3 Solutions to Overcome Slowing Foodservice Sales

Nick: 00:00:02

There are a million ways to make money in the food service industry. You just have to find one on the Titans of Food Service podcast.

I interview real life movers and shakers in the food game who cut through all the noise to get to the top. My name is Nick Portillo and welcome to the Titans of Food Service podcast. Let's jump right into it.

Okay, thanks everyone for hopping in here to another episode of the Titans of Food Service podcast. Appreciate you joining me again.

If you enjoy the show, if you could leave a five star review, whether you follow along on Apple Podcast or Spotify or anywhere you get your podcast, that means a lot to me. It helps with the show and to get traction and get it out there, you know, my started this, I want to bring knowledge and learnings to people.

I also want to shed light on this beautiful industry we call the food service industry. So if you can help there, that always means a lot. Back here in the studio today.

Enjoyed my time last week at the International Pizza Expo in Las Vegas. Pretty fun time. Got to walk around and see a lot of familiar faces on my clients, some operators and distributors.

So it was a really nice show overall. You know, coming out of COVID that show has become more and more popular and it's, it's definitely one to attend.

If you're someone in the pizza space or pizza ingredient space, I mean it's a no brainer. But you also start to see other manufacturers there that are not necessarily in the pizza space.

Maybe they're pizza adjacent or maybe have nothing to do with pizza whatsoever. But it's a nice, it's a breath of fresh air.

When you go to those types of booths that aren't in the pizza business and people, you know, operators like to come by and see what you have and things like that, you kind of stick out a little bit more. So I don't know, kind of interesting, really fun show.

I feel like and hope that the people there exhibiting got a lot of value out of it because I sure did back here on this podcast. Today I'm excited to bring another episode.

I wanted to talk a little bit, you know, going through the show and just my experience in the last 10 years as a food broker, you know, I see there's been, there's a change in food service landscape, especially on the sales side. So in the 10 years I've been doing this, you know, it's kind of a, in the most simple, basic way to say it, it's three things in food service.

We build relationships, we work the distributor network and we rely on face to face meetings.

Hence food shows like the pizza expo or you know, when you go to a Cisco show or a US food show or whatever, it may be face to face, very important to your business. You know that that model worked really well and will continue to work well. But it only works to a degree because things are changing.

If you look at other industries, let's take like the clothing industry, for example, at one time you would just go to Macy's or JCPenney or Nordstrom or wherever you shop and you'd go on, you'd try shoes, you' try shirts, you try shorts and pants, dresses, whatever it is. And then you'd pick what you like from what they had there and that's what you'd wear.

You know, moving forward now with technology, there's brands or there's companies that can, that do in home clothing delivery, such as Stitch Fix. Essentially with Stitch Fix, they'll send you a box with five items in it. You pay 20 bucks for the box.

It's almost like a mystery box, but you're paired with a designer, if you will, and you get to choose different brands online. You kind of click through and choose the ones you like in the box. Shows up your house and you get to try everything on.

If something doesn't fit, you can send it back and get a different size.

But the things that end up the five things, maybe there's only one or maybe there's two or three, or maybe there's all of them that you enjoy and then you get to keep that and then you send the rest back in the mail. They give you a bag and then a, a return seal to send back to to them. And then, you know, they just bill you for what you bought.

It's the same concept as when you used to go into the brick and mortar locations to try on stuff. You're still trying on things, but they're leveraging technology. They're hitting you in your home, you're going online to do this.

It's low touch point. You're not working with anybody directly. You know, you have your designer, but you've never met them, you've never been on a call with them.

So that's just one example of probably thousands of other industries leveraging technology and, or digital marketing or whatever it may be to build their brand. And I'm starting to see, you know, a little bit more food service companies move towards that.

Not necessarily in the home box sales, I'm not saying that, but there are other things in our industry that people are now starting to leverage. And I'll talk about that.

You know, kind of a few different things, a couple different topics or a few different topics maybe that you should start to get into. You don't have to be proficient and amazing today on day one, but you kind of do small little bits, bits and pieces over time. And hey, you know what?

ow, especially coming here in: 2025

You know, all these types of things. Also some slowing in sales cycles in food service as well.

