Welcome to the Community Call Podcast.
I am Melissa Travers, Director of Community here at BevNET & NOSH, here with my co-hosts Jackie Brugliera, Monica Watress, and Mike Schneider.
If you're enjoying the show, please follow and review us on Apple Podcasts or your listening platform of choice.
Monica, you are a new face on the Community Call Podcast.
Welcome, and how are you?
I'm sorry, I couldn't hear you over my crunching.
There's been a lot of crunching coming from this direction.
I'm thrilled to be joining the team and here in Boston or Newton, Massachusetts.
I'm actually based in Kansas City, so it's been a real thrill to hang out at the HQ, as it were, and spend some time at the local establishments like Market Basket.
So for your inauguration, we took you to Market Basket.
And I haven't heard your final feedback yet.
What did you think about Market Basket?
I think I'm still processing it, to be honest.
This is really important, by the way, Monica.
Well, I feel like you call it an inauguration.
I call it a hazing.
So from what I understand, the experience I had wasn't as intense as what you've described.
So this was like a low-key 9 a.m.
on a Tuesday-type Market Basket experience and not like a Saturday morning before a winter storm Market Basket experience.
That's Super Bowl level.
I was watching the body cam footage though, and it looked like you were trying to create that environment, ramming into people's carts.
Only because Mike told me to.
I do think if you leave Market Basket without ramming into someone's cart, then you've really missed the ball.
Did you really go to Market Basket if you didn't ram it?
What I wanted to make sure was that Monica had the Market Basket experience.
And yes, we did recreate a little bit of that.
Although there were some shenanigans happening in aisle one as we were walking in, and there was a woman behind us who did not appreciate it, and she was going to run you both over, just so you know.
We kind of just dodged that.
I think I know what you're talking about.
That actually happened two or three times while we were doing this point of view video, and I definitely saw steam come out of a couple of people's ears.
There's no fun in games in Market Basket.
It's like people go in with a mission.
They know what they're coming to get.
They're getting in and they're getting out and they're getting their deals.
Because even though it wasn't actually busy, you are always in there with the mentality that you need to get out of there as soon as possible.
Everyone has PTSD.
I had a delightful experience.
Excellent.
Well, I'm so glad that we could show you that local establishment.
It's obviously one of mine.
I feel like people love Aldi and Lidl, but to me, it's all about Market Basket.
I feel like I love it.
You're definitely the queen of Market Basket.
You're anointed.
Thanks.
I feel like that's a real compliment.
It's a life goal.
You're like a superhero, like the Market Basket Queen, where you just go and ram through everyone through the aisles.
But instead of flying, I'm pushing a cart.
Yeah.
Fighting the best deals.
That's right.
So, Monica, you have fully passed our test.
Now, please tell us and tell our audience, what are you up to here at NOSH?
Well, I've just started as managing editor at NOSH, and it's a very exciting time for the community as we are about to expand our coverage to the broader food industry and beyond the natural channel to really capture the evolution of consumer packaged goods.
And I've had over a decade of experience covering the food and beverage industry, so I'm really excited to leverage that expertise to help lead this effort.
We certainly appreciate that expertise and look forward to seeing so many great things.
I also appreciate your expertise in waffling.
Well, I would say that I'm more of a nano-influencer when it comes to waffling.
What's your Instagram handle so everyone can check it out and watch the waffling?
So it's what's Monica eating?
It's at Monica Watress.
And just the past year, I've been experimenting with what different types of CPG products can I put in my mini waffle iron.
And sometimes they turn out great and sometimes not so much.
Hashtag will it waffle?
She's a waffle influencer.
She's the queen of waffluence.
Sounds like I'm rich with waffles, like I'm affluent.
We need an AI waffle-er.
Okay, I'll make that.
Waffle hero.
We'll make the waffle queen.
And you even have the apron too to match.
I do.
So Robert Broom, the founder and CEO of Mooski was such a sweetheart, had that apron custom made and sent to me.
He is.
That's amazing.
That was a gift from him once I started doing these waffle videos.
And after that, I had to do more of the videos with the camera on me.
I was just taping the waffle iron before, but I was like, well, I guess I'm part of this now.
I've got this apron I have to show off.
So yeah, he's the reason for the Will It Waffle video.
Now everyone wants to know Mooski, Will It Waffle?
No.
Oh, I didn't think so.
So we're talking about a fresh granola bar.
It's coated in chocolate.
It doesn't hold up.
It sounds messy.
It was.
I mean, what lay underneath was a, you know, almost like a no-bake cookie type vibe, but it left quite a mess to clean up in my waffle iron.
That's a commitment because you knew what was going to happen.
That's part of it.
Sometimes you know and you still do it anyway.
I waffled ice cream before.
That's commitment.
