The Broker’s Playbook: How to Grow Foodservice Brands in New Markets

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. Welcome back to Titans of Food Service.

I'm your host, Nick Portillo. Thank you for joining me again here on another episode. Excited to have you back.

Please, if you enjoy the podcast, if you leave a five star review on whether it's Spotify, YouTube or Apple Podcasts or anywhere you get your podcast, that would mean a lot. It's been a bit a busy week. My daughter, Poppy, she is now 9, 10 weeks old, which is pretty surreal.

The first three weeks they were tough on the sleep. My wife, she's a champ. Poppy and I, I took her out early this morning on a little coffee run.

We walked while I, I pushed her in her stroller over to get some coffee at Kit Coffee here and in, I think it's technically Newport, Newport beach or Costa Mesa, one of the two. But really fun morning. And now here I am doing a little podcast.

Okay, so on this episode I'm really going to take, I'm going to go through how myself as a broker or as brokers in general, how we look to grow food brands in new markets.

So if you're, let's say a manufacturer rep or a distributor rep or broker rep or anybody in the food service sales marketing ecosystem, this episode is going to be for you. I'm going to talk about how we, you know, we as brokers, we represent many different brands.

We've encountered many, many brands over our careers and how we really take a brand and think about it in terms of, hey, if I want to build up new sales or a new company in a certain market or in a space, there's certain things that I need to look at and I need to make sure that I've got the groundwork laid. So we're going to go into some of that here today. So let's go ahead and get into it. So why, why expansion is harder than it looks.

One, a lot of times manufacturers, maybe they have some sort of setup already in retail and now they want to get into food service for whatever other reason. Very hard to do.

Just because we're both selling food, it doesn't mean it's the same and it doesn't mean you're going to have natural success because of it you think if a product sells, you know, in retail or even on the food service side, let's say I'm selling a product in California, it doesn't necessarily mean it's going to sell in New York or Florida or Iowa or other markets throughout the company. The company. Well, throughout the country. You can't just. It's not just a copy and paste model.

Now, you could have your, your most popular items in certain areas that always do well, but it doesn't mean you're going to have success across the board if you're having success in one market or in retail or whatever it may be here in food service.

So every market, whether, again, whether it's Southern Cal, where I live, or it's the Midwest, like Iowa, or even Hawaii, which I represent, we have a great team out there and our general manager and Alex and Kat, phenomenal what they do, and so well entrenched into that market. But it has its own nuances. In Hawaii, it's. It's different than what it is in California. The most nearing state. Is that a word? Nearing state?

The most geographically close state. In California, they're vastly different. I mean, between population, between just different dynamics and demographics across the two different states.

I mean, California is a beast. It's kind of like five or six states all in one.

But again, whether it's Hawaii or New York or Florida or any other food service market in the country, it's got its own culture, it's got its own distribution quirks, operator preferences, and of course, those decision makers, those gatekeepers that may prevent you or help you to sell your product.

As brokers, we're really the tip of the sphere in the journey of helping these you as a manufacturer or just manufacturers in general, grow your business. Okay, so start with step one. You need to know your ideal operator profile. Think of product market fit before you have boots on the ground.

And invest in a sales team and a marketing team and all those other things. You have to sit back and think about who is your product actually for in that market. Not just fast casual or coffee chains.

You got to get really detailed, kind of get granular with it. What's the volume potential? What's the menu style? What labor do they have in the back of the house?

Okay, you want to start drawing a picture of how does my product have functionality within a kitchen or within a food service operation? At my company at Portillo Sales and Marketing, we build what we call a strategic account classification guide.

So we really try to drive it down to, okay, if a brand let's say fits in business and industry, which would be think of like corporate campuses in California. We have Google, we've got Meta, we've got Salesforce, all these large companies that have large food service operations on their corporate campuses.

We really try to make sure that we are targeting the right ones for the right brand and that the size and volume is there should they make a purchase decision.

It helps us align these types of guides, help not just ourselves, but you align your product to the right type of operator because if you get that wrong, every other meeting becomes a misfire. Now I will, I will throw out this one caveat though. Sometimes you have to go out and trial and error. You have to test.

Marketing is really just testing and seeing what works and what doesn't work. So you may say I really fit in hotels, but, but in actuality you should be in healthcare or maybe you can do both. It really just depends.

It may take a little bit of time, a little bit of tweaking to figure out, you know, which way you want to go. So step one out of the broker's playbook. You have to define your ideal operator match in that specific geography.

Again, trial and error, test it out, see what fits. Interview or, or talk to operators in that market and get their feel. And they're essentially their buy in. Now let's go ahead and talk about buy in.

You have to build local distributor buy in in food service. Distribution is a massive key to success. And here's the part most brands overlook. You can't sell what they can't buy.

You need local distributor alignment before you start operator calls.

