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What we hear from people like you
Let’s say it like it is:sustainability messaging is a necessity for the vast majority of new food and beverage brands. What’s the right approach?
As a mission-driven founder you face multitude of challenges, including how to scale your business and gain trial for your product while standing out among all the good-for-everyone products(and of course all the virtue-signaling and greenwashing too).
The dilemma is that you’re not sure how to simultaneously push past the barriers at the category level as well as the ethical level, making your next business move that much harder to strategize.
Here’s what we’re hearing from founders just like you:
My brand doesn’t have the right positioning or consumer messaging in order to leverage our values.
My brand is my baby but something isn’t quite right. I’m no longer confident in what to say, how to say it, and to whom I should say it. We launched with some initial clarity but now I’m being battle-tested and I’m questioning… well, everything. I’m worried that my values are going to get lost in the shuffle or that like-minded consumers are going to miss out on just how special my brand is.
My vendor network is disjointed, underperforming and lacks the ethical resolve I need to grow my brand in a way that I’m truly proud of.
Our budget is stretched thin and my supplier stake a lot of my energy, require a lot of supervision and aren’t delivering on their promises. It’s so frustrating! My vendor roster and supply chain are so important to the production and adoption of my product but for some reason I feel isolated, confused and my business is missing out. I know I need to rely on others to make my dreams come true but it’s hard when my suppliers’ efforts, or lack thereof, pull us down.
My product has all these certifications but they don’t necessarily drive trial with new consumers.
Our product needs to communicate its unique value at the category level but it’s difficult to do that at the same time as educating consumers about our shared values. We’ve worked so hard on getting our ingredients, processing and business verified but our certifications aren’t helping as much as we hoped. I’m starting to lose confidence that our ideal consumers will give our brand a try before we get delisted and I’m totally losing sleep over it. An ethical position in the market is helpful but it’s only a piece of the puzzle and I’m feeling stuck on how to push past this adoption barrier and tap into the desires of our hopeful consumers.
My team doesn’t have the insights or an actionable sales and marketing roadmap.
We’ve been doing a lot of guesswork and gut checks and trial-and-error with our marketing and we’re missing more than we’re hitting. The brand strategy, category and consumer insights, and sales approach we had when we launched isn’t holding up. We’ve had some really good ideas but they weren’t activated well and most importantly, there’s no big picture, no concrete plan to really rally behind and it’s starting to worry me.
My business is at a critical junction and we don’t have access to ethical capital or value-add partners in order to execute on our growth strategies.
My business needs help in all sorts of areas and a bucket of cash would totally help but I also need practical, hands-on help to scale our operation and drive sales. I want all of that and I also want to make sure our story and our mission really land with the consumer. I’ve put a lot of blood, sweat and tears into my business and I’m pretty sure I need better partnerships to pull this off. Oh, and I hate fundraising.
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If you’re trying to balance ethics and business, you likely resonated with more than one of these dilemmas. It’s challenges like these that played a significant role in starting Ethical FoodGroup. We want you to know: you’re not alone—our member community, and our team, are here for you. Let’s chat about it