If it worked.
I mean, how amazing would that have been?
Well, what do we think?
Will people people waffle?
You know, I don't know.
I feel like it's definitely worth a shot.
I know it would if you put it in the batter.
It would make for an interesting waffle.
Because what is people people, Melissa?
People people is a line of fermented hot sauces that are Pakistani in origin.
I actually just spoke to Elise Rizvi of people people.
She is one of the founders there.
She just joined our Slack community, which all of you can do at slack.bevnet.com.
Anyways, I was chatting with her just the other day, and she was talking about her journey creating people people.
Here, why don't we do a little taste test?
Oh, yes.
We also have these tortilla chips that we got at Market Basket today.
Michele's fresh.
Is that a vegetable orgy on the front of those?
It looks a bit...
We got a pepper that says, I want a strip for salsa and dip.
Very suggestive.
It's a veggie orgy.
I mean, sex sells, so.
Michele's fresh.
Yeah.
Yeah, let's do a little taste test.
It's very fresh.
The first is Harabara.
This is a lovely green color.
And then the second one we're going to do is Pila Pataka.
This is a...
It's labeled as a bright and fruity sauce.
This is yellow.
Okay, so I think that in Urdu means yellow firecracker, if I'm not mistaken.
Are there varying heat levels?
There sure are.
I think this...
I think this red...
And then we have Bhut Bangla.
This has smoky and fiery, so it will be interesting to see.
Okay, so Bhut Bangla means haunted house.
Does it really?
It's like my favorite.
Can I see that one again?
Pila Pataka's habanero.
It's so good.
Oh, good God.
This stuff is super spicy.
It's so good.
What's the heat level on that bottle?
The habanero.
That's three?
Two peppers on the...
It's three, and it's really spicy, and it's really good.
The red one has four.
I'm going again.
Four out of five.
I started with the red one, which perhaps was not the wisest decision.
Jackie, I feel so bad.
I feel like it's the rudest thing.
I put plenty of hot sauce in my fridge.
I am like the hot sauce queen.
Jackie, do you have this?
I don't have people people right now.
It's missing.
It's the missing link in my fridge right now.
See, we met Aliza at the Snack Shot event before Expo West.
And that's when I learned about People People.
Also learned about Paro.
Also learned about another great brand called Baba's Kitchen.
Oh, it's so hot.
The boot bongola is ridiculous and spicy.
Your eyes are watering.
Pretty generous pour too that you...
I mean, I'm not going to hold back.
Mike's using it like salsa.
Wow.
Monica, what do you think?
I can't speak.
That's how you know you had a hot hot sauce.
People People, five stars in quality and heat.
Five stars indeed.
Alize, thank you so much for sending us those hot sauces.
They are fabulous.
Well, we would like to see all of you in our Slack community.
You can join us there at slack.bevnet.com.
You can message us, ask your questions, and we'll try and give you a shout out on the podcast.
So please do join us there.
Yeah, we're also going to find the answers to your hardest questions.
We promise.
And if we can't find the answers, maybe we'll turn it into a community call and get the experts to answer it.
That's what the community is for.
That's what it's for.
And for now, in this episode of Community Call, you will hear Michele's Granolas, Oliver Buccicone, and Lauren Shafer talk about limited time offer strategy, innovation opportunities, partnership strategies, and lifecycle management.
Enjoy.
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Just head to submit.bevnet.com to get started.
Oliver and Lauren, thank you so much for joining us.
Why don't we start off with a quick introduction from each of you.
Oliver, I will start with you.
You are the CEO at Michele's Granola.
How long have you been with Michele's?
I've been with Michele's for just past three years, I think three years and two months officially.
Started right as COVID kind of started doing its thing.
Maybe towards the end of that year.
And your background, as I remember it, your background is not necessarily in consumer packaged goods.
Is that right?
It is not.
I actually have a pretty strong industrial background, but the way I like to say it is I'm a manufacturing guy.
I just, I love manufacturing.
If you can make it, it's fascinating to me, it's fun to me.
And so I've made granola now, doors and windows like inside of your house, all the way up to coal power, like coal fire powered plant equipment.
So we would have 10 to 20 pieces a year versus several hundred thousand pieces a year in CPG.
And because Michele's Granola, self manufacturers, all of those skills immediately translate.
100%, yeah.
Well, thanks so much for joining us today.
Lauren, welcome to the show.
You are director of marketing at Michele's Granola.
How about yourself?
How long have you been with Michele's?
Yeah, hi there.
I have been with Michele's Granola for 10, going on it will be 11 years in the spring.
So I've seen a lot of change in growth here, that's for sure.
That's amazing.
That perspective will be so interesting as we dive into this topic.
You've seen so many iterations, I'm sure, of limited time offers, and we can't wait to pick your brain.
