How To Start A Healthy Snack Food Business
You've stumbled upon the idea to build a healthy snack food business and now you're ready to take the next steps.
There's a lot to think about when building a business, so we put together a guide on how to get started, launch, grow and run your healthy snack food business.
We also provide you with real-life case studies and examples of founders running successful healthy snack food business (and how much💰 they're making today).
💡 Introduction To Starting A Healthy Snack Food Business
Is Starting A Healthy Snack Food Business Right For You?
There are many factors to consider when starting a healthy snack food business.
We put together the main pros and cons for you here:
Pros of starting a healthy snack food business
• Flexibility
You can put as much time into the business as you'd like. If you like the work and have some initial experience, you can start small and manage all aspects of the business on your own.
• Ability to start your business from home
It's not necessary to have a physical storefront or office space to get your business started. You can do everything from the comfort of your own home, at least in the beginning!
• Little startup costs required
The cost to start a healthy snack food business costs significantly less money than most businesses, ranging anywhere from 12 to 27,209.
• Rewarding work
Starting a healthy snack food business can be really rewarding work. After all, you are solving an immediate issue for your customer and you're working on something you truly care about.
• Scalable
With businesses and processes changing daily, there will always be demand for new features, products and services for your business. Additionally, there are several different business models and pricing tiers you can implement that will allow you to reach all types of customers.
• Traffic to your website
A healthy snack food business gives people a reason to visit your website and to keep coming back to you!
• High margins
The gross margins for your healthy snack food business are typically around 40%, which is considerably high and allows you to grow your business and manage costs easily.
• Quick build time
The average time it takes to build your product is quick - typically around 7 months. This will allow you to bring your product to market faster.
• Easy to encourage "impulse buy"
In the healthy snack food business, you have a much higher chance of encouraging your customers to buy on impulse - you can easily alter the price, placement, packaging, and promotional value to influence the decision of your buyer.
• Unlimited income potential
With starting a healthy snack food business there is no cap as to how much income you can make. The stronger your business skills and the more energy/time you put into your career, the more you'll make.
• Amazing perks and discounts
Working in the healthy snack food business comes with its perks! As a seller for these products/services, you typically also get to enjoy industry perks and discounts.
• You are your own boss!
With starting a healthy snack food business, you are the one to make decisions for almost all of the operations. Calling the shots can be empowering and liberating!
• Higher likelihood of getting referrals
This business is all about referrals, which can be a a very impactful way to attract and retain customers. It's critical that you have a great referral program in place that incentivizes your customers to tell their friends about your product.
• You can sell your product in various places!
There are various different markets to sell your product, which will help you reach different audiences and revenue streams.
• Simple business model
A healthy snack food business has the advantage of a simple business model, which makes launching and building the business more seamless.
• Control your own destiny
Starting A Healthy Snack Food Business allows you to control every aspect of your life and make your own dreams come true every day.
• You get to do something you truly love
With starting a healthy snack food business, you get to put your energy into something you are truly passionate about! You'll find yourself devoting as much time and energy as possible into the business to make it successful.
• You can work from anywhere!
Not only can you start your healthy snack food business from home, you can also run your business from anywhere in the world. This is the entrepreneur dream.
• Ecommerce retail is growing fast
Ecommerce has been grown rapidly over the years and is expected to hit a total of 4.9 trillion dollars by 2021.
With running an ecommerce business, you provide your customers with alternative and more convenient shopping experience, which will ultimately drive sales.
• You can promote and sell your product on Amazon
Although there are some disadvantages to consider when selling your product on Amazon, there are also a host of benefits. Mainly, Amazon is the world's largest online retailer, so you're bound to tap into new business and reach an entirely new audience.
• Various different ways to make money
With starting a healthy snack food business, there is not just one business model to choose from. This field is amazing in that there are various different ways to make money. Although this may complicate things, it's great to have different options and sources of revenue.
• Make money while you sleep
The advantage of starting a healthy snack food business is that you have the ability to have passive income and make money while you sleep. This is the dream for many entrepreneurs.
Cons of starting a healthy snack food business
• Crowded Space
Competition is high when it comes to your healthy snack food business, so it's important that you spend a good amount of time analyzing the market and understanding where the demand lies.
• Finding The Right Supplier
Most businesses in this space go the supplier/manufacturer route, which isn't a bad thing! However, finding the right supplier can take a lot of time, energy and trial/error. If done properly, this process can save you months (if not years) of time and energy. More on this below in the "finding a supplier" section.
• Security Issues
With any Saas business, data loss and security issues may arise throughout your process of building your product. It's critical that you understand exactly what you're responsible for and how to avoid potential issues down the road.
• Lack of benefits
With a healthy snack food business, you are typically self-employed and responsible for finding your own insurance, which can be quite costly and time-consuming.
• Isolation
Often times, as a healthy snack food business, you typically work alone and do not have much face-to-face interaction with other team members.
• Taxes
As a healthy snack food business, you typically pay self-employment taxes which can be quite high. It's important to understand what you will be paying in taxes each year so you can determine if the work you're taking on is worth it.
• No safety net
Typically, as a healthy snack food business, you do not receive a consistent pay-check and instead earn money based on your transactions each month. During the slow periods, you typically take away less since the job is based on commission. It's important to budget accordingly for the slow times.
• High overhead expenses
With starting a healthy snack food business, there are overhead expenses that come with selling a physical product. You will want to make sure you strategically budget for these overhead costs. We discuss this more in the startup costs section below.
• You may need to charge sales tax
If you are selling your products in various states, you may be required to charge sales tax. Although this may not impact your financials specifically, it can be a headache to create a process and procedure for this. To learn more about sales tax, check out this article
• Work can be repetitive
You may find creating the same product over and over repetitive and tiresome. One way of avoiding this is to diversify product lines and revenue streams - this will keep things interesting!
• Difficult to build trust with your customer
With starting a healthy snack food business, there can be minimal face-to-face interaction, which means it can be a lot more difficult to establish trust with your customers. You'll need to go the extra mile with your customer to grab their attention and business.
• Minimal physical activity
A big part of starting a healthy snack food business is sitting at a desk for the majority of the day starting at your computer. Some may enjoy this, but others may struggle with sitting for the majority of your day without much physical activity.
• Learning Curve
When you start your own business, you no longer have upper management to provide you with a playbook for your roles and responsibilities. You should know the ins and outs of every aspect of your business, as every decision will come down to you.
Players
Big Players
- Daily Harvest (36.3K Alexa Ranking)
- KIND Snacks (104K Alexa Ranking)
- Chomps (124K Alexa Ranking)
- Pipsnacks LLC (140K Alexa Ranking)
- Garten (152K Alexa Ranking)
Small Players
- Love Good Fats - Revenue $3M/month
- Neuro - Revenue $500K/month
- Natura Wellness - Revenue $150K/month
- Ka-Pop! Snacks - Revenue $100K/month
- Protein Package - Revenue $90K/month
- Holmes Mouthwatering - Revenue $40K/month
- ABS Protein Pancakes - Revenue $25K/month
- Funky Fat Foods - Revenue $20K/month
- CandyCan - Revenue $15K/month
Search Interest
Let's take a look at the search trends for healthy snacks over the last year:
How To Name Your Healthy Snack Food Business
It's important to find a catchy name for your healthy snack food business so that you can stand out in your space.
Here are some general tips to consider when naming your healthy snack food business
- Avoid hard to spell names: you want something easy to remember and easy to spell for your customers
- Conduct a search to see if others in the space have the same name
- Try not to pick a name that limits growth opportunities for your business (ie. if you decide to expand into other product lines)
- As soon as you have an idea (or ideas) of a few names that you love, register the domain name(s) as soon as possible!
Why is naming your healthy snack food business so important?
The name of your business will forever play a role in:
- Your customers first impression
- Your businesses identity
- The power behind the type of customer your brand attracts
- If you're memorable or not
It's important to verify that the domain name is available for your healthy snack food business.
You can search domain availability here:
Find a domain starting at $0.88
powered by Namecheap
Although .com names are the most common and easiest to remember, there are other options if your .com domain name is not available. Depending on your audience, it may not matter as much as you think.
It's also important to thoroughly check if social media handles are available.
As soon as you resonate with a name (or names), secure the domain and SM handles as soon as possible to ensure they don't get taken.
Here's some inspiration for naming your healthy snack food business:
- Foodbes
- Cubed Food
- Rubicon Snacks
- Snackszilla
- Nest Snacks
- Baconic Corner
- Intelligence Food
- Snacksarc
- Earth’s Bounty
- Developed Snacks
- Healthynetic
- Taste Buds
- Agile Snacks
- Foodlytical
- Power Snacks
- Activator Healthy
- Snacksgenics
- Spire Healthy
- Pure Food
- Healthyaro
- Catered Care
- Port Food
- Reactor Snacks
- Sea Vegan
- Wise Healthy
- Food City
- Real Foods
- Soft Healthy
- Sprint Snacks
- Citizen Fast Food
- Healthy Click
- Healthyhut
- Foodgenix
- Pinnacle Food
- Pasta Street
- Vice Food
- Transition Food
- Tiny Tarts
- Obelisk Food
- Foodtastic
- Beacon Food
- Task Food
- Snacksoryx
- Good Clean Chow
- Cubed Snacks
- Street Food Stuff
- Globe Healthy
- Fooddo
- Freeze Healthy
- Curious About Green
- Smart Snacks
- Venture Snacks
- Byte Snacks
- Pursuit Snacks
- Healthylia
- Snackslia
- Eat Simple
- Eat Pretty Food
- Foodoryx
- Foodbia
- Quick Sneaking
- Healthyiva
- Up Healthy
- Snacksoont
- Arrange Healthy
- Cut the Wheat
- Ware Healthy
- Wise Food
- Fast and Fresh
- Controller Snacks
- Syndicate Healthy
- Health Dash
- Green Spice
- Snackscog
- Tacos Parked
- Plan Food
- Favorite Forage
- The Organic Nutrition
- The Hearty Collation
- The Delicate Heath
- The Plain Meat
- PoorFood
- The Quiet
- Best
- Extra
- Salty
- InexpensiveSnack
- AdequateFood
- TolerableHealth
- Frail Healthcare Trading Co
- HealthfulSnack
- Gingival
- MereSnack
- DeliciousFood
- The Enough Meals
- Organic Foodstuffs Group
- Eating Collective
- Abundant Meat
- Healthcare Co
- Hygiene Place
- Suitable Grocery
- Fried Collation Co
- The Healthy Refreshment
- Medical Place
- Favourite Fresh
- Afterschool Bite Pro
- Frozen Gourmet Pro
- Human
- The Precarious Healthcare
- Optimal Care Collective
- Ill
- The Small
- Financial Hygiene Co
- Human Sanitation Co
- Wellness Group
- Free Fresh
- Sandwich Pro
- Latenight
- Rich Collation
- Biscuit Place
- DaySnack
- Small
- Vigorous Insurance Group
- Usual Bite Spot
- Heath Collective
Read our full guide on naming your healthy snack food business ➜
How To Create A Slogan For Your Healthy Snack Food Business:
Slogans are a critical piece of your marketing and advertising strategy.
