2121 - Crafting a Unique Brand Identity in the Competitive Food Sector with Gregory Vetter

0:05Hey there, thoughtful listener. Are you looking for introductions to partners, investors, influencers, influencers, influencers, and clients? Well, I've had private conversations with over 2 ,000 leaders asking them where their best business comes from. I've got a free video you can watch with no opt-in required where I'll share the exact steps necessary to be 100 % inbound in your industry over the next six to eight months with no spam, no ads, and no sales. What I teach has worked for me for over 15 years and has helped me create eight figures in revenue for my own companies. Just head to upmyinfluence.com and watch my free class on how to create endless high ticket sales appointments.

0:51Also, don't forget, the thoughtful entrepreneur is always looking for great guests. Go to upmyinfluence.com and click on podcast. I'd love to have you.

1:05With us right now, it's Gregory Vedder. Gregory, you are an author. We're going to talk about that. You're a business founder. You're an investor. You're an entrepreneur in Maryland. Gregory, it's great to have you. By the way, congratulations on the launch of your book. It's called Undressed, the Unfiltered Story of My Failed American Dream and How It Led to Success. Very compelling book cover to our friend that's listening. I'm not going to describe anything more. You're just going to have to take my word for it. And you can go to Gregory's website. It's GregoryVetter.com. And you'll see a link there directly to Gregory's book.

1:45And Gregory, just by way of introduction, you're the CEO of Tessa Mays. And Tessa Mays is likely a salad dressing brand that folks are familiar with, especially if you look in the produce section and or if you go to places like Whole Foods and so forth to get your salad dressings, you're going to find Tessa Mays. Gregory, it's great to have you. Yep. Thanks for having me. Former CEO, former CEO. Former CEO. Yes. Yes. Graduated. Graduated. Graduated. Yes. Well, give us the story. So I was 25. I was selling insurance over top of a bodega overlooking a cemetery. And I thought to myself, this doesn't seem like a way for me to live the life that I had imagined as a young man or a college student.

2:39And so I would go home every day during my lunch break, stand on my head, wait for an epiphany and one never came. But after that, I would go downstairs, make myself a big salad with some protein on it and use the dressing that my mom had made for me in a two liter bottle. And one day I went and looked for that two liter bottle and it was missing. And so I called my wife and I said, Hey, have you seen the salad dressing? She goes, seen the salad dressing. What are you talking about? I go, I can't find it ever anywhere. I've been looking all over our little townhouse. Every fricking cabinet is opened.

3:19I can't find it. She goes, maybe someone took it. I go, no one broke into our house and stole our salad dressing. That's insane. She goes, I don't know what to tell you, Greg. And so I actually started calling people and I got in touch with a guy and it turned out he did break into my house and he did take my salad dressing. And so I thought to myself, if a man was going to steal another man's salad dressing, I should bottle it. So I called my wife back and I said, hey, you're never going to believe this. This guy broke in and she kind of laughed and goes, yeah, well, the dressing's really good.

3:55And I go, I'm going to quit my job and I'm going to start a salad dressing company. Dead silence. And then she goes, that's the greatest idea I've ever heard and it's going to work. and I was like really so then I had to figure out you know anybody else care does anybody else believe in this and so I just started cold break can I ask why why do you think she said that other than her just wanting to be super supportive no well I don't think that was it oh really okay so she legitimately was like no no no listen I like you and all but that's actually a really good idea. Yeah. You know, I wanted, you know, I was always trying to think of a good idea and I would, you know, go to her.

4:39And at one point I was, you know, doing okay in insurance. I go, Hey, maybe I should just start my own insurance brokerage. I'm pretty good at it. We can make a lot more money. And she goes, no, I want nothing to do with that. You know, you don't, you don't care about insurance. I'm not just going to chase money with you for our whole lives. And so I had previously brought an idea to her and it did not go well. And so I was, it was an interesting pressure test and it kind of gave this almost, you know, spiritual omen to the situation where, okay, this is such a random idea. It's so bizarre. I've never heard of someone starting a salad dressing company outside of Paul Newman.

5:25Maybe it's time for a new Paul Newman. And I would be thinking, and I'm no Paul Newman. I mean, he's got a couple of things that might be to his advantage. Yes, yes, he does. And so from that point, I just started cold calling grocery stores. And I finally got a meeting two weeks later. I was calling grocery stores twice a day for two straight weeks. And this guy goes, yeah, bring it in to me in two hours. And so I called my mom and I said, Hey, I need you to make the greatest batch of salad dressing ever made. She goes, why? I go, I got this meeting with a grocery store. I'm going in there. She goes, you're not a company.

6:08You don't have a product. You don't have a brand. You have nothing. And I said, don't worry about that. I'm going to figure this out. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Made this dressing. I put it in a Tupperware container with romaine lettuce. I walked into the meeting and I offered it up to this guy. He took it out of the Tupperware container after looking at me like I was a crazy person, lit the dressing off and goes, this is the best salad dressing I've ever had. You need to call the regional office. And so then they gave me about 200 pages of food manufacturing paperwork. So I had to live into the bull crap I was telling people.