So let's dive right into it.
First of all, let's talk about how Michele's defines limited time offers.
So, for example, how...
I know the time is limited.
How limited?
How long do you typically run these?
Yeah, I would say typically.
So I think of our limited time offer.
We have our limited edition series.
Those typically run for maybe a couple months to a quarter.
We also have a seasonal line.
It's a little different than a limited time offer in that it comes back over and over again.
So we have a fall seasonal and a winter seasonal.
Those repeat, and those probably go, again, maybe a couple months to a quarter.
And certainly with the seasonal items, I think we understand what the objectives there are.
But what are the objectives with the limited time offer items that aren't recurring?
What are your goals for those?
What are you typically looking to get out of those projects?
Yeah, I think there's a whole long list of benefits and reasons why we do them.
If you don't mind, I would like to talk about our original LTO, which was we started, Michele started this business at the farmers market.
And so at the farmers market, we were in front of our audience.
It was a great opportunity to make a special recipe, something a little different out of the normal, and let folks try it.
So something outside of our standard line, we'd bring it to the market.
We could get immediate feedback from folks.
Is this something you're interested in?
And that's how a number of our products actually developed was we were at the farmers market, made the original LTO, a small batch.
It was tasted.
It was brought back.
We loved it.
When COVID hit, that that pesky COVID comes up again, we pulled back from the farmers market, and within a couple of years, we realized, well, less than a couple of years, we really missed that that feedback that we would get face to face with the customer, putting something new in front of them, letting them try it.
We also really enjoy kind of playing in the kitchen.
So we're not just a CP Good distributor.
We own the manufacturing too.
So it's fun for our kitchen team to play with new recipes, play with ingredients.
We also realized from a marketing perspective, when we introduce a new product, something novel, our customers love novelty.
So there's the sales aspect.
There's the actual, our team enjoys making it and playing in the kitchen.
It also allows us to maybe, we're not much of a trend chaser here at Michele's Granola.
If you know our lines, we have a lot of clean, classic flavors.
But the limited edition offering allows us to play with some of those different trends, to play with different ingredients that may not be part of our standard line.
It also allows us to build on partnerships.
Partnerships have been really important for Michele's Granola since day one, and so being able to partner with different ingredient partners.
So you can see there's a lot of levels to this, from the manufacturing part, from the partnership building, and then ultimately from the sales process.
We find that because our customers love novelty, they're adding more to their cart.
That also brings in new customers as we're doing these partnerships.
I could go on, you better stop.
There's one thing in there, just from a more strategic level, that when 2021, middle of 2021-ish, we kind of realized we hadn't launched a new full line flavor since almond butter in, what, 2018, Lauren?
Yeah, 2018, 2019.
Yeah, 2018.
And so we hadn't added to our new full line.
So what the LTOs allow us to do is to experiment as well, right?
So see what kind of customer feedback we get.
And then we can, if it gets the right degree of customer feedback, we can then introduce it to our main line and continue to innovate and show that good vitality number from a strategic perspective.
How do the limited time offers coincide with Michele's Granola's overall business strategy?
Yeah, I'll speak a little bit, and Oliver probably has something to say about it too.
So we offer, currently we only offer them as a D2C offering.
It gives us a lot more flexibility and both with the product itself and then with the timeline.
Working with a retail partner, we would have many, many, many, many months of planning, if not years of planning in some cases, to really get it on the shelf with these limited time.
So they are part of our online line up exclusively.
And from a more corporate perspective, we look at it almost as marketing spend.
These are not cheap to make.
From a gross margin perspective, they are certainly dilutive.
And we make it a point to keep the price in line as best we can with what we're selling.
But these products, because we're buying unique ingredients, sometimes we'll have that partnership where we'll get a price break.
But in general, the cost that it makes to produce, far outweigh, say, like our original almond butter, those main line products, purely because of scale.
So it's very much a marketing spend.
It generates excitement.
It generates, frankly, it generates publicity, right?
How do you approach the innovation process?
What feeds your inspiration for limited time offers?
And I certainly know that partnerships is a huge part of that process.
There's a bit of a history with that, that really does go back to the farmer's market.
And there are members on our team who love experimenting in the kitchen and bringing in new ingredients, starting with Michele herself and then on down the line.
But we're thinking, you know, for example, I know that a few of us love Zoom Tahini.
It's a fantastic product.
We also love the company, a woman-owned company.
So we thought, I wonder what we could do with that, right?
Or we think of sometimes it starts with an ingredient.
Sometimes it starts with a person.
So this spring, we actually partner with an influencer, Dana, who goes by TheBullAddict, it's her Instagram handle.
And she uses our granola and our muesli and our granola butter and all kinds of bowls.
She approached us and said, have you ever had done a partnership with an influencer?
