by Bob Benenson, FamilyFarmed

NewPoint Marketing played a big role in FamilyFarmed’s Good Food Financing & Innovation Conference held June 19. The company, based in Lafayette, Indiana, provided marketing consultation services to the winner of the Conference’s Pitch Slam — part of an overall prize package valued at $15,000 — that went to Mark Muller, founder/CEO of ready to BRANDS (and a 2018 graduate of FamilyFarmed’s Good Food Accelerator).

Now NewPoint is holding its own big event: the Emerging Food Brands Conference, on October 2 from 8 a.m. to 5 p.m. at the Purdue University Memorial Union in West Lafayette, Indiana.

The centerpieces of the event are a Lunch & Learn Buyer’s Roundtable, in which a panel of buyers will answer pre-selected questions submitted by early-stage food producers, and an Emerging Food Brands Sampling Tables exhibition — aimed at retail buying groups, brokers, distributors, food service and restaurants groups — reminiscent of the Trade Show at FamilyFarmed’s annual Good Food EXPO (to be next held March 22-23, 2019 in Chicago).

With a lineup of buyers headlined by Kroger (the largest U.S. supermarket chain),  Sysco (the nation’s largest food distributor), Giant Eagle’s Market District chain, and South Bend-based Martin’s Super Markets, the event is definitely worthy of the attentions of rising food companies who are looking to enter or expand into the Indiana food market. (To learn more about the event and how to participate, visit the Forum’s website. The Conference is produced in partnership with Indiana Grown and Purdue University.)

Patrick Nycz, founding president of NewPoint Marketing

NewPoint Marketing launched in May 2017; Patrick Nycz, the company’s founding president, has more than 30 years experience in marketing. He specializes in helping early-stage companies scale up, and is author of the book Moving Your Brand Up The Food Chain.

Nycz (pronounced “nice”) told FamilyFarmed that a key goal of the Emerging Food Brands Conference — embodied in its Buyer’s Roundtable — is to help entrepreneurs recognize what they don’t know about getting their products into stores, restaurant kitchens and consumers’ hands. When asked the most persistent issue he has found among food startups, Nycz said, “What they don’t understand is that when that buyer says no, don’t just take that. You’ve got to ask them why.”

He continued, “You’ve also got to understand that when you’re trying to sell something in, they’re not waiting for you, they don’t have a spot on their shelves waiting for you… ‘Thank you for this salsa, I’m going to put this on my shelf. You’re right, this is the best product I’ve ever tasted.’ It doesn’t happen.”

Nycz shared some of the questions that have been submitted for the Buyer’s Roundtable:

• What do retailers look for when placing a product in stores?
• How do you help in sales?
• What prompts you to accept a meeting with a possible new supplier?
• Are products less appealing when they need to be frozen?
• What is your target shelf life when looking at new products?

Product differentiation in an increasingly crowded marketplace is crucial. Nycz cited the case of Sheila Capito, a client who owns Fresco Spice Blends of Fort Wayne, Indiana. A fortunate startup, Fresco caught the attention of buyers for the big Meijer supermarket chain, which immediately took the company’s products national. Nycz serves as a consultant to Capito in her effort to get similar attention from other retailers, and they visited the spice section in a Kroger store.

“I said, ‘Sheila, what do you see on the shelf,’” Nycz recounted. “She tore it apart. Her expertise in where product is sourced, how brands are priced, is there too much of one kind of flavor?  I said, ‘Okay, bottle that up for your presentation. Because what you’re showing is expertise in your area.’”

“Smaller food brands need to show retail food buyers that they’re experts in their category in their category and plan-o-gram,” Nycz emphasized. “Buyers want to partner with vendors who know what is going to sell.”

Scenes from the 1st annual Emerging Brands Conference produced by NewPoint Marketing and held in November 2017. Photos provided by New Point Marketing.

Even with the strong focus on connecting early-stage producers with buyers, the Emerging Brands Forum is not overlooking other key issues affecting entrepreneurs. In fact, the event kicks off with a “Financing Growth Roundtable” focused on attracting investment. The panel features Andrew Bluestein of Chicago’s Bluestein & Associates, a mentor in FamilyFarmed’s Good Food Accelerator program, who Nycz met at the Financing & Innovation Conference in June; and principals at two Indianapolis firms, Andy Miller of Ouabache Investments and Jacob Schpok of Elevate Ventures.

Discussing Bluestein’s participation in the Indiana-focused Forum, Nycz said, “Our conference draws emerging food brands from Indiana, Michigan and Illinois. If the right situation comes along, I don’t think any of these people believes in borders at all.”

The Financing panel will be following by two sets of concurrent workshops on hot entrepreneurial topics. The first set will enable attendees to choose between “Finance for Growth & Investing Q&A” and “Social Media Marketing;” the options for the second workshop are “Vetting a Co-packer & Best Practices for Growth” and “The Killer Pitch Deck & Your Buyer Selling Story.”

The presence of industry giants such as Sysco at the Emerging Food Brands Conference underscores the growing recognition by “Big Food” of the seismic shift toward Good Food that is occurring in the consumer market. “It’s disruption,” Nycz said. “The consumers had to drive it. The consumers had to recognize.”

And Nycz praised FamilyFarmed for the work it has done over two decades to accelerate this consumer demand. Nycz said, “The advocacy that FamilyFarmed has done all these years is adding to the voice of what’s happening with processed foods, and educating people who need to know more about what’s going into them.”