Food Entrepreneur - May 12, 2020 - 12

RULE BREAKER SNACKS

"If you're not careful, your
innovation model to create, itercampaign could end up costing
ate and bring products to market
you a lot of money," she said.
faster," said Noelle O'Mara, group
"Figure out when you think you
president of prepared foods for
can deliver the rewards and add
Tyson Foods.
at least three months to it. Since
The Coca-Cola Co., Atlanta,
we already produced a similar
created a campaign on Indiegogo
item, we thought we'd have no
to gauge US interest in Valser, a
trouble delivering on time. But
mineral water brand from Euit was packaged with a different
rope. The company exceeded its
method that didn't work at first,
crowdfunding target of $10,000
and we ended up being months
for the one-month campaign.
late - and having to explain
"Given how rapidly consumand apologize over and over
er tastes are changing, our team
A Kickstarter campaign over a three-week period raised $28,403
again to frustrated backers."
is challenged with taking risks,
to support the production of Rule Breaker Bites.
Following its Kickstarter
testing, iterating and cycling
campaign, Quevos successfully
through ideas quickly to see what
scaled manufacturing and expanded the
works," said Dave Preston, vice president
production team from two employees to
of innovation for Coca-Cola North Amertraffic and fundraising were in line with
seven, Mr. Hamburger said.
ica. "We saw Indiegogo as an opportunity
pre-pandemic levels; however, the num"It took us a few months to scale
to quickly get Valser out there and see if
ber of projects had decreased by 25% from
things up, and there's headaches on
there is a demand."
the same period a year ago.
occasion if equipment breaks, different
Other consumer packaged goods
"While we have seen a drop in
companies including Procter & Gamble
launched projects, overall live projects are things will come up, and it's a little more
and Heineken have used the platform as

'Crowdfunding is like having a free focus
group on which to try out all your great/
crazy ideas and find out which ones are
most appealing to consumers.'

a new approach to product development,
said Slava Rubin, founder and chief business officer of Indiegogo.
"Innovation teams are now using
pre-order transactions as a new kind of
real-world validation to learn what people
actually want and using those insights to
decide which amazing new products to
bring to market," he said.

The 'in' crowd
Even during a global health emergency, traffic and funding activity have
remained steady on Kickstarter and Indiegogo. Widespread lockdowns caused by
the coronavirus crisis may be prompting
consumers to buy more products online,
in spite of economic uncertainty.
During the second half of March,
Indiegogo traffic increased nearly 14%
over the year-ago period, and daily funds
raised on the platform increased 24%
over the prior year. On Kickstarter, overall
12

Food Business News

RULE BREAKER SNACKS

- Nancy Kalish, Rule Breaker Snacks

getting funded," said Kate Bernyk, director
of communications for Kickstarter. "Food
projects included."
The food category typically represents about 4% of overall successful
projects on Kickstarter, she said, and may
include food trucks, cooking tools and
appliances, and cookbooks, in addition to
packaged food and beverages.
Founders launching a crowdfunding campaign should factor the costs
and timing of producing and shipping
rewards and set fundraising levels and
expectations accordingly, Ms. Kalish
of Rule Breaker Snacks said.

time and energy to manage it, but it's
awesome to have the flexibility to be
able to hopefully protect our process,"
he said.
Another benefit of the campaign was
building a loyal base of consumers to drive
awareness when the brand announces
new products, he said.
"For instance, we just launched a new
pickle flavor and sent an email to backers
and offered a free sample pack to them
and got tons of emails flooding in of people taking us up on that," Mr. Hamburger
said. "I think it does give you this nice
loyal group of fans." ▪
May 12, 2020
Food Entrepreneur - May 12, 2020

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