That means, you know, slotting Skus into the right distributor, having clean data in the system, aligning pricing with market expectations, educating the distributor sales reps inside those distributor walls as well. So there's many different aspects to it. I always say distributor reps are the second salesforce you didn't know that you had.

But they only sell what they're excited about. So you have to bring that passion. You have to train them.

You have to talk about margin and the use case and how they can be a benefit and a value to the operators that they service and the chefs that they call on the owners and so on and so forth. This stuff, it's not glamorous, but it's incredibly cool. Crucial and critical to success is getting that distribution alignment.

Now there is a little bit of this chicken. Chicken or the egg I believe is the, is the phrase the chicken or the egg.

You can go out and you can obtain that operator Pull through to force distribution or you can go to distribution first, kind of get their buying in, maybe have them slot maybe a pallet or two or a few so that you have a cart to sell from if you will in the trade going out to the operator. So you kind of have to find that right balance.

Again I'm not proposing but maybe an idea is a little bit of that, that you know, throw mud against the wall and see what sticks kind of mentality of. You can try, you can test the word. Test is going to be the word, the big word of the, of the episode.

You can try different things to see what really is the right fit for you. Especially if you're starting on the ground level. Now let's say you already have some products stocked in distribution.

Okay, now you've got something there. Let's say I'm working with Cisco Los Angeles here in Southern California. Okay?

Cisco Los Angeles is a massive distribution warehouse, distribution center. They call them opsites at Cisco. That's their corporate language. That Cisco upsite is massive.

So if I've got one item or maybe I've got five or maybe a handful or whatever it may be, I now have a cart to sell from.

Can I go to the buyer or the category manager and talk to them and say hey, if I put together some sort of marketing program, maybe it's 3%, maybe it's 5%, maybe it's bigger, maybe it's less. It's totally up to you and say can I get this product open coated so that I have something to sell from when I'm out on the street? That's important.

Once you get that, think about if you wanted to buy a certain brand of cheese from the grocery store and if it's not on the shelf then it's really hard to buy it. You can go around and circumvent, maybe buy it online or, or drive a few miles down the street to find a different location that may have it.

But really your grocery store, you want to have that cheese there. So it's the same, it's a similar type thought, similar type mentality.

And maybe I'm going too far on a tangent but here, but if the product is not stocked and available, it's really hard for an operator to say yes, I'm going to make that, that purchase.

So you have to think about I got to get it stocked, I got to get it open coded and get it available to the rest of the industry or at least the local markets that people have a way to buy it. Next is Going into and leveraging brokers like myself who have that local, what I call gravity.

If you're a national brand, you're trying to grow, you need someone local who speaks that operator's language. Or maybe you're a brand in Northern Cal. There's a lot of manufacturers that start in Northern Cal.

You have that kind of tech space and we see it in food as well. Maybe you want to start hyperlocal. I'm in Northern Cal as a manufacturer, for example.

I'm going to hire a broker like, let's say, myself, Portillo Sales Market, who's in Northern California. I want to start there.

I want to get super hyper local and talk about my, my brand story in that area and kind of make it again, the word test in one certain market. And then I can take that success and I can magnify it across other. Across the whole west, for example, across the whole country. Brokers.

What's great about brokers is and they understand the politics that come with distribution. They know what menu trends are happening in real time. They speak the operator's language. And I. They also have what I call knowledge of and access to.

They have knowledge of who the right operators and distributors are in that market. And many times they have access to them. They have a relationship.

They know the person by first name, or they can get a call back, or they can set up a meeting for you. You know, essentially get you a seat at the table. So knowledge of the market and access to the market as well. So that's a big piece for.

For where brokers come in. A great broker, they don't just push product. They build relationships.

They create those menu ideas and they connect a lot of the dots that you may not be able to figure out on your own, or your direct sales team may not have the bandwidth to do on their own. At my company, for example, we don't walk in with just a sales sheet. We're walking in with a solution.

Or, you know, we're trying to do concept selling. Maybe it's I represent a hot dog bun, I represent the hot dog, I represent the ketchup and the mustard. I compare them all together. It's a solution.

When I come in as a solution, as a broker replacement, as opposed to maybe say manufacturer up, where you're just trying to sell. Let's say you're the ketchup manufacturer if you're just the ketchup. But I've got everything.

A lot of times I may, as a broker, bring more value to a chef because I've Got more options. I may not be able to sell the ketchup there necessarily on that, on that call.

But the other items may have helped me get in the door or continue a relationship with that operator and continue to come back because they see that I'm bringing value to them. When you're evaluating brokers, I've done episodes on this I've done. You can go on our portillsales.com website. I've done blog posts on this as well.

If you're evaluating brokers, you have to ask how often are you in front of key operators? Can you get my product available in distribution or do you work food shows? Can you work those on my behalf?

