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
Forward:
I don’t know anything about the food business. Aunt Erma’s Mandel Bread began at my work computer. Bored from staring at the computer screen all day, I started goofing around in photoshop. I made a fake mandel bread box and a fake web site. Before I knew it I was invited to pitch my package design on CNBC on a show called “The Big Idea With Donny Deutsch.” I had no real package, it was all a fake, just clever photoshop work to make it look real. The mandel bread box Donny held up on TV was printed on my inkjet printer, complete with fake bar code and fake nutritional panel. The mandel bread he tasted was baked by my wife in our kitchen at home. Donny had no idea, but he loved it! By the beginning of 2009 I convinced myself that I should make real boxes, maybe even form a real company. By September of 2009 Aunt Erma’s World Famous Mandel Bread landed its’ first Whole Foods Market, in Beverly Hills. We sold out our first day on the shelves. Today, we are not ‘big time’ not by any stretch. Comfortably holding at four Whole Foods Markets in Los Angeles (for reasons which will be explained later), we are now working with a large cookie manufacturer to try and scale up Aunt Erma’s production to handle not just a few stores, but an entire region. And all of this on a product that most people have never heard of. ’Man dell bread?’ No, it’s ‘mondel bread.’ But say the word mandel bread to a Jewish person and you will stir up nostalgic memories of grandma baking in the kitchen. I heard a great quote from an entrepreneur who said “Your business is a story wrapped around you.” Aunt Erma’s Mandel Bread is a story of a long lost recipe, nostalgia, family and home. Never heard of mandel bread? That’s ok, there was a time in American history when no one ever heard of a bagel either. And there was a time in history when no one ever heard of a photocopier. But it was the genius of Xerox to instill their brand so deeply in the American subconscience that today you’re just as likely to say “I need a xerox of this” than “I need a photocopy of this.” If we ever make that leap, if mandel bread ever becomes ubiquitous for ‘a better tasting biscotti,’ I hope that people won’t think ‘mandel bread’, but will think Aunt Erma’s.
No doubt if you’re reading this blog you may have dreamed of bringing your favorite family recipe to market. Is it a cookie? A great BBQ sauce, or the most incredible cakes ever? Well here it is, here’s how I got in. As this story goes so does my little mandel bread company. You will see links in this online guide, mostly too earlier posts from the last two years I have kept this blog. So get your recipe ready, it’s time to hit the shelves!
Phil Weinstein
Founder Aunt Erma’s mandel Bread
Team Mandel Blog How to get in to Whole Foods Chocolate, CNBC, Donny Deutsch, Mandel Bread, Sales, Whole Foods Market