Maybe I could work with you and we could come up with something fun.
So that led to that.
So I think there's a lot of points of inspiration that can inspire us.
We also did a really fun, last year we did a golden milk granola, like a turmeric latte.
And we partnered with actually a beneficiary of our charitable giving program.
We operate a program called Give One for Good Food, where we donate 1% of all of our sales to organizations that are working to improve the food system.
And one of our grantees, we were looking to see, you know, maybe we could do something where this is specifically to benefit them.
And they actually grow turmeric as part of their urban farm and apothecary.
So it was kind of like the perfect meeting of minds on that.
So inspiration could come from anywhere.
And our team is definitely very good at taking that inspiration and turning it into something delicious.
I'll say one of my favorite things that we did last year, we did a crowdsource recipe.
So first, we asked everyone on our team, from the guys that are moving around the forklift in the warehouse, to bakers, to folks on the packaging team, to office folks like myself, and said, submit a recipe idea.
So everyone would submit it.
I had a stack of recipe ideas that was this tall.
We then took that and kind of bundled it up into things that were very similar.
We created a bracket, and we had 32 recipe ideas in a bracket, and started putting it on our Instagram story and getting daily votes.
We got it down to a final four, which was honestly really fun and very surprising.
I was biting my nails every day, like, what are the people going to choose?
We got down to the final four.
We baked four recipes.
We actually refined them a little bit to get to four recipes that we loved and would be happy with any of them.
And then our team did a tasting, and we also involved some of our influencer partners, and we also did a giveaway so some folks from the general public got to taste those four recipes, voted on them, and more of the granola became a thing.
I think there are a lot of ways that we found that we can actually engage our customers before we even release it, which was a lot of fun.
I remember we had a couple of folks who were messaging us on Instagram, and they said, I literally just set up this account to vote here.
I don't use Instagram.
Can you tell me how to vote?
I don't get it.
Which I loved, loved, and was very happy to help them every day.
It had you every day.
I think, again, obviously, I think at the strategic level, so to wrap our arms around that, it's very much talk to your friends, right?
Whether it's other brand partners, it's the grantees like Lauren talked about, our consumers or the folks that work in our shop.
At the end of the day, Lauren, Oliver, and our production mastermind Sam, we're not smart enough to come up with all this on our own, right?
So engage those other brains and hear what they have to say, and then you fill your production or your new product development funnel, and then you can start to narrow it down through whatever means you want to use, right?
So like we did the consumer bracket.
I mean, that's a glorified NPD funnel process, right?
Like, in action.
I've heard you both say that the limited time offers allow you to be fun and have some fun and engage with not only consumers, but also with your own team.
You also mentioned that you don't pay for any social posts yourselves.
I'd like to dive a little bit into social media influencers not paying for that kind of content.
I think is unique and I think it's certainly that so many folks who run brands themselves would be very interested in.
There was a Strawberry Shortcake Skew.
Lauren, I don't know if that was the one that you were talking about before with the Musely.
Can you talk a little bit about that partnership that led you to the Strawberry Shortcake Skew?
How it came about?
Did the influencer come to you?
Did you go to them?
How did that all play out?
The way that that came together is actually while we were doing the bracket where people were voting for that crowd-sourced granola, I mentioned her before, the bowl addict Dana.
She had reached out and said, hey, I see you're doing this cool bracket.
Have you ever done an influencer granola?
And so we started that conversation.
Working with her was a little bit, so I will say as a rule, to protect the authenticity of our community, we don't pay for posts.
We're happy to send free products to lots of influencers, and we do.
But in terms of actually paying for posts, it's just not part of who we are as a brand.
So this work with Dana, Dana had, I think she had said that we were one of the first brands that had ever sent her product.
I love her content.
It's all kinds of fun.
But she certainly back then especially was really focused on breakfast, which is, I'm all about breakfast.
So we went back and forth, and we talked about, well, what are some of the ingredients that you love?
Her content was focused on these beautiful granola bowls and muesli bowls that had tons of fruit.
And for her little personal logo, she had a little strawberry.
So as we were talking about options, banana bread or blueberry something, strawberry became obvious.
And so strawberry rose to the top as a great idea.
We did a lot of experimentation in the kitchen.
So based on that, we talked about some other ingredients you might like to try.
And for her, she thought about strawberry shortcake, as opposed to if you look at our flavors, they're very straightforward.
It's cherry chocolate.
It's lemon pistachio, right?
The name of the product is within the product.
There's not a lot of fluff.
So something like a strawberry shortcake is a little bit different.
It's not going to have actual pieces of shortcake in it.
So how do we make it taste like that?
And so there was a lot of iterations in the kitchen to get to that final recipe that was approved by Dana herself.
And then we launched it out.
