"Fresh" Food Trumps All - 5 Ways to Be "Fresh"

The buzzwords are flying as food marketers look for new ways to appeal to still-stingy consumers. A recent report by Hartman Group found that “the picture is no longer black or white; it is a colorful mosaic where organic and/or natural intersects and overlaps with attributes such as local, fresh, sustainable, safe, green, quality, lack of additives and many more.”

Personally, I’m a big fan of “local” — it communicates a human dimension that I find msising from today's increasingly homogenous shopping world. When it comes to food, our research with consumers in August shows that the main benefit of local is that it's more likely to be fresher.

Consumers told us:

“Local foods are fresher and you are helping out your economy locally”

“(When local) there is less chance that they have been processed or preserved with mystery chemicals”

“Locally grown means that it takes less than 3 hours to get to me. Means the food is fresher and travels less (fuel, energy) to get to me.”

In fact, it turns out that what most consumers are really looking for when they say they prefer locally grown produce or locally raised meat is fresher food. So, the appeal of “local” is that it delivers on “fresh.”

Consumers not only prefer fresh, they are shifting their behavior and buying more fresh food in grocery stores and restaurants. Increasingly, they shop for that day’s needs and are not interested in food that requires defrosting. The explosive growth of farmer’s markets is one example of this shift.

When it comes to fast food, only “value” beats “fresh” among consumers as a reason for choosing one restaurant over another. We found that “fresh” also is the most compelling reason for trying a new menu item at a full-service restaurant. Restaurants of all types have noticed, and menus are shifting to emphasize fresh ingredients. McDonald’s is enjoying success with its fresh messaging.

Chipotle's reputation for food integrity and freshness has made it the No. 1 casual restaurant among Millennials. Our research showed that three out of five 20 to 24 year olds in California visited Chipotle in the past year, the highest penetration of any casual restaurant chain. Chipotle’s Millennial penetration in California is twice what it is among older age groups.

What’s a food, grocery or restaurant brand to do? Here’s a starter list of ways to be fresh:

1. Location: Be available where consumers are shopping for fresh meat and produce – specialty stores, butcher shops & farmer’s markets — or allude to them in the menu.
   
   
2. Packaging/Signage: Allow consumers to see through the package to the good food and ingredients inside. For restaurants, conjure freshness through signage
   
   
3. Ingredients: Minimize processing and eliminate unnecessary ingredients. Pursue sustainable practices (and let customers know).
   
   
4. Message: Credibly link to ‘fresh taste.
   
   
5. Target: Millennials, mothers and Food Channel watchers.
   

The move to "fresh" is an opportunity for food, grocery and restaurant brands to connect to a powerful, positive trend. Find your voice and get the word out.

Local Has Cache

Retail vacancies are on the rise in our town and others like it across the country. City Councils and Chambers of Commerce debate mostly useless tactics that will take months or years to have an impact and don't have the funds to do much about the problem. In a recent story in the Wall Street Journal, Joseph Epstein made the case for judging a city "by the number of blocks of interesting shops it contains."

I tend to agree with Epstein's friend, sociologist Edward Shils, who made the observation. I am not against chain stores - they have hard-working employees, just like the independent stores, and face similar challenges finding and retaining customers and talent. But to a great extent, their takeover of malls and street locations across the country has led to a homogenization of the urban and suburban landscape and of the customer experience. We've gained consistency and predictability at the expense of being surprised and delighted - it's the triumph of brand management over brand, which it a topic for another story.

Though lots of people are concerned about these changes, there has been little organized response, or at least little coverage of any organized response. The WSJ ran a story in June about campaigns in multiple cities across the country to save neighborhood stores. It profiled the 3/50 Project, which encourages shoppers to pick three independently owned businesses and spend $50/month at each one.

According to the organization for every $100 spent at a store, $25 more stays local if spent at an independent store vs. a chain store through payroll, taxes and other expenditures ($68 vs $43). Compared to buying online, all of that $100 comes back to the community. We buy a lot online, and shop at chain stores as well as independents, but I worry that the amount spent locally is not enough to make our town one Shils would judge favorably.