6:50and I Googled my way into becoming a food manufacturer. And then we got our official start May 5th, 2009. And that is when that journey began. Amazing. So, all right. So how do you grow a solid dressing company? So from there, we set a demo for the first day and I didn't know anything about anything, but what I did understand was that if anybody was going to buy this thing, they had to try. And so I set up a table. I partnered with a local lettuce company. I printed out recipe cards. I had little samples of lettuce with dressing on top. And so when people walked into this grocery store for the grand opening, I just quickly tried to create a connection.

7:41This is my dressing company. It's my mom's recipe. Here's a recipe card. And so we ended up having one of the most successful first five days in salad dressing history, if you ask me. And we sold 660 bottles of salad dressing, one product in one store in five days. And so that was this kind of momentous sign that this could potentially work. And that's amazing. And so from there, I just started calling grocery stores and I said, Hey, I'll set up demos in your store. Please bring it in. You know, don't worry about the brand. You don't know about it yet, but people will, because we're going to be standing in your grocery store, handing out samples until the cows come home.

8:29And so that was really the baseline fundamental marketing strategy that we applied to eventually every grocery store in the United States. And so that is how we grew from one store to being the number one organic salad dressing company in the country. Do you mind maybe talking a little bit about sampling and why that was an important part of your go-to market? Obviously, you know, that makes sense with a consumer product like salad dressing. But, you know, I'm curious if maybe there are others of us that could do better when it comes to the concept of sampling, like what that means and why that's a great strategy for reaching consumers.

9:18Well, I think the one thing that I understood was people have options and they don't care about me. And so if I could make them people wait, I want to say that again, people have options and they don't care about you. Yeah, I mean, that's absolutely accurate. Right. And so you're walking into a grocery store. It's a sea of bottles and jars. There are millions of options here. And so how could I tell someone my story, have them understand my brand and understand how good it was? Well, the only way you can do that without millions of dollars in marketing and advertising is to create these little moments, these little authentic connections where you tell them what you need them to know.

10:08They try it. They experience something special and you make them a part of the journey. And so we didn't hire people in the beginning for the demos. It was me and my brother. Just you. It was me and my brothers and my wife, and we were telling the story to anybody that would listen to it. And so what that did was it made something that is basically irrelevant, not cool, not fun, interesting, which is salad dressing, right? No one in the history of the world has said to themselves, man, salad dressing is so cool. So we wanted to apply energy, the American dream, and this kind of authentic human connection to a product that historically had been irrelevant.

11:03Wow. No. And if you could do it with salad dressing in an otherwise crowded market, were you concerned that there were you concerned? And did you have people say, you know what, there's so many salad dressings out there. Why would you want to go into such a crowded space? What was your and how did you address that? And what were your like, what was your positioning? Like, how did you position yourself against even kind of like the product categories that might be similar? So like people are looking at your product. They're like, cool, organic, check. Cool, vegan, cool, check. And there's other vegan and organic salad dressings out there.

11:43We were the first clean salad dressing. So no one had ever made salad dressing without thickening agents, without preservatives, and without weird additives before. And so we were literally hand making it. That's why we were able to do it. And so our initial pitch was just simply, it tastes better than everything you've ever had. And it's only five ingredients. So a lot of people that were coming into these grocery stores go, well, I make my own. And we go, yeah, so do we. And we say, and so they would look at the label and they go, wow, this is similar to what I make. I wonder if it's as good.

12:28and then they would try and they go, this is way better than what I make. And so then they would put it in their cart and they would go. And so understanding the real-time feedback from customers every day, do they like the flavor? Do they like the packaging? Should we expand flavors? Do they like them? Do they not like them? That allowed us to keep a pulse on our customer base and really begin to have a deeper understanding of how far we can scale. did you find yourself um having a sensitive ego during that early time like someone had come and just give you a dumb opinion they're like i'm getting a huge hit of kiwi and you're like no man it's bacon no by the way i am making a joke i don't know if you've ever seen the saturday night live hidden valley ranch skit with melissa mccarthy i have actually seen that i have it is honestly it's one of my favorite snl skits ever because melissa mccarthy is just in her she's just absolutely prime 10 out of 10 melissa mccarthy in this skit to our friend that's watching or listening go watch this afterwards for a laugh i'm sorry but i was i was kind of making it making but but getting back to my original point you know you get you're just getting like this all of these opinions.

13:51And I wonder, you know, if someone's like, listen, I put my heart and soul into this thing. Your opinion is just dumb. Yeah, no. And I'm saying that completely facetiously, but as creators, sometimes we do, we need to watch our ego a little bit. A hundred percent. And so it really came down to a numbers game. So if a hundred people told you that it was the best salad dressing they ever had in a four hour period in one person. I'll never forget it. It was a Sunday morning. This guy walks in, he's dressed to the nines. He's with what looks like a girlfriend. It doesn't really vibe as a marriage, let's say.

