Snack Food & Wholesale Bakery - September 2008 - (Page 23)

2008 W h ol e s a l e Ba k e r o f t h e Y e a r conventional fruits and vegetables has been hurt by reports of pesticides over the years. “They don’t look at bread in the same way,” he says. Although these concerned consumers generally read labels, when it came to bread, they looked for whole grain and wheat and then stopped reading. However, when they looked deeper into the label and saw high-fructose corn syrup or dough conditioners that they could not pronounce, it triggered the reaction that they had never thought of bread that way. “We’re pretty excited about this,” Radi says, who previously worked at the nation’s largest organic milk producer, and prior to that, at the world’s largest snack manufacturer. “The biggest ‘Ah ha!’ for me as a marketer was — and I’ve been an organic food marketer for more than six years and an organic shopper for eight years — I never realized that our target moms aren’t reading the whole label,” Radi says. “Even my own wife said, ‘I didn’t know my Whole Grain, Super Seven Grain bread had all of this stuff in it.’” With the new campaign, Charter Baking’s mission is to see how high it can raise the market share for the Rudi’s Organic brand and organic baked goods in general. “We’re just trying to generate awareness and education,” Radi says. “We offer a very different type of product. Our main interest is that the organic mom knows the difference [between organic and conventional bread], and right now, she doesn’t. This is our opportunity to tell her the difference.” Nationally, he adds, organic products account for 3% of total food sales, making it a $17 billion industry. There’s no reason, he says, that organic bread shouldn’t be getting its fair share. Moreover, the Rudi’s Organic Bakery business has history on its side. The Rudi’s Organic brand has been around for 32 years. In the past, it has been promoted mainly through word of mouth. Still, the brand has a 4% unaided awareness level in the Denver metropolitan area and 20% aided awareness. With the new campaign, which includes 30-second television commercials on network and women’s cable channels, those awareness levels should change. In a selfcontained market such as Denver where few or no bakeries advertise on television, Radi says, the potential upside is huge for this campaign. That’s because he believes organic bread is a lot like the other “gateway categories” such as organic milk in the late 1990s. Charter Baking simply needs to preach to the already converted to accomplish its mission. The company plans to heighten awareness through advertising, rely on sampling programs to increase trial purchases and drive penetration through promotions to see its marketing campaign succeed, especially among core consumers of organic foods. “We just want to target the 10% to 14% of people who are in the organic [food channel],” Radi says. “I don’t even want the transitional or trial organic buyer. If mom is buying organic milk, meat or produce, she should put organic bread on her shopping list. If we do that, we should triple the size of our company.” SF&WB SEPTEMBER 2008 - Snack Food & Wholesale Bakery 23

Table of Contents Feed for the Digital Edition of Snack Food & Wholesale Bakery - September 2008

Snack Food & Wholesale Bakery - September 2008 Contents Editor’s Note For Goodness Sakes Better Than the Rest Unconventional Thinking Easy Does It New Products In the Comfort Zone Engineering Management The ASB Column Printer Keeps Production Running Equipment Briefs Better Than the Rest The Final Word

Snack Food & Wholesale Bakery - September 2008

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