The whole idea of supporting local products and merchants appeals to consumers. Farmers markets are booming, and chain stores saw bigger declines than independents this past holiday. While sales at independent stores declined an average of 5.0% vs. 2007, retail sales overall were down a record 9.8% meaning that chains saw bigger declines: Barnes & Noble (- 7.7%), Best Buy (-6.5%), Borders (-14.0%), JC Penney (-8.1%), Macy's (-7.5%), The Gap (-14.0%), and Williams-Sonoma (-24.2%).

The Institute for Local Self-Reliance, a Minneapolis nonprofit research group, has found that community efforts to support local merchants can help to insulate them from the worst of the recession. Their research shows that independent retailers in cities with buy-local campaigns saw holiday sales decline less in 2008 than those in cities without them (3.2% vs. 5.6%). According to ILSR, there are about 100 buy-local campaigns active across the country. Could be worth bringing up at the next city council meeting instead of the next lame brand or beautification campaign.

Have you visited an independent retailer in your town lately?

Locally Grown Food - 3 Steps to Get the Word Out

Before a recent business trip, I bought a bottle of Crystal Geyer spring water at the airport. Nothing terribly remarkable about that…until I looked at the label. Since I’ve been doing a lot of packaging work lately for CPG brands, I took special note of the label on the water bottle. And that’s when I saw it – my bottle was “By CG Roxane”. Not only that – it was bottled “at the CG Roxane Source in Olancha, California, in the California Sierra Nevada Mountains.” In case I didn’t know where that was (which I didn’t) there was a map showing Olancha, CA near Mt. Whitney.

I’ve written before about the local movement relative to fresh produce. USDA and others are careful to point out that locally grown food is not necessarily safer than food from farther away. But it seems consumers are not satisfied with government assurances about the safety of the food supply in general, and they like the greater ripeness that sourcing produce locally affords. In some respects, “Local” has become short-hand for “Safer” and "Better."

The trend is accelerating and taking on new meaning. QSR Magazine’s May 18 issue reported on Chipotle Mexican Grill’s move to source some of the produce used in its 800+ restaurants locally. The story reports that Chipotle:

“will expand its local produce program this summer, purchasing at least 35 percent of at least one bulk produce item in all of its restaurants from local farmers when it is seasonally available. This represents a 10 percent increase over last year's program, the first of its kind for any national restaurant chain.

"Under its local produce program, Chipotle expects to have more than 25 local farms in its network that will supply some of the romaine lettuce, green bell peppers, jalapeno peppers, red onions and/or oregano served at the 860-plus Chipotle restaurants nationwide."

What’s new is that the trend toward knowing where our food comes from is extending beyond fresh produce to other categories. My bottle of Crystal Geyser is one example. Another is from last week's USA Today, which reported the launch of the Frito Lay’s campaign promoting the:

“80 local farmers from 27 states who grow the potatoes used to make its Lay’s potato chips. “Lay’s Local” is the brand’s biggest 2009 campaign, featuring 40,000 in-store displays customized for each state…Ads and regional store displays announce that the product is “locally in Texas.”

At the same time, Atlantic Monthly’s current issue (May 2009) features a story about the trend to locally grown meat. Apparently, lamb is among the winners here. As Corby Kummer, an Atlantic senior editor and the curator of the food channel on theatlantic.com, reports:

“Lamb offers several advantages to the budding locavore. Sheep are easier to raise and require less pasture than cattle, so aside from poultry and pork, lamb is the local meat you’re likeliest to find from small farms.”

What’s behind this drive to know the source of our food? Perceptions about safety and freshness are clearly part of the motivation. Sustainability and carbon footprint may also be factors. In today’s virtual world, interest in local sources may also be a quest for personal connection to a time and place.

