Food and Beverage Consulting for Hire

As a food brand marketing or sales director, it often feels as if your job can be summed up in three words: “Growth, growth, growth.”

That’s a seemingly straightforward objective. But, as you know, behind it lies a migraine-inducing amount of complexity. Growth can come from a myriad of strategies: marketing refinements, brand premiumization, increased household penetration, expanded distribution, new product lines, or sales channels. The list goes on.

To get the 30,000-foot perspective necessary to plot a course for success, experienced minds are invaluable. This is where the right support team can make you look like a rock star. If your goals are clear, but you feel under-resourced getting there, consider allying yourself with a food and beverage consulting agency to obtain the intel, expertise, and actionable ideas you need to move forward with confidence.

3 Areas Where Food and Beverage Consulting Comes in Clutch

Before hiring a food and beverage consulting agency, however, it would serve you well to analyze your in-house weaknesses. Here are few broad questions to help focus your consulting needs:

• What capabilities or expertise am I wishing I had myself or amnong my team?
• What resources or assistance would accelerate my project(s) along?
• What exactly am I needing – solely information? Recommendations based on that information? Execution of those recommedations? 

Consulting is far more than just giving advice, and having a clear idea of what you need from a consulting agency will help you in multiple ways. First, identifying your specific needs will help you find the right mix of expertise to bolt on to your team. Second, knowing exactly what you want from a consulting agency will help you more accurately scope your project.

At NewPoint, we’ve often been often the food and beverage consulting answer to these questions above, both for CPG and B2B-focused food manufacturers. The majority of our clients are interested in our experience offering industry analysis, consumer research and evaluation of marketing materials. Here’s what that expertise often looks like in terms of specific deliverables.

1. Research Product Lines

Successful food manufacturers often want to capitalize on a brand’s success and generate more sales by launching new products or entirely new product lines. It’s a big investment – one where even a well-advised “no” can be worth the consulting fee.

Researching a product line involves analyzing consumer behavior and market trends. By understanding what products are selling and why, food manufacturers can adjust their product offerings to meet consumer demand. Sometimes the adjustment might be minor – a format change (e.g, sizing the product up or down) or some kind of value-add component (e.g., new flavor or pre-cooked) – yet the payoff can be huge.

That kind of research can take hours that smaller marketing & sales departments, with limited personnel, sometimes just can’t afford to handle on their own, especially if it’s an unfamiliar ask.

At NewPoint, we assist food manufacturers by researching their product lines and determine what products are successful and which ones need improvement. This research can help you make better decisions about what products to produce, how to market them and how to price them.

2. Competitors’ Market Share and Price Points

Speaking of prices, another important consulting service that NewPoint offers is competitive analysis. This involves researching your competitors’ market share and price points. Analyzing market share data can provide diredtion on a number of tasks, such as:

• Recognize market trends
• Zeroing in on competitive advantages
• Identifying potential partners or acquisition targets
• Uncovering customer service issues
• Pricing products

Pricing is a critical factor in the success of a product. If a product is priced too high, consumers (or your B2B customers) may balk and opt for a cheaper alternative. Conversely, if a product is priced too low, you’re going to miss out on potential profits. By researching competitors’ market share and price points, NewPoint Marketing can helpyou make smarter pricing decisions that balance profitability and consumer demand.

3. Evaluate B2B Marketing Materials

Finally, NewPoint also help food manufacturers by evaluating the quality of their B2B marketing materials relative to their competition. B2B marketing materials are critical lead-gen tools for many food manufacturers. As they create an initial impression for your business, if your materials pale in comparison to your competitors, or if they fail to accurately highlight your differential advantages, potential buyers write you off.

B2B marketing materials include media like brochures, websites and sales presentations. These materials need to be well-designed, informative and persuasive. By partnering with a consulting agency like NewPoint who’s seen thousands of examples of B2B marketing materials over the years, food manufacturers can make improvements to theirs that will help them connect with potential buyers more effectively.

Your Food and Beverage Consulting Agency

So why should you choose NewPoint Marketing as your food and beverage consulting agency? For several reasons:

1. Expertise in the Food and Beverage Industry

Food and beverage is what we eat, sleep and breathe. This means that NewPoint has a deep understanding of the industry and its unique challenges. This expertise allows us to provide food manufacturers with insights and recommendations that are tailored to their specific needs.

2. Broad Range of Services

At NewPoint, we offer a broad range of services that can help food manufacturers with various aspects of their business. Beyond industry research, competitive analysis and B2B marketing evaluation, we have diverse capabilities to help food manufacturers with additional projects that may grow out of the original consultancy project or be wholly separate from it.

3. Proven Track Record

We have a proven track record of success. Over the years, NewPoint’s worked with many food manufacturers to help them achieve their goals. From courting investors to breaking into new retailers to launching innovative products, our research-backed guidance has given clients actionable solutions for moving forward.

4. Client-Focused Approach

NewPoint takes a client-focused approach to our work. Any consultation begins with a listening session so that we accurately understand client needs and are able to develop solutions tailored to them. This approach ensures that we properly contextualize a client’s challenges and understand their thought process and priorities going into it. At the same, listening first offers us a chance to recognize any fresh solutions that may have been overlooked from corporate tunnel vision on an issue. This is one of the greatest benefits of bringing in a third party: the clarity that comes from looking at business problems with fresh eyes.

If You’re in Need of Expertise…

Or guidance or just some outside perspective from food brand marketing experts, you’ve come to the right place.

At NewPoint Marketing, we have decades of combined experience and some of the most talented experts in the industry at our disposal. Contact us for more information today!