I'll say in this case, we did pay a commission to Dana.
It was different than just having her post about the granola.
This was a real service that she was engaged in, in the recipe development.
And so that was kind of, I wouldn't say an exception to the rule, but a different case, essentially.
But I will tell you, that granola, that only was it extremely delicious.
We could not keep it.
In inventory.
And in fact, we sold so much of it, and it sold so fast, we had two instances where this happened with a limited edition.
We actually had to order another set of labels from our label company and get rush labels delivered.
We could label more bags and bake more granola to fill the demand because it was outrageous.
And how did you promote this?
I'm sure that Dana did a lot of that, but logistically, what did that look like on Michele's granola side?
And what did that look like on her side?
So before it even starts, a week or, well, I'd say maybe a few weeks before the release date.
And boy, there's a lot of paddling under the surface to get to that release date internally, just from the marketing perspective.
A few weeks before, we'll start teasing it.
We'll start letting folks know we have something new, something's about to drop.
You'll probably want to subscribe to our VIP text club.
Our VIP text club is going to get a few days' notice.
They're going to be able to buy it before we even announce what it is.
So usually, anywhere from three or four days to a full week before we make the public release, our text club gets access to buy.
What's a VIP text club?
The VIP text club is our SMS program.
You can sign up for it right on our website.
I'll be sure and share that link with you, Melissa.
Please, please, I want to be a VIP text clubber.
Yeah, and so the VIP text club, they get early access to purchase any new product, also with our seasonal editions.
They get early access on those.
We also send them special discounts that we may not send to anyone else or put out publicly on our website.
So it really is the VIP text club.
And that's a derail us, but our conversions for that are multiples of our email conversions.
Yeah, absolutely.
Because it's opt-in, we have really great engagement with the text club.
So when they get that early notice, that's also a really good indicator for us.
So I am tracking how many units are sold during the text club release exclusively.
And that will give us a good indication if we have a hit on our hands.
If that limited period where it's only those people who have a specific link that we have provided to them can purchase, if that thing takes off.
I remember our chocolate lovers, we sold, I'm just looking at my notes, we sold about a third of our inventory during that talk launch.
And that was another instance where we said, oh, oh, we have a hit.
We better get more labels in-house.
Let's order some more cocoa powder.
So VIP launch happened and then the big launch happened.
So it's a big social push.
Usually we have some kind of a partner who we're working with, if it may be, in this case, with the strawberry granola, it was a bowl addict.
And so she was sharing on her feed as well.
She also participated in the soft launch.
That's something that we'll offer to our partners.
If we're partnering with an ingredient partner, like Naveedah with their matcha powder or Tsum tahini or Dandy's marshmallows, we also give them that option.
And then at the full launch, we've done all the photography.
We've got some beautiful lifestyle shots.
We've got the bag shots.
We've got all the ingredient cues.
And everybody starts cranking out the social content immediately.
We'll do a bunch of email campaigns, continued outreach to our VIP tech club for those who missed their early opportunities.
And then we sort of follow and see where it goes.
I'm constantly tracking.
Internally, we often have a little betting pool.
And everybody participates in the betting pool to see when do we think it's going to sell out.
And so everyone will pick a date.
Everyone from, I mean, everyone will pick a date.
I never win.
I never win.
People always accuse me.
Oh, Lauren's just going to set up a 50% off coupon the day before that her date, right?
Which I would never do, I play fair.
Lauren, you mentioned Dandy's, Zoom.
I know that when we were getting ready for this, you both spoke a little bit about the brand partnership opportunities for limited time offers.
Is there benefits with working with brand partners the same as social media influencers?
Are there any differences?
What are the benefits that come with partnering with brands in this way?
Yeah, I mean, the brands that we partner with are brands that we love.
The brands that we love, and though we're not necessarily exactly in the same space, we certainly have shared audiences.
So for example, with the S'mores Granola, working with Dandy's Marshmallows, Dandy's is a vegan marshmallow company.
We are a granola company, and our granola is also vegan.
So there's definitely some crossover there, but our products have a little more of a sort of a helpful sheen to them, being with full grain oats and all that good stuff.
So we know that there are maybe some, what I would, with much love, terms like a junk food vegan may not be a hit to our granola yet.
So by partnering with Dandy's, who makes these really fun, indulgent vegan marshmallows, we get their audience all of a sudden has eyes on us.
You know, in working with an influencer, it's kind of a different sort of a partnership, whereas when we're working with another manufacturer, another supplier of an ingredient, we get access to their audience and they get access to ours.
When we did the partnership with Tsum tahini, we made a salted chocolate tahini that is to die for.
I should say an award-winning salted chocolate tahini from NOSH Live a couple of weeks ago.
But we love Tsum personally.