14:33And I'm like, Hey, would you like a sample of the salad dressing? Yeah. He walks up, takes it, puts it in his mouth, spikes the cup on the ground and tells me it tastes like trash and keeps walking and i was like my life is on the way wow well you know you think about the lessons that you are learning there though right about you know not having our ego tied to i think on social media it can be really easy and in person obviously you know you get um like that that stings when you hear something like that even if it's completely look that had everything to do with him that had nothing to do with me but still as creators again it can be really tough for us to you know accept that for what it is you know learn from it get value from it and keep moving forward yeah no for sure and you do develop a tough skin.

15:34I mean, again, doing the actual demos in stores is just an animal in itself. No one is prepared for the level of social anxiety that comes standing in a grocery store and handing out samples to your peers as they look down on it. Yeah. Well, that was another thing too, it's like, listen, you're, you're handing out samples at the grocery store, but you know, you're not an unsuccessful guy and, you know, kind of have a, you know, just step down into that level to get that retail experience, you know, and that direct, I mean, you know, it's like, man, if you can get in there and grind that out for a period of time, you're going to get on the backside of that.

16:22So powerful as a result, and you're going to have such a better product too. Yeah, it was very, very helpful. It was very tough, but it was very helpful. Gregory, what do you do now? What's your work now? Obviously the book, Undress, that's available on Amazon. You can go to your website, by the way, gregoryvetter.com, click on books, and you'll see where you can get the hardcover, a signed hardcover, or the audio book. But tell me about your work now. Yeah, so I own a couple different businesses. We have a produce business in California where we kind of make salads and fresh items for big grocery stores across the country.

17:04We have a manufacturing business on the East Coast. So we own a business that does dressings and sauces and honey and spices. We have a brand accelerator where we help young entrepreneurs or just people in general who have never kind of chased their dream, figure out how to scale their business, take their idea and turn it into something of substance. That has led us actually one of the people we did that with was a guy I coached when he was a young kid. So we've launched a Port-a-John business. It's called Tushy's. So that's been an interesting brand exercise. Wait a minute. Was Tushy's featured somewhere in a book or in a study?

17:49did you get some did i'm trying to think i feel like i heard that like tony robbins talked about you on a podcast i thought somebody talked about tushies i've heard that before yeah so uh it's been going really well we have a couple nfl stadiums we do the porter johns for them yeah yeah okay okay good good good good and um and then we're launching an alcohol business here in the next kind of two to three weeks called quenchers. So that's really good. And then the rest of my time is spent. I counsel some CEOs, give them my insights into the world, sit on a couple boards, and then do some, you know, basic baseline performance coaching for a couple people for their requests.

18:37But it's kind of turned into something really fun and interesting. And so that really takes up my time combined with the book. And then obviously I'm a dad of four and I coach a bunch of sports and have some dogs and live on a farm. And, you know, my time is focused and occupied. Yeah, yeah. Well, Gregory Vedder, the book, it's available on Amazon. It's available through your website. It's called Undressed, the unfiltered story of my failed American dream and how it led to success. your website, GregoryVetter.com. Also, you'll find a direct link to HomegrownBrands.com, which is a brand accelerator.

19:22That's all kind of part of the work that you do as well. Gregory, great conversation. Thank you so much. And congratulations on the launch of the book. Phenomenal story. Listen, it's 270 pages. There's a lot going on here. And it sounds like there's the journey is going to be so valuable for someone that might be in the in the thick of things right now to kind of see what you've been through and how you kind of came out through the other sides of these. Yes. Yep. Thanks for having me on. Thanks, Greg.

19:59Thanks for listening to the Thoughtful Entrepreneur Show. If you are a thoughtful business owner or professional who would like to be on this daily program, please visit upmyinfluence.com and click on podcast. We believe that every person has a message that can positively impact the world. We love our community who listens and shares our program every day. Together, we are empowering one another as thoughtful leaders. And as I mentioned at the beginning of this program, if you're looking for introductions to partners, investors, influencers, and clients, I have had private conversations with over 2 ,000 leaders asking them where their best business comes from.

20:40I've got a free video that you can watch right now with no opt-in or email required where I'm gonna share the exact steps necessary to be 100 % inbound in your industry over the next six to eight months with no spam, no ads, and no sales. What I teach has worked for me for more than 15 years and has helped me create eight figures in revenue for my own companies. Just head to upmyinfluence.com and watch my free class on how to create endless high-ticket sales appointments. Make sure to hit subscribe so that tomorrow morning, that's right, seven days a week, you are going to be inspired and motivated to succeed.

21:22I promise to bring positivity and inspiration to you for around 15 minutes every single day. Thanks for listening and thank you for being a part of the Thoughtful Entrepreneur Movement.