Running a specialty food business requires a massive amount of planning, creativity, knowledge, and motivation. However, even when all of those elements are present, makers face unprecedented and unforeseen challenges, from sourcing ingredients to forging retailer connections. SFA News Daily asked three makers to share what frustrates them the most about the current state of the industry.
The panel:
Dena Manning, president, Butterfields Candy
Nicki Praiswater, co-founder and co-owner, Lone Star Bee Co.
Ryan Johnson, director of sales & marketing, PS Seasoning
Q: What is your biggest industry gripe?
Dena Manning, president, Butterfields Candy
My biggest industry gripe is when you seem to have landed a lead and they are very much taken with your product, but then nothing comes of it. You never hear back from them, you have no feedback; you want to know, was it the product? Was it the price? This makes it so hard for a small business as we are always trying to improve and learn and it would be so nice to receive the feedback so you don’t keep making the same mistakes and not know how to fix them.
Nicki Praiswater, co-founder and co-owner, Lone Star Bee Co.
At Lone Star Bee Co., we have always thought of ourselves as “problem solvers” when it comes to running our business smoothly. Like so many other businesses, we really had to ratchet up our problem-solving efforts over these past several months when our normal business flow was interrupted with impacts from COVID-19. For instance, our business was challenged by bottle and lid shortages. As well, customer purchasing trends changed. We were also faced with making changes in our production facility to accommodate for social distancing.
Regardless of our best laid plans, there will always be situations that arise that are out of our control and increases in costs seem to have the biggest impact on our business. In particular, the increased cost in shipping has to be our biggest industry gripe. We watch the costs of shipping change nearly daily and unfortunately, we have to determine if (and when) the extra cost is enough for us to absorb, or if we must increase the price of our products to offset the impact, and that can cause customers to think twice about purchasing our products.
Ryan Johnson, director of sales & marketing, PS Seasoning
The largest industry issue we’re facing today is adapting to packaging shortages and supply chain disruptions caused by COVID and other economic factors. With longer lead times from our vendors and shortages on critical packaging, our team is working overtime to find alternative solutions to absorb as much of the burden from our customers as possible. Although we hope to see improvement, everything we’re hearing right now is this trend will continue through 2021 and into Q1 of 2022. Some of these challenges could be mitigated by taking shortcuts on our packaging solutions, but our goal is to provide a premium product and premium service to our end customers, so we will continue to be aggressive in sourcing.
Arielle Feger is content associate for Specialty Food.