273. How I Get Grocery Buyers to Actually Respond

0:01James Pippin:Welcome to Startup to Scale, a podcast by FoodBevy. I'm your host, Jordan Buckner. Join me as I talk to aspiring entrepreneurs, seasoned industry experts, and everyone in between as we unlock the keys to growing from startup to scale.

0:18James Pippin:Getting a meeting with a grocery buyer is one of the biggest challenges for emerging CPG brands. Founders spend countless hours sending emails, attending trade shows, and chasing those introductions. often without knowing what actually gets the buyer's attention. So I've invited back to the podcast, James Pippen, who's the founder of Good Now Foods and the Harvest Hub to break this down. James is constantly pitching retailers, but also building relationships with them, has a unique perspective on what works, what doesn't, and how you can improve your chance of landing, meeting, and getting on the retail shelf.

0:52James Pippin:James, welcome back to the podcast. Thank you for having me. Thanks for the awesome introduction. And so happy to be here. So for those who aren't as familiar, tell me just a quick little snippet about what GoodNow Foods and Harvest Hub are. Yeah, yeah. Thanks for asking. So GoodNow Foods is our sales agency. We work nationwide with pretty much every natural retailer of any significance, pitching in organic, clean ingredient products across the store from pet food to pastries to canned goods to tuna to pretty much everything that you can think of. And so over the years that we've been building and growing this business and helping small to midsize brands grow into this retail and distribution space, we've also recognized that the database of information that we've accumulated through, you know, one at a time, calling out to a store, talking to a buyer, getting on an email list, working through submissions is something that brands who maybe don't want to pay all the money to hire a company like us or a broker or traditional broker.

1:52And maybe they just want to have some information that helps them more professionally submit other products for consideration. And so that's the genesis of Harvest Hub, which is a licensable access to essentially our production database of information that we use day in, day out in our agency. And people often ask, is it complete? Is it perfect? Is all the information up to date? It never will be. Things are always changing in this industry, but it is the information that we use regularly to do what we do. So I think it's largely a pretty useful tool for that.

2:24James Pippin:Yeah, I love that. And especially because I've tried building a database of retail buyers before, right? And like spend all this work one time and then two months later, it's irrelevant because they've moved jobs, they've moved positions and categories. And you only can keep it up to date if you're actively doing this and using it to run your own business, which you and the team are doing, which I love. That's right. That's right. It's like I used to get like these Excel lists shared around, right? And I think I still get the 2017 UNFI West account manager thing said to me sometimes. And I'm like, this is nine years old.

2:57You know, I know a lot of these people and they're not there anymore. So it is important to keep it up to date. And that's a large part of what we do in our agency already as we work. So we're excited to have a community of people who not only use the tool, but also share back information along with whatever information we gather in the course of our business.

3:14James Pippin:Absolutely love that. So let's break into how brands and founders can really stand out within this space and getting a buyer's attention because there's a huge focus right now on brands getting into retail shelves. And it's a very kind of crowded market out here. And so I want to give you the best advantage possible. And so starting out, I'd love to know, you know, what are the ways that brands typically can get in front of a buyer to get their attention and to be considered? Yeah, that's a great question. And I think there's probably four real key things that you should be thinking about. One is taking advantage of whatever local trade shows or regional events you can.

3:56So buyers go to, you know, up here in Seattle where I live, there's a distributor called Crown Pacific. Crown Pacific hosts a great event every May, June, and all the regional buyers come to that event. And it's pretty easy to get set up in Crown Pacific. You just have to find one of the small regional anchors to look at you. And sometimes they might even let a brand in with just some independents that are committed. So first of all, look for those opportunities where buyers are already going out looking for innovation because their mindset's already thinking about it. I would say second, you know, it's pretty traditional, but reaching out via email.

4:28And this doesn't have to be like, you know, a big, massive submission that you put your heart and soul and mind into. I think it's perfectly, I'll share an example of what kind of thing that we would do. I think it's perfectly fine to send a short email with a sell sheet that says, hey, could we send you some samples of your product? I know the category review isn't up for another few months and we're going to submit in for that timing. But just in advance of that, if you were interested, I'd be happy to get some samples your way. And if you have any feedback for that submission, we'd love to hear that.