Many of us, I know, as a people in my cabinet, so partnering with them was personally satisfying, but also we know that their audience loved the granola.
Tsum actually also was one of the only partners we worked with who actually carried the granola on their website as well.
So typically, we're the ones who sell it.
We've offered it to other partners, but the logistics of having a granola product can be a little challenging.
But what's funny is, so they sold out of theirs first.
No, we sold out of ours first, and they sold out of theirs.
And customers kept trying to play mom and dad against each other.
Like, wait, wait, wait, do you guys have any more?
Wait, do you have any more?
And it was funny, we were talking, we realized literally, we had a couple of the same customers that were really haranguing both of us.
We thought that was pretty funny.
I think, again, to kind of just put some numbers to that, it's so much of it is about reach.
One of the questions we're constantly asking ourselves is, how do we convince somebody to try an $8 or $9 bag of granola, right?
That's not a cheap bag of granola.
And so this is one of the ways that we access people, where we reach people where they're at, that may not have heard of us, because we don't have podcast advertising, we're not on TV, right?
Like, we just don't have a ton of reach.
And so let's say Zoom Tahini has 25,000 followers, we have 25,000 followers, maybe again, like Lauren said, there's that intersection of call it 5,000.
Well, guess what?
We're getting to 20,000 more eyeballs that we didn't see before, that some of them may try this limited edition and now they become lovers of the product and now they'll try the main line.
Maybe they'll go find this in Whole Foods or Sprouts or wherever else we're sold.
Have you been able to quantify the increase in followers that you've seen from partnerships like Dandies or Zoom?
You know, have you been able to...
And I know it's sort of hard to tell where people are coming from and why, but any sort of general ideas of how much you're able to add to your social following based on partnerships like those?
Well, the numbers get thrown off because we typically do a giveaway, right?
So we know numbers go way up.
So anytime that we have a partnership with another brand like that, we've got to do a giveaway.
We can't not do a giveaway.
And so that giveaway on...
I mean, come on.
So that giveaway will be on both of our feeds.
So, you know, both of us get the bump.
So, you know, Dandy's Marshmallows gets the bump.
We get the bump.
They get our audience.
We get their audience.
Now, how sustained that is, that's always tough to tell too with a giveaway.
And the quality of those follows is sometimes questionable when it comes to giveaways, but there's always a bump.
There's always a bump.
Anytime we do a limited edition, we see a bump that's somewhat sustained on our Instagram following, for sure.
A question I've heard come up a few times when it comes to brand partnerships is how you sort of divide up the financial logistics.
Are there any best practices you've noticed?
Like, do you just buy the ingredient outright and then the brand that's manufacturing sort of holds all the finances?
Any sort of tips or tricks on what the best way to approach that is?
Yeah, it depends on the partner.
And in a number of cases, our partners will give us the product.
So they'll give us that unique ingredient.
And in exchange, we're doing a lot of the heavy lifting on the marketing side.
So we're putting that partner brand, whether they're donating or giving us a good wholesale rate, we're putting their logo on the bag.
We are promoting the heck out of them in email campaigns, social, through our texts, through blog posts.
And then one of the other really fun things that we do, I mentioned that we have our Give One For Good food program.
So we donate 1% sales to an organization that is improving, or working to improve the food system.
Our partner will typically ask them, who would you like the beneficiary to be?
And as long as they are a vetted charitable organization, then that's who the 1% goes to also.
So like with Zoom, they're in Philadelphia and they chose VCAP.
That's a culinary arts program that is fantastic and doing really good work to help teach individuals to pursue a career in food, what's not to love.
And so we donated the 1% of all the sales of the limited edition to VCAP.
I'll also say Michele is very generous and will usually round up a good bit so that we're making a more significant donation to those organizations on the behalf of our partner.
So it's just another way for us to really honor the partners that we're working with beyond making a delicious granola and yelling about them constantly on social and sticking their logo on the back.
We've got another logistics question for you.
You mentioned that your consumer base was pitting you and Zoom sort of as a mom and dad trying to get that last bag of granola for themselves.
How do you decide when to cut the cord on the LTO?
So certainly, you know, is it like it's better to burn out than fade away?
Do you want to leave people wanting something for the next LTO?
How do you decide when to end the offering?
When we first started doing this, we were kind of feeling our way around in the dark.
Now we have a better sense of what the volume could be, should be-ish.
So we are a little bit unique in that.
Well, I won't say we're unique, but we have to order packaging for the product, right?
Everyone's got to order packaging.
Our bag is essentially like a blank.
So we're ordering a label that we're affixing to the bag.
So we will order a set amount of labels.
And so that defines what we think we're going to make.
We may order a little extra just in case.
I mentioned there were two instances where we were way off and we had to go get more labels and order more labels.
