Coffee in the Beverage Industry

Wholesale Distribution and Coffee in the Beverage Industry and the New Age Category

Coffee is one of the best products to distribute because you have so many potential customers and new products.

You can sell coffee in packages or cans; you can sell it to stores, to convenience stores and supermarkets, restaurants and coffee houses, even to offices. Starbucks showed us that you can sell coffee in different ways and sizes to al type of people at many different prices.

If you want to get a bit more sophisticated you can sell “Coffee Programs”. Coffee Programs are full service programs that you can set up in Supermarkets and Convenience Stores. You lease the equipment and provide it to the stores, you provide signage, cups, Point Of Sale material and the coffee.

Besides the traditional ways of selling coffee there is the new way that was introduced through Energy Drinks and New Age Beverages. This way you can sell it at a premium. The best example of this is iced coffee and iced flavored coffees. You can sell them at a premium the competition here is not yet as great as with energy drinks.


Thanks,


Jorge


www.LiquidBrandsManagement.com

Energy Drinks Sales: Landing the account is the easy part.

Energy Drinks Sales: Landing Distributors and Retail Chains is the easy part. The name of the game is REORDERS.


OK, so you landed a large distributor or national chain for your Energy Drink or other beverage. You feel good!

Well, the job just started. The hard part will be to sell the product off the shelves.

I always found it easy to sell beverages to distributors and retail chains. I’ve never even paid slotting fees! The real challenge is making the distributors and stores sell out of product.

Most distributors have many products to choose from, the sales guys will only push yours if you give them a great reason, like an extra commission.

Same happens with the retail stores, you need good positioning in the cooler, competitive pricing, and some sort of retail promotion for the store manager and employees and another one for the end customer.

Remember; when you land large accounts don’t celebrate just yet, first devise a plan to sell your products and get reorders. That’s the name of the game, reorders.


Thanks,


Jorge

Energy Drink Promotions Trap

The Promotions Trap in the Beverage Industry, especially Energy Drinks


Here is one of the most frequent mistakes made by new age beverages, especially Energy Drinks… Spending money in promotions without getting something in return, like sales!

This is one of the most common mistakes made in many industries, not just the energy drink business or new age beverages. Thinking you need bar promotions to launch your beverages. YOU DON”T.

I’m not saying you don’t need promotion, I’m saying you should have some sort of distribution before you launch your promotion. Without distribution your promotion will go nowhere. Some people even do promotion in bars or discos that don’t even carry their product after they leave.

Make sure you have some distribution before you spend any money in promotion. The other next best thing is to use your promotion as leverage to get distribution. This is a trick I used many times to land distributors, bars and retail stores.

To do this you organize a promotion a few months ahead, you then talk to bars in that city, stores and distributors and invite them to the event. You make every retail store around the promotion knows about it and commits to carrying the product during and after the event. After the event you then tell all the retailers how great the event was and how much publicity the product got. You must also make sure that you tell all the attendees of the event that they can find the beverage in the stores surrounding the event. If you can do another promotion like coupons or incentives even better.

There are other important points to consider in bar promotions, we’ll go over them over time.

The one thing you have to remember is that you have to use promotions to land accounts or drive sales. You don’t need to do it for branding, your not Red Bull, Rock Star of Monster energy.

Thanks,


Jorge

What are the hot products at the moment? Energy Drinks.

What are the hot products at the moment? Energy Drinks.

I get more calls about Energy Drinks than anything else put together. I get calls form distributors looking for them from manufacturers trying to sell them and from people looking to start their own brand.

It’s a great business to get into; more than 300 new Energy Drinks hit the US market last year. If you plan on going into this business do your research first. Find out:

What is the best size to start with? The right size can sell up to 30% more!

What is the best pricing for your product? Price to beverage distributors, wholesale distributors, exporters, food service, cash and carry and wagon jobbers

How much will you put back into marketing? Usually the formula calls for 30% of sales

How will you start selling? Do you have a contact with a retail store or a distributor? Please pay the most attention to this part of the business. You need sales to survive. Get a seasoned salesperson or a good broker to help you if you are not a great salesperson.

How much will you get for your promotions? Notice I don’t ask how much you’ll spend in promotions but how much you’ll get back. Please, please don’t spend a dime without a plan to get it back in sales.

Everyone will want something for free, the stores, the bars, the distributors.

Thanks,


Jorge