Hey , 

Happy Monday! I hope you have a great start to the week coming up. Today I want to talk about velocity, and how to get your product moving off the shelf. I've been talking with a lot founders recently who expanded their grocery footprint over the past year and now they're struggling to figure out how to increase velocity. Let's dive into this topic below.

PS. If you were forwarded this newsletter, please 

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  Why Velocity Matters

For those of you new to the industry, velocity is a measure of how many products you're selling per store per week. It can be measured in units or cases. The higher your velocity the better, but what matters is how retailers view your velocity in comparison with other products in your category. Retailers have limited shelf space, and their goal is to maximize velocity per category while maintaining a diverse assortment of products. 

Need to understand your velocity as your store footprint grows? Crisp is the best platform for compiling your sales data and measuring overall and store-level sales/velocity data.

I was able to get you 60 days to try it out with your brand for free, just click here.

Increasing Velocity in Store

When I launched TeaSquares into grocery stores, I thought my job was to make the product, and the store's job was to sell the product. Oh how I was wrong. As a brand, selling the product is ultimately your responsibility, retailers simply act as a location for people to purchase. Yes, good retailers will help to sell, but if the product doesn't move, they'll discontinue you. Let's talk about the best ways to move products:

Quarterly Promotions

-

Most retailers will expect you to run at least 4 promotions throughout the year of at least 20% off and expect you to fund it. I couldn't believe that retailers expected me to cut my margin, while they kept theirs! But like I said, retailers are just a shelf where consumers can buy your product. Now, I encourage brands to think of promotions like Facebook ads. Yes, they are expensive upfront, but the only way to grow your brand is through acquiring new customers through trial and encouraging repeat purchases from lapsed customers. That's the role of quarterly promotions. This is why it's important to build promo costs into your business model from the beginning, just like you build in social media advertising.

If you need help managing promos,

check out Promomash

. Their software can help you plan, schedule, and analyze promotions.

Demo Tables

- The first 2 years of TeaSquares I was doing at least 2 demos a week at Whole Foods stores. Starting out, demo tables are a great way to introduce you products to new customers. Shoppers love to meet a founder and support a small business. Even when you have to bring in help, people love to stop because who doesn't like free food? (Well apparently a lot of people, but that's another story). The only problem with demo tables is that they become extremely expensive to scale, and you often get a better ROI from promotions.

Retail Staff Support

- One very effective strategy is to build relationships with the store-level retail staff. They are the ones who make sure the product ends up on the shelf, answer shopper questions, and build the beautiful displays you see in the store. Ever seen one of those large displays of chips? The store has to buy that, which can end up being 10x their normal order volume. So what do you do? Send product samples to every store labeled for staff. Some stores let staff wear branded hats and vets to work. We were able to get a few free endcap displays from stores just because the store-level staff liked us! 

  Average Velocity per Category

Looking to understand where your velocity fits in? We compiled some average velocity data from our 2022 Brand Survey below. It's not representative of the entire category, so just use this data directionally.

Jordan Buckner

Foodbevy

PS. Check out some new offers I was able to curate for you below:

BACKEND OPERATIONS AND SUPPLY-CHAIN SUPPORT

Need more time and resources allocated to revenue generating and brand building activities? Black Ink Ops helps growing CPG brands scale by providing a suite of solutions addressing the non-revenue generating tasks that are time consuming, requires capital and often a distraction.

Acting as an extension of your team, their solutions include transacting the following on your behalf:

• Order Management

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LOOKING FOR A DESIGNER?

Crowdspring is an online platform to find freelance designers for your business. They can help with everything from graphic design and illustrations to website and packaging design. 

I used them to develop our first packaging design for TeaSquares and it was super affordable. They're offering $25 off your first project for Foodbevy community members.

NEW PODCAST EPISODE: 40. Building a Profitable CPG Business with Ami Bhansali, Chai Diaries

After watching many great CPG companies rise and fail, I've become an advocate of founders building a Profit First business model. This means they prioritize finding product-market fit and a model to breakeven to become a sustainable business. Ami Bhansali is one of those founders. She started Chai Diaries after coming to the United States to build her dream business. Ami comes from a family steeped in tea production and utilized that background to create delicious products. Best of all, Ami has now build a profitable business and we talk about how she achieved this.

Listen on Spotify | Listen on Apple Podcasts

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- Mindful Goods 

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With your help we're building an amazing community of Food and Bev entrepreneurs helping each other!

Jordan