Advenia

The Food Exchange

 What to know when you start a food and drink business

“You work hard to earn your money. I have to work hard to get it.”
– Rory Doyle, Three Wheels Coffee

 

On Friday 21th of September, Rory Doyle, founder of Three Wheels Coffee, gave a speech at the Food Exchange event organised by Enterprise Nation, to explain how his business went from a bicycle to a coffee shop in the Shard (check the full story here). Rory said that being tenacious was the essential key to his success. He made people come to his coffee shop by offering them what they needed: good coffee, lively music, positive energy and a welcoming attitude. But most of all, believe in your concept – everyone has an opinion on your business, it is good to listen but do not let anyone have an influence on your enterprise.

1. Advice from Louise Robert – How to be a strong and relevant business

• Do not agree to anything before reading and understanding it perfectly
• Know your customers and your potential market, what they like, what they need (can be different), what are their habits, what are their pain points
• Use your specification and differences to tell something about your product or business to your customers: communicate on your values, your message, your process
• Be in control of your supply chain and your logistics. It is important to understand the expected volumes and the timescale to be able to respect them.
• Be transparent with your customers. You need to provide them the technical means to access information they need about your product
• Get the accreditation relative to your field and your product (for example: HACCP)
• Most important thing, do not hesitate to ask for help. To be strong does not mean you cannot have weaknesses, it means to know your weaknesses and find the good people to help you get over them.

2. Advice from Markus Sripf – How to promote your brand

When you have created your brand or concept, when you have all the keys to success, you need to be known by your target. For that, here are some advice to promote your brand:

• Personalise your marketing strategy: each customer is unique and response to his/her own name
• In the food business, new groups of customers are emerging: vegan, gluten free, dairy free, etc. You need to consider these different types of customers and to get to them with the relevant arguments
• Be sure to answer a need or a desire in particular: it is difficult for people today to find the right products, that is why you have to promote your product on the right market and the right segment
• And finally, you need to be very explicit about your product and your message. People have the tendency to connect with concept that are completely transparent

3. Advice from Raechel Dines – How to be powerful online

• Secure your hosting: you need to be found online
• Create a strong digital marketing strategy (target, purpose, objective, message)
• Build a home online: website that looks like you, which defines your business, with a unique template
• Your website needs to be mobile friendly and to adapt perfectly to cell phones and tablets
• Embrace social media, they help to share your message and allow you to create fresh content daily
• Make the most of marketing tools like Buffer, Hunter.io, MailChimp, etc.
• Be active online on a regular basis, your customers need to able to expect something from you

The Food Exchange was fruitful and in tune with today’s issues regarding the agri-food industry. Most of these thoughts are applicable to any type of businesses.