Seven hot tips for a new retail food product
In the last decade, the food trends have varied dramatically year on year, especially in 2020 with more people spending time to learn new recipes and cook meals ‘from scratch’ at home. However one trend, that many dismissed has become permanent. Plant based meals including: raw food, clean food, probiotics; fermentation and healthy snack food.
If you are planning to launch a new retail food product in this space, read on for our hot tips and a relevant case study from Arabian Bites of how they have launched their cook at home Falafel mix.
The market for plant based meals is well established in the urban areas of Australia. Between 2012 and 2016, the number of Australian adults whose diet is all or almost all vegetarian has risen from 1.7 million people (or 9.7% of the population) to almost 2.1 million (11.2%). While Australia’s vegetarians (and those who eat an almost vegetarian diet) are more likely to live in capital cities than in regional or rural areas.Roy Morgan Research 2019. This is now an established market that provides opportunities to launch retail food products to match the demand.
Hot Tip No 1: Research the market to find out exactly what people are buying now, how much money they are spending and and what your competition is offering. Also pay attention to potential retail / wholesale opportunities for your product. Learn more via our Marketing blog post.
Hot Tip No 2: Develop a unique selling point (USP) based on your market research, before you spend any money creating a product. Then test that concept with your ideal customer, adapt your USP and test again until you are 100% confident you have a clearly defined USP. Learn more via our USP blog post.
What we also see with this trend in Australia, is staple ingredients not traditionally included within the Western diet the feature of plant based meals. For example legumes: beans, lentils and peas. Legumes are highly versatile in cooking, providing a number of health benefits they are popular in Middle Eastern, Mediterranean and Asian cuisines. However less than a quarter of Australians include them within their diet - cooking at home or within take away meals. Fava beans are the basis of falafels - more on this later with our case study.
If you are planning to be a producer of plant based meals, using a non traditional ingredient, you will need to conduct extensive research to fully understand who/where your ideal customer and what their reason is for needing your product.
Hot Tip No 3: The key is to understand your customer’s problem and solve it for them via your product. More on this via our What makes a Great Food Business blog.
The next step - developing a prototype - can be taken when you have a USP, understand how your product will solve the customer’s problem and have conducted some testing of the actual product with family, friends and some strangers for an objective view.
A prototype of your product is essential to conduct focus group testing: do they like the taste / feel / texture / delivery method / packaging / expected RRP point. At the same time as testing your prototype, you will be developing a strategic plan for your business that brings together the operational side of product development with an applicable business model. Don’t like planning, then check out our Planning for Success blog.
Hot Tip No 4: Don’t spend lots of money on the ‘perfect’ prototype. It will be a waste of money, add extra stress to yourself and defeat the purpose of having a sample product to gauge the market response to it.
If you get a great market response to your prototype, then you are ready to move ahead with developing a brand image for your business. Then you can move on to sorting your packaging and labelling, making contact with retail / wholesale outlets you identified during your market research phase. You guessed it, we have you covered with blog posts on brand / distributor / web design / online sales etc. Take a look via our main blog page.
If you don’t get a great response, then that is a win as well. You will have information on what didn’t resonate with your target customer and can use that to tweak/significantly change your prototype and test again; and you haven’t blown your budget by launching an untested product into the marketplace.
Hot Tip No 5: Don’t do it alone. It takes a lot of work to launch a new retail food product into the market place. If you are trying to cover all bases by yourself - you will feel stressed to the max at this point.
There are practical tools you can use to assist you; and don’t discount the expertise of your friends and family. BUT - an extra tip for you - cost in their real time at full market rate prices, because in the long run you want to be successful enough to pay for that expertise.
Also consider what expertise you don’t have or can’t access and outsource it to a professional. Why - because they will save you a lot of time, money and stress in the short term and also the long run. You will not be surprised to read, we have a Build Your Team blog post!
Hot Tip No 6: Genuinely pay attention to how you pull all your hard work together, so you can prepare for a clean and effective launch of a new product into the market place.
This is a super long blog post - so we are hope you are with us for the case study. Arabian Bites make a falafel mix and their target audience fits into a couple of categories, including plant based meals. Take a look at their website, to see how they clearly:
promote their USP - with great packaging, an eye-catching logo, contemporary website, colours, etc. all tied into their brand style and image differentiating them from their competitors. With basic details about their product ‘above the page’ on the home page and then more info further down for those who want it and will scroll for it
promote their secondary benefit - using fava beans means a healthy product ideal for vegans and those seeking more plant based meal options. This is the info people will actively seek on the packet and is critical for the target market of customers seeking plant based meal alternatives
prompt the potential customer to buy - three obvious click through buttons, for Product Range / Make / Buy combine to prompt a potential customer to find out more and ideally buy the product. The Make click through button is how Arabian Bites reinforce their USP
contact us button - essential on any website. Easy to see on this one, then when you click through they have a prompt to buy or contact re wholesale orders. They also have a phone number and email proforma - both demonstrating how they are wanting customers to contact them.
Hot Tip No 7: It takes a team to make this happen. Arabian Bites have been assisted by The Business of Food, a brand designer, a professional food photography, a website designer and of course family and friends. As their business has grown in the past year, they now have expert social media assistance to ensure they continue to reinforce their brand messaging and engage their target audience AND a retail buyer consultant to ease their way into retailers.
If you would like The Business of Food to be part of your team, providing practical advice and support as you prepare to launch a new food product, get in touch.