The role of your slogan is to help your customer understand the benefits of your product/service - so it's important to find a catchy and effective slogan name.
Often times, your slogan can even be more important than the name of your brand.
Here are 6 tips for creating a catchy slogan for your healthy snack food business:
1. Keep it short, simple and avoid difficult words
A great rule of thumb is that your slogan should be under 10 words. This will make it easy for your customer to understand and remember.
2. Tell what you do and focus on what makes you different
There are a few different ways you can incorporate what makes your business special in your slogan:
- Explain the target customer you are catering your services towards
- What problem do you solve?
- How do you make other people, clients, or your employer look good?
- Do you make people more successful? How?
3. Be consistent
Chances are, if you're coming up with a slogan, you may already have your business name, logo, mission, branding etc.
It's important to create a slogan that is consistent with all of the above.
4. Ensure the longevity of your slogan
Times are changing quickly, and so are businesses.
When coming up with your slogan, you may want to consider creating something that is timeless and won't just fade with new trends.
5. Consider your audience
When finding a catchy slogan name, you'll want to make sure that this resonates across your entire audience.
It's possible that your slogan could make complete sense to your audience in Europe, but may not resonate with your US audience.
6. Get feedback!
This is one of the easiest ways to know if your slogan will be perceived well, and a step that a lot of brands drop the ball on.
Ask friends, family, strangers, and most importantly, those that are considered to be in your target market.
Here's some inspiration for coming up with a slogan for your healthy snack food business:
- No Gym Equipment Needed, Just Your Foodie
- Simple Food Recipes For Everyone
- Creative Snacks For Everyone
- Our Recipes, Your Longevity
- Eat Nutritious Snacks and Relax
- Healthy Snacks Mukbang
- Eat Healthy, Get Satisfied
- Fight Sickness, Eat Nutritious Snacks
- Healthy Mind, Sound Body
- Your Healthy Snack Buddy
- Simple Yet Fun Living
- Simple Snacks to Get Well
- Eat Healthy, Get Toned
- Get Healthier For a Brighter Tomorrow
- Cook Delicious Meals For You
- Fit Body, Stronger Mind
- All the Way to a Healthy Body
- Keep it Simple and Healthy
- Lose Weight, Gain Confidence
- Love Yourself, Eat Well
- Get Healthy Right Now
- Getting a Trendy Yet Healthy Diet
- Cozy and Trendy Wellness Foods
- Work Hard, Eat Healthier
- Eat Healthy, Live Happier
- DIY Food Snacks For a Good Health
- Get Jacked Up with Great Foods
- Eat Now, Live Longer
- Cook Healthy, Live More
- Mild Green Health Liquid.
- Mental Health, We're Commiitted
- Work Hard, Smoking Harder
- Order Of The Nutrition
- Office Of The Insurance
- Work Hard, Risk Harder
- Work Hard, Cook Harder
- Only And Phoney
- Work Hard, Promoting Harder
- Cleans Your Floor Without Food.
- Much Food, Redefined
- Two Snack Are Better Than One.
- Think Different, Think Health.
- Health For The Masses.
- Health, Where Success Is At Home.
- If You've Got The Time, We've Got The Health.
- Exceedingly Good Snack.
- Snacks With Dish
- From Heavy To Lite
- The Queen Buys Food.
- Grub Is What We Do
- Healths With Life
- Work Hard, Eat Harder
- Whatever You're Into, Get Into Food.
- Snack Is My Sport.
- Food The Only Way To Go.
- Did Somebody Say Food?
- Bad Sants Are What We Do
- Come Fly The Friendly Food.
- Mental Heath, Good Care
- Foods With Time
- Healths With Agreement
- Put Of The Wellness
- Just Do Health.
- Food's Like Heaven.
- Now With 50% More Health!
- Sufficient Food, Done Right
- Healthy And Filthy
- Snack Keeps Going, And Going, And Going...
- Base Of The Wellbeing
The eCommerce Business Model
One of the main benefits of operating online is that you are exposed to the entire world, versus just one local area. Rather than depending on foot traffic, you have all the tools at your disposal to create exposure for your store online.
Additionally, there are much lower costs to operate an online store - fewer employees, you can operate from your home, and you get to create your own schedules (yes, holidays included!)
Although you are operating online and have the ability to connect with people all over the world, it's important to consider that you will need to invest marketing money upfront in order to promote your store to the right audience.
Gia Paddock, founder of Boutique Rye explains the 3 reasons why she decided to build an online store:
I wanted to find something I loved but also allowed me to stay home at the same time. While I was working at this local boutique, I realized that there was a lot of sitting around during the day when other people were out working. Therefore, an online business seemed like the best route for a few reasons:
- We didn’t have the extra funds sitting around to pay sign a year or two-year lease at a brick & mortar location.
- I realized the opportunity to reach a wider audience online compared to the audience of this small local boutique. For us, it seemed like hitting two birds with one stone.
- And finally (maybe the most important of all), running it as an online-only business would allow me to stay at home with Riley!
🎬 How To Start A Healthy Snack Food Business
How Much Does It Cost To Start A Healthy Snack Food Business
If you are planning to start a healthy snack food business, the costs are relatively low. This, of course, depends on if you decide to start the business with lean expenses or bringing in a large team and spending more money.
We’ve outlined two common scenarios for “pre-opening” costs of starting a healthy snack food business and outline the costs you should expect for each:
- The estimated minimum starting cost = $12
- The estimated maximum starting cost = $27,209
Startup Expenses: Average expenses incurred when starting a healthy snack food business. | Min Startup Costs: You plan to execute on your own. You’re able to work from home with minimal costs. | Max Startup Costs: You have started with 1+ other team members. |
---|---|---|
Office Space Expenses | ||
Rent: This refers to the office space you use for your business and give money to the landlord. To minimize costs, you may want to consider starting your business from home or renting an office in a coworking space. | $0 | $5,750 |
Utility Costs For Office Space: Utility costs are the expense for all the services you use in your office, including electricity, gas, fuels, telephone, water, sewerage, etc. | $0 | $1,150 |
WiFi & Internet: Whether you work from home or in an office space, WiFi is essential. Although the cost is minimal in most cases, it should be appropriately budgeted for each month! | $0 | $100 |
Total Office Space Expenses | $0 (min) | $7,000 (max) |
Inventory Expenses | ||
Upfront Costs For Inventory: This includes all upfront inventory you will need in order to launch. Be sure to compare prices of wholesalers to ensure you're getting the best deal and margins remain high. | $300 | $5,000 |
Inventory Storage: If you decide to have a physical space for your healthy snack food business, whether it be used for inventory or as a showroom, you may have monthly rent payment or a large down payment associated with renting/buying the space. | $0 | $5,000 |
Package Design: Packaging refers to wrapping and protecting products during distribution, shipping, and sales.Your package design is your customer's first impression of your brand, so it's important you spend some time and energy to get this right from the start.Many businesses design their own packages using design software and tools. There is always the option to outsource this to a design expert, but that route tends to be much more expensive. | $50 | $3,000 |
Shrinkage: Shrinkage refers to the loss of inventory at any point between the purchase from your supplier and the purchase by your customer. Although you will try to avoid this at all costs, this does happen sometimes (especially in the learning stages of your business), and it's important to plan ahead financially in case this happens. Fortune states that retail shrinkage costs U.S. retailers approximately 1.4 percent of their total sales. | $0 | $1,000 |
Distribution costs: Depending on what distribution plan you choose, expenses such as renting vans, hiring delivery drivers and gas costs can add up. If you are looking to save money upfront, you may want to consider conducting distribution on your own. | $0 | $750 |
Total Inventory Expenses | $350 (min) | $14,750 (max) |
Software Expenses | ||
Design Programs & Software: These programs might include the Adobe family of design tools: Photoshop, Illustrator, InDesign and others. This is typically a monthly subscription ranging from $10-$50/mo. | $0 | $50 |
Email marketing tool: If you plan to grow your email list and email marketing efforts, you may want to consider investing in an email marketing platform (ie. Klaviyo, MailChimp). We put together a detailed guide on all of the email marketing tools out there + the pricing models for each one here. | $0 | $100 |
IT Support: IT support installs and configures hardware and software and solves any technical issues that may arise.IT support can be used internally or for your customers experiencing issues with your product/service.There are a variety of tools and software you can use to help with any technical issues you or your customers are experiencing. This is a great option for businesses that do not have the means to hire a team of professionals. | $150 | $2,000 |
Accounting & Invoicing Software: It's important to have an accounting system and process in place to manage financials, reporting, planning and tax preparation. Here are the 30 best accounting tools for small businesses. | $0 | $50 |
Project Management Software: You may want to consider using a project management and collaboration tool to organize your day-to-day. This can also be very beneficial if you have a larger team and want to keep track of everyones tasks and productivity. For a full list of project management tools, check out this full list here. | $0 | $25 |
Internal Communication Tool: If you plan to have multiple members on your team, you may want to consider an instant message tool such as Slack or Telegram. The cost is usually billed per month (approx $5/user/month) or there are freemium versions available on many platforms. | $0 | $20 |
Social Media Management Tools: If you plan to do social media marketing for your healthy snack food business, you should consider investing in a social media automation or publishing tool. This will save you time and allow you to track performance and engagement for your posts. Here is a list of 28 best social media tools for your small business. | $0 | $50 |
Payroll Software: The main purpose of payroll software is to help you pay your team and track each of those payments (so that you don't have to do it manually). If you do not have any employees or have a very small team, payroll software may not be necessary at this stage. Here are the 11 best payroll tools for small businesses! | $0 | $200 |
File Hosting Service: It's important to make sure the information for your healthy snack food business is stored and protected should something happen to your computer or hard drive. The cost for this is affordable and depends on how much data you need to store. To learn more about the different options and pricing on the market, check out this article. | $0 | $299 |
Total Software Expenses | $150 (min) | $2,794 (max) |
Website Costs | ||
Domain Name: Your domain name is the URL and name of your website - this is how internet users find you and your website.Domain names are extremely important and should match your company name and brand. This makes it easier for customers to remember you and return to your website. | $12 | $200 |
Business Email Hosting Service: An email hosting runs a dedicated email server. Once you have your domain name, you can set up email accounts for each user on your team. The most common email hosts are G Suite and Microsoft 365 Suite. The number of email accounts you set up will determine the monthly cost breakdown. | $1 | $15 |
Total Website Costs | $13 (min) | $215 (max) |
Advertising & Marketing Costs | ||
Customer Research & Surveys: Many healthy snack food business's conduct industry and consumer research prior to starting their business. Often times, you need to pay for this data or hire a market research firm to help you in this process. | $0 | $300 |
Affiliate Marketing Commission & Fees: If you want to increase revenue for your healthy snack food business, affiliate marketing is a great way to promote your product to a new audience. When determining affiliate commission rates you will offer, you will want to take into account the price and margin for your product to ensure affiliate marketing is worth it for your business. According to Monitor Backlinks, the average affiliate commission rate should be somewhere between 5% to 30%. To learn more about how to set commission rates, check out this article.. | $0 | $250 |
Influencer Marketing: Partnering with like-minded influencers is one of the most effective ways to grow your social media presence. Many small businesses simply gift a free item in exchange for an influencer post, or pay the influencer directly. | $0 | $750 |
Press: If your business and story is unique enough, press and media attention may come to you, but odds are, you may need to do your own outreach and budget for this. We put together a guide here that discusses different press opportunities (both free and paid). | $0 | $500 |
Google Ads: With Google Ads you have the ability to control how much you spend by simply setting a monthly budget cap. Additionally, with these ads you only pay for results, such as clicks to your website or phone calls! It's okay to start with a small budget at first and make changes accordingly if you see valuable returns. | $0 | $300 |
Facebook & Instagram Ads: With Facebook and Instagram ads, you set your budget and pay for the actions you want (whether that be impressions, conversions, etc).You can learn more about pricing based on your impressions here. | $0 | $350 |
Total Advertising & Marketing Costs | $0 (min) | $2,450 (max) |
Total Starting Costs | $12 (min) | $27,209 (max) |
Raising Money For Your Healthy Snack Food Business
Here are the most common ways to raise money for your healthy snack food business:
Bootstrapping
You may not need funding for your healthy snack food business.