Twitter can help smart marketers capitalize on this seemingly growing desire to know where our food is from, and get around the systems integration required to make real-time inventory information available online. Here are 3 steps for food marketers:

1. Set yourself up on Twitter using your brand name and the relevant geography you serve.
   
   
2. Tweet a few items that are new and / or particularly fresh or locally sourced each day, and where they're from.
   
   
3. Invite people to contact you to find out if you have what they’re looking for.
   

3 Ways For Local Businesses To Benefit From Being Community Insiders

Being a believer in having a vibrant local business community, I want to support our town’s local businesses whenever I can. Recently, I spent over 3 hours at a recent Business Task Force meeting discussing ways to increase the vitality of our local economy. Putting my money where my mouth is, I set out last weekend with my 17 year-old daughter to run pre-prom errands as much in town as possible. We had the dress but needed it hemmed, needed a slip and had to schedule appointments for hair and makeup before the big event.

First order of business was getting the dress hemmed. In our town, there are several dry cleaners that do alterations. We went to the most exclusive one first and struck out. We struck out again at the number 2 provider. Apparently, people in our town only need their clothes altered on weekdays. Neither store had any one on site on a Saturday morning to pin the hem.

With two strikes against us and determined not to strike out on the dress-related errand front, we abandoned our local businesses and set off to Nordstrom at the nearby mall. They didn’t have the slip we wanted, but offered to order it and ship it directly to our home at no charge. Great service!

Next, we asked in a tentative voice if they would hem a dress that had not been purchased at the store. The timid associate who helped us with the slip asked a colleague and was told “no.” It seemed to us that the colleague hadn’t actually listened to the question – we asked our timid associate to ask the department manager. We got the answer we were hoping for, and the alterations lady appeared on the spot! Nordstrom has always gotten service. And they understand their customers’ lives. Score one for the Seattle chain store!

When it came to the hair and makeup appointments, we again went local. Here, the providers were far more tuned-in than the dry cleaners. We found a few who were willing or even planning to come in on Sunday (our high school’s prom is always on Sunday night, for some reason). One enterprising salon had created a Prom Special, a package deal for hair and makeup. Smart marketers at work!

What’s up with the alterations people? What can other local businesses learn from these vignettes? Here are three ways local businesses (providers of products and services) can take advantage of the fact that they are community insiders:

1. Make your services available when people in your town are likely to use them. Whether it’s the seamstress at the dry cleaner’s or the local coffee house, if you’re not available when potential customers are about, you’re not only missing a revenue opportunity you’re risking falling off the community’s radar. The last show at our local movie theater usually gets out around 11 pm. Almost all of the stores in town close at 6 and most restaurants and coffee houses close at 9. Affluent people are strolling back to their cars with nowhere to linger. Give them an opportunity to come in and buy something!
   
   
2. Make it your business to know what’s going on in your town, and tailor your offerings for local needs, tastes and events. Unlike command-and-control chain stores, local businesses can be more nimble. As the hair salons in my Sunday prom story show, being tuned into the local community can give local merchants an edge on the competition in the surrounding area. By offering specialized products and services (e.g., hair and makeup for the prom or box lunches for the mountain play every Sunday in June), they earn incremental revenue and as importantly, they motivate residents to give them a try when they might not otherwise, and have an opportunity to turn them into more frequent customers.
   
   
3. Help consumers extend the useful life of their purchases. As sustainability grows in appeal and shoppers become ever more frugal, interest in maintaining and repairing clothes and other items rather than simply replacing them is already on the increase. Expect it to continue. Being known as the place that can help people to get more use out of their clothing is on-trend and personal. It's more natural for a local business to provide these services.
   

Smart seamstresses will see an opportunity to help consumers make their clothing last, and will make themselves available to fit their schedules. Those who don’t figure it out will continue to reduce their hours until they are no longer in business, unless Nordstrom drives them out of business first.