You have at the distributor level, you know, they're, they're really focused, especially the more traditional broadline, they're really focused on their private label. They're trying to push those types of items.

So if you're not in that niche of products, you know, you have to really get out there and build your business in a different way, you know, because it kind of slows down the sales cycle. There's other things of, you know, just, I mean, a whole umbrella of logistics.

You've got imports that you compete with, you know, you know, maybe price or availability, you know, those types of things. You have other competitors coming in, people and brands that are making adjacent or like products or very similar products to you.

Maybe they're adding more value, maybe they're adding a different value. Maybe there's lower cost, maybe higher cost. It really just depends. There's more competition.

So I see a little bit of slowing in the food service ecosystem also too, at some point. You know, the economy's been pretty resilient coming out of COVID I know discretionary spending has been pretty good overall from my understanding.

And so we'll see what it looks like as time goes on.

So it's important as a brand, as you go through the ups and the downs, you want to make sure that you're building your business throughout and continue to build your brand as well.

Super important also too, I, in working with my clients, a lot of them feel that the operator is getting further away, that the distributor really has that relationship. You know, they're pushing again their private label or maybe they have their contract managed.

So you don't unless you have maybe a setex of contract or earmark contract that they're not necessarily going to buy from you.

Maybe they're having centralized buying at some of these operators so it's further away you have to take a flight there or many hour drive or whatever it may be. It's starting to feel like these operators are feeling a little bit further away.

And so that traditional face to face, some people call it belly to belly, which is kind of funny.

Like if, you know, essentially face to face selling that type of technique, it still works really, really well, but it may not be as scalable as other options that are out there. So kind of just some things to think about with the business. You know, you go from kind of your traditional door to door sales professional.

Now we want to take that old school mentality because I don't want to get away from that, that drag the bag.

Love and passion for food and getting in front of a chef and having them cook it up and try it and see their reaction and, and getting your products on their menu like it just feels so good. It's such a rush and I never want to get away from that, but maybe there's a way to enhance that.

So on this episode, I want to go through some different solutions that I'm seeing. And these are speaking from my experience. So the first one is around LinkedIn.

en in the LinkedIn game since: 2020

You know, even this podcast, I'll take little snips and clips, snippets and clips of this episode and post it on LinkedIn.

And it's a good way to get my, my own personal brand out there and drive my message of trying to teach and educate people on the world of food service through my eyes, the broker, through a broker's eyes, you know, so these types of things and what's great about LinkedIn is all of the decision makers, or let's say an overwhelming majority of decision makers that you want to interact with, they're right here on one platform on LinkedIn online, logging in daily, sometimes many times a day, multiple times a day, or weekly or monthly. So that when they log in, you want them to see you, my friend. Yeah, they want them to see you, not your competition.

We don't want them thinking about products that are not yours or brands that are not you. We want them thinking about you. It does.

The content doesn't have to be the greatest thing you've ever seen, but it's just getting out there and posting something. If you're at a food show, take a selfie, put it online, you make a sale, celebrate it. You don't have to necessarily say, I sold my product.

To give an example, this stadium or this restaurant chain, you don't have to name them directly. But talk about the process and how you got there and, and maybe the opportunity. Those types of things, those resonate with people.

Talk about your struggle and maybe you didn't sell something, or maybe your product fell short, or maybe you lost business because you couldn't service that, that customer. Talk about those experiences, those things. It's real, it's raw. People connect with people they want.

People want to support you, they want to get behind you as a person. You just have to share your experiences. And that's. And LinkedIn's a great place to do that. Proof in point.

When I go to a food show, for example, let's take the International Pizza Expo last week in Las Vegas. As I go around the show, people come up to me and say, hey, I saw this podcast episode and it really resonated with me.

I've had people get emotional, whether it's excitement or some people, it hit, you know, maybe some of my messages have hit more of a somber tone, maybe a negative experience in their life, but people come up.

Or maybe I've, you know, my long form post, essentially my writing things out, things that catch people's eye and they share it and they see it online, you know, those types of things. So that when they come up to me, they already know who I am.

I may not necessarily have ever met them, or maybe we've connected online and didn't necessarily recognize them on first glance in person.

But those types of things help me and my brand and myself when I go in and make a sales presentation that the person already has a little background on who I am. It's all about social proof, right?