In fact, many entrepreneurs take this approach when starting their own business, whether they have a little amount of cash or a substantial amount to get started.
So what exactly does the term "bootstrapping" mean?
This method essentially refers to self-funding your businesswithout external help or capital and reinvesting your earnings back into the business**
Bootstrapping means building your company from the ground up with your own, or your loved ones, personal savings and reinvesting all earnings back into the business
Here are some tips to consider when bootstrapping your business:
- Use your savings as your capital - one of the best ways to bootstrap your business is to collect your savings and use them as startup capital. This will also help you avoid using your personal or business credit cards when getting started.
- Determine exactly how much capital you need and how much capital you have to get your business off the ground. Generally, when bootstrapping your business, you may want to consider starting a business that involves less startup capital.
- Consider starting a business that will generate immediate returns so you can put money back into the business
- Be as lean as possible - this refers to cutting down expenses as much as possible, such as payroll, fancy software tools, unnecessary travel, renting an office, etc
- Consider outsourcing instead of hiring - in the beginning, you may not need to hire someone permanently to help run your business. It tends to be much less expensive to outsource work to a freelancer and hire someone permanently down the road!
Want to learn more about bootstrapping your business? Check out this article
Crowdfunding
For your healthy snack food business, a common way to raise money is through crowdfunding.
So, what does it mean to crowdfund your small business?
Crowdfunding refers to funding a project through many individual investors.
Here are some items to keep in mind when planning your campaign:
- Sell more than just your product. Sell your passion, your vision, and your story.
- Be real. Give your community honest details about your product.
- Treat your audience as your friends (not just potential customers)
- Put together a great presentation - it will attract people quicker.
To launch a successful crowdfunding campaign, you first need to select the type of crowdfunding platform to host your campaign.
Here are the most popular crowdfunding platforms to raise money on:
Kickstarter
Funding platform for creative projects.
- Pricing: Freemium
- Twitter: @kickstarter
- Website: kickstarter.com
Businesses using Kickstarter:
91 successful businesses are using Kickstarter ➜
Indiegogo
Crowdfunding platform for innovations in tech and design.
- Pricing: Freemium
- Twitter: @Indiegogo
- Website: indiegogo.com
Businesses using Indiegogo:
36 successful businesses are using Indiegogo ➜
StartEngine
Crowdfunding platform that has helped more than 350 companies raise $175M+ from a community of over 250,000 prospective investors.
- Pricing: Free
- Twitter: @StartEngineLA
- Website: startengine.com
Businesses using StartEngine:
We connected with one of the most successful Kickstarter campaigns, Photobooth Supply Co, and asked founder, Brandon Wong to give us some insight on his strategy:
Product first, campaign second
So with all of those positive benefits of the platform figured out, we wanted to make sure we had the product itself in the right place before we launched.
We’ve been working on Salsa for a long time now and wouldn’t have felt comfortable revealing the ability to pay for it until we hit a very important milestone. We had a final prototype.
Doing all of the sourcing and actual production is secondary—there was absolutely no way we could have gone public without people being able to see real photos (and touch in person) a functioning prototype.
This meant that we had to do all of the development before we ever saw a cent.
Finding backers in the real world
We launched the product at our annual Booth Summit, which is a convention for photobooth owners to get together and learn from experts in the field. Launching a product in a receptive environment is generally considered to be a good idea. The same was definitely true for us!
We had a crowd of people who had just told us they were dedicated to growing their business… and we had the chance to offer them a way to do just that. I really can’t emphasize enough how important it is to make products that matter for people who will care about them.
This opportunity to see the product in real life was an essential component for our launch, but it might not be the same for you. I think it just shows how essential having a great prototype is. People love to touch and feel what they’re buying, if you’re talking about something physical… you should be able to show a prototype before you ask for money.
Building excitement with even the smallest backers.
We knew that we wanted to have a ton of incentives for early backers so that they’d be rewarded for taking a leap of faith on a new photobooth.
We’re obviously not making a whole lot of money on that first $1999 tier. But it enabled people to be part of something fun.
Every $1999 backer is always going to be able to say, not just that they got a great deal, but that they were one of the first to get on board. It means a lot more than a discount code expiring—just look at how frustrated people are on Twitter when a limited stock of rewards is secretly gobbled up.
Kickstarter doesn’t reveal the names of backers, but it humanizes them. And it just adds to the fun of getting your own spot! Even for someone backing now, they’re able to say that they were an early adopter.
Delivering on our promise
One of the most common critiques of Kickstarter items is that they either never show up or that they take years. I wanted to make sure that our timeline was easy to deliver and also reasonable.
Nobody deserves to wait two years for your product after they pay for it. I felt like we needed to offer a much quicker turnaround than that. We launched on Black Friday 2018 with an estimated delivery of April 2019.
That’s under 6 months and much lower than the average Kickstarter! The most important thing is that we will be able to meet that timeline. You can’t go around promising delivery dates and missing them, this isn’t a consumer product.
Anytime you’re working with the events industry you have to be very transparent and up front about timelines. A bride who books a photobooth needs it to show up on her wedding day. It’s non-negotiable!
VC Funding
VC funding is a traditional and long process, but an effective way to raise money for your business.
The term "VC funding" refers to venture capital firms investing in businesses in exchange for equity.
The VC's (venture capitalists) are an individual or small group investing in your business and typically require substantial ownership of the business, with the hope of seeing a return on their investment.
VC's are typically the best approach for businesses with high startup costs - where it would be very difficult to raise the money on your own or through a loan.
When deciding whether to take this approach, it's important that you have a few things in place first, and know what you're getting yourself into:
Determine if your business is ready
Having an idea is not enough to get VC funding.
Typically, VC's will check to make sure you have these things in place prior to closing any deal:
- An MVP (Minimal Viable Product)
- A founding team with all proper documents in place (articles of organization, business formation)
- A validated idea with actual customers buying your product/service
Get everything in place and build a pitch deck
A VC individual or firm will be expecting a fine-tuned presentation that gives an overview of your business.
Here's what you should consider including in your pitch deck:
- Management team, their previous experience + current roles in the business
- Market challenge and solution
- Company financials - including a P&L statement, cash flow statement, and projections
- Company progress
- Investment amount - how much do you need and why?
Research the right VC to fund your business
Research the types of VC investors out there and what niche they focus on.
Then, put together a list of target VC's you want to approach and your strategy around setting up meetings.
Be sure you have everything in place (as discussed above) before setting up any meeting!
Make sure the terms and expectations are right for your business
Committing to VC funding is a big deal and a decision that should not be made lightly.
Although the money and experience from VC's can help your business quickly grow, you are also giving away a stake in the company, and the money comes with strings attached.
Be sure you do your due diligence in finding the right investor - one that truly believes in the growth and success of your business.
What Skills Do I Need To Succeed In Starting A Healthy Snack Food Business?
As a healthy snack food business, there are several essential skills and characteristics that are important to identify prior to starting your business.
Let’s look at these skills in more detail so you can identify what you need to succeed in your day-to-day business operations:
Business Savvy Skills
When starting a healthy snack food business, there are a few fundamental business skills you will want to learn in order to be successful:
- Leadership and training skills: A great team starts with YOU. Make sure you have all company policies and training procedures in place prior to hiring your team
- Decisive and self-confident: Over the course of your career, you will need decisions that could impact your business significantly. It's important you are able to think clearly and rationally about these decisions.
- Ability to understand the financials: You don't need to be an accountant, but it is important that you are able to clearly understand and define metrics such as expenses, revenue, profit, margins, COGS, etc.
- Strategic Thinking: Setting clear goals and benchmarks, identifying opportunities, risks. Ability to effectively communicate these insights to your team.
These are a few of many business savvy skills you should have (or work on) when starting a healthy snack food business.
For a full list, check out this article here.
Customer Service Skills
Friendly communication with customers and the ability to address service issues is a critical part of the job.
Here are some customer service skills you may want to consider prior to starting a healthy snack food business:
- Professionalism: The way you act, present yourself, and respond to situations all leave an impression on your customer. It's important to stay professional at all times when handling customer requests or issues.
- Problem-solving: When issues arise, it's important that you are able to think quick on your feet and address the situation with a calm and clear solution
- Friendly-manner: This is an obvious one, but customers truly appreciate someone that can respond in a quick, efficient, and friendly manner.
- Proficient in writing: These skills include the ability to write well-crafted emails, service tickets, and any other programs used by the business (ie. chat functions, SMS texting)
Self Motivation Skills
Self motivation and discipline skills are critical in order to become successful in this field.
