Archive for May, 2007
An article in Gourmet Retailer, April, 2007 touts the advantages of sending coupons to customers that can be redeemed at your store or on your web site. According to the authors, “coupons drive traffic!” Their research indicates that customers who shop with coupons “spent 24% more than those shopping without them”. Full Story
Coupon offers can be efficiently offered if you communicate with your customers via: email. Collect email addresses when customers call in orders or make a purchase at your store. You can then send an email weekly, biweekly, or monthly, featuring a coupon for a particular gourmet basket. These offers can be related to a particular holiday and might encourage customers to make a purchase that they weren’t planning (eg. a coupon for 10% off a chocolate basket sent a few weeks before Easter.) Or the coupon might promote a seasonal basket that you’ve designed (eg. a coupon for $5 off your picnic basket designs during the month of June).
The authors point out that a coupon program such as this can have two positive effects. “First, it may increase your ability to connect well with your customers”. Oftentimes, customers will call in with questions about your coupon promotions, wanting details about exactly what they get with the coupon. This provides an opportunity for you to talk about your products, the services you offer, and establish a friendly relationship with the caller (which can lead to future sales!). Second, if the caller is ultimately not interested in what the coupon offers, you will be able to talk about other products that you sell! “The bottom line is that you have their attention and they are interested”. What a great opportunity to sell your products and yourself!
May 30th, 2007
Do local hotels in your town offer concierge services? “In hotels and certain other facilities, a concierge assists guests with various tasks like finding taxicabs, restaurants, and interesting places to visit. In upscale establishments, a concierge is often expected to “achieve the impossible”, dealing with any request a guest may have, no matter how apocryphal or strange, relying on an extensive list of personal contacts with various local merchants and service providers.” (Wikipedia)
Hotel guests may ask a concierge to send a gift to a business associate after a successful day of negotiations. Or a guest may want to send a “thank you” gift to friends who took the time to organize some sight seeing for the visitors. A hotel guest may run into an unusual situation such as finding out at the last minute that a business associate is celebrating an important birthday and may want to send a something to acknowledge the occasion. A gourmet gift basket would be perfect for any of these situations.
Stop at the hotels in your city and find out if they offer concierge services. If not, there may be employees at the Registration Desk who offer these types of services to guests. Take a gourmet basket to the hotel so that the concierge can see and enjoy your gourmet design. Be sure to leave a lot of your business cards with the basket.
While you’re at it, look in your local Yellow Pages to see if there are any concierge companies in your town. These companies might offer the same type of services as the concierge at a hotel, but the services can be “purchased” by anyone who calls in. Make sure that these concierge businesses are also aware of your business.
May 27th, 2007
As your customer’s start to plan their summer vacations, you can be planning some great promotions. Many of us love to take a “good” book when we head to the beach or the mountains or even head to the park for a quiet picnic. Think about teaming up with your local book store and creating gift baskets that include some good reading along with some tasty snacks.
How about a Mystery Lover’s basket including the newest, popular “whodunit” along with popcorn, pretzels and other crunchy snacks? Or a “Danielle Steel Romance Basket” packed with teas, candies and delicate cookies? Consider a “Western Theme” with a Louie L’Amore frontier favorite along with with wild west salsa and nachos? Or for those who love cooking, a basket full of pasta and sauces along with Mario Batali’s newest cookbook.
Use your imagination. Don’t forget to send your customers an email or postcard announcing your newest literary designs.
May 24th, 2007
I read an article in Yahoo Finance about a pizza restaurant that uses electric carts for deliveries to customers. The owners of this restaurant believe that they have a responsibility to protect our environment while they engage in the business they love. “Galactic Pizza emphasizes environmental sustainability and protection in its business practices, uses organic and locally grown ingredients when possible, and donates a small portion of its profit to hunger relief and other charities.”
According to this article, “more small business owners are finding ways to achieve social good through their practices.” These days, as more and more people are becoming concerned about our environment, savvy business owners might consider how they can promote “good causes” while promoting their businesses.
