6 Smart Steps To Sell More Food At Higher Prices
Ethically produced food and consumer trust will impact the bottom line.
Every food company, every restaurant and every beverage company now faces a new sales paradigm. Consumers no longer trust you, your products, your pricing or your advertising.
They may still love the taste of your food. They may still love your promotional pricing. But they increasingly recognize that the food you have been selling them in is not good for their health.
How mistrustful are consumers?
75% of consumers believe that food companies place profits before human health. This mistrust has pushed consumers into reading food labels and doing research on the food they eat.
Today 63% of consumers read food labels. 54% of consumers buy foods based on their ingredients. 89% of likely 2016 voters favor mandatory labeling of genetically engineered foods.
The result is that for the first time in fifty years the market share of Big Food has fallen below 50%. It now stands at 45%. Soda sales are at a thirty year low. Consumers are voting with their pocket books against food that is unhealthy and unsustainable.
Four steps to building consumer food trust
Food authenticity is the only path to regaining consumer trust.
What consumers increasingly demand to know is whether your foods and beverages stand for. It’s about something more than great taste, promotional price and profits.
These are the four attributes food customers increasingly use to determine whether they trust your grocery store, your restaurant or your food:
1. Does your food do good things for people?
They want their food to mean something to their health. They want see the human purpose in what you are selling.
2. Is your food ethically sourced?
To be trusted and authentic consumers expect the creation of food to do no harm. No use of slave labor on Asian fishing boats. No inhumane animal treatment.
3. How does your food benefit the planet?
65% of Americans believe climate change is real and manmade.
Agriculture is estimated to account for as much as 50% of global green house emissions. Agriculture has a huge environmental footprint. Globally, 90% of freshwater use is for agriculture. To win consumers’ trust the food industry must reduce its environmental impacts.
That means producing food using fewer chemicals, using less water and reducing global warming emissions.
Next- Attribute 4 and Six (6) action items to drive sales success