5:01I also like using an image in the body of the email because, you know, the buyer doesn't know you yet and your email pops up in their inbox. As long as the subject line is relevant, they'll probably pop it open and take a glance at it. And if they look at this and they see, oh, this packaging looks nice, this is coming up, sure. I'll hit reply and say, yeah, send me some samples. Here's my address. And I think, you know, that step, as long as it's done politely, as long as you don't, you know, send six emails over two weeks and call and leave two voice messages. I think one email offering to do this ahead of a review and maybe asking to be put on their email distribution list for any information that's being distributed about the review, that gives you a heads up over everybody who's not asking those questions to the buyer in kind of a personal directed way.

5:50James Pippin:Now, in this email, just to describe if anyone who's not looking at the video right, there's three, four sentences that talks about the product. It's not like your whole pitch is not the story is purely pretty much like about the product itself. And so like, tell me what works effectively in these emails, like what information is included and what not to include. Yeah, I've talked to several of the Whole Foods buying team about this because we work with them so closely. And one of the things that they say pretty consistently is, if I don't know what you're asking for in that first sentence or two of the email, I'm probably going to say I can do this later and then later never comes.

6:27So first of all, first sentence on this, could we send you some samples of our truly unique certified organic cold press juice called Midwest Juice Rate? Right there, the buyer knows why we're reaching out. We're asking to see if they'd be interested in some samples. Then the next thing I think that's really important is, again, like you said, don't tell your whole story right here. Keep it really simple, relevant, and put a picture in there. Just put a picture in that lets the buyer glance at it, see immediately what we're talking about, and they can decide, yes, no. Or oftentimes they'll say, you know what, this is actually so-and-so's category.

7:01I've forwarded it over to them, and they'll let you know if they have any interest. So you get that sort of like upfront initial alignment around, is this the right category? Because sometimes that can be a little confusing. Like, what's the difference between grab and go and fresh convenience? You know, that can be some inside baseball in the retailer part, you know that. So I like it short. I like a picture in there. And I like a question with a question mark at the end of it to drive some next step.

7:25James Pippin:I love it. I think that's awesome. It's short to the point and it can get a quick yes or no. Yeah. So you mentioned kind of local events in there around, sending an email, reach out. What else do you have? Right. Next up is the submission itself. And this is where, you know, you really need to get into when is the category review happening. So what I've got up here is our internal tool at GoodNow Foods that we use. It's pretty similar to our Harvest Hub tool. It's a little bit more similar to our next iteration of Harvest Hub that's coming out shortly. But what I've got pulled up is just a simple review for soup.

7:58And so we keep track of hundreds of these category review calendars. They're constantly changing. And so in this case, this is looking all the way out until May of 2027 at Andronico's Markets, which is a NorCal division, specialty division of Safeway. I can see they have several reviews for like canned soup, broth, canned and dried. There's all sorts of different names for these types of reviews coming up in May of 2027. And it's a full reset. that's going to tell you they're probably going to make some significant changes. It's a good opportunity for new items to come in. And so knowing when this review is happening and then drilling down to filling out the whatever new item forms, whatever submission documents, whatever process is required for that account and doing that properly.

8:47And so, you know, retailers really see if you don't know what's going on, if you don't know how to work with them, if you don't know what their preferred process is. And if you submit using not that information, they can tell, I'm going to have to educate this person a lot on how to work with us. That's another barrier for them to develop that relationship to you. So the submission timing done with the right paperwork to the right person at the right time is really essential. And there's no getting around this. Whether retailers publish a date like this or whether they have an open review, they still want you to do it properly.

9:23Natural Groceries Vitamin Cottage famously doesn't have a published category review process, but they have a specific time each month that you need to submit some information and then you need to get samples off to them within a certain amount of time after that. And if you do that properly, you will be reviewed by them and you will get formal feedback in six to eight weeks. And it's pretty straightforward. So you just have to know that process, follow it, do it on time. And it's not the sexy part of the industry. It's pretty, you know, this is spreadsheets and calendar dates and just, you know, doing all your P's and Q's right.

9:55But it is important. It's probably everybody knows it, but that's definitely the third most important thing I would say.

10:01James Pippin:So in talking about category reviews, this is a part that confused me and I think a lot of other people. When you should plan to go through a normal category review process and when it might be better off to start that relationship beforehand or come in off cycle for a category review. And even for my brand T-Square, my first launch, we came into Whole Foods kind of off category review in the Midwest region. I think that had some pros and cons to it. Right. We only launched in 12 stores at the time. This is kind of way back when you can pitch store by store. Right. But we did not get regional placement in the same kind of shelf set.

