How to Sell Microgreens

now at full disclosure before I get started I just want to make it really clear that I don't claim to be a marketing expert or a selling expert as many of you know I've already talked about I'm a pretty small grower I do this part-time but in any case I do know a little bit about selling microgreens and how to market them and get them in the right hands and you guys ask me a lot just how that works oh so I thought it made sense for me to share even though I'm a small time grower if you guys keep asking apparently some of you think that I might know something so I'm gonna do my best to answer those questions for you but was actually even brought up today somebody had actually commented on one of my videos on YouTube and asked me about it and so I did my best to answer in a short short wait I could you know through a comment but I really need to go over it more in-depth than that so for the person who asked I hope you find this video maybe I'll link it to you so you can see it so anyways selling your microgreens in my experience actually really starts with your packaging so you've got to have good packaging something that people see right away and they're like that's nice I like that so I use these 16-ounce clam shells and there you can reclose them they don't have like a tamper protective thing or anything where you can tell if they've been opened or shut again that'd be a nice feature these don't have them so this is really nice because the microgreens the way that they stay in this are great and this holds two ounces of microgreens perfectly which I find to be a perfect amount of microgreens for one package so I've actually contacted my restaurant customers that buy that size package and I've offered I can make that I can sell them in any size package they desire if they want maybe a pound in a packet or whatever but they all come back and say nope we actually really like this we go through sometimes one package like this press shift' and they really like the idea if they can just grab a fresh one right out of the fridge or their cooler and it's good to go so that packaging alone has actually gotten me into at least two stores because when I walked in and I said hey you know I'm a microgreens grow and I'm local I'd like to sell my product here see how it does I've actually had stores immediately say you're in because you're packaging don't even care what the products like we're used to dealing with product and baggies and it's rot and then it looks gross the baggie and everything the package is worth it I think I spend maybe eight to ten cents per container something like that the other side of that is labeling I know you can't see that that well so I have a whole stack of labels for all the different things I grow I grow a lot of different stuff I've tweaked my labels I started off at one point where I had everything I grew on one label and then I would circle what the product was it was in the container I didn't like that over time I've messed with how I stamped them for the date I've tried a sell by date that was really difficult and challenging to deal with because I don't really know how people are going to store them how they're going to handle them how long's really going to be good for and so I bounced between that and I harvested on day and I settled on the harvested on day the reason I was bouncing around was that in stores people aren't used to seeing a harvested on date and if they see a date that's passed they may not even look at the part that says this was harvested on this date they to see that it's passed the date that's stamped on it so that's why it bounced around a little bit with that but I ended up settle it ultimately on the harvested on date because that's the most honest way to do it so label one is important when I was selling in stores which I have stopped it just wasn't worth it for me but I used I used a lot of color so on is color I had pictures of see I can find one still got one here so I would actually use pictures of the product that's in the container and so that would be nice and colorful and stand out but because I always sell the restaurants right now and caterers they don't care about that they know what my product is so black and white it saves me a bit of money on printing because I print them myself these are Avery labels like an Avery shipping label and they work out awesome so that's probably one of the biggest keys so if you want to sell you microgreens you want to go to market them to people you want people be impressed when you walk in and present yourself and you show them what you have packaging is for me a key I know a lot of people are doing bags and I'm sure that's fine for you for me I like the package of a clamshell so the other thing how to sell you microgreens would be to actually go and visit the restaurant now when you go and visit the restaurant that's going to be critical so restaurants you have to understand I'm super busy these people they're in there and they are just busting ass and they are not really interested in dealing with you if you show up at let's say about lunchtime or about dinnertime or like crunch time when they're trying to prep and they're like really going going cuz it's getting close to one of those those times so make sure you pick a good time so if you know it's a customer that does lunch you could do maybe 10 o'clock in the afternoon might be good so what you do is you walk into the restaurant whoever is at the desk that would seat you or whatever you walk in you bring a bunch of sample stuff you're gonna give away for free i I do full sized samples by the way because