Inner Sircle

Inner Sircle

By Adam BrownBusiness
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Inner Sircle episodes

  • Brands and Restaurants = Great Partners?

    On this episode, I am just sharing some great tips from the Indie CPG newsletter, that I highly encourage people to sign up for.  Big shout out to Steven Vigilante.

    This experience opened my eyes to new opportunities for brands and restaurants to be friends. Here are a few partnership ideas.

    Cafe / Marketplaces
    In some states, a restaurant is still allowed to welcome customers inside their cafe if they post a "Mini Market" sign outside. These cafes are acting as local culinary bodegas, often featuring staple goods like condiments, snacks, imported pasta and wine, and packaged food made by the restaurants. Chefs usually source their inventory through UNFI, Hubba, Faire, and local distributors, but you can also pitch them directly. And some restaurants are even creating their own branded small-batch products like granola, sauces, cocktails-to-go, and bulk pantry staples.

    Pop-up Sampling / Free Gift With Purchase
    Offer free, unopened product samples to cafe customers. Design a one-pager featuring your product differentiators and social media handles. The baristas will only give your product to people who request it.

    Online Ordering Menu
    Restaurants are now online retailers with the goal of acquiring and retaining customers through a larger menu to choose from. Offering add-on food and beverages also help the customer meet delivery minimums.

    Insert Samples, Coupons & Postcards in Takeaway Bags
    Are you sitting on coupons or mini samples you didn't use at trade shows? Offer to send them to restaurants as a little gift to give their customers. If they get good feedback about your product, they'll consider stocking it!

    Collaborate on a Meal Package
    Feature your product at a set price with another menu item. This works well for beverages and snacks like chips paired with a sandwich, salad, or soup.

    Get on the Food & Drink Menu
    Pitch your canned cocktail or gluten-free pasta to restaurants that can charge their customers a premium. If your product can be a food service ingredient, consider offering restaurants a discount for mentioning your brand name in the dish description. Keep in mind that restaurants are on a tight budget right now, so be open to offering them samples or discounts.

    Product Giveaways
    Most restaurants have newsletters to keep their customers updated about new menus. This is a *huge untapped channel* for brands and restaurants that are targeting the same consumer. To start, focus your efforts on giveaways with restaurants in cities where you have retail partners.

    Get Creative
    Our friends at Haus, makers of low-abv aperitifs, partnered with restaurants in San Francisco and Seattle on limited-edition flavors now sold exclusively by each restaurant. Haus donated 100% of profits to partners.

    How to Find Restaurants That Share Your Values
    Check out OpenTable, Happy Cow, Yelp, and these directories of Black-owned restaurants in Los Angeles, San Francisco, and New York.

    4 min
  • Facebook advertising boycott results...

    Now that August is here a clearer picture of July’s #StopHateForProfit movement, in which 1,000+ brands including Unilever, The North Face, Heineken, and Chipotle staged a public advertising boycott of Facebook, is coming into focus.

    It's just a flesh wound

    On its earnings call Thursday, Facebook said ad revenue grew 10% annually in the first three weeks of July. Zuck said, “some seem to wrongly assume that our business is dependent on a few large advertisers.”

    • Some numbers: Throughout most of July in 2019, the top 100 advertisers on FB spent $251.4 million. In 2020, that number was 12% lower, according to data from Pathmatics.
    • Some perspective: Facebook raked in $18.7 billion—with a “B”—in revenue in Q2. The top 100 spenders contributed 16% of those sales.

      • Bottom line: The leaders of the boycott said it won’t formally continue past July because of the strain it puts on businesses that rely on the platform for marketing. But the movement as a whole “will get bigger and broader” until they feel Facebook takes meaningful action “to mitigate the damage it causes.

      4 min
    • POV: Snapchat Brand Profiles

      On this episode, I talk about Snapchat Brand Profiles that are now being rolled out. I like this move by Snap and think this is something to pay attention to in the coming months. 

      From this source:

      Brand Profiles offer a permanent home for brands on Snapchat, built around their unique investments in the app – starting with AR Lenses, native commerce stores, and content highlights. Brand Profiles bring these various brand experiences for Snapchatters together into a single home on our service.

      Four main components of a Brand Profile:

      • AR Lenses: Brands can save and showcase Lenses on their profile, allowing any Snapchatter to discover and/or revisit a brand’s unique AR experiences. These Lenses will be discoverable through both Snapchat Search and Lens Explorer.
      • Native Store: Profiles may include a Native Store experience that enables Snapchatters to seamlessly browse and purchase items directly within the Snapchat app powered by Shopify. (Checkout the Spectacles Brand Profile to see the native store experience.)
      • Highlights: With Highlights, brands can showcase collections of their best Public Snaps, Stories, photos, and videos right on their profile — permanently! This is the best way for Snapchatters who aren’t familiar with a brand to get to know who they are.
      • Story posts: With their Public Story, brands can share what’s happening in their world with Snapchatters everywhere -- from behind the scenes to daily activities -- your Story is your daily point of view.
        • 3 min

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