It's likely that you will find yourself starting and running your healthy snack food business from home, which could mean there are more distractions for you.
Here are the basic skills needed for self motivation & discipline:
- Becoming a self starter: It's important that you are capable of independently completing a task without the help or direction of anyone else
- Listening and following directions: When you are given direction by others, it's critical that you are able to follow directions and ask the right questions in order to get your job done
- Taking the initiative in problem solving: Instead of taking the easy route, you'll need to learn to troubleshoot issues on your own as much as possible.
Advice For Starting A Healthy Snack Food Business
We've interviewed thousands of successful founders at Starter Story and asked what advice they would give to entrepreneurs who are just getting started.
Here's the best advice we discovered for starting a healthy snack food business:
Joe Oblas, founder of Stryve ($/month):
Always raise at least twice the capital that you believe that you will need.
Read the full interview ➜
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Julien DUTHEIL CORBIOLI, founder of Natura Wellness ($150K/month):
Any entrepreneurs know that entrepreneurship is a lifetime struggle. It never stops and you never really “made it” If you are not ready to face that and solve problems all day long then do not choose that life.
Read the full interview ➜
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Julien DUTHEIL CORBIOLI, founder of Natura Wellness ($150K/month):
Learn from what you’ve done wrong and always try to improve yourself.
Read the full interview ➜
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Ashley Drummonds, founder of ABS Protein Pancakes ($25K/month):
See your entrepreneurial journey as a marathon and not a sprint. It’s the daily things you do that keep you moving forward.
Read the full interview ➜
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Ryan Chen, founder of Neuro ($500K/month):
Just start, since nothing will ever be perfect in the beginning and things will always evolve.
Read the full interview ➜
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Louisa Mesquita Bakker, founder of Funky Fat Foods ($20K/month):
I know now that we have a product that is perfect for retail and less perfect for worldwide shipping, which is the complete opposite of the idea I had when starting.
Read the full interview ➜
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Krik Angacian, founder of CandyCan ($15K/month):
At the end of the day making decisions should be taken after collecting a wide group of consultation and advice and making your own decisions.
Read the full interview ➜
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Casey and Vanessa White, founder of Jaju Pierogi ($80K/month):
We couldn’t keep up with the demand, so we knew we had something to explore and develop further.
Read the full interview ➜
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Krik Angacian, founder of CandyCan ($15K/month):
Although having a well-thought-out plan and strategy is important, it’s also important to get moving and start selling a product.
Read the full interview ➜
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Write a Business Plan
Writing a business plan from the start is critical for the success of your healthy snack food business.
Why?
Because this allows you to roadmap exactly what you do, what your overall structure will look like, and where you want to be in the future.
For many entrepreneurs, writing out the business plan helps validate their idea and decide whether or not they should move forward with starting the business.
You may want to consider expanding upon these sections in your business plan:
- Executive Summary: Brief outline of your product, the market, and growth opportunities
- Overviews and Objectives: Overview of your business, target customers, and what you need to run your business
- Products and Services: Specifics on the products and services your business will provide
- Market Opportunities: Analysis of customer demographics, buyer habits and if your product is in demand
- Marketing: Outline of your marketing plan and how you plan to differentiate yourself from other customers
- Competitive analysis: Analysis of your competition and the strengths and weaknesses therein
- Operations: Hierarchal structure of the company and what it will take to run the business on the day-to-day
- Leadership Team: Detailing roles and responsibilities of each manager based on their specific skill-set
- Financial Analysis Understanding of all expenses, operating budgets, and projections for the future.
Learn more about how to write a business plan here
Determine Which Business Bank Account You Need
There are hundreds of banks out there, and it can be overwhelming to find one that's right for your business.
Here are some factors you may want to consider:
- Location - Is your bank close enough that you can easily make deposits or get cash?
- Low Fees - Make sure to understand any and all fees associated with setting up and maintaining your bank account. Ask for a list - banks usually try to keep this hidden and in the fine print.
- Online Banking Services - Make sure you can easily navigate through your online portal and you have easy access to everything you need.
- Line of Credit - What do your options look like (even if you don't need this now, you may need this down the road).
- Every bank has something that differentiates them from the rest, so make sure whatever that is applied to your needs and values.
Check out this list of the 13 Best Banks for Small Business in 2020 and what makes them so unique.
Setting Up Your Healthy Snack Food Business (Formation and Legal)
When it comes to setting up your business, you may find yourself in a place where you have to make some financial and legal decisions.
The first thing you'll want to decide on is whether you want to be an LLC, S-Corp, or C-Corp.
These three options are found to be the most common when starting a small business, and all serve to protect your personal assets and also provide you with certain tax benefits.
- LLC: All income and expenses from the business are reported on the LLC personal income tax return.
- S corp: Owners pay themselves salaries + receive dividends from profits.
- C Corp: C Corps are separately taxable entities that file a corporate tax return (Form 1120). No income tax is paid at the corporate level and any tax due is paid at the owners individual expense.
Depending on where you're conducting business, you'll also want to consider securing the proper permits, licenses and liability insurance.
Learn more about securing the right permits and licenses ➜
Need to start an LLC? Create an LLC in minutes with ZenBusiness.
How Do I Pay Myself As A Small Business Owner?
Most entrepreneurs start a business to do something they love- but at the end of the day, you still have bills to pay (maybe now more than ever).
But it's important to strike the right balance - if you pay yourself too much, you could be putting your business at risk.
There are two common ways to pay yourself as a business owner:
1. Owner's Draw
Many entrepreneurs pay themselves through an owner's draw. This means that you are technically sean as "self-employed" through the eyes of the IRS and are not paid through regular wages.
At the point that you collect money from the draw, taxes typically are not taken out - so make sure you are prepared to pay these taxes once you file your individual return.
As an owner who takes a draw, you can legally take out as much as you want from your equity.
This type of compensation is suited for Sole props, LLCs, and partnerships. If you’re an S corp, you can pay yourself through both a salary and draw if you choose.
2. Salary
If you decide to pay yourself a salary, you will receive a set and recurring amount. This will be taxed by the federal government and the state you reside in.
The reality is that it can be really complicated to set your own salary, so we have some tips for you to consider:
- Take out a reasonable amount that allows you to live comfortably but also sets your business up for success
- Consider the number of hours you are working weekly + the type of duties you are performing.
- Set your salary based on your industry-standard, location, and profits (or projected profits)
- Look at your P&L statement: Deduct your own pay from that amount. This is important so you can first tackle important business expenses, and then pay yourself from the amount leftover.
- Pick a payroll schedule (and stick to it)! In the US, it's most common to pay yourself and employees twice a month.
To learn more about how to pay yourself and what is a reasonable amount, check out this article.
How To Price Your Healthy Snacks
One of the most challenging aspects to starting a healthy snack food business is determining how much to charge for your healthy snacks.
When businesses under-price their product, this can be extremely detrimental to their bottom line and reputation.
Often times, businesses under-price their products to drive demand and volume, but that last thing you want is for customers to view your product/service as "cheap." Additionally, this can have a big impact on the type of customer you attract, which can be difficult to recover from.
On the other hand, when businesses over-price, this tends to be just as damaging to the business.
When customers buy, it's likely that they will explore the internet and look at other competitors to ensure they're getting the best value + deal. This is why it's so important that you research your competition and understand where you land in the marketplace.
Here are some factors to consider when pricing your product:
Understand your customer
It's important that out of the gates, you identify the type of customer you want to attract and how much they're willing to pay for your service. One great way to do this is by surveying your customers. Here are some important items you'll want to takeaway:
- Customer demographic: Age, gender, location, etc.
- Buying habits of your customer: What they buy + when they buy
- Level of price sensitivity with your customer
All of these segments will help you identify the type of customer you're attracting and how to price your product accordingly.
Understand your costs
When pricing your healthy snacks, it's critical that you first identify all of your costs and consequently mark up your healthy snacks so you can factor in a profit.
The actual cost of your healthy snacks may include things like:
- The actual cost to make the product (ie. raw materials, supplies, manufacturer).
- Shipping + overhead fees
- Rent
- Operating costs to run your business
You may want to consider creating a spreadsheet with every single expense involved in operating/owning your business. This will give you an idea as to what you need to generate in order to at the very least, break-even and will help you price your products to factor in a profit.
Create revenue goals
When determining the price of your healthy snacks, you'll want to create goals for revenue + how much profit you want your healthy snack food business to make.
This process is simpler than you may think:
- Think about your breakeven cost (by completing the above step).
- Create a revenue goal based on your break-even cost
- Evaluate the # of items you plan to sell in a given period (make sure this is a realistic number)
- Divide your revenue goal by the number of items you plan to sell
This figure will help determine your estimated price per product in order to meet your revenue goals.
Evaluate your competition
The last piece in determining how to price your healthy snacks is by simply looking at your competition.
The best way to do this is by finding like-minded businesses that offer product(s) with similar perceived value. Then, you can compare prices of the different businesses and determine where your healthy snacks fits best in the marketplace.
All of these factors play an equal part in pricing your healthy snacks, so it's important you evaluate each one individually to come up with an accurate price that will help optimize your business from the start.
Understanding Your Costs
Example from Ishan, founder of Ugly Duckling
First objective: profitability
Our profitability is OK at this point but definitely not where it should be yet. To this day I have not paid myself a regular salary yet...and it’s been 4 years!
The problem is not the cost of goods which are well under 20% of sales, which is good by any standard. The problem is fulfillment costs. In 2018 we transitioned from our first fulfillment company to a much bigger company. We did this because we wanted to provide faster shipment speeds and a better quality of packaging. In hindsight, we chose a company which would have been more suitable for a larger company with bigger volumes. We ended up being tied in with some pretty large minimum monthly payments. So currently fulfillment costs are currently around 45% of sales...way too high.
We are now looking to transit to another fulfillment center. Our target is to get our fulfillment costs down to around 30% of sales which I believe from what I have researched, is possible.
Just to be clear, when I say fulfillment that includes transportation costs also - FedEx, USPS, etc. Not just storage, picking, and packing. I am pretty sure that it is possible to get fulfillment costs down even lower, and I suspect that some large pro sellers on amazon.com work with around 20-25% of sales.
So our target P+L for 2020 looks something like this:
- Cost of goods, including inbound freight and clearance - around 22% of sales.
- Fulfillment - around 30% of sales.
- Digital Advertising & Promotion - around 15% of sales.
- Other marketing and office costs, including salary costs - around 10% of sales.
- That would leave us around 23% of sales - enough to pay me a liveable salary and for the company to make a profit and finance future growth.