it doesn't really cost that much in product and you go and you say can I speak with the head chef or the manager and so they'll ask you why you're there and such and you just tell them you know I'm a local grower of microgreens and I'd love to offer you my product I got some free samples they'll go talk to chef the chef almost definitely if they are there the head chef is gonna want to talk to you because they in my experience they've always been interested especially if you're giving away free samples doesn't mean they're gonna buy them but they'll take the free samples but that's how you get in so you talk to them you say that you could they could order some right then or they can just take your samples and see how they like them my experience has been you're probably not gonna hear back from them if they don't water them on the spot or at least set up a time for you to come back you probably won't hear back from them cuz you're not the only person that walks in there with samples or whatever even if you leave them a card leave them whatever they probably won't get back to you so what you don't want to do is in three days or so you're gonna want to go back to that same restaurant at about the same time you did before and ask to speak to the person and see how they like them if they're ready to place in order now if if they loved you microgreens they're not ready a place in order right then you're gonna want to go back again now this is where I usually drop off I don't have the time to keep like getting a hold of somebody to see if they want my product and so I don't always follow through but I do know follow through is so critical if you want to gain that customer so make sure you follow through if they take your samples they love them follow through try to set up a day that you can show up every week that day and just bring a variety of stuff and they can pick from it that works out really good for me I do that with all my regular customers they might have a couple things that they asked for specifically and I know they're gonna want them but usually I'll bring an array of stuff and just say pick from what I got and that works out really good because now you're not held accountable to a specific order so anyways they love that so for me that works so visit in the restaurant that would be number two so number one was packaging number two is visiting the actual restaurant at the right I'm another way that works well for me is Facebook messaging almost every restaurant the Rosen existence has a Facebook page so what you wanna do is just send them a message on Facebook just like you would in a text message or an email or what you would say in person introduce yourself tell them you're a local grower you would love to earn their business you would love to come in set the time to deliver some free samples and from there if they accept your offer you handle it just the way you do it if you walked in so Facebook message for me is a great way to get hold of a business a restaurant another way is email I don't like email as much people are always checking their emails they they could get lost but email is very similar to the Facebook message you can do it it may work I've found that it's easier to get hold of people through Facebook message another way this is actually I have gained customers from doing this is so that the stores I was selling at originally these were small like general stores but they also carry produce and such and by the way they were very happy to have my product but I've actually found that some chefs will shop at some of these general stores and one account I've held now for over a year actually originally was buying my product through the store and when I sell to the store I'm selling it for $4 for a two ounce container unless it's a premium microgreen which would be ten ounces a container which I try not to do at the store because if it doesn't sell you lost too much money there and so the store gets it for $4 container I mark it up for them to $6 a container and so that means I'm missing out on $2 unlike my potential profit on this product but if you can move him that volume that's worth it so in any ways a chef was buying them there and I they actually reached out to me and they wanted me to to come in to the restaurant and stop by because they were they want to be direct and I was hesitant because I was like well yeah I know a lot of your a lot of the store sales are coming from this chef as far as for my microgreens and then one day I was actually stocking the shelves and the chef was in there and was like please come by we want to talk to you so that's how I got into that restaurant and now I just go there directly every single week and they've been happy with my product and I've been happy to serve them so the thing about stores to keep in mind one you're gonna take a little bit of a cut in your profit to if it doesn't sell you need to replace it for free that's the part that made me get out because my product didn't sell as much as I wanted to it the restaurant and three though is it's really cheap marketing so you've got now your product on a store shelf and everybody that walks by sees your microgreens sitting there you can get immediate brand recognition now that comes back to something else sorry if I'm given too much detail on this video but so brand recognition if you've got your products sitting on a store shelf and you don't come back quick enough and it starts to wilt or look bad well guess what that does to your brand people look at it and they think you don't have a quality product so it's absolutely critical that if you want good brand