Why “Buy Local” Should Replace “Buy American”

In the ‘80s, I knew a lot of people who insisted on only buying American-made cars. Nowadays, though, it’s tricky to figure out what qualifies as “Made in America.” Honda, Toyota, and Nissan all have US-based plants. Nike, Patagonia, Gap and Wal-mart, are just a few of the brands that have most of their merchandise made offshore. We import food from all over the world, and sell most of it in US-owned stores staffed with US employees.

With jobs being slashed in industry after industry, people are increasingly aware of the connection between what they buy and where that money goes. The House-passed fiscal stimulus bill makes it clear that protectionism is on the rise - not out of patriotism, but out of economic self-interest.

Can consumers hoping to support their domestic economy buy Nike, Wal-mart, Toyota or the others and stay true to their conscience? Should we consider the “domestic content” of what we consume, and assume the higher the better? How would consumers figure it out? It’s time to let go old notions of protectionism and adopt a “Buy Local” mindset.

Just what does “Local” mean? Local stores can be part of a chain. They can sell merchandise from elsewhere (including other countries). And they can hire or be owned by people from elsewhere, too. What makes stores local is that they’re nearby - they’re in the neighborhood.

My Top 5 reasons for supporting local businesses are that they:

1. Provide jobs for the people who live nearby
   
   
2. Contribute to the tax base of their communities, which makes better schools, roads, police, fire, sewage and other services available to residents
   
   
3. Also contribute to a vibrant sense of community by supporting local charities and events
   
   
4. Can best fulfill local preferences and needs because they know us better through interacting with us day in-day out
   
   
5. Demonstrate that people we all know work hard and give back
   

It’s not realistic to think we can buy everything we need in our neighborhoods – stores in most residential neighborhoods simply don’t offer the selection or the pricing. And change is an incremental process, anyway. It starts by buying more locally than we have historically, making the 10+ mile trip to the mall a little less often and spending a little less at those stores when we do go.

Many retailers have deepened their connection to the local communities they serve lately. While some people don’t view chain stores as part of the local retail scene, I disagree. Here are a few examples that illustrate why:

• Macy’s – is rolling out its successful MyMacys program across the chain to return merchandise decision making to local stores

• Origins - has tailored some products for specific geographies, like its High Elevation Hydration Cream sold in the Denver-area stores.

• Starbucks – their support and call to action for customers to volunteer in their communities is a great example of getting local

I’m going to try the “Buy Local” argument the next time I’m with people who spout off about protectionism and buying American. Wish me luck!

Is Local the New Black?

In the wake of Enron and Worldcomm, I wrote an article on “Moving From Words to Deeds to Restore Public Trust“ that got picked up by Marketing Profs. It is as relevant to today’s outrages – just replace those guys with Madoff, the mess on Wall Street, and abuses of “rescue” funds by our biggest financial institutions. So, what have we learned since the last massive breach of public trust in Corporate America?

We expect greater accountability of the companies that enjoy our tax breaks, consume our resources, raise capital through our markets, and benefit in other ways by doing business in our neighborhoods. Most major companies launched social responsibility initiatives (or at least PR campaigns) before the September 2007 meltdown to demonstrate they understood this. But the bar is higher now that so many bedrock institutions have become beggars at the public trough. So, what are the implications for big companies? This time around, Corporate America may have died along with the idea that markets can be self-regulating.

If pendulum were to swing back toward decentralization, it would provide a way to for companies to get closer, and more accountable, to the customer and other constituents. Networking and technology provide the tools to enable many of the benefits and avoid at least some of the costs of taking a decentralized, locally focused approach to business. This is why I think local may be the new black.

There are real advantages to supporting local businesses – decisions are made locally and the people who work there are personally invested in the community since it’s where they live. In return, they support the schools, the local kids’ sports leagues, and more.

But what does local mean these days? Does it mean not-chain-store? Does it have to do with the type of real estate – not a mall? Is it about local ownership? Is it physical? I think it’s more a mindset… a commitment to serving the community, regardless of ownership, type of real estate, or number of locations. The challenge is to deliver that local, home-town feeling (regardless of where you’re doing business) consistently across locations.

