Food Branding: A Small Company's Quest to Survive in the Industry

Working as an export consultant towards small and medium size companies in the food industry has been a very inspiring experience. Every week, I meet food companies that vary in size, structure, positioning and turnover but that within this diversity share two common challenges:

1. In its essence they process products generically understood as commodities. 

2. They related to Distribution chains both as suppliers and competitors.

Facing this reality, how can a company with obvious limited resources emerge from anonymity and stand out from competitors?

Until late 90’s, every average food company would have its own portfolio composed different brands to different targets. With the growth of distribution labels in the past decade, the rules of the game changed dramatically, forcing companies to choose to stand exclusively by their brands or to industrially balance a partnership with distribution chains.

Independently from whatever strategy a company chooses to adopt, one thing remains certain: you’ve to make your brand something special. Meaning that a branded product as to deliver something far beyond quality and price.

As we could confirm by the recent horse meat scandal, both distribution and consumers take quality for granted. As consumers, the large majority of us assume that if the product is available for sale is because it complies with required food standards. Promoting quality by itself won’t make your brand stand out enough.

Price is an ambiguous variable. If you aim to be the cheapest, you’re always as good as your latest offer. Considering that we all play in a global market, your biggest competitor may be your next door neighbour or a company based deep in the South America.

The opportunity to stand out remains in the product itself and the way you deliver it. If building a brand is engaging with your consumers, in this life of multiple stimuli, the smartest way to accomplish it is to deliver you product throughout innovation or tradition.

Innovation is normally established by adding a twist to an all time favourite. Great examples of that are the combinations of flavours or by delivering in new formats. Tradition is mostly accomplished by the resurrection of old production methods “upgraded” by technology. We can find delicious examples of that in cheese, cookies and jellies products.

Selling your product trough a real story of innovation or tradition, will pull your brand from the mainstream and place you in more direct contact with your consumers. Either innovation or tradition approaches will benefit from complementing the mainstream range as their non-threatening positioning will enhance cooperating with distribution labels. 

Photo Credits: 

canvas from Campbell's Soup Cans by Andy Warhol, 1962. Displayed in Museum of Modern Art in New York.