Company Blog

Looks Homemade to Me

by Adam Zack — April 6, 2016

Killer Meat Sauce

We’ve had several “learning about myself” blogs in a row, and this week it’s time to give you an idea on how you can differentiate your company in the marketplace and profit in the process. One great ways to do this is to create your own unique, “homemade items”. But it’s not just creating something awesome, it’s how you market and sell it. I was in the San Francisco Bay Area a couple months ago visiting the family owned, locally driven Bianchini’s Markets. What really caught my eye were glass jars of Chris’ Homemade Meat Sauce.

I asked the store owner Kevin Bianchini about it and he said that Chris is his brother and partner. He makes a killer meat sauce, so they decided to put it in a jar and sell it. What was so great about the idea was how they chose to put it in a glass jar (pint and quart). It communicates quality, history, family and uniqueness. If they were conventional thinking, they would have put it in a plastic container like everyone uses in the deli. Much cheaper, the empty containers take up much less space and it’s easier. I’m so glad they didn’t. It’s a winner of an idea that I saw repeated again in Los Angeles at natural foods grocer Erewhon. Only they did it with soups. They had a large refrigerated case filled with glass jars of soup that just screamed “I’m homemade!”. Are any of these products cheap? No way. But do they differentiate themselves from the competition? 100%

Gotta look different

Lastly on this topic, there is an incredible family owned retailer in Canada called Sunripe (www.sunripe.ca) that has built a quality differentiation reputation by looking for products from other manufacturers that they think are terrific (sauces, candies, meats, snacks, etc.) that they buy in bulk and repackage under a variety of Sunripe labels and sell. Owners Will and Ingrid Willemsen just opened their 3^rd store and the competition can’t touch their homemade image. During the Christmas season they found what they thought was the best eggnog sold in gallon containers. They bought hundreds (or maybe thousands) of glass bottles, used the gallons to fill them and sold incredible amount. Sure, the eggnog was very good, but it was that distinctive packaging that closed the deal. You can’t just be different, you gotta look different to.