For the most part, food is competitive because it’s pretty easy to make and it’s pretty easy to sell. Therefore, everyone has a shot at selling food. How do you differentiate yourself? Especially in the beginning? Start will focusing on having a product be shareable.
The concept of shareability affects a ton of things and it’s vital for scrappy, young food entrepreneurs who want to get off the ground. We’ve all heard the adage that done is better than perfect, or a product must be perfect before it is solved, but in my opinion, the most successful products are shareable.
By changing your lens to focusing on a product that’s “shareable”, or able to be spread by word of mouth, it allows you to relax on making a product perfect, but it also gives you the ability to study who buys your product and who they share it with. Forming a community that shares based on the values your company emits is vital for building a strong foundation.
Here are some tips I’ve used to make shareable products. It’s not just a product, but also tactics.
Taste Baseline
First of all, you must have other people try your product and you must find a way to quantify likeness. It allows you to validate what works and in what magnitude. We call this in the industry, sensory testing!
When we do sensory tests, we usually do a 9-point hedonic scale where we rate the products we taste from 1 (extremely dislike) to 9 (extremely like). Ideally, most product developers can try their best to get all 9’s and 8’s, but in general, 7’s will do. Anything averaging below a 7 is back to the drawing board.
In general, most people have a concept of what tastes “good”. There will be outliers who will dislike it and there will be outliers who can’t get enough of it, but in general, most people understand what generally tastes good.
We say in the industry that taste is king and generally, you can have the most marketable health product in the world, but at the end of the day, if it doesn’t taste good, it generally doesn’t work out.
Good doesn’t have to be just taste, but also the experience you deliver to the consumer. If people generally feel good the moment they try your product, it’s possible that they’ll share it. This might be why it’s more than just trying the product, but how you present it, and what you stand for.
Food isn’t the only thing that people can judge as good. A good podcast is a podcast where the sound quality doesn’t bother you. A good spatula is one that doesn’t break when flipping an egg. Starting with good first is fine. It can be improved later.
Though you really don’t have to worry about having a perfect product when you first start out, if your product ends up exponentially growing once everyone thinks you’re “good”, then there are many competitors who strive to do “better”. La Croix, Quest Nutrition, RXBar and Halo Top Ice Cream are all examples that had a value proposition and tasted good, but competition made “better” products and they ended up having less success as more competitors entered the market. Therefore, you always have to explore new ways to innovate. Companies like Beyond Meat and JUST, which started with soy meat and eggless mayo respectively, innovated to the beyond burger and JUST Egg which is dominating the market.
How to Share Your Product
At the WeWork Food Labs, we ask our tenants to showcase their product and let them taste it. I always suggest finding ways to gather data by observing. Tasting is generally believing in the industry but how do you get someone to share it?
It’s really tough because you have to give away for some sort of viral effect.
Ideally, the best way to share is to give it away, but there are many more ways to keep the mojo going.
Demo’ing, whether it’s a farmer’s market, in-store, or expo is the best way to not only gather information about your product, but also the people who interact with them. In terms of just bootstrapping, the effort you put into demo’ing really pays off in terms of gathering valuable data.
Over time, I’ve noticed, that giving away not just products, but more intangible value, pays back in dividends but it’s extremely hard to do.
Probably the best example of “giving away” is my podcasts. I give the episodes away for free but that ends up paying dividends in terms of branding and opportunities.
Therefore, you have to be consistent in terms of “sharing” your stuff. It doesn’t have to be just products, but maybe experiences.
I’ve mentioned this a few times, but if you’re starting with a new idea or a new product, then you have to give it away and you have to monitor two things: If you give it away, will they ask for more? If they give it away, will they share it? Once you do that, can you reconfirm that again? How about 10 times?
Seth Godin says that if you give ten people something and if they share with ten other people, you have something going on. If not, it might be time to go back to the drawing board.
Tactic One: Strategic free product sampling
Everyone does strategic free product sampling. This is a store demo, this is sending a sample to a customer, and this is the ability to monitor what works and doesn’t work.
Sampling free product is difficult, but a necessity but there’s a strategy about where to sample and how to sample.
At my old job at Isagenix, we would have to do pilot runs of thousands of nutrition bars and we would have to give them away. I would put them at my desk, and give a few of them to people who really loved them. They would tell their coworkers about it and then they would swarm my office. The craze from this pilot run allowed my team to climb up to the c-suites so they had to launch it. It was just that good. The strategic part in this was to monitor who loved the bar a ton and treat them well. Eventually, they start to share it with others.
Though pilots work once, you’re generally going to be dealing with a huge amount of product that will actually eat away your inventory continuously. From my research, the best thing to do is live sampling and demoing. My friend Pete Brennan from Sonar says it’s one of the most important ways not only understand customers but also get broker interest. Having a founder behind the demo counter, especially when you’re just starting out is vital. I wouldn’t ask for direct feedback when doing demos, but study people’s faces and how they react to your story.
Tactic Two: The Human Element
Your product is not the only thing that can be shareable. Reputation is shareable, what your brand stands for is shareable.
Surprisingly, showing that you’re an actual good person does wonders when you’re selling a product. Yes, you can show this via demo’ing or publicity articles, but there are many ways to show the world that your company cares about what they’re doing.
I think it’s very important to put effort into innovative ways for people to come together and be immersed in what you stand for.
A great example is when I visited the Michel Et Augustin location in Brooklyn. Every first Tuesday of the month, they would do this event at their US headquarters where they would open their shop to the community and people all over the city would come and enjoy the warm and cozy location where their energetic employees would teach them how to cook French cookies.
Tiesta Tea also does a annual giving back program called “Spread the Warmth”. It’s an extremely generous campaign that allows people to give care packages to the homeless.
These types of engagements build up over time and they are a long-game tactic. They are an investment that helps your brand as it grows and creates loyal followers. It’s inherent nature that good people want to support good people and this is a great way to do so.
Overall, giving away product takes more than just giving away food. Putting more effort and diversity in your givings allows you to invest in your brand in the long run. Don’t have the money to do an event? Even a simple podcast can help not only gather your knowledge base, but also help see you as someone who wants to give.