What's your product process to launch a brand? Do you take a brand from the ground up or are you more taking an established brand and scaling them bigger?

You want to make sure you kind of figure out those things again. I've got a lot of resources and content over on portillo sales.com you can go check out. Okay, step number four.

You have to sample like it's a science. This is where some brands, not a lot but some, they fall short in the food service industry.

Food service sales industry, should I say you have to get product in decision makers mouth, period. They're not just going to buy something sight unseen. Does it happen? It can and it does.

However, most the time if an owner of a restaurant or the executive chef at a hotel or the buyer at a multi unit restaurant group, they want to try the product. They want to understand and play around and feel and test again, there's a word test. Experiment with your product and see if it will work for them.

If it fits their, the product profile, excuse me, the flavor profile they're looking, will it fit their demographic, all those types of things. So you have to sign, you have to sample like a madman or a mad woman.

The best brokers, they pre qualify the opportunity, they set up the right environment for you, whether maybe it's a hotline or maybe kitchen support or whatever and then they help follow up immediately and track conversion. So that's where again where a broker can kind of come in and help you in those types of things.

If not, if you're on your own doing those, it's trial and error.

You have to practice, you have to get out there, you have to, you have to perfect your pitch or at least practice your pitch and understand what works with the within the. Within the market. I always like to say a sample without a system, it's just a free lunch.

You can't just drop off a sample, they'll eat it, they'll enjoy it, and then they'll go on with their day. You have to have some sort of follow up mechanism, very important to your overall success.

Those that follow up more consistently and more often typically grow their business faster. So build the process around it from distributor sample, stock to a rep execution. That's not even a word, rep execution.

You have to have samples readily available. It's a cost.

You have to figure out how do I get that, those samples into the market so that my broker reps or distributor reps or myself or my direct team, whoever it may be, have access to them so they can get product in mouth. If you think you can sell from just a sell sheet, you're wrong. You, it's, that's one part of the industry that's incredibly important.

It's getting product in people's mouth.

Okay, now once you, once we've, we've talked about operators, we've talked about distributors, we've talked about sampling, we've talked a little bit about brokers and how they can help your business. Now we want to go an inch deep and a mile wide. Wow, I totally threw that backwards. No, you want to go a mile deep. Good job, Nick.

A mile deep in an inch wide. Okay, so within a market. I want to be deeply entrenched. I don't have those deep roots going down into the ground. And so here's some thoughts.

You don't need 50 accounts to succeed in a new market. You need, let's say five really loyal ones.

Maybe you need two, two big ones that can force distribution, move product, help you build a story, help you with your marketing, all those types of things. Once you kind of get that baseline, you can build from there. Again, you want to go an inch wide, a mile deep. Educate the kitchen staff.

If they don't know how to use the product, if they're not comfortable with the product, then you may not have the right amount of turn that you want. You want them to be using your product, be comfortable with it, train them how to use it, visit with them.

Maybe it's quarterly, maybe it's twice a year, maybe it's once a year. Stay within their business, helping them out, introducing new products that you have so that that product stays sticky.

So once you get it in, it doesn't come out. That's important. Provide the marketing support. Maybe they need some, some window clings that go on the outside of their deli case.

Or maybe they need, you know, some on table point. Of sale material, maybe a little table tents that have a picture of your product and, and, and their logo, whatever it may be.

Offer them the support that they need so they can be successful with your products and then think about what are some unique and interesting recipe ideas they can create. What's what are called LTOs or limited time offerings. Which restaurants specifically they do all the time.

Think about it, when you go in and it's Christmas time, you've got or let's say Thanksgiving time, how many pumpkin or squash or fall type foods do they offer In a lot of these different places it's a promotion, you know, go to Starbucks.

And when, whether the year there in around Thanksgiving time or Christmas time, you've got peppermint flavored things, you've got pumpkin spice, you've got all these different fun, interesting flavors that are LTOs Limited time offerings that don't necessarily stay on the menu forever, but in that time they can move some serious volume.

When your brand becomes part of the success story of the operators that you service, they're not just going to buy your product, they're going to advocate for it. Many times operators like chefs for example, or business owners, they may work in other locations, other concepts or they have friends and that.

And it's another great way to be able to spread the word about your brand and about your products. So let's recap. This is the playbook to grow in new markets. Number one, define your operator target. Number two, build your distribution alignment.

Number three, leverage a strong local broker. Number four, sample with purpose. Number five, go deep with your top accounts. Growth isn't luck, it's execution.

If your brand thinking about your next region or market or you're a broker or distributor, whoever you may be looking to level up, this simple framework or playbook will help you level up your game. Okay, want to say thank you again for following me and listening along again.

If you can leave me a five star review on Apple Podcasts, YouTube or Spotify, that would mean the world to me. I'll see you again next week.