recognition you revisit that store frequently and make sure that anything on the shelf it's done or not look so good is immediately removed I'm guessing any anybody that sells any sort of produce knows that and it's something that it just occurred to me really early on that hey you know I don't want my brand on bad product ever so that comes a store so you're gonna get brand recognition you might get people that see it you might get customers because they saw it and they want directly shipped to them another thing you can do is you can maybe put right on your label contact us for direct sales or maybe stick like a little little pamphlet on it or something that says you know we can something about how you can deliver this directly to them at there at a time that works for them select covers stores so another way that you can do this is Google ads so Google ads can be really good at targeting you can target by location by interest by whatever the hard part is finding out what are the interests of the people who are like the head chefs and sub and such like that because they may not ever see that ad but if they're searching for microgreens they probably will see your ad so if you're gonna do the ad you're gonna want a website the website is gonna be critical to make sure you have all your product up there I have a website I don't even use it that much for selling because I actually never got sales off the website to be honest everybody had ever bought from me bought it from from me messaging them or going into the store or going in the restaurant or word-of-mouth but anyways the Google Ads is a good way to get you out there if anybody in your local area search for microgreens and you do the correct target and Google Ads will work for you you can do it really inexpensively Facebook Ads is another way so Facebook Ads could be maybe even a little bit better than the Google Ads because everybody has facebook head chefs have Facebook owners of restaurants have Facebook and if you do little correct targeting you can make sure your ad is seen by these people it can be hard because you don't know what the interest is of a chef just because they're a chef doesn't mean they're interested in culinary arts doesn't mean they're interested in organic food so you kind of guess in a little bit when it comes to that but in any case Facebook Ads is a great way to get in front of your audience and try to get a good targeted ad in front of people that might be interest in your product the other side of that though is you actually have to make a good ad the ads gotta you've got to really spend some time on and work on and make sure that it pops it stands out and lets people know right away this if it does interest them you want to make sure that they realize they're interested right away so it's got to stand out in that way a Facebook page this is a way that I actually have gotten sales for my Facebook page so what I do with my Facebook page have a brave ant farms Facebook page and what I usually do for the most part on that page is share photos from my customers from their Facebook pages but I have had people see my posts on there and then want product and that's worked out alright I think if you're any sort of business having a Facebook page these days is really pretty important I don't think there's a lot out there don't have a Facebook page and in fact a lot of people these days are actually not even making a website anymore and just making a Facebook page so a Facebook page is another great way and if you do the Facebook Ads you can actually advertise your Facebook page then some people land there and then they can go on and see your product see customer photos maybe see restaurants that they compete with and see your product on their plate might get you in the door right there the final way would probably be a website now websites I don't expect you to get a lot of sales from a website unless you are - unless you're shipping and so I have a website and these days I mostly use my website to educate other growers or people that want to do it for themselves or in a business or whatever that's mostly when I'm using my website for these days because I find that people just don't buy from the website I don't have a way for you to actually add to your car and actually make a purchase because I don't want you to be able to purchase something until I've made the commitment to grow it for you so that's where microgreens can be kind of weird I don't keep me from me if you're a big grower maybe you keep a big stockpile and you can fulfill an order but for me if you're gonna order five pounds of sunflower well I'm gonna need ten days to grow that I'm not gonna have that for you right away and I'm not going to ship it but a website it's still good because if if you have somebody in your area searching for microgreens they may pick up your website and find you that way so kind of a long video kind of detailed kind of rant and a lot of stuff I said you may not agree with but this is what I do what's it's what works for me if you want to hear from me on how I do it I pretty much just laid out everything I can think of hope you like this video hope you learned something from it if you have any questions reach out to me let me know ask in the comments I'll almost always answer your comments leave feedback like share subscribe hit the little bell so you get notifications whenever I make a video thanks for watching guys that's going to conclude it

Channel: CoreysCave

Views: 262,495

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Id: 9nwdyjEuYMY

Length: 18min 22sec (1102 seconds)

Published: Wed Sep 26 2018