At Creative Energy, we’ve been helping food manufacturers and suppliers sell more into the foodservice channel for 33 years. All of our clients have their own priorities in meeting their own sales objectives, but the best path to sales success is knowing the foodservice operator’s pain points and reducing that