Check out JustGive.org, a web site that lists hundreds of charities that address the environmental issues and problems that we face today. Work with other business owners in your neighborhood to plan a “Think Green” promotion where a portion of purchases are donated to environmental charities of your choice. Let customers choose the charity they’d like to support. Get your local Chamber of Commerce involved in your efforts. Ask your local library to set up an information center where people can learn more about environmental issues that we face.
Please share your ideas for a “Think Green” promotion.
May 22nd, 2007
In a recent issue of Fancy Food News Bytes, this question was posed to readers: how often do you take inventory? For those of us in the specialty food industry, it’s an important question. Although many of the gourmet foods used by gift basket assemblers are shelf stable, this doesn’t mean that these foods will last forever.
Here’s a summary of suggestions that I got from some of Apex Gift Food’s customers plus some ideas of my own about taking inventory and turning inventory over.
1. When new gourmet products come in, keep track of the date they arrive. Mark the date right on the outside of the case where you store them.
2. Do an inventory of your gourmet foods stock on a monthly basis. Check to see what date the product arrived. If you haven’t sold much in the month’s time, think about using those items in a special promotion. It’s better to turn over inventory that’s not moving even if you lose some of your profit rather than letting the products go stale on your shelf at which point, you’ll make no profit at all.
3. Check to see if any items have expiration dates that have already passed. Although these products may still be edible, you don’t want to send any of these in your gift baskets. You can either discard these items, or donate them to a local bank. (Taste these yourself before donating.) Ask your financial advisor how you can take a tax deduction for these donations.
It’s worth your time to keep track of your inventory and make sure that your customers are receiving top quality, fresh products in the gift baskets that you design.
May 21st, 2007
In Specialty News, May, 2007, Ari Weinzweig wrote a thought provoking article entitled “Building a Sustainable Business”. With the growing popularity of organic foods and increased awareness of environmental issues, the idea of sustainability has often been associated with agriculture. But Weinzweig suggests that a business, if viewed as a growing, changing, organic entity, can also be “sustainable” through attention to “the practices and values that maintain the lives and livelihoods of the people, producers and community in which the business is located”. Full Story.
I was especially intriqued by one point in particular. According to the author, sustainability is “about staying in business”. He points out that this in part, “includes charging a fair price” for the goods and services provided.
In our wholesale gourmet food business, Apex Gift Foods, we have contacts with very large retail gift basket businesses ranging to very small, home based gift basket businesses. Too often, we see customers at both end of this continuum go out of business because they haven’t paid enough attention to pricing their products at levels that will cover and exceed their costs of doing business. In many cases, these now defunct businesses were so busy trying to compete on price with mass merchandisers, that they were neglecting to consider that they were in business to make a profit!
As Weinzweig says, “we must have the courage to charge what we need to charge to stay in business in a healthy way. Yet we still need to back up what we charge by delivering great experiences to those we interact with”.
Read the full article. You’ll learn a lot!
May 16th, 2007
Read how the Pigeon Ford chapter of the American Women’s Business Association set up a local college scholarship fund by auctioning gift baskets. Members of the organization created gift baskets, full of certificates and merchandise from local stores. Over the years, this event has netted over $100,000 in college scholarship funds for aspiring high school students by auctioning these baskets.
Events such as this are inspiring. As an owner of a gift basket business, you can get things rolling in your community to provide resources for high school kids in need and promote your business at the same time. Here are some steps you might take.
1. Talk to other business owners in your community to find out who might be interested in putting together an event to raise money for kids aspiring to go to college. Explain that baskets will be created that include gift certificates and merchandise from local businesses and that these will be auctioned off to generate money for a college scholarship fund.
2. Go to the local high school and talk with the principal to present your idea and provide a list of businesses that want to be involved. Find out if the event can be held at the high school gymnasium. If the high school can’t be used, ask a local restaurant owner to donate their space for the event.
3. Ask the principal how the monies raised might be allocated to needy students.
4. Get the names of school board members and contact them with your idea. Ask each board member for more names of other business owners who might be willing to participate.
