Celebrating a Major Milestone

Landing a national retail account with over 4,000 stores was a moment of triumph for us. Our small but dedicated team popped the Dom Perignon and celebrated with champagne, laughter, and a bit of a mess on the carpet.

This achievement marked the beginning of 5 years of hard work finally paying off.

With this new account, our store count popped up to about 8,000 outlets—an impressive number in the Food and Beverage (F&B) industry. This milestone doubled our volume, and in the F&B world, volume is power.

No one pays attention to a scrappy little start-up. But 8000 stores sparks interest. Now you are a success. Now you are proven.

This volume increase would lower our costs with co-packers. It would lower our costs with our suppliers. It would make us a scheduling priority for our production runs.

It opened doors with investors, and with other retail accounts, and other companies looking for co-branding opportunities.

 It would make us profitable.

 We would be a self-sustaining company.

But most of all, this volume was proof that our concept was valid and accepted in the marketplace. Parents needed better and easier ways to get more vegetables into their children’s diets. More vegetables equals better health. It was a simple concept that every parent understood.  

And we had just recently introduced our first products for adults. It was aimed at helping ever-stressed, busy, active parents get all the nutrition they needed to stay happy, healthy, and active. We had plans to create products for seniors that was actually healthy and not packed with sugars. We wanted to be the generational answer for great nutrition.

We wanted clean, sustainable products with clean and simple ingredient labels. And we were on our way.

 A Kick in the B***

Then Covid punched us in the face.

We weren’t the only company to get gut-punched. It was an unprecedented time. But this was especially difficult for smaller companies. We fought. We dumped personal money into the company. We kept our employees until the bitter end.

 Our products were heavily promoted as a back-to-school and school lunch box items. Schools closed. Retailers panicked. Supplies were difficult to get. Shelves emptied.

If you weren’t considered an ‘essential’ item, you were dropped.  Shelves filled with masks, and disinfectants, and hand sanitizers. People stayed home.

Our store count went from 8000 stores to about 600 stores in 6 months. 600 stores is not enough to sustain a company. 600 stores is not enough for a production run.

We ran out of product. We shut down production.

What now?

We began to hear from our customers asking about the shakes.

Where could they get their Sneakz milk shakes? When would we be back in stock? What’s happening?

A production run of Sneakz milk shakes is built around tanker truck containers of milk. You've probably seen those shiny, stainless steel tanker trucks motoring down the highway. It's a lot of milk.

Plus, every production run must be balanced. We need to match containers of milk to packaging purchases to ingredient requirements to production scheduling time. The optimum run size was built around two containers of milk. Co-packers won’t run anything much smaller. So, each production run cost us about $800,000.00.

That’s a lot of moolah.

We began to examine our company from top to bottom. We’ve studied every step, in each of our processes.

This is our plan:

Mission – to supply plant-based super foods – foods packed with nutrients – focused on vegetables, that taste good, are sustainable and traceable, and with clean ingredient labels to help busy families. There will be no hidden sugars. We will explain every ingredient in our products, why it was chosen, and where it came from. We also want to focus on education. Being a parent is tough. Let us help. We’re going to be a reliable source for information and education, on nutrition for the family, parenting, and support for parents and the modern, active adults raising their kids. We’ll be there for families of all shapes and sizes. Nearly half of all children in the U.S. do not eat daily vegetables. Only 4.8% of children get enough vegetables each day. We want to fix this.

Products – Milk shakes that are dairy based require  large production runs which puts a significant strain on cash. In order to manage cash flow and create high quality products, we’ve examined non-dairy shakes.  Our new shakes are healthier, still taste great, and have even higher vegetable counts. But even non-dairy milk shakes are capital intensive. We're going to take this step-by-step. The first product we will re-introduce is our Meal2Grow super food meal. It's designed for children that are falling behind on the height and weight growth charts. Or children that need better nutrition. It replaces the need for a multi-vitamin. This of a healthy version of of all the sugar-filled kid's 'health products' currently in the marketplace. Kids need vegetables to grow. They don't need more sugar. 

Distribution - Traditional distribution in the F&B industry has many levels. Manufacturer's sell through wholesale distributors who sell to retail stores. Wholesale distributors require participation in trade shows. Sales reps are required to work the shows. They require a commission. Cost is increased. Wholesale distributors mark up the product around 20% depending on the item. Every time the product is shipped cost is added. There are storage costs, show costs, in-store demo costs, training costs for the wholesaler and sometimes the retailer. And the dirty secret to this method is that it the manufacturer more money once it hits the grocery store. It takes coupons. It takes service teams. It takes in-store sampling. Without these services the product will not sell at a high enough rate. It's cost upon cost that get layered onto your products. This is difficult for startups. It's cost layered upon cost. 

control more than half of the market for nearly 80% of grocery items. For almost a third of shopping items, the top firms control at least 75% of the market share.

The answer for us is to ship direct to the consumer (DTC). Online sales eliminate many of the layered costs in the traditional distribution methods. It still takes advertising. It still takes planned production. It still takes coordination of many parties. But we can manage production quantities and inventory turns much easier. We'll get fresher products to you. You'll have a fairer price that is more value based without inflated costs for steps that do not create any value for the consumer. And we'll do it one product at a time until the volume is big enough to introduce the next product.

Education - We are introducing a Sneakz Newsletter that will focus on education for your family. It will help you understand the food and beverages you bring into your home in more depth. It will help you stay abreast of cutting-edge, science-driven nutritional advancements. It'll talk about the food industry and the hidden reasons for rising food costs. We show you how to read a ingredient label. We'll also help with parenting, family activities, with sections on special needs and ASD children. We're all in this together. Let's support each other. Remember, eat right, sleep right, and exercise right and the rest has a tendency to take care of itself. 

This is the plan. We'd appreciate it if you'd send the link to receive this newsletter to anyone you feel can benefit from it. The sign up link is below:

 

The newsletter is free. It will always be free. And if you have a topic that interests you, send us a note. We'll be happy to research it and give you a reliable, dependable answer.

Thank you for the support.