Specialty Food Magazine is the leading publication for retailers, manufacturers and foodservice professionals in the specialty food trade. It provides news, trends and business-building insights that help readers keep their businesses competitive.
Issue link: https://www.e-digitaleditions.com/i/623506
greenmountaingringo.com Our salsa, named the "Top Pick" of 2013 by Epicurious.com, is made from vegetables that are picked at the peak of ripeness, resulting in the freshest jarred salsa on the market. Green Mountain Gringo ® Tortilla Strips feature a new taste that guarantees a consistently high-quality chip, perfect for dipping. All Green Mountain Gringo ® products are Non-GMO Project Verifed and Certifed Gluten-Free. They are also Certifed Kosher and free of preservatives. Try Green Mountain Gringo ® Salsa and Tortilla Strips today! Featuring all-natural ingredients, Green Mountain Gringo ® is the wholesome complement to healthy living. Fancy Food Show Booth #4747 045-1015 Info@ReliantRibbon.com • Call 1 - 8 0 0 - 8 8 6 - 2 6 9 7 A Family Business Since 1963 Wrap Up Your Confections In Style S H O W R O O M L O C A T I O N S : ATLANTA • DALLAS • NEW JERSEY · Specializing in Custom Ribbons and Bows · Custom Printing on Ribbon · Large Stock on Pre-Made Twist Tie Bows Winter Fancy Food Show Booth 4747 That would have been in 2008—how have you seen things change since then? I still worry. How far has the industry come along? Well, a little bit. To a large degree, many consumer food companies still have not made much progress. Fads have a shorter lifespan, trends have a shorter lifespan, consumers have a shorter attention span. While you might have had longevity of three to six to 12 months with a particular type of food, is that collapsing now? We're no longer in a world in which we can sit back and have a one-year planning cycle. You talk a lot about mobile technology. Everyone seems to be doing everything with their phones, but how can a company really leverage mobile? Think big, start small, scale fast. If you think big and look five years out—you're, say, an olive oil company—the bottle is going to be intelligent. It's probably going to have a chip built into it. You'll probably have some type of relationship, either direct or indirect, with the consumer. That's a given. How will a chip on a label or bottle help the company get to know the consumer? The consumer might have liked the company on Facebook—maybe there was a very effective ad on Facebook and they have agreed to share their information. That establishes the relationship. When [the consumer] walks into the store, their mobile device has that relationship embedded in it and the product with the active packaging chip in it recognizes that they're near and starts running a commercial on an LED screen while they're walking into the store. It might say something such as, "You've liked this before, so here's a coupon that we'll zip to your mobile device." That kind of freaks me out. I'm 56 and that kind of freaks me out, too. My son—he's 20—is in a different world. He views contractual relationships in a very different way. Five years, 10 years from now, he's going to have more of a budget for spending, and will he accept that idea of zipping a coupon to him? I think he will. There's a stat I dragged out years ago—the average consumer scans 12 feet of shelf space per second. Think about that. You have very little time to grab their attention, so you've got to experiment quickly with new ways of putting [your product] in front of them. Brandon Fox is the food and drink editor of Style Weekly in Richmond, Virginia. Her work has also appeared in The Local Palate and the Washington Post. "Fads have a shorter lifespan, trends have a shorter lifespan, consumers have a shorter attention span." 96 ❘ SPECIALTY FOOD MAGAZINE specialtyfood.com