If I have proof that the person that I'm talking to has experience or they have success or knowledge in whatever it may be, you become a little bit more comfortable with that person before they even say a word.

And then from there you can go, you know, because if you're listening to this in your journey, you may be the most experienced person in the industry or maybe you're just on day one. Either way, these, this type of stuff, it really helps if you're the most experienced person.

Give some like, you know, good, excellent, deep insight on the food service industry and the things that you've learned. If you're green and have never spent a day but this is your first day in food service. Talk about it. Talk about the things you're learning today.

You know, even if it seems basic, talk about it. You know, talk about your journey and where you want to go and, and what the, you know, your daily, weekly, monthly, yearly life looks like.

People want to hear that and they resonate with it. So that's kind of the topic number one of both brands is really getting online. Maybe LinkedIn's your vessel. It could be YouTube, I use YouTube.

It could be Facebook, maybe being part of Facebook groups. I'm, I'm in part of a K12 Facebook group where, you know, people share different ideas and updates in their lives.

You know, it's really great to be able to connect with people on these different mediums. The second part is being able to track operator demand. I'm seeing a lot of manufacturers get into that, starting to buy data.

Whether it's like Data Essentials is a great example where they're providing data to these manufacturers of, hey, these are maybe some segments and channels that you should look at and be in so that when the manufacturer makes decisions they say, hey, let's, let's move to this segment over here to the right.

We feel that there's opportunity, maybe let's create some new products because there's demand for it and then we can point our sales and marketing efforts exactly directly towards it. So operator data, super important. I'm seeing a lot of brands go towards it and it's, it's, it's very effective.

Now if you could take the data and then match it with actual contact information and relationships. Remember that old school, that knocking on doors, that's where that comes in. Taking that with the data and pairing it together.

I mean, recipe for success.

If you do it really well and at a high scale across your whole team or with yourself, or maybe you're training other people on how to, on your brand and how to sell your products, whatever it may be. And then the last one is really, there's only, there's only so many hours in the day.

Even if you have a thousand sales professionals on your team, they, they have the, the same, the same limited resource and that's time. You can, there's only so much time in a day, a week, a month, a year to be able to sell.

If you think about it, in a 30 day time, how many days in a month's time, excuse me, how many of those days are weekends or holidays or you're working a food show or you're spending a large majority of your A day traveling, you know, maybe you're going from the west to the east coast, those types of things. So you start to, you know, lose dates. Maybe what should be 30 days in total. You can't sell all those dates.

Maybe down your 20, maybe down to 15, maybe some months you're down to 10. It just really depends. Or maybe less. So it's focusing and maximizing your time around what really matters.

And if you're gonna point your, your sales arrow at anything, shoot big. Go for the large leverage operators. You've probably heard that llo for short. That's where your time should be.

The operator, the, the, let's stay on the theme of Italian. The, the pizza operator on the corner that only maybe could buy two cases a week of your product or a case a week.

That's a fantastic, I'm sure there, it's a fantastic business. They've been there a long time, they do great work. But in a sales situation, you really want to go hunting for the big fish.

If I wanted to maybe, maybe it's a pizza operator. Maybe can I find one that has 10 units? Maybe one that has 50 units? Maybe that one that has over a hundred units.

Can I focus my time there, present my products to them? Because when they buy, the sales cycle is longer, it's a little bit slower. Slower, it's a lot slower.

But when you get that hit, brother, big time product moves, distributor has to bring it in, they have to stock it for you. You put a price in, you build a relationship with them, then in the future you can show them other items. That's how you build your business.

So leverage things like get on LinkedIn, build your brand. They don't know you exist. You can't assume people know who you are.

Get out there, build that brand, broadcast it everywhere, Track you know, as you build your brand, track the data. Who are the operators in the segments and the channels that I should be in.

Once I figure that get a little more granular, find the large leverage operators that can buy your product and move it in big volumes.

So again, build the brand, find the channels, then go out there and make the relationships with the operators and this decision makers that make sense to you. That's my message for today. Thank you. I'll see you next week. I drop an episode every Wednesday.

Again, if you can leave me a five star review whether it's on Apple Podcasts, Spotify or anywhere you get your podcasting, that would be amazing.