Brand Building Through Customer Experiences & Interactions

Someone was recently asking me why we were wasting so much time and effort on holding so many cooking classes and events…?They could not connect the dots as to why a retailer, butcher, and online store would be doing such things and how this related to the business's core values.

My answer is quite simple; holding events and experiences such as cooking classes, lunches, dinners, and social evenings give us a unique opportunity to connect with our customers, interact with them and generate value. It allows us to meet with them and them with us, in addition, it underlines our loyalty program as we offer free experiences in exchange for points collected from shopping either online or in our retail shops.

Every Friday evening, we host a dinner in our event space and showcase our products in a Steak House environment, we always reserve a table or two to invite some of our best spending customers and some of our worst customers. (By worst I mean the ones that are not happy with us for whatever reason - maybe we delivered their order to the wrong apartment, and they hate us for it). The dinner for both sets of customers is on the house and is a big thank you to our regulars and an even bigger sorry to the disappointed ones. We will always sit them at the same table and usually by the end of the evening we have a full set of loyal customers because our team has interacted with all and they have also interacted with each other. Of course, we make sure they all have a good time and hopefully realize that we do care and that when we do mess up we are willing to go the extra mile to put things right.

Our cooking classes are another avenue for us to connect with our customers in a fun, educational, and creative environment. They also get to touch and feel the products that we sell, and in addition, we also get to show them how to best prepare and cook the raw materials that we purvey, ?which has to be a win-win for everyone!

We feel that the gains achieved by connecting with our customers through our experiences are numerous and include:

·??????Loyalty

·??????Value

·??????Brand Awareness

·??????Get us close to our guests and the public

·??????Gives us a competitive edge

·??????Customer impact

·??????Longevity in the market

·??????And lastly we enjoy doing it!

·??????They are not a hugely profitable part of our business but they are invaluable for the above benefits.

Take a look at our events/experiences deck and this should give you a clearer picture of what I am trying to say portray above.