Building brands with foodie entrepreneurs
For almost two years we’ve been running brand training workshops with food industry start-ups in partnership with the Kings Cross branch of Impact Hub, a socially minded business incubator.
It feels a little bit like a side hustle: helping these entrepreneurs and family-run businesses shape their brands through workshops and one-to-one sessions. All very different from our day-to-day work with very established, often global, brands.
Here’s what our sessions have covered:
Brand storytelling - building a narrative about each business based on storytelling techniques such as ‘And. But. Therefore.’ and creating manifestos for non-profit businesses
Proposition development - helping distil brand thinking into clear, differentiating propositions that provide a rich platform for creative development
Social and digital content - developing content strategies that maximise the potential of the relevant social platforms and demonstrating how to leverage personal stories to promote the brand
Behavioural biases – explaining how to promote the brands as ethical, without detracting from the quality, value and competitiveness of their products and services.
The programme we’ve been supporting – Feeding the City – is aimed at community-based food entrepreneurs and the latest cohort have energetically launched plant-based pizzas, seeds snacks, superfood treats and zero waste food stores.
The biggest eye-opener is just how quickly and adeptly these start-ups find their feet, carve out their niche and start snapping at the heels of the multinational food brands in their categories.
Even more amazing is the fact that many of these entrepreneurs – husband and wife duos, sisters-in-law, Dads and sons – start out with little or no experience of the food industry.
It usually begins with late night sessions experimenting in the kitchen. Pots and pans bubbling, recipes fine-tuned and shipped to friends and relatives for taste testing.
Once they know they’re onto something, they get to work online: sourcing manufacturers, food scientists, packaging companies and intellectual property specialists.
It must take massive amounts of guts to take the leap and leave the safety of a well-paid career – but the Feeding the City gang have proved that anything is possible in our digitally connected economy.
For us, it’s been a joy to be part of this, seeing the relentless energy behind these socially and environmentally aware ventures, and doing our small bit to help them get their stories out there.
It’s also been really satisfying to see that the food industry of the future won’t be totally dominated by mass producers; independents will still be able to pop up and claim their space.
So, if you’ve ever had secret ambitions of launching an artisan business from your kitchen table, it may be more achievable than you think. With a little bit of help and a lot of late nights, you could soon be writing your own brand story.