Tag Archives: Food industry

July 19, 2019 · 1:07 pm

Foreign Flavors

This Foodie Friday, let’s think about the Black Cheese donut. Yes, there is such a thing although unless you live in Jakarta you’ve probably not sampled one. It’s a donut that’s glazed in chocolate icing and then rolled in parmesan cheese. No, I’m not making this up – you can find them at Dunkin’ outlets in Indonesia.

Then there is the Thai snack food of BBQ-flavored fish. They’re bite-sized – yum! You can buy a creamed corn pie (think apple pie but creamed corn) at KFC outlets in Japan or haggis-flavored potato chips in Scotland. If you want a brief around the world tour of some odd food products that will probably seem strange to those of us with American palates, click here and scroll through 46 of them.

The thing is that they’re not odd, not to the people in the areas where they’re made and distributed. As with most things, if there wasn’t demand the product wouldn’t continue to exist. The fact that they got made in the first place is a tribute to anyone who was involved in the process but for whom the product has no appeal. Ignoring our own prejudices is something that helps us succeed in business. Most of us aren’t the typical consumer of our product and, therefore, must keep an open mind where research or other data tells us that there is a market opportunity.

You might not need to be reminded that not everyone sees the world in the same way. One glance at the evening news or even your own social media stream will confirm that for you. Not everyone will love a Black Cheese donut but apparently, enough people do to justify their continued presence on Dunkin’s shelves. We need to try some flavors that are foreign and, even if we don’t like them, remind ourselves that others do.  Crab flavored Pringles might not be your thing. Maybe you prefer the Iberian ham chips. I had my first ketchup flavored chips when I was in Canada. They seemed like a good idea – ketchup goes on french fries which are potatoes, so… Well, they weren’t, but I don’t think any less of our Canadian brethren for making them popular.

Want to keep your business open? Keep your mind open as well. The flavor might only be foreign to you!

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June 28, 2019 · 11:28 am

Intentional Mislabeling

Let’s start with a question this Foodie Friday. If I offered you two carrots, one of which was had a label that said “non-GMO” and the other didn’t, which carrot would you choose? “GMO” as I’m sure you know means that this food wasn’t made from genetically modified crops. Would that make a difference in your selection?

It’s a trick question, actually. There are no genetically modified carrots in the marketplace, at least not yet. Neither are there GMO strawberries. That won’t stop you from finding carrots or strawberries labeled as non-GMO though. You’ve also probably seen that many chickens are labeled as “raised without antibiotics” while others don’t bear that label. Does that influence your thinking? It shouldn’t: antibiotics have been banned on chicken farms for over a decade.

Some labels in food can be horribly misleading while others are not. “Organic”, for example, really does mean that the food was grown without synthetic pesticides and fertilizer. It’s a legal term meaning that there are penalties for its misuse. You might think that non-GMO foods are organic and, therefore, better for you. Unless they also say they are organic, non-GMO foods are conventionally grown using synthetic pesticides and fertilizers.

Why I bring this up in a business blog is that the misuse of these and other terms in marketing is not due to confusion about them. It’s due to the willful deception of the consumer by an unscrupulous marketer who at best is just jumping on a bandwagon and at worst is looking to charge more for an inferior product. Your “cage-free” chicken still lives indoors in a jammed coop and those “free-range” chickens for which you pay a premium probably haven’t been outside either. It just means that they have access to go outside if they can find and get through one of the few doors in the henhouse.

I’m a fan of clear, enforceable labels in all products, not just food. What the hell does “skin organics? mean on a cosmetics label? Chemical-free sunscreen? Not possible, yet some brands are labeled just that way. The labels don’t write themselves and as marketing people, we need to hold our customers’ interests paramount. Their health too since it’s rather difficult to get a dead consumer to buy much of anything. Make sense?

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June 21, 2019 · 10:41 am

No Strings

It’s Foodie Friday and it’s also the first day of Summer. Actually, it’s felt like July down here in the Carolinas since May, but I digress. In honor of the day, Dairy Queen is giving out coupons for a free soft serve ice cream cone. Yum! What better way to celebrate the new season?

Well, not to be the one to look a gift horse in the mouth, but of course, there are strings attached. You see, in order to get said free cone you need to purchase something else at DQ. Not that I’d generally mind doing so but that little bit of fine print sort of chills my enthusiasm (see what I did there?). Oh yeah, one other thing – in order to get the coupon you need to have installed the DQ app on your phone. I mean, who doesn’t want yet another app tracking you, sending data to who knows where, taking up room on your phone and hitting you up with “big announcements” every hour or so?

My point is a broader one that just beating up on Dairy Queen. I’ve always had an issue with seemingly benevolent marketing or charitable offers that are really self-serving. You know what I mean. How many offers have you seen for “buy this and we’ll make a donation to this worthy cause”? If the cause is so great, why don’t you just make the donation? Then there are those “free” offers that cost you in other ways. Opera, the browser company, offered “free” VPN a couple of years ago. Of course, you had to agree to let them track your usage and share the data with third parties.  Sure, it’s supposedly completely anonymized but if it includes a device identifier of any sort or location data, it’s not hard to merge it with other data.

Gift horses may, in fact, be Trojan Horses too. There are way too many “free” offers that are really scams. We’ve all seen the “free” product that involved paying shipping and handling charges that are detailed in tiny print and quite costly. Then there are the “free” products that require you to hand over a credit card, ostensibly so that if you make any “optional” purchases it’s a seamless transaction or maybe they’ve enrolled you in something that will charge you monthly once your “free” period is up. Illegal? Actually no, if it’s disclosed (you read all the mouse-type every time, don’t you). Shady as hell? You bet.

If you’re going to make free offers or do something nice for your customer, do so without strings. A gift involves altruism. If there is an ulterior motive lying within, it’s not a gift, right?

 

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