5. Create mailings that feature all of the businesses who will participate in the event and send these to all parents of high school students. Many high schools have their own web sites where lunch menus, bus schedules, etc are posted. Find out if you can advertise the event on that web site.
6. Create gorgeous baskets with merchandise and certificates supplied by other businesses. Add some of your gourmet products for your donation. You will also be donating your time to make the baskets. Fill the basket with business cards from all merchants who have products in that basket.
7. On the day of the event, make sure you have more business cards and brochures to pass out to those who attend. Each person there is a potential new customer for you and the other businesses who generously gave their time and money to support local high school students in the community.
May 14th, 2007
Go to Festivities Publication’s on-line magazine: Gift Basket Review, to learn techniques for wrapping your baskets with cellophane and shrink wrap. Free video downloads, featuring Debra Paulk who demonstrates these techniques, are available for subscribers to the web site.
Your on-line Gift Basket Review membership will include access to Gift Basket Review Online Magazine where you will find seasonally updated articles related to running your gift basket business plus marketing and design tips and tools. Additionally, you will have access to Gift Basket Review’s on-line archives that includes pages and pages (and pages) of advice and ideas for every aspect of your gift basket business.
And if you’re looking for great prices on cellophane and shrink bags, visit Apex Gift Foods. Tell the customer service rep that you saw this posting and get 10% off your next cellophane or shrink wrap/bag purchase.
May 11th, 2007
Summer will be here before you know it and this is a good time to find out about community events that will be taking place in your neighborhood. Read about local businesses that worked together to create a very well attended Easter event in a small Denver community. According to the businesses owners who participated in the event, it was “a great opportunity to connect with local residents”.
One thing that struck me was that although the Easter event was sponsored by some of the larger businesses in the community, even home-based business owners were invited to participate and act as sponsors. What a great way to get the word out about your home-based business without incurring huge costs for advertising.
Visit your local bank or other prominent businesses in your community and speak to the owners/managers to find out what events might be planned in your community. If your community has a local home owners association group, this could be a resource for you.
Offer to create some gift baskets that can be given away as door prizes at the event. Ask other business owners to contribute products or store gift certificates for these baskets. Make sure that your business name is displayed prominently in these baskets. Your participation in these types of events can go a long way to promoting and growing your business.
May 7th, 2007
I just read an article about a new web based business called Homes.org. If you browse their site, you will see that Homes.org’s mission is to help new “would be” home owners by providing information about moving companies, realtors, utility companies and other service providers in the location where the move is planned. Most often, this information is delivered in a “gift box” that includes moving supplies, maps and other relevant items.
Although this service is geared to people who are planning a move, it occurred to me that a similar service could be provided to any new homeowner who has recently arrived in a new neighborhood and needs to quickly learn the ins and outs. I recently moved to new city and had no idea where to grocery shop, take my dry cleaning, find doctors, or a groomer for my dog. So I started to ask my neighbors and slowly I gathered some resources. But it would have be great to have a “relocation” package with some of this basic, neighborhood information so that I could get some routines established more quickly in my new neighborhood.
So what’s this have to do with gift baskets? Many of you already work with local realtors who order gourmet baskets to send to their clients who have just purchased a home. But if I had received a gift basket when I moved to my new home, here’s what I would have wanted:
- A local map of the neighborhood plus surrounding neighborhoods.
- A list of the following including addresses: grocery stores, dry cleaners, gas stations, hospitals, banks.
- Directions to the local Home Depot (or other similar store) where all new homeowners spend an enormous amount of time!
- Information about registering my car, and getting a new driver’s license.
Of course, along with this information, some cookies, candies and other gourmet treats would have been greatly appreciated. Not to mention some coupons from local restaurants, beauty salons, and other businesses that I would gladly try since I didn’t know where else to go!
If you as a gift basket business owner, delivered this to my home when I moved in, I would have been grateful forever! And of course, I would be thinking about you the next time I wanted to send a gift.
May 4th, 2007