That's the first objective for 2020: to right-size the P+L so that we are profitable at our current sales level
Gross Margin Calculator: How to Calculate The Gross Margin For Your Healthy Snacks
Our calculator is designed to be simple and easy to use.
The goal is to help you set realistic expectations and understand what is considered a healthy gross margin for your healthy snack food business.
Calculate your gross margin and profit margin here.
Design A Prototype
Turning your idea into a reality can feel like a daunting task - but it's critical that you have an idea of what your product will look like (even if it's just a sketch) prior to finding a manufacturer.
Here are some common ways you can design your prototype:
- Draw Your Initial Design on Paper
- Form pieces of fabric together
- Consider Taking A Generic Product And Putting Your Own Brand On It
- Try Making the Product Yourself
- Consider Building A Prototype With A 3D Printer
To learn more about how to design and prototype a product, check out our latest guide here.
Ryan Chen, founder of Neuro dives deep into the process of designing and prototyping their product:
Our process for everything usually starts with an open dialogue with our entire team. We have our new line of Calm and Clarity coming out and it has been over a year in the making and I will try to break down the process as much as possible. everyone gets to be a guinea pig, and we research A LOT. While there is no “one size fits all”, we do extensive sampling to find a common denominator across effectiveness and taste. Now that we have a larger team it helps get more feedback but in the beginning, it was Kent and I being the guinea pigs.
Typically, our product creation cycle consists of:
What is the problem we are trying to solve? What are we personally looking for and if we can find that desired effect, we are confident others would want it as well. For us, our flagship product was NeuroGum and NeuroMints Energy and Focus (a blend of natural caffeine L-theanine, and B vitamins). Expanding into the calm and clarity product line we did extensive research on what supplements worked best for people to relax and reduce stress.
We generally start with some Initial research, where we look into the market space and see how people are responding to certain products (i.e. Do they love it and does it fit in their daily lives). There are a lot of ingredients with studies and papers about their effectiveness and dosage size. We try to find that would pair the best in our gum and mint format. Our newest calm and clarity line is going to include the active ingredients GABA, L-theanine, and Vitamin D3. We took a substantial amount of time researching each component and also the combination of the 3 active ingredients together. The key for us was trying to make something effective, yet simple at the same time. National Institutes of Health is an incredible resource and free platform to research studies and ingredients - we use it all the time in our research phase.
Time Frame = 4-12 weeks (crucial, take your time with this process)After identifying the active ingredients comes the next part which is taste and flavor. For our initial energy and focus line we chose mint (most popular gum flavor) and then cinnamon (apparently 5th most popular gum flavor). Calm and clarity were a new challenge because we couldn’t use the same flavors so we outline as many flavor profiles as possible. We then surveyed some of our most loyal customers by incentivizing them with a $100 gift card. I promise you will be surprised by how many more responses you get with a small reward!
For the new calm and clarity line, we had about 10 different options in the end and landed on 2! This whole process takes a few weeks and we came up with honey lemon and ginger chai.
Time Frame = 4 weeks
So in an ideal world, these new flavors will work with the taste of the active ingredients which are often not the best tasting. For example, caffeine is EXTREMELY bitter and is difficult to mask. So after we narrow down to a few flavors we then go into batch mixing with our active ingredients to see how the products would taste. This can be a quick powder batch mix so the turn around time is a few days versus a few weeks. You will quickly know how the final product would turn out. Time Frame = 1-2 weeks
The next steps are the analysis of ingredient cost and what it takes to do a MOQ or sample R&D. For us, R&D ranges anywhere from $5-10k to get it to the production level. This is almost in the final stages of product development
Time Frame = 10-12 weeksDesign (in tandem with R&D). After getting closer to a final product you should start working on the sidelines for your packaging. This can take some time especially if you don’t have your brand aesthetic and look flushed out. Luckily we just went through a major rebrand on packaging in February 2020 so we had a clear vision on what the product design would look like. Time Frame = 2-3 weeks
Production! MOQs are typically in the 30,000 pack range. This is the most nerve-wracking but exciting part. All the hard work in the previous steps is now coming to fruition. Our manufacturing cycles take advanced planning not just on cash flow but also in media and PR.
Time Frame = 8-12 weeks
I would say the best-case scenario would be about conception to launch 6 months with products like our functional gum and mints. But in our experience, it's closer to a year! Be patient, good things take time.
Our very first order.
We never met our manufacturers before the first run. Everything was done via email. The incredible benefits of the internet and global commerce. Things that were not possible back in our parent’s age.
Both Kent and my parents were entrepreneurs and when they did business it involved a lot of traveling and face to face interactions. In hindsight, it's crazy to think about sinking most of our life savings into our manufacturer and never visiting but we didn’t have the capital to travel and meet them AND do the manufacturing run. But we gained trust and confidence when they sent us samples of the products they currently make and videos of their manufacturing plant!
Anyway, we negotiated down the lowest MOQ possible and that was around 25,000 units I believe at the time. We had enough to pay the deposit of 50% upfront and the remaining 50% due upon shipping.
Other than the fact, we had some of the worst paper packagings with a difficult fulfillment process we were so happy we had a finished product. That product ended up being launched via Indiegogo which we will go into more detail below.
How To Find A Supplier For Your Healthy Snack Food Business
Here are the steps to consider when finding a supplier/manufacturer:
Know your design
One very critical step to finding the right supplier is having an initial idea of what your design/product will look like.
Sketching is one of the most simple ways to get started in the design phase.
What's great about sketching is that you can practically do this anytime, anywhere - even on the back of a napkin.
To get started, all you need to do is pick up a pen and paper and start drawing - or if you are working on a virtual/software product this can be a diagram that outlines the user interface or experience.
Decide your supplier type
You'll want to identify the type of supplier you are looking for.
Here are some questions you may want to ask yourself prior to searching for a supplier
- Are you looking for a manufacturer to produce your product idea?
- Do you want to find a supplier that can simply purchase existing products for you?
- Do you want a drop-shipper to supply and fulfill orders?
- Do you want a domestic supplier or an overseas supplier? Read more about the pros and cons of each here
Where to start your search
Once you have an understanding of what type of manufacturer/supplier will be best to bring your idea to life, there are several areas you can start your search:
Domestic Suppliers
Overseas Suppliers
Manufacturing Your Product In House
It's also very common to manufacture your healthy snacks on your own - either from your home or in a commercial space.
In order to get the product right, you may want to consider experimenting with different designs and recipes until you find the perfect one.
Some founders choose to manufacture their product in-house so that they can control quality, manage costs, and easily handle production/logistics.
Down the road, you can always choose to outsource your healthy snacks.
Leslie Eisen, founder of AlmondClear discusses how to manufacture products in house
If you want to start a line of unique products, then you have two basic options: you can make them yourself, or you can find a manufacturer to work with that creates custom formulations for their clients.
I knew that I was trying to build a larger-scale business and that the home-made model wasn’t right for me, so I had to find the right manufacturing partner. It took a lot of research, phone calls, and emails before I found the laboratory that met my needs.
I wanted to create unique products (as opposed to private label), so I worked with the manufacturer’s chemist who specializes in skin care formulations. This process takes some time!
First, you have to tell the chemist what kind of product you’re looking for, the ingredients that you want to include or leave out, and what you want the final product to look like/feel like/smell like, etc.
Then, the manufacturer sends you the first sample, you try it out or give it to others to try, and then provide feedback for revisions. In my case, the first two products came together fairly easily because I only needed to make small changes to stock formulations.
There are many, many rules and regulations around cosmetics and skin care products. If you want to sell products that contain FDA regulated ingredients then you have to register and get a permit.
My products aren’t FDA regulated, so I didn’t have to go through this step, but I did have to be aware of the many guidelines and standards around labeling and safety warnings. Some people hire a lawyer to help them through this process, but my manufacturer was able to guide me through the regulatory process.
The entire process, from researching labs to work with to having the first finished products shipped out to me, took around six months.
Purchasing Inventory For Your Healthy Snack Food Business
When first starting out, it's important to start small with your overhead to get a gauge for what people want.
Just remember - if you order a line of items that don't sell, it's nearly impossible to recoup the money lost.
Buying the right inventory takes research and planning in order to get it right.
- Identify your target audience: Identify the age, gender, annual income that you will be selling to. This is a defining factor in ordering the right inventory that will sell.
- Research your competition: Conduct market research and identify the different types of styles, price points, and materials being used. This will help you see what's trending and ways that you can improve/stay ahead of the competition.
- Create an inventory wishlist: Identify what you need for the launch of your business and create a budget that you will stay within. Remember, it's okay to start small.
- Find a supplier Make sure to first compare prices and analyze different options.
- Delivery timing: Schedule the inventory delivery to match with seasonality and trending buying seasons
Pro-tip: It's easy to become biased based on your own fashion preferences on what types of shoes/apparel to purchase. This is where a lot of fashion businesses go wrong. It's important to base purchase decisions on current buyer behavior, trends in the market, and specific to your niche.
Erin Hooley, founder of Bailey's Blossoms tells us how poor inventory projections led her to lose over $2M
When we first launched Peyton Bre we did so in a social or direct sales model.
Through poor inventory projections we were forced to change models but only after losing $2 million dollars.
It was a devastating time for us and one we were not sure we could survive.
I have since become very intentional about the way that we project our inventory needs and we continue to refine that quarterly and even monthly. We have created a KPI for the cost of goods sold to help us hold ourselves accountable.
Ultimately, the better we manage our inventory the less we have need to discount and the healthier our profit margin becomes.
This is, of course, a very high-level overview of the importance of inventory control.
To see the full breakdown on how to manage inventory, check out my guide over on my blog..
🚀 How To Launch Your Healthy Snack Food Business
Build A Website
Building a website is imperative when launching your business, and with the right tools in place, this can be a simple task to check off the list (without having to hire someone).
- Pick a domain name that's easy to remember and easy to type
- Choose a Web Hosting Plan (ie. Shopify, Squarespace)
- Make sure you choose the right theme and design
- Implement the proper page structure (ie. about page, contact page, pricing etc)
To learn more about how to build a stellar website with little stress, we give you all the details on this step-by-step guide.
Web Design
Once you have chosen the domain, web hosting, and platform, it's time to get started with the design phase.
Themes are a great way to produce the fundamental style and identity of your website - this includes everything from your font design to your blog post styles.
One of the best ways to get started is to simply explore the various themes (free or paid depending on what you're looking for) and test them on your site.
If web-design really isn't in the cards for you, you may want to consider outsourcing a web designer to help bring your vision and brand to life.
Launch Strategies For Your Healthy Snack Food Business
There are various different ways you can launch your healthy snack food business successfully.
Here are a few different strategies to get customers excited about your healthy snack food business.