10:38James Pippin:And so there's definitely cons of that. But we'd love to hear kind of your thoughts on that. Yeah, I think, you know, like many things, it kind of depends on where you're at as a company, right? And in your resources and your scale, there are some advantages to starting small, because if you launch into 10 Whole Foods stores with the local forager support, you're not paying the big fees. You know, once you get into 500 stores, you're paying$12 ,000 for the privilege of discounting your product, and you still pay for all the discounts. So, you know, starting small lets you focus your resources, build a great velocity story.

11:09So there are advantages to it, for sure. But I think the most important thing is building that relationship directly with your category manager, your buyer at the account. You don't have to know these people ahead of time. And I think that's another sort of popular misconception about, you know, when is the right time to hire a broker? And now we hired you and now we have all these relationships. Well, yes, we might know the buyer for your category, but we're still introducing in a product that they've never seen before and they don't see it on their spends data and they don't see it in any of their competing retailers.

11:40And so, yes, we can maybe help get that email read and get some attention on that. But you could do that, too. And this is not exclusively the purview of, you know, brokers and trained salespeople. If you are polite, if you are respectful, if you are thoughtful in your approach to these buyers, if you do take the time to understand how does Andronico's work? What does Becky like to see in an email? What are their distributors that you work with? So you're not going in and asking questions that you can find out ahead of time and make the buyer sort of put you in this category of people who are asking her to do all the work for you.

12:13So I think that's sort of the reason that we built this system the way we did. And if I log into Harvest Hub just to show you what having that data can do for you, if you want to go and look at, let's say, let's try New Seasons up in Oregon. I'm just going to pop in here and pull up some data about New Seasons. Now you can come in here, you can see a whole list of distributors that they work with, right? So, UNFI, Paradigm, Chef's Warehouse, so on and so forth. You know, placement requirements. Wow, Center Store requires three months of 25 % promotions at launch, along with a free fill of 12 units per scoop.

12:48So, already now you can start to make your budgets. You can decide, what can I offer to New Seasons? How can I go in and in my email say, hey, I want to introduce my product to you. We're fully prepared to support the initial discount program of 25 % off in the first three months. we're ready to support placement deals. If we can negotiate on that 12 units placement deal, I'm happy to add a fourth month of 25 % off. You can communicate with a buyer having done your homework and that distinguishes you from 90 % of everybody else who's completely unaware of distributors, who's completely unaware of the requirements and who's maybe even approaching the wrong people at the wrong.

13:26James Pippin:Yeah, I think that's so helpful, especially as you mentioned, along with the email communication, like they're blowing, like going through hundreds of emails a day, right? Deciding what to delete to, what to maybe come back to later and what to reply to immediately. And so if you can give them the easiest way to reply within 30 seconds to a minute, you're more likely to get a reply back from them. 100%. Than if you are asking them a bunch of things or a complicated question that maybe they want to answer but just don't have the time. Right, right. Yeah, that's right. And I think all of those three ways to approach a buyer are kind of nothing without the last one, which in my mind is follow-up.

14:06And this is such a topic in sales because people do this all sorts of ways. And I think it's generally understood that sending an email once a week that says, I'm following up on the blow is not really all that helpful and kind of alienates your relationship with the buyer. There's been some good discussions with that with some other buyers' podcasts that I've seen. But again, this is what like having more information can help with. So if I look down here and I see, oh, here's the 2026 New Seasons Market holiday submission instructions. Here's another opportunity to communicate with the buyer with some relevant information.

14:40If you have a holiday item, if you have some new products that you're adding into your submission, if you have some new sales data, if you have an updated promotional form that you've decided you can offer demos as well as everything that you offered before. So make sure that you're additive in your follow-ups and that it's respectful. And this is where also, I know, Jordan, you follow AI use in the industry, and there's a lot of true power in AI and how it can be used. But I think this is where you really have to be careful with your communications to buyers. Every communication has to be additive to the discussion.

15:17It has to remove an obstacle. It has to add really relevant information. So if we're just following up for the sake of following up without adding information, that can become annoying. As you just mentioned, buyers get so many submissions each year. So just filling up their inbox with another reminder that you sent a previous email is a wasted opportunity in my mind of actually sending that buyer something that will help sway their decision towards working with you.

15:41James Pippin:Yeah, you know, it's interesting because as you know, I talked about it's like I love the AI can do, but it doesn't replace building genuine relationships. And I think in this buyer world as well, right, like that's when it really matters is how do you start building an initial relationship with them, right? They don't want to feel like they're just a transactionary person or gatekeeper. They want to build relationships, get to know people, know brands, have things that they trust and believe in. And so how do you start building that through email, through trade shows, events, where then you're a person that they know versus an email that they didn't respond to?

