The Online Community for Food and Beverage Startups

   GOOD FOOD BRANDS       IS GOING AWAY...   

Hey ,

So you may know that in addition to Foodbevy I run Good Food Brands, an online marketplace and gifting platform for emerging food and beverage brands. Well, very soon, Good Food Brands will be no more…

…Because I’m rebranding! In today’s email, I’m breaking down my thinking and process so you can learn from my experience. I'm adding a new section to these newsletters and each week I'll share a behind-the-scenes look so you can follow along the journey. I'll also be giving shoutouts to the awesome people and companies who help me along the way.

  Why Rebrand?

I’m a believer in the quest for constant improvement. I started Good Food Brands back in 2020 with the goal of creating an online marketplace to highlight emerging food and beverage founders.Over time, we added curated boxes and options for gifting and corporate ordering.While traction for the marketplace was slow, gifting and corporate orders took off. It left me questioning, where do we have the best Product Market Fit?

My favorite way to identify customer PMF is through the Foodbevy CPG Product Market Fit Survey. It’s an ongoing survey that identifies who is buying your products, why, and if you’ve found product market fit.

From this survey, I found that the majority of our customers were buying our products as gifts, with 80% of our sales coming from corporate partners.

While these top customers liked our business, company, and products, they saw room for improvement in our branding, packaging, and overall experience.

Wow! This was valuable info and aligned with where I saw the biggest opportunity. 

That led to some introspection and a decision to rebrand the company to focus on being a gifting company and a continued focus on supporting diverse suppliers. (continued below)

GFB REBRAND JOURNEY

   WHAT'S A NAME, REALLY?   

Now that I knew our new direction with Good Food Brands, my first step was to come up with a new brand name that would encompass our new gifting message. I've always come up with my own brand names, but this time I wanted a little help.I've been eyeing this site: No Revisions for a long time ever since I met their founder Anna, and decided to try working with them. You see, I'm working on a super slim budget for this redesign and I like them because they offer one-time design services for cheap. I used their branding and naming service through their partner Jinglehimer. So it was pretty cool. I got set up with their team with everything managed through Basecamp and had a kickoff call with Patrick from Jingleheimer. We talked through my goals, feelings, and branding, then two weeks later he came back with dozens of potential names, narrowed down to a top three.

Which of the top 3 options do you think I went with? E-mail me back with your top choice! I'll reveal the answer next week.Needless to say, the name felt perfect and I can't wait to get it out into the world.

WEEKLY UPDATES

   EVERYTHING TO KNOW       ABOUT GOOGLE ADS   

I am definitely NOT an expert on Google Ads. Honestly, I find it extremely confusing, which is why I went out to find Andy with PPC Pitbulls to explain it to me. I convinced him to let me offer up a 30 min strategy call to Foodbevy members specifically for a deep dive on your business. This isn't a "pre-sales" call just to push you to a more expensive product, he genuinely wants to help.Take 30 min to walk through your business and your unique goals and leave with actionable insights to improve your digital marketing.Free 30 min strategy call

   GRANT FOR CPG       FOUNDERS   

If you’re looking for grant opportunities, the Emerging Brands Alliance will be awarding a $50,000 grant this September.

This year’s grant is to help one CPG company purchase packaging or processing machinery for their operations. Just imagine what $50,000 could do to help you scale your manufacturing: Expand your product offering, increase your output, or automate to increase labor efficiency.

Don’t self-manufacture? This grant can be used towards machinery in a co-manufacturing facility, too.

The winner will be announced September 10, 2023, at the Emerging Brands Summit in Las Vegas.

Submit your free application today!

STARTUP TO SCALE PODCAST

104. Finance Stories: The Limiting Beliefs Holding Us Back from Financial Success

Conversations around finance are often stuck in budgets and forecasts, leaving out the most important part: our relationship with money. We all have limiting believes that are holding us back from fully engaging with our finances and this episode breaks them down.

All of us have deep seeded emotions from childhood that shape our relationship with money.

Listen to my conversation with Keith Kohler, the Financing Man to uncover how the limiting stories you tell yourself might be holding you back.

Listen on Apple Podcasts or Spotify

DISCOUNTS

Stripe is now providing $70,000 in fee-free processing for new and EXISTING customers. Save over $2000

NielsenIQ Byzzer platform provides data for emerging CPG brands. You can access 3 free reports using this link.

Mindful Goods is an awesome Amazon expert that can quickly get you started or optimize your pages for strong ROI. Get 10% of their services  use code FOODBEVY.

Maverick allows you to create individually personalized videos (with a customer's name) welcoming them to your community.