That's a best case scenario.
But I'll even say with both of those, the two that really surprised us were Chocolate Lovers, which was our chocolate variety obviously, and the strawberry one.
We probably could have continued.
We probably could have ordered another round of labels.
But I'll tell you, initially, a lot of excitement.
Somewhere in the middle, we'll do some kind of other exciting campaign, another little bit of excitement.
But the excitement does start to wane a little bit, and you want to be done with it before the excitement is done.
So to your point, we like to leave them wanting more.
And in terms of how the limited time offers, be your innovation pipeline and maybe even land in your core lineup, what does that look like?
Have you ever had a limited time offer work its way into your core lineup, and how did that work out?
Yeah, we sure did.
Also, I mentioned that the way that we are naming conventions for our year-round line is very straightforward.
Aside from original, which is the original, they basically say, here are the key ingredients, here are the key flavors in this product.
The limited edition, a little less so.
We're a lot more playful with it.
So Chocolate Lovers, as I referenced, was our Valentine's Day limited edition a couple years ago.
It was very popular.
And just looking at the reviews on our website and the feedback that we got, people were clamoring for more.
So we had, again, we had already ordered more labels at once for it and did another big run on it.
We felt like, you know what, it's time for us to go.
It went away, but we kept thinking about it.
And I believe it was in July, we said, let's do this.
Let's do this thing.
And we renamed it.
So we had a little naming contest internally, where we tried, again, we wanted to be straightforward with the naming.
Chocolate Lovers is now Cocoa Chocolate Chip, and it's a standard part of our line.
Sprouts just picked it up nationwide.
Whole Foods is going to be picking it up in 2024.
So in this case, the LTO really did provide us with a lot of feedback that had translated into turning it into part of our main line.
And this was right around that time I mentioned earlier, where we knew almond butter was going to come out of our vitality calculation.
We hadn't launched a new product in several years.
Vitality is the percent of your revenues from new products introduced in a period of time, three to five years.
We use five years as our window.
So a healthy vitality, it's in the eye of the beholder.
For us, we've said, now that almond butter is gone, because almond butter is a huge portion of our sales, a strong vitality for us is 15% of sales.
So products introduced in the last five years.
So we were looking at it saying, almond butter is going to go away.
We haven't introduced any new products.
We have some work to do.
Oh, look, this LTO just took off.
We had to bake more.
We had to buy more packaging.
People love it.
They're asking for it.
Oh, and in this particular case, the cost basis was substantially lower than our typical limited edition.
So it was a really easy decision for us to say, let's take this main line.
Let's see what it can do.
And we have this hypothesis that it should be a number two or a number three product within our main set.
And it's moving in that direction.
It's absolutely, along with our maple pecan, is really driving vitality currently.
Oliver, you talked a bit about the tougher side of innovation, which is life cycle management.
So, you know, figuring out which SKUs to retire.
Do you find that keeping an eye on which limited time offers are doing really well and may deserve a spot in your core lineup allows you to eye existing SKUs that may not need to exist anymore?
Absolutely, 100%.
Look, products go through phases.
Some products go through phases.
Our original is just resilient.
It's never going to go away.
It's totally our all-star.
But some products take off because there's something going on in the market that makes maybe one of those ingredients exciting, and then the market moves on and that product falls off.
As a responsible innovator, you have to keep an eye on those products that are tailing off.
Ask yourself, why is it tailing off?
Is it fixable?
And if it's structural as opposed to fixable, you have to have the ability to say, okay, this one's going to go away, but that makes room for the exciting new flavors that people are super firing up about.
The other piece of it is around the same time we launched CO, Cocoa Chip, we launched a new muesli flavor that internally we were super excited about.
It was apple cinnamon muesli.
It did pretty well for a little bit, and then it just kind of flatlined.
And so when you think about your gate process, there is a post-launch gate where you say, is this product doing what we thought it was going to do?
And in this particular case, it was something around like 25% of what we thought it was going to do.
And as much as it pained us to take that product away, we ended up ending that product.
It had three of its ingredients were C ingredients.
So if you classify A as your most volume, B as your kind of middle volume, C as your unique ingredients, we had to trim those, we had three C ingredients in that product.
So moving that product on, took away complexity in manufacturing planning, made room in our warehouse, and then made room for whatever's next, right?
So potential new flavors.
What are the key criteria you look at when you're approaching skew rationalization?
So certainly it sounds like sell through, it sounds like ops considerations.
What are the different, you know, pieces of business that you look at when you're trying to decide where each product fits in your lineup?
Operationally speaking, much of it comes down to the cost and complexity burden that it creates.
So when you're running manufacturing, you have something called a change over wheel, and it's even more complex when you're dealing with allergens and in the food world, right?
