How Food Businesses Can Adapt To Meet Changing Shopper Needs

Nobody can deny that the last few years have been a rollercoaster ride, with the global pandemic, cost-of-living crisis, economic turmoil, and the like. It’s hard to recall a time when more change has occurred in such a short space of time, affecting just about every aspect of our daily lives.

With the sheer amount of change and the velocity of its impact, the consumer landscape has suddenly become very hard to navigate with all but the most data-driven businesses struggling to keep up.

?For smaller business folk, lacking the budgets required to stay at the cutting edge, every bit of guidance can make a huge difference. So, by drawing on some of our recent project work and distilling our experiences down, here are some practical ways to stay relevant (and afloat) in a challenging environment.?

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Cost-of-living Crisis

The ongoing cost of living crisis presents opportunities for food businesses to adapt and cater to consumer needs in several ways. The perception of ‘value’ is important but it’s important to be aware that ‘value’ represents different things to different consumer segments, not just monetary.?

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Value for the Budget Conscious

For shoppers hit hard by the current cost-of-living crisis, reducing basket spend whilst still putting good food on the table is a key concern.?

You only need to see an episode of ‘Eat Well for Less’, where Chris Bavin and Jordan Banjo encourage switching behaviour to help families save on their food shop, to know that private label brands will prosper as value alternatives to big name brands.

However, retailers’ own-label processes often lack the agility needed to keep up with fast-changing consumer trends. This can be a challenge for businesses trying to bring New Product Development (NPD) to market promptly.

?To tackle this issue, companies can identify "value gaps" in a retailer's own-label range and fill them with revamped versions of their existing products. This approach helps create tactical brands designed to boost sales volume and cater to customer demands.

Social listening could be an alternative source of inspiration for new recipes. For instance, it’s no secret that food content has skyrocketed on TikTok, racking up 268 billion views in 2022.?

Moreover, TikTok's new food shop offers an exciting opportunity for businesses. It enables people to buy directly from the platform, potentially making it a new sales channel to explore. By considering TikTok as a viable distribution channel, businesses can reach a wider audience and potentially boost sales.

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Creating Tactical Brands Without Breaking the Bank

With the right partners, food businesses can quickly introduce tactical brands to meet specific consumer needs and gain a competitive edge. These brands can also be designed exclusively for a retailer to help them meet their strategic goals and enable retailers to test the water with new recipes or flavour ways to tie into key sales events.

When marketing budgets are tight, you don’t need to go the whole hog with a brand that’s shelf-ready.? Concepts that are well thought out, in terms of the consumer need they meet and a pack design that a buyer can get on board with, can be enough to garner support before investing in full-scale brand development.

White Rabbit has been instrumental in driving volume sales for our clients by bringing tactical brands to market within 8 weeks of the initial brief. We also worked closely with Oscar Mayer to create El Loco Cantina, a range of familiar Mexican favourites, aimed at a young audience. The packaging drew attention with a bold typographic style and funky Mexican Sugar Skull illustrations which added incremental sales to the category.

In the same timeline, we also created Treat ‘n’ Eat, a supermarket meal-deal alternative to family restaurant favourites. The vibrant colours and loose style added a light-hearted, inclusive feel for shoppers looking for a great value meal solution.

By creating a compelling branded offer based on the individual retailer’s strategy, and mock-ups to provide tangible products for the buyer, the team was able to secure listings so final designs and artworks could be created with minimal financial risk.?

Opportunities for Existing Brands?

Switching behaviour also offers opportunities for established brands to re-look at how they position themselves against higher-priced market leaders.?

Whilst a good quality product will ensure repeat purchases, it’s the packaging that sells your first pack to a new shopper.

If you are a brand owner who already has a credible alternative to the market leader, now is a good time to take a look at your brand and packaging with fresh eyes. A good starting point for this would be to engage with a specialist packaging agency to conduct an audit of your current offer.

The benefit of using an agency for this is that you avoid internal biases clouding judgements (nobody wants to tell the founder that their baby is ugly!) and the resulting work will form part of the creative strategy going forward.

One example of this is the Limehouse Gin brand in Tesco, which had been struggling to meet shopper expectations and expected sales targets. By auditing the brand and identifying key areas for improvement, the resulting redesign enhanced the provenance of the brand, increased the flavour cues and as a result, retained its listing with growing sales.

By finding ways to meet changing shopper needs, businesses can thrive in the face of challenges and stay relevant in a competitive environment. If you have a project you’d like to discuss with us, drop us a line, we’d love to hear from you: [email protected]?