 2,000 years. Its prominence on store shelves continues to grow as CPG brokers meet the high demand for highly portable kombucha. So, what is kombucha and why does demand continue to grow? To put it simply, kombucha is a fermented sweet tea (derived from green, black, or white tea leaves). For a more scientific definition, Wiley Online Library puts it best by stating, “[kombucha] is obtained from the infusion of tea leaves by the fermentation of a symbiotic association of bacteria and yeasts forming ‘tea fungus.’ A floating cellulosic pellicle layer and the sour liquid broth are the 2 portions of kombucha tea” The floating cellulosic pellicle layer they refer to is also known as a “scoby,” which stands for “symbiotic culture o...

The competition for consumer attention and loyalty has never been fiercer. In fact, according to research released in 2017 by Hartman Group Inc. for the Food Marketing Institute, just 47% of the 2,145 grocery shoppers surveyed stated that they did most of their grocery shopping at a primary supermarket—down from 61% a decade earlier. These statistics mean that supermarkets, and the brands they stock, have to innovate and adapt to remain at the forefront of a consumer’s thoughts and needs. CPG marketing and data-driven insights are effective ways to harness a competitive advantage for your brand. By investing in data, brands can gain the upper hand with retailers and consumers. Extensive analysis of your data can drive your presence before consumers and allow you to make compelling decisions that move your business forward.  Data can give your brand insight into: How you are performing compared to your competitors Your consumers and their shopping behavi...

As anyone in the industry knows, dealing in consumer packaged goods like food is no walk in the park. There is only so much space on the shelves and in the center aisles of grocery stores and supermarkets. If a natural food brand wants some of that real estate, it needs to work harder and smarter than its competition. / An established, reputable food broker enables vendors and brands to do exactly that. CPG brokers can provide their clients with a considerable amount of resources and expertise. They can give vendors a foot in the door, shoulder the burden of marketing goods and help clients reach new levels of efficiency and profitability. Here are three major advantages of hiring a food broker: Food Brokers Have Connections Like marketing in any other industry, effective CPG marketing needs to speak to a specific target audience. Before retailers agree to stock vendors’ products, they need assurance that those products will appeal to their customers. The best foo...