Team Mandel Blog

Congratulations!  You are on the shelves at Whole Foods Market.  You have reached your first goal.  The next step is to get your product in to more stores.  So here’s how this works.  Things get progressively easier, because now you have the name of a Leader and a product in a store.  You might even ask the Leader of the store carrying your product what other Whole Foods stores your product might sell well at.  Most of the Leaders are great folks, they’ll usually refer another store and that stores leader by name.  So for store number two, when you walk in ask for the stores Leader by name  (remembering they generally work very early in the morning, so 7:00 am sales calls are acceptable).  Show the Leader what you have, give him a sample and say something like ‘Eddie (Grocery Leader) over at Beverly Hills is carrying my product and he thought it might sell well here too.”  If the Leader of store two agrees to carry your product they’ll have to contact the regional office and get them to connect your product to their store so they can ‘scan the product in’.  Meaning the regional office has to make your product that is only visible in the computer of store one, visible in store two.  Make sure you get the leaders e-mail address so you can gently remind him to do this for you if nothing happens after a few days.  The magic store for you now is store number three.  If you can get a third Whole Foods Market to carry your product (usuing the same approach as store two), you can then send a request (by email) to the Whole Foods regional office to be put in the DVO system.  What is DVO?  This is Whole Foods Market database.  If you get in to the DVO system, this means your product is available in the computer region wide.  Every Whole Foods Market in your region will see your product in their computer.  This doesn’t mean every store is going to order your product.  But it does mean that selling becomes easier.  All you have to do now is tell the Leader at stores four and beyond that you are in DVO, they can easily place an order online.  If they do, you’ll get a DVO order request by e-mail, and you and your amazing product are off to the races!

Up next – Part 7 going big!

Team Mandel Blog How to get in to Whole Foods cookie, cooking, dessert, grocery, jewish, Mandel Bread, product, recipe, Whole Foods Market

So you met a really cool team leader, and he agreed to carry your product.  The leader sent your product information over to the regional office and they sent you some information to get you set up for direct deposit.  After a few pestering calls and emails to the team leader he finally says “Ok, you’re in our system.” and he places his first order.  So now what do you do?  First I should clarify something.  When the leader puts you ‘in the system’, you are only available in that one Whole Foods Market.  You’ll have to check in on how things are selling at the store, and see when he wants to reorder.  But I’m getting a little bit ahead of myself.  The question you might have next is.  How does the delivery work?  This is pretty easy.  Create duplicate invoices on the computer, there is no standard format, just create something that has the store name and location, and all the order details including price.  You’ll also need to come up with some kind of invoice number.  I used an abbreviation of the Whole Foods location followed by the date of the delivery.  For example, Whole Foods Market Beverly Hills order delivered on March 1st, 2010 invoice number would read WHBVH030110.  Take the order to the store, there will always be someone in the back who can sign for your order.  Give him a copy to keep (that’s how you get paid!), and keep the signed copy for your records.  Whole Foods generally will pay you in about 45 days or less by direct deposit.  Next posting, DVO and beyond!

Team Mandel Blog How to get in to Whole Foods