Marketing Spoonful

Now, the cynical traditionalists will scoff, but we think it behooves (love that word) food marketers to find ways to appeal to people’s desire to connect to unique and relevant brands with local flavor.
It’s pretty clear to us when something is completely contrived, like when we walk into ESPN Zone and the hostess has no [...]

Tags: ESPN, Food, garlic, hamburger, local, Restaurant, salad, steak, Stuart Scott, Supermarket

The Spoon has long been a fan of the jerky. Beef. Venison. Turkey. Good stuff. Don’t spare the salt. Natural-style. Stick. Strip. Pepper. Barbecue. Teriyaki.
You can’t go wrong with a good hunk of jerky.
Now, thanks to the wonders of mass dehydration, we can experience the wonders of fruit leather. I’m not talking about any wimpy, [...]

Tags: convenient, Food, fruit, natural, organic, Pemmican, Slim Jim

Warning: The following is a shameless promotion of one my favorite brands.
I could probably live without Applebee’s.® But then again, why? Sure, that whole Onion Peels thing didn’t really grab me, but they have, quite possibly, the single best menu item in the history of family casual dining:
The Oriental Chicken Salad

That’s right, I just took [...]

Tags: Applebee's, Bennigan's, consistency, eating out, Food, healthy, Life, TGI Friday's

This is a pack of gum as it might have appeared in 1944. It cost about 10 cents.

This is today’s chewing gum packaging. It now costs $1.39 for about the same amount of gum.

The price has gone up 14X.
This photo shows the baked bean packaging design and technology of 1944 next to that of today.

Not [...]

Tags: Food, inflation

It’s hot here in Kansas. I just finished my third glass of iced green tea. Earlier today, I had some green tea chewing gum.

And you know what sounds good right about now? A frozen green tea Frappuccino from Starbuck’s.
Functional foods haven’t caught on quite as fast in this country as in Europe. But if anything [...]

Tags: antioxidant, Food, health

No matter your age, one of the best ways to learn is to play. Recently we took this to heart and took it upon ourselves to understand our customers’ lives. One of our clients sells beef to supermarkets and restaurants, and we wanted to experience the challenges of creating fresh beef cuts that will appeal [...]

Tags: consumer research, Food, Meat, team building

For some, the most wonderful day of the year comes once in the fall, but it’s not a paid holiday or a religious celebration. It’s Family Day, and this year, it falls on September 22.
So why talk about it today of all days? Summer vacation have visions of loud, sweaty nine-hour minivan rides dancing through [...]

Tags: Family, Life, Supermarket, teen drug abuse

Economist C.K. Prahalad, in his 2004 book, The Fortune at the Bottom of the Pyramid, identified ways marketers can tap into income streams by tailoring products, packaging and promotion to “the four billion people living on less than $2.00 a day.”
Prahalad urges us to take advantage of little insights about these consumers, such as:

Smaller packages [...]

Tags: impoverished, lower income, niche marketing

Nobody likes to waste their time searching for knowledge only to find that it falls way short of expectations.

That’s why we’re creating the Spoonful; to give food marketers a reader-directed resource for information that guides decision-making.

In fact, we can’t tell you exactly what it’s going to look like because we want you to help us [...]

Tags: corn syrup, food blog, marketing blog, new blog, obesity

Clichés can be convicting. They can be irritating. But rarely are they untrue.
Think about how a few of them apply to branding and marketing:
Dance with the one what brung you: Be true to your brand’s values. Change your brand’s clothing, but don’t try to change its soul.
Luck favors the prepared: Do your homework. Know your [...]

Tags: axiom, Branding, cliche, truth, wisdom