There's certain flavors that simply cannot come after a flavor before it without essentially wiping down every single surface in the bakery.
And so you have to plan very carefully what sequence you're going in as you go.
And so first thing first is how many C ingredients?
How hard is it to make?
What's its contribution, right?
So is it expensive from an ingredient perspective to make?
Okay, so we have those three things.
And then it's, okay, which partners are they sold at?
Is it sold at a strategic partner and they're super duper in love with it, or are they not in love with it and they're kind of moving on from it, and is that informing, helping us inform the outlook for that product?
The other thing, and this is something we're wrestling with with one of our long-time mainline products, I'm not going to say which one it is right now, but there's some that are just fan favorites and there's absolute fanatics, and Lauren also manages our customer service side of things.
We know we're going to hear about it, right?
And so it's, our internal question is, are we ready to hear about it when this goes away?
And that's kind of that final gate of, if we're there, if the grieving process has started, it's time to move on and it'll be okay.
But it's hard, it's super hard.
I think one of the things that Oliver, Oliver is very data focused.
I also love data.
I also love a good story, right?
So Oliver is always reminding us that we have to, but this person, we have all this kind of anecdotal reasons why we should keep something around because, you know, customer so-and-so is, oh, we're going to hear from him because you always buy the five pound bag or, you know, whatever it is.
Those are just anecdotes and it's important for us to look at the big picture.
And sometimes, sometimes it is a personal hit.
It'll be a flavor that I have a personal love for, like apple cinnamon toasted muesli.
But when you look at the whole set of data, you know, it does make sense in some cases.
And Lauren's not kidding.
Lauren's obviously not saying the name, but there are literally people who we know by name that love a product, and in particular, the product we're talking about right now, that when it goes away, we might lose that customer, unfortunately.
Is there a way to test that out before you yank it?
Like, do you talk to those customers and try to find out if there's something else they would buy instead?
We really pride ourselves.
So, you know, I talk about Michele starting this brand at the farmer's market and having that interface with customers.
It's a different world that we're in, where we have millions of bags of granola instead of, you know, bringing six bags to a farmer's market in 2006, which is how Michele started the brand.
But we do really have a close relationship with a lot of our customers.
They are constantly talking to us through email, through our little chat bot on our website, on social media.
So we do have an open line of communication with our customers.
And when we are making changes, we're real upfront about it.
We're making sure to give them plenty of notice that something is going away.
So for example, with the apple cinnamon toasted muesli, again, something that I love very much, we made sure if there were customers that we knew who we knew loved it.
We let them know.
We gave them options.
We let them know, you know, our original toasted muesli, our classic toasted muesli is a great option, and here's why.
It's similar in these ways and different in these ways.
And try to provide a way for them to make another choice with us, as opposed to looking for something somewhere else.
So I do think we definitely have some open lines of communication with our customers, whether we know them by name or not.
We're always trying to communicate any changes that we're making with those customers, for sure.
Yeah, I think we've got a really good balance there.
You hear from Lauren, we care about every consumer that is eating our product, right?
One of the things we're constantly talking about is putting good whole food back in people's boundaries.
That's not just the super fans, that's everybody who buys it.
We care what they think and we love to hear from them.
And then we try and balance it with that data and kind of meet in the middle.
How about cannibalization?
Is that something that you see as a risk?
Is it something that you monitor and watch out for?
Are you worried that consumers are going to be purchasing the limited time offers and sort of stray away from the core line?
How do you reconcile that?
And Lauren just hinted at it.
One of the things that we notice when we do a limited time offer is that we monitor average cart size on our web store.
And when we do a limited time offer, conveniently the cart size goes up by about the price of a single bag of granola.
And so it's either our regular shoppers are just saying, oh, this is cool, I'm going to throw this in, or folks are coming looking for the limited time offer and then putting it in their basket in addition to other things.
When we converted chocolate to the main line, we were worried about cannibalization of actually almond butter and original.
And what we found is it hasn't cannibalized almond butter and original.
What it's done is it's kind of taken the place of another flavor that's on the decline.
And so when we talk about life cycles, when product life cycle management, you want to jump your S curve, right?
So you have this old product that's fading out, you want to jump from that one to your new S curve.
Well, that's kind of what we ended up doing.
Somewhat unintentionally, but it's what has happened.
People have left that declining flavor, they've moved on to potentially this new flavor.
Great stuff.
I want to thank you both so much for joining us today.
Oliver Buccicone and Lauren Shafer of Michele's Granola.
Thank you so much for digging in to your limited time offer strategy.
It is certainly creative and all of the information you shared was illuminating.
So thank you both so much for joining us today.
For everybody else, you can watch a recording of this call at bevnet.com/communitycall.
You can sign up for future calls there as well.
Thanks so much for joining us and we'll see you next time.
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