16:17James Pippin:Right. That's right. And I think that's the, you know, our role as a company that both gets hired to become a sales team for a brand and also a company that provides information like this to brands that don't want to necessarily hire sales teams or want to use this as a supplemental tool. You can see here we have distribution reps who work with new seasons and then down to account contacts, including their contact information, emails and telephone numbers. So this for us, this is a collaborative tool that really we feel like extends the collaborative nature of how we seek to work with brands. And I think that's where the real magic happens, because I feel like many of our brands would be entirely qualified to do this work on their own.

16:59But, you know, you know what it's like when you're running a brand. You've got operations, you've got packaging, you've got logistics, you've got new product development, you've got finance, you've got investing, you've got all these things to do. And so I think the real thing that we're trying to do in our company is provide things that are force multipliers, things that, you know, if you have the time and you are a competent salesperson and you just need the information to do things properly, we've got it all here in one place. Now, you could go dig on a dozen different locations to find who's the buyer and then what's their email and then what's the category review calendar.

17:33The magic here is it's all in one spot. So you don't have to do that digging. You look at it all in one spot. You can be more efficient and effective in your outreach. And that's what I'm really excited about with Harvest Hub is I think it's a truly designed differently solution for the industry and that our approach is to be collaborative. We want to raise everybody's success up by sharing information, which I don't really think has quite been done in this way yet.

17:56James Pippin:Yeah, I mean, I love the fact, too, that you also work with brands and members who join in to bring in and kind of collaboratively update the database, right? And so if anyone's using the platform, like, oh, this is actually the contact change, then that person can come and, like, submit that. There's, like, updated information or a category that are used because they're all learning. I mean, I always said this, James, where like, I know some founders like, oh, I can't like share this category review schedule. I can't share something because there's a perspective of like your product might get chosen over mine if you're also in the submission.

18:29James Pippin:But then I always say if your product can't be chosen on its own merits, right, the buyer or the retailer or the situation. And there's something about that. If you have to kind of limit just the access, then there might be something more that you need to succeed. And so I don't think like just having the buyer information or their category view like that cannot be your competitive advantage. Especially because all this information is out there already. Right. It's like we're not creating anything new here. All we're doing is consolidating in a way that makes it easier to use and keeps it up to date in a way that is hard to do or impossible to do if it's just a document that gets shared around.

19:05That document never gets updated. This, to your point, we're grateful for the people who send in information to us about buyer changes. I think it helps the retailers too. You know, if Tim has left his role and now Samantha's the new buyer and Tim's gone on to be a store director, you know, Tim doesn't want to get 100 emails that are about the submission for the, you know, that needs to go to Samantha. So this is helping retailers too, in my mind. And I just think it's, I think it's best for everybody.

19:31James Pippin:So I love that. So looking ahead, how do you see the process of discovering and pitching new products evolving for both brands and grocery buyers over the next few years? Do you think it's kind of the same status quo? Do you see anything else kind of coming around the corner? That's a great question. You know, I'm a big believer and I think we as a team are big believers in that the amount of data that's getting sorted, you know, on a weekly basis, reviewing products, considering all the things is massive. And so efficiency is always really important. And this is true for buyers who review 2000 items or brands who want to submit into 2000 retailers or just about anybody in the industry.

20:12And certainly AI is going to help with some of that. But I think one of the big things that we're aligning around is consolidating information in such a way that it can flow into different retailer data pools more quickly and more easily. And I'll give you an example of what I mean by that. We work with a technology partner that makes software that runs promotional tools for retailers. Well, what if our systems can easily flow into their system so that we don't have to recreate another promotional form every time? So there's some AI around that that'll help us do automated form filling if the distributor is not using our same data process.

20:51But I think the management of data is going to get easier as some AI is used for that purpose. And then more systems are developed. This is an industry that, you know, for a long time, you know, we had to put a fax number on lots of our new item forms, you know. And like we I remember one large retailer, a couple hundred stores wouldn't place our order until we got a fax number. And I was like, my gosh, we have to get a fax number. You know, so this is an industry that's been famously a little bit behind the curve and all that. But it's an industry that I think is going to benefit greatly from improvements in the managing and accurate transition of data from one place to another.

21:28James Pippin:Well, I'm excited about that. I think you're right that data and just how it's used and consolidated is going to take some big steps forward. James, thanks so much for being on and walking through this process. If you are listening to this and want to learn more about Harvest Hub, Good Now Foods, I'm going to put that info in the show notes so that you can use that to supercharge your business and grow into more grocery stores. James, thanks again. Thank you so much, George. Great to be here.