- Build hype with a landing page: you can effectively do this through waiting lists, discounts, countdown timer etc
- Create a teaser video: even just a 30 second video is a great way to exposure for your healthy snack food business, and possibly even go viral
- Reach out to influencers: The right influencer for your product has the ability to reach your audience with just one post, and because of their loyal following, this could lead to a big return for you.
- Get Press: Whether you plan a PR stunt or get exposure through a popular news outlet, this is a great way to attract initial customers
- Launch on popular sites: A great way to get buzz about your healthy snack food business is to submit your launch to popular startup sites.
Here are a few popular sites to launch on:
Learn more about how to launch your business successfully ➜ here
Louisa Mesquita Bakker, founder of Funky Fat Foods dives deep into the process of launching the business:
We had our MVP launch at the end of February 2018 at a famous chocolate event in Amsterdam called Chocoa Festival. An event for real chocolate aficionados, which was a great way to receive feedback and sell some bars.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CZqcsIx9kjI
We also started selling the bars via a Shopify site (using a free theme), and I asked my family and friends to help me sell at local fairs.
We sold 12.000 bars in 6 months mainly through organic search and Instagram. Selling at local fairs wasn’t really successful. Most of the time we just got to a break-even point. The whole high-fat, low carb lifestyle is still something quite unknown here in the Netherlands, but the interest is slowly growing.
When launching the MVP online, we received several reviews from customers in the Netherlands and all over the world, as we’re shipping worldwide. Reviews said that KetoCacao really helped with their cravings, surviving long office hours, and so much more.
However, we’ve also received feedback that the taste, packaging, and branding were all things that could be improved. We have this memorable moment where I sent the MVP bars to this lovely famous keto couple called Keto Connect, hoping to receive their honest feedback by email.
Little did I know that their review would be uploaded on their Youtube channel (last year among their 400k subscribers now its doubled). It went viral, but they weren’t impressed with the product. That was quite a bummer, but also very motivating as I’ve always seen this first product as an MVP and the more honest and good feedback we get, the better.
In the end, I want to create the best high-fat snacks. I want people to enjoy their active life eating good food. All the feedback, good and bad, served as extra energy to take back to R&D, improve the product, and, at the same time, rethink the overall strategy. I think being flexible and open to feedback is something that truly helped me along the way.
The evolution of our labels:
A before and after shot of our packaging.
The entire "back to R&D" process to improve the taste and texture of the bars and rebuild the brand took longer than expected. I’ve had an “Out of Stock, we’ll be back soon” note on my website for over six months. It was a long period of time, but I needed it to reflect, test new formulas among our early adopters, and have the new designs created for the packaging.
During this period, I also worked as a restaurant hostess and privately taught the Dutch language to expats just to earn some extra money. But after many brainstorming sessions together, my freelancer, my father, and I finally fit it all together. We thought it would be better to change the company name to Funky Fat Foods, as the mission is to motivate, empower and inform as many people as possible to eat more healthy fats and skip the sugars. During this process, my father got more involved in the business regarding our strategic planning and logistics. He’s a nomad and travels all year round, however, we talk almost every day by phone to discuss the business. He’s my go-to person.
Since August this year, we’re back again with a completely new site, new packaging, and new improved flavors. Now I work in the business full time from home. I spend most of my time on product development, customer service, and sales. I learn so much, and every day I feel it’s only getting more serious and finally starting to develop into an actual business. Our main sales channel at the moment is through our (online) resellers. We can’t thank them enough for their trust. Some of our online resellers have been with us since we launched our MVP, so it’s amazing to see their belief in us.
Make Sure You Get The Package Design Right
The way you package your healthy snack food business is often the first impression your customer has - so it's important to get it right.
You may want to ask yourself these questions:
If my product is on a shelf next to hundreds of other similar products:
- Will my healthy snack food business stand out?
- Will the branding/packaging create a connection with my customer, and hence, lead them to buy?
There are hundreds of tools you can use to help with packaging and design:
- Canva - Allows non-designers to create beautiful Instagram/Pinterest posts, flyers, business cards, etc.
- Stickermule - High quality custom stickers you can include on or in your packaging.
- Noissue - Custom tissue paper and compostable mailers
- Rollo Label Printer - A great tool to print all shipping labels at home
Sheets & Giggles explains the motive behind their "Premium Unboxing Experience"
I had a particular vision for our packaging centered around one goal: because we were a DTC company and wouldn’t do physical retail in year 1, we needed to focus entirely on an incredible unboxing experience that made the product feel as premium as possible.
Outside: a white box, nice wax coating, logo front and center with no other copy, easy to open, nice and sturdy.
Inside: make people smile from the get-go, have a social call-to-action, include free extra surprises (a knapsack that wraps the sheets and an eye mask), put funny copy all over the place, and add a donation bag that people could use to donate their now-defunct cotton sheets (sheets & blankets are the #2-most-requested item at shelters behind socks).
Get Press Coverage For Your Healthy Snack Food Business
The more buzz around your brand - the more the phones ring, the more traffic to your website, and the more customers as a result.
Here are a few ways you can get press for your business:
Press releases:
Press releases are a great way to share big announcements or news, but in order to get any traction, you'll need to find a way to make your press release stand out amongst others.
Try to convey a story that really matters, not just to you, but to the reporter and to their audience.
Here are some things to consider when submitting a press release:
- Craft a catchy subject (keep it short and sweet).
- Acknowledge the journalist's past work and interests - this is key!
- Include the main point of the story in the first paragraph, heck, even the first sentence. Reporters want to hear the juice first and foremost.
- Focus on the facts and try to limit the amount of jargon used.
- Pitch yourself! Help them put a face to the story.
- Make sure your topic is newsworthy. If it's not, find a way to!
- Try not to include any attachments of your release!
Email is one of the most effective and preferred way to send your press release, so as long as you keep your pitch brief, interesting and personalized (no cold emails), you should stand a chance!
Get Press Using HARO
HARO, otherwise known as "Help a Reporter Out" is an outlet for journalists to source upcoming stories and opportunities for media coverage.
The best part is, HARO is free to use! There are, of course, premium versions you can purchase, but the free version is still an accessible way to get press.
Once you set up an account, HARO essentially will email you based on stories (that are relevant to you) that need to be covered where you will then have a chance to essentially "bid on the story."
Here are some tips when crafting your pitch:
- Discuss your experience and expertise in the space. Make sure it's obvious why you're relevant to this story.
- Answer the question in 3-4 sentences. Try and be as direct as possible
- Offer to provide the reporter with more information and make sure to give them your contact info
Plan a Publicity Stunt
Planning a publicity stunt is an effective and quick way to raise awareness for your brand and gain some traction from the press.
If you're looking to plan a stunt, the objective should be to be bold and create something memorable
However, being bold has a fine line - it's important that you consider the timing of your stunt to ensure you don't come off insensitive or unethical. For example, timing may not be in your favor if you plan something during the general election, or in most recent cases, a global pandemic.
In order to measure the success of your stunt, it's important that you first determine your end goal, for example:
- Is the stunt aimed to raise money for your business or a particular organization?
- Is the stunt aimed to drive more traffic to your website?
- Is the stunt aimed to get more followers and engagement on Instagram?
Here are a few tips for creating a great publicity stunt:
- Research to ensure that there haven't been similar stunts done in the past by other businesses - this could easily turn off journalists and your audience.
- Make sure you can explain the stunt in one headline - this will help grab the media's attention. In other words, simplify!
- The stunt should be related to the product you are promoting. Even if the stunt is a success in terms of viewers, but it doesn't tie back to your original goal, then it's not useful.
- Keep the stunt visual with videos/images.
- Leverage the internet and social media platforms for your stunt by sharing your message across a variety of audiences. This will help with word of mouth and the overall success of your event.
To learn other strategies on how to get press, check out our full guide here.
🌱 How To Grow Your Healthy Snack Food Business
Social Media Advertising
Social Media Advertising is one of the leading ways to get the word out when it comes to healthy snack food business.
There are various different Social Media platforms available to you. Some may be more critical for your marketing efforts than others, however, it's important to have an understanding of what's out there and available to you.
Let's talk about a few of the main platforms and what makes them unique:
- Facebook Advertising - more than 2 billion monthly users. Facebook is the best for lead generation + capturing email addresses for e-commerce businesses.
- Instagram Advertising - approximately 500 million monthly users and has a higher audience engagement rate than any other platform. Instagram ads are best for linking to a product page or landing page and reaches the 18-29 age group most effectively.
- Twitter Advertising- Small businesses typically use twitter ads to drive brand awareness, but the platform is meant more for organic engagement (and is not as heavily used for paid advertising)
- Pinterest Advertising - 175 million monthly users and most effectively reaches the female audience. Pinterest is great for promoting products without "promoted". The promoted pins have a way of blending right in.
- LinkedIn Advertising - 227 million monthly users and is geared towards the B2B market and generates the highest quality leads. Great platform for recruiters, high-end products and services that will help businesses
It's important to first define your goal/objective so that you don't waste time and money into the wrong platform:
Here are some different questions to ask yourself as it relates to your goals:
- Do I want to simply drive brand awareness?
- Do I want to drive users to my website to gather information?
- Do I want to increase sales and get my customer to take action?
From there, choose the platform that targets your audience best and start experimenting!
Learn more about social media advertising ➜ here.
Founder Andy Hayes talks about mastering FB ads and the pixel:
The biggest bang for your buck will likely be mastering Facebook and it’s platform - which we all know is pay for play, so you’ll have to come up with a small amount of budget to start for marketing.
We’ve spent countless hours (and paid numerous coaches) before we cracked the code that works for us on Facebook, but it is working really well for us now.
Some of the most important things to know when it comes to FB Ads:
- Start with retargeting (that’s showing ads to people who already know you but did not purchase). Master this - and start building information on your Facebook Pixel - before you do anything else
- Once you have that down, try working with the 1% “Lookalike” audience to prospect for new customers. This may take awhile because your pixel audience is small, so try layering on interests - 1% Lookalike and your largest competitor, for example. Don’t use interest-only targeting until you master this.
- Great photography and videography is key, as is smart copy. Research what’s out there in your industry and constantly test - what works for one company may not work for other people.
- Make sure you have good offers. For example, we have a $5 trial for our subscription, which converts affordably - if we promoted our subscription with the standard $30 front charge, it wouldn’t be as cost-effective.
Build A Facebook Community
Building a community is a great way to grow your network and your business.
There are several different ways of building a community, one of the most effective (and simplest) ways is to build a Facebook group
Setting up the group page takes less than 10 minutes, and we've outlined ways the top 5 ways to create an engaging and successful group:
- Make the group exclusive. This may sound counter-intuitive, however, this ensures privacy and that the group will feel comfortable posting and engaging with members.