Who’s doing this today?

• Real estate offices (including the regional chains) get it, and always have – they are all about the local economy they serve and are well-aware of the differences between neighborhoods.

• Local grocery stores – unlike Safeway and Whole Foods, Mill Valley Market and Molly Stones support most community events with cash and in-kind donations and they stock unique merchandise at customer request.

• Community banks & credit unions – their point of differentiation often is their support of the local economy or workers. Given their greater insight into the local market, they are more likely to make loans in today’s anti-lending environment than the big banks. And they’re getting no bail out money!

• Privately run enrichment programs for kids – preschools, arts & crafts programs and others like them cater to local families. There are good reasons why Steve & Kate’s Camp, West America Tae Kwon Do, and others like them are long-lived institutions in our town. They fill a need and make our lives richer.

With retail vacancies hitting small towns like ours hard, City Councils should be thinking about what types of retail they want to see move in. I’d suggest they consider the benefits of businesses with a local mindset, and go after these four types of good corporate citizens.

Is Local Better?

We live in Mill Valley, CA, four miles north of San Francisco in Marin County. In our town, there’s a definite bias toward supporting local merchants and products. Smith & Hawken got its start here, and so did Banana Republic. At the holidays, even the parking meters take a vacation so shoppers can park free like they do at the mall up the highway. In terms of store names and ownership, Mill Valley commerce is diverse, and that adds to our town's character and personality.

But Ad Age got my attention when they reported yesterday that "it’s going to be a private label Christmas." Most private label merchandise is sold in chain stores – near us, that includes Safeway, Whole Foods, Molly Stone’s, Target, and Costco (no Wal-Mart nearby). In general, people buy private label goods because of the savings relative to branded goods. Consumers typically don’t know where private label products come from – part of their lower cost stems from avoiding the expense of telling the story of the individual products.

Based on its research, IRI predicts that big-box stores like Wal-Mart and Costco could be the big winners this holiday, possibly drawing shoppers from department and specialty stores by convincing consumers they can save enough on food to cross the aisle and shop for gifts, as well. Guess that makes the local specialty stores downtown more vulnerable than usual this holiday season, and the local grocery stores, too. Besides free parking, I’m guessing there will be more holiday festivities this year to draw people to the local shopping district.

But what does local really mean? Does it refer to the store’s ownership structure? Or its involvement in the community? Can a big box store be local? Is there a distance that defines what’s local? Is it the distance from the customer’s home to the store, or from the source of the products to the shelf, or both?

In the fresh food category, Wal-mart defines local as grown in the same state as it's sold. Whole Foods considers local to be anything produced within seven hours of one of its stores, and says that most of its local producers are within 200 miles of a store. For Seattle's PCC Natural Markets, local is anything from Washington, Oregon or southern British Columbia. Frankly, of the three, I think Whole Foods gets it closest to right.

According to a story this week by Julie Schmit for USA Today, “the ‘locally grown’ label is part of retailers' push to tap into consumer desires for fresh and safe products that support small, local farmers and help the environment because they're not trucked so far.” And for some consumers, being locally grown is now more important than being organic.

Farmers' markets are seen a source of local fresh produce, meats and cheeses, and they're on the increase. Last month UDSA reported that the number of farmers markets in the United States has nearly tripled over the past 15 years to 4,385. We have seven a week just in Southern Marin County.

USDA and others are careful to point out that locally grown food is not necessarily safer than food from farther away. But it seems consumers are not satisfied with government assurances about the safety of the food supply, and they like the greater ripeness that sourcing locally affords. In some respects, “Organic” and “Green” have become short-hand for “Safer” and "Better." Sounds like “Local” is the newest addition to that list of reassuring words.

Look for a push for standard definitions and certification of “locally grown,” and a move to track and report on the handling of fresh food from source to shelf as people increasingly think about what’s on their plate and how it got there.

And back in Mill Valley, I expect merchants large and small to continue trying to figure out how to capitalize on our passion for all things local.