Brand Q&A – Gosh! Foods

We realise that it’s all well and good us talking about product sampling, the benefits it can give you and the best ways to use it within your marketing. But we would say it’s all brilliant, wouldn’t we! So instead, we decided to chat with some of our customers about their experiences of product sampling and share them with you. To kick things off, this month, we sat down with Lucy, brand manager from Gosh Foods, and asked her some questions.

What Are Your Goals for Product Demos?

I feel like a need to give some context for this! So originally the business was called Great Food and we’d been stocked in wholesaler Costco since 1998. In fact, the head of our supply chain used to hand deliver products to the Watford depot! We rebranded the business 8 years ago, which is when we became Gosh! Foods.

When we rebranded, there was a job to do with raising awareness. Especially in the plant-based market, where over recent years there has been a surge in a lot of new competitors. Sampling became a big focus for the brand within Costco to drive more awareness and trial.
The other part is the consideration piece. There are challenges in the category around how to use plant based products, as well as concerns that plant based products won’t hit the mark on taste. So, allowing people to try our tasty products and demonstrating how to use them in recipes is another big focus for the demos.

What Benefits Have You Seen from Doing Product Sampling and Demos?

Whenever we do a demo day or a sampling event with Fizz, we can look at the sales driven from the day, and what the conversion rate is. So we can see that the sales do improve on certain lines when we’ve ran sampling, and by how much. All of that data means we can see how much we’re spending on demo days and what the return on the investment is, so that’s been really beneficial for us.

I do think that there was a big improvement once we started taking the advice from the team at Fizz about our demo unit. We weren’t aware of how we could enhance our in-store demos with additions such as point of sale (POS) etc. but their account managers gave us loads of advice about signage, merchandising, wrap arounds and all sorts. So, we invested in branding our demo units, stocking branded aprons and having recipe cards to give out. By doing this we are able to get our key brand assets out there, which in the longer term will boost our brand awareness in Costco.

What’s Made You Happiest About Working with Fizz?

Working with Fizz has been great. We’ve always had loads of support, right from the start. For example, they prompt us to update our product briefs regularly. Rather than simply accept the information provided by a brand, Fizz pushed back and encouraged us to update them so that they could better communicate with the team, and so their brand ambassadors would be more informed about our product range.

We’ve always been impressed by the level of communication we get from the team as well. Fizz is so responsive and quick to get back to you. It makes my life as brand manager a lot easier. On one occasion I needed some stats on how many demos we had done in a year for a presentation. I called Rosie from Fizz, and within an hour she had responded, sending me details of what demos we’d done and with what products. It’s an absolutely fantastic level of responsiveness, especially when we need to be so reactive.

They’re very in touch with their own brand ambassador teams as well, always able to do stock checks and letting us know what the brand ambassadors need so that we can send it out. I never need to chase anything. The brand ambassador team are engaging and promote our products well. And whenever we run sampling events, they always send some level of photography. We can’t always get out to the events ourselves to take photos, so it’s really useful to have someone else there to capture it so that we can use the images later.

What Would You Tell Someone Who’s Considering Sampling?

That it’s definitely worth trying. It is great to blend with other marketing efforts (like end caps) but you will see an instant uptick in demo days helping to drive your sales conversions and creating that awareness. Overtime, getting consumers to try out products has really helped towards improving consideration. With sampling, you’re much more likely to attract new customers to purchase instantly than perhaps other in-store promotions.

“With sampling, you’re much more likely to attract new customers to purchase instantly than perhaps other in-store promotions”

Even if you only do a couple of events at the key times of year, like bank holidays, Easter, Christmas, or whenever makes sense for your products, you’ll definitely see a return on investment. Not only in that sales uplift because people go and buy it once they’ve tried it, but in terms of people being more aware of your brand.

And there you have it! It was great chatting with Lucy and finding out more about her experiences with sampling, and with using Fizz. If you’d like to know more, or you want to find out how product sampling could work for you, then we would love to help. Just get in touch today to arrange your free consultation.