- Try to be warm and welcoming. A great way to do this is by having a "Member Monday" where you welcome new members and ask them to introduce themselves in the group
- Use polls/surveys. This is a great way to know your audience and see what people want more of in the group (more business tips, networking opportunities, etc).
- Include influential people & conduct AMA's (ask me anything). This is a great way to get members engaged
- Host an in-person (or virtual) event with members in the group. This will create stronger relationships and build a strong community.
Mike Doehla, founder of Stronger U, an online nutrition company noticed that his customers needed a little motivation and sense of community:
Most diets are lonely so we wanted to give support and a community.
I think many people fail diets because there is no one to talk to and no accountability.
You can by a book, or google a meal plan but who’s going to keep you on track? We will. The entire SU community.
We give our members access for life to our Facebook community filled with people around the world who are looking out for everyone’s success.
Most diets make up arbitrary rules and we thought they just didn’t make sense. Meal timing, Cutting carbs, butter in coffee, sugar being the devil? Ehh no need to overthink that stuff.
We’ll give you the science behind of what we do and show you what actually matters based on real research.
Luckily we have a PhD at our disposal to educate our staff and members so everyone is getting the most up to date information out there.
Consider Selling On Amazon
In addition to selling your products directly on your site, you may want to consider selling on Amazon to reach a wider audience and attract new customers.
Here are some pros and cons of selling on amazon:
Pros
- Easy and seamless process to get your product listed on Amazon
- There are roughly 100 million thoroughly committed prime customers, so you're bound to tap into new business
- Can help grow your business exponentially and reach new audiences
Cons
- You may encounter some "copycats" and counterfeit products
- Amazon owns the relationship with the customer (you lose control over product reviews + customer service)
- If you already have a low-markup, amazon may not wrth your while and you could end up losing money
- Commissions and listing fees are high - it's easy to lose control of your offering
Follow these instructions to get your product listed on Amazon or check out the video below on how to get started:
Cory Stout, founder of Woodies ($250K/mo) provides us with specifics on how to rank better on amazon:
Our main product is walnut wood sunglasses that I sell for $25 on Amazon and Woodies.com.
I dedicated myself to becoming an Amazon expert. I listened to all the podcasts and read all the blog posts I could find. Shoutout EcomCrew I took the basic fundamentals that are out there and I added a couple of my own twists.
Amazon brings me, 100 brand new customers, every day for very little acquisition cost. If I tried that on my own, it would take a TON of work and it wouldn’t be nearly as effective as Amazon, so I took the easy road on this one.
Here's an article I wrote on how to rank better on amazon (30+ Tips):
5/5: ESSENTIAL
- Beautiful images (minimum 5 images) especially lifestyle images I use UpgradedImages.com for product photography (hey Ken!)
- Keywords in your title (but it still needs to sound human)
- Competitive price (contributes to high conversion rate)
- NOT having 1-star reviews
- DON'T STOCKOUT: it's such a killer and if you DO stockout, definitely DON'T raise your price right before you do, if anything LOWER your price for the last 10-20 units before you stockout, each ASIN has a 'memory' for when you do get back in stock so that will help you regain ranking quickly
- DON'T VIOLATE AMAZON TOS: just don't
- Perform QC on your stock before you send it in (I sent in a wrong box once and I had to 'remove' over 3,000 pieces so I could sift through them and remove the 150 contaminated pieces 0/7 would not recommend
4/5: Pretty Friggin Important
- Minimum 10 5-star reviews (do this before you do anything below this)
- Well optimized PPC campaigns (could do a whole post on this, keep ACOS under 40%) here's a screenshot of some of my campaigns I use a combination of manual campaigns with exact phrases and high bids...and auto campaigns with a broad range of products and very low bids
- Turning on FeedbackGenius for auto review requests (it's not as good as it used to be, but it's still worth it)
- Get a trademark and get Brand Registry, this protects you from hijackers and other unscrupulous sellers
- Quick response to customer messages (under 12 hours) here are my stats my mom does all my customer service "Employee of the Year" status
- Drive outside traffic (amazon loves outside traffic because they don't have to spend so much to acquire customers) Facebook, Instagram, and Google Adwords are the usual suspects
- Use ocean shipping to save mucho $$$ on unit costs (use flexport)
Read more about amazon tips here.
Improve your SEO
SEO is not just about driving traffic to your site, it's about driving the RIGHT traffic to your site, and ultimately, converting leads into customers.
One of the most important aspects of SEO is understanding what your customers are searching for, otherwise known as "keyword research."
Here are some tools that can help you choose the right keywords for your healthy snack food business.
- Google Ads Keyword Planner invaluable for discovering search trends.
- Google Search Console is very helpful once your website is up as it shows you what words/phrases are generating traffic.
- Ahrefs and SEMRush are paid tools that allow you to look at results of your competitor's website.
Publish Great Content
Finding keywords is an important piece of the puzzle, but Google also ranks your site based on the actual content you produce, as this is what your customers are reading and engaging with.
There are various different "forms" of content that you may want to consider diversifying on your sites, such as blog posts, articles, studies, and videos.
So let's discuss what google considers "good content:"
- Length - This will vary depending on the page, however, generally having a sufficient amount of content helps search engines recognize that your site is a good source for a specific topic
- Engagement - The longer people stay on your website to read your content, the higher Google will rank your website. It's important to have informative and "thick" content that keeps people reading
- Avoid Duplicating Content - Google will recognize this and may consider your content to have low value
- Ensure pages load quickly - This will also help with engagement and time spent on your website
- Shareability - Create content that people want to share, and is easy for them to share, especially to their social media accounts (ie. "click to tweet" is a great example of this).
Another element of creating good content is creating consistent content.
If (and hopefully you are) publishing content frequently, it's important to stick to a schedule - this helps build brand trust and easy user experience with your customers.
Planning out your content with a content calendar is key to staying consistent.
Here are a few great content calendar tools that can help you:
Backlinks
Backlinks are an important piece to SEO, as they allow for other websites to link to your content.
Search engines recognize that other sites are essentially "verifying" your content and essentially rank you higher because of this.
Of course, some links are more valuable than others and can affect your site in different ways.
For example, if a highly valuable and credible site like the New York Times links to a page on your website, this could be remarkable from an SEO perspective.
Aside from organically getting mentioned from other sites, there are other ways that you can increase and earn backlinks:
- Create infographics with relevant data that people want to share
- Promote your content on different sites/look into "guest blogging"
- Contact influencers/journalists/bloggers and ask them to mention you!
- Write testimonials for other sites in exchange for a backlink
- Leverage existing business relationships
Learn more about the fundamentals of SEO ➜ here and check out Neil Patel's 3 Powerful SEO Tips below
Build A Blog
One of the most effective ways to build brand awareness and grow your business is through consistently blogging.
We've outlined some useful tips for you to consider when creating content:
Consistency and Quantity
Quality is important, but it should be the standard for any content you publish.
What’s more important is consistency and quantity.
Consistency is as simple as committing to publishing and sharing a certain number of posts per week. For me, that’s three per week right now.
This kind of commitment is key, because one day, a random post will blow up, and you will have never expected it.
Oversaturation
The easiest mind trap is to think "I’m posting too much", and “I need to give my readers/audience/this platform a break”.
This is nonsense.
There is no such thing as oversaturation. Well, there is, but it is just someone else’s opinion.
For every person that tells you you are posting too much, there is another person that wants even more of your content.
You should ignore people’s opinions on how much you post.
Patience & Persistence
Keep posting, keep trying, and keep putting out good content on the regular. Your time will come, and when it does, it will change everything.
The only thing you have control over is your content.
You can’t control how people will react to it. You can’t control pageviews, likes, or shares.
So the only metric you should focus on is how much content you can put out in a week, month, etc.
Where to share your blog content
Mailing List
I know it sounds obvious, but the best places to share your content is on your mailing list. It is guaranteed traffic and it is a great way to get rapid feedback from your most loyal readers.
Send newsletters often. I have done once a week since starting, and I’m moving to twice a week soon.
Work on increasing your mailing list as well. Look into ways to increase your conversion rate to your mailing list. I added a flyout popup thing to my site and now I’m collecting ~30 emails per day.
An email newsletter is one of the most powerful assets you can have and it is worth its weight in gold.
Reddit is one of my favorite places to promote content.
It is a very scary place because you will often get banned or heckled, but it can really pay off.
Create social media accounts for your blog, the main ones I use:
Twitter Facebook Instagram LinkedIn
Set up Buffer and share all of your blog posts to all of your accounts. All of these little shares really do add up.
Automate this as much as possible. I automated all of my social media for Starter Story.
Facebook Groups
When I started out, I put together a spreadsheet of relevant Facebook groups for my niche, and I would post to these groups whenever I had a big story I wanted to share.
Experiment With Pay Per Click Ads (PPC)
Pay-per-click (PPC) is a performance-based marketing method that allows you to show specific ads for services or products oriented to a very defined target, with the goal that the user visits your website or landing page.
Here are some tips to consider:
- Consider connecting the ad to your corresponding landing page so that the audience receives the necessary information after clicking on the ad.
- Conversion Tracking: When running PPC campaigns, be sure to run the ads with conversion tracking.
- Focus on quality keywords, even if there are few as this will save you time and money. When assessing the performance of a keyword, it's important to track the expense, conversion, and cost per conversion, as well as the ROI.
PPC advertising can be a very important lead generator as long as it's done properly. Your PPC campaign is intended to drive traffic to your website and help the business scale.
Additionally, if the campaign is not having the desired results, you can make the necessary changes immediately to improve them.
Ryan Schortmann, founder of Display Pros talks about their investment in PPC Ads:
My name is Ryan Schortmann and I’m the founder of Display Pros. We are a custom trade show display booth company offering easy to use portable display “kits” for small and medium businesses wanting to get into the trade show game.
It did not take long to come to the realization that to compete at any reasonable level, we were going to need to take the plunge and invest in Pay Per Click ads and display.
From experience, I know that it is important to give Google’s hivemind some time to settle in before each campaign starts seeing consistent results (this is largely dependent on budget).
A certain amount of PPC budget must be viewed as a “marketing research” expense and then you can look at the analytics data and make informed decisions on where to refine, tweak or plain scrap an idea.
Google Shopping was an entirely new concept for me. You can’t assign keywords to products so at first, I was asking myself “How the hell do you refine these?”. Then I found some good reading material and courses and learned of some advanced methods that the pros are using. It turns out you can utilize negative keyword lists combined with the priority setting on each shopping campaign to “shape” the keywords that are coming in and how much you are spending on them.
To learn more about PPC Ads and Google Shopping, check out this video to learn everything you need to know!
Grow Your Email List
The more engaged list of emails, the more engaged customers, which ultimately leads to more sales.
One of the best ways to start growing your list is by providing your customer with something free (or discounted) in return.
This could also be anything from:
- Ebook
- Fascinating case study
- Video series
- Free week of the product
- Discount on the product
Learn more about how to grow your email list and improve email marketing ➜ here.
Dylan Jacob, founder of Brumate states their email collection tactic that is proven to work:
We use Spin-a-Sale for this (you spin a wheel for a discount code in exchange for subscribing to our email list). This has been the best email-collecting tool we have found because the customer truly feels like they won a prize rather than just a coupon code.
Even if a customer doesn’t convert right away, if we have their email we have a 19% chance of converting them into a future customer whether that is through future promotions, new releases, or simply just sending an email at the right time for a purchase to finally make sense for them.
We also have a return customer rate of over 14%, so one out of every 6 people we convert will end up buying from us again with an average order value of over $60.00.
Add an exit-intent popup to your online store
A great way to double, or even triple, your email opt-in rate and to grow your list is to add an exit-intent popup to your site, and offering a discount or content upgrade for subscribers.
Here's an example of what that might look like:
One thing that I spent years NOT doing, that I now kick myself about, is adding an "exit intent pop-up" to our site, which lets people enter a sweepstakes to win a Xero Shoes gift certificate.
That one idea has added over 100,000 subscribers to our email list, which is one of our most effective marketing channels.
Improve Your Email Marketing
Different types of emails
Here are the most common types of email campaigns you can send to your customers and their benefits:
- Welcome emails - the perfect way to provide information from the start with a clear CTA. Make sure to tell your customer everything they need to know about your product or service.
- Newsletters - a great way to give customers updates or send out your latest content
- Product launch emails - the quickest (and easiest) way to increase sales is by selling to current customers. Make sure they're the first on the list to know about your new product
- Promotional emails - promote discounts, deals coupons etc. Try and make this feel exclusive and for a limited time only
- Abandoned cart emails - give your customers a reason to complete their purchase!
Here's a great resource for finding curated email designs, for all types of email campaigns!
Abandonded Cart Flow
The abandoned cart workflow is one of the most effective strategies for turning your lead into a customer, and a powerful tool to have if you're an e-commerce business.
Think about all the times that you went on a shopping frenzy only to add items to your cart and then either forget or realize nows not the right time to pull the trigger.
Then, minutes later you receive an email saying "Hurry up! Your cart is waiting - and we want to provide you with 20% off your order."
Maybe that's the special touch (and discount) you needed to pull that trigger.
Implementing this workflow can automatically trigger this for your business every time a customer abandons their cart.
Here's a great example of an abandoned cart email from Brooklinen:
Things they do well:
- Showcase 5-star reviews from other customers
- Offer a small discount + free shipping
- Great design + clear call to actions!
🏃🏼♀️ How To Run Your Healthy Snack Food Business
How To Retain Customers For Your Healthy Snack Food Business
Retaining customers is one of the most effective ways to grow your healthy snack food business.
Oftentimes, it's easy to find yourself focusing on generating new customers, vs retaining your current ones.
Look at it this way - you are 60-70% more likely to sell a new product to an existing customer than you are a new customer.
That's not to say that finding new customers and revenue streams is not important, however, the easiest (and most inexpensive) source of new revenue is right there in front of you.
Here are some ways you can retain customers for your healthy snack food business:
- Responding to comments on social media
- Send discounts (or freebies) to loyal customers
- Provide valuable content, for free
- Write a hand written thank you note
- Provide awesome customer service and build relationships with customers
To find out more tips and tricks on retaining customers, check out this article ➜ here
George Greenhill, founder of Protein Package dives deep into the process of attracting and retaining customers:
Scaling a business is a tricky process, the three of the key pillars we’ve relied on time and time again are organic social media interactions, search engine optimization (SEO), and direct email marketing.
When starting Protein Package, Instagram was experiencing an intense period of growth with users around the world migrating to it from Facebook (who owns Instagram). Our products are generally visually appealing when they’re opened up, making Instagram’s free social platform the ideal place to promote our products on.
We quickly racked up around 15,000 Instagram followers and just over 45,000 fans across all our social media channels. We were able to communicate directly with our current customers and anyone looking to potentially order from us in the future showing offers, new launches, and news.
In 2020, I discovered Ahrefs through their YouTube tutorials and began to use their premium software service that’s rated the best in class with SEMRush as a toolset for backlink and technical SEO analysis.
The software includes a keyword explorer, content viewer, rank tracker, and website audits so that we could target search phrases and build links to pages to improve our search visibility on a platform that gets around 5 billion organic searches per day.
On the Barebells bars for example, by building multiple backlinks from reputable sources, we were able to go from the ranked 12th on Google for the search “Barebells” to 1st place ahead of the brand's page bringing in an extra 7,000 visitors per month. We also managed to bump up our domain rating from around 10 to 37 in the space of six months, boosting our website’s authority compared to similar competitors.
Email is still the bread and butter for marketing. Recent reports show that ‘email generates $42 for every $1 spent, which is an astounding 4,200% ROI, making it one of the most effective options available’ (Litmus, 2021).
For our emails, we use Klaviyo which has a direct integration with Shopify to automatically pull in all of our products. We’ve created plenty of different templates and presets in the software to speed up the process of building the marketing from the ground up which otherwise takes up a lot of time from your day.
Getting software where you can build templates is something to always look out for and not overlook when picking which service to go with. Being a small family team like us makes it vital to automate as much as possible to reduce the time spent replicating tasks.
Our email marketing is very successful, the Bang Energy Drinks email you can see in the image had a click-through rate of 5.6%, an open rate of 27% and an unsubscribe rate of 0.05% which all fall above the average benchmarks for our industry.
It’s a good idea to always check how your emails are performing against current market benchmarks found online to ensure your audience is responding well and are maintaining interest in your brand messages and new product releases.
We currently have an email subscriber list of 26,000 engaged customers and a combined social media following of 36,000 people that we can easily communicate with to introduce new product ranges and brands. We see sale spikes of around 10% on older products when we launch new ranges due to customers ordering the newer products but also reordering some of their long-standing favorites.
Regarding website statistics, our average time on the website is 2:35 minutes and we have an overall conversion rate of 3.5% which well is above the health food industry average benchmark of 2.2%.
Through working with an advertising company for our Google Shopping campaigns, we're able to generate a new sale for every £4 we invest into shopping ads meaning we're able to break even on every sale due to our profit margins and then make the customer profitable on any repeat purchase. Our average customer lifetime value currently sits at £250.
Diversify Your Product Line
Adding new products to your business is a great way to expand into new markets and grow your business.
It's important to note that adding new products and diversifying may not be in the cards for you right this moment, and that's okay. You can always consider it down the road.
Here are some reasons you may want to considering adding/diversifying your product
- Meeting the needs of your customers
- Establish yourself as a top provider in your industry and stay ahead of the game with competition
- Resistance to downturns/trends fading
- Create new revenue streams
Word of Mouth
The most tried and true way to grow a healthy snack food business is through word of mouth - some entrepreneurs would say it's more important than all social media.
Why you should focus on word of mouth:
- Consumers trust word of mouth above all other forms of marketing
- 92% of consumers believe recommendations from friends and family over all forms of advertising
- 64% of marketing executives indicated that they believe it is the most effective form of marketing
Learn more about word of mouth in our guide: 30 Ways Founders Grow Their Business ➜
Build a Referral Program
Word of mouth is one of the best ways to get the word out about your business and acquire new customers. Especially when you are starting out, it’s important to build a solid referral program to encourage existing customers to help you find new ones.
A great way to do that is by offering a reward (ie. credit on your service or cash) to customers that refer you to their friends and family.
A fantastic referral program will help with clout, credibility, and establishing yourself in the space.
Resources
We put together the best resources on the internet to help you start your healthy snack food business.
Tools
- Platform tools such as Shopify, WooCommerce or Amazon
- Email tools such as MailChimp, Klaviyo, Planoly, G Suite, Mixmax or Privy
- Social media tools such as Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, YouTube, LinkedIn, Buffer, Reddit, Tiktok or Hypeauditor
- Reviews tools such as YotPo, Smile.io or Stamped.io
- Design tools such as Canva
- Shipping tools such as ShipStation
- Analytics tools such as Google Analytics or Sumo
- Productivity tools such as Google Suite, Slack, Basecamp, Notion, Calendly, Airtable or Todoist
- Payments tools such as ReCharge
- Blog tools such as WordPress
- Crm tools such as Hubspot
- Freelance tools such as Fiverr or Upwork
- Seo tools such as Ahrefs
- Advertising tools such as Instapage
- Accounting tools such as Yuki
Books
The 4-Hour Workweek: Escape 9-5, Live Anywhere, and Join the New Rich
Reallionaire: Nine Steps to Becoming Rich from the Inside Out
Web Resources
- Starting A Food Business Checklist: What You Need To Know
- How To Start A Healthy Snack Food Business - Starter Story
Videos
Case Studies
- Launching a Healthy Protein Pancake Business
- How An Entrepreneur From Ohio Launched His Own Applesauce Company
- How I Started A Protein Snacks Company
- How We Started A Caffeine Gum Product, Sold 12 Million Pieces, And Landed A Deal With CVS
- How I Started A 1200% Growth Business Selling Natural Healthy Superdrinks
- How I Started A $20K/Month Business Selling High-Fat, No Crap, Nutritious Snacks
- I Started A $36M/Year Healthy Snack Business From My Dining Room Table [Canada]
- I Turned A Recipe In My Kitchen Into A $10MM/Year CPG Snack Company
- I Started A $1.08M/Year Snacks Ecommerce At 17 [With Only $300]
Download the report and join our email newsletter packed with business ideas and money-making opportunities, backed by real-life case studies.
Download the report and join our email newsletter packed with business ideas and money-making opportunities, backed by real-life case studies.
Download the report and join our email newsletter packed with business ideas and money-making opportunities, backed by real-life case studies.
Download the report and join our email newsletter packed with business ideas and money-making opportunities, backed by real-life case studies.
Download the report and join our email newsletter packed with business ideas and money-making opportunities, backed by real-life case studies.
Download the report and join our email newsletter packed with business ideas and money-making opportunities, backed by real-life case studies.
Download the report and join our email newsletter packed with business ideas and money-making opportunities, backed by real-life case studies.
Download the report and join our email newsletter packed with business ideas and money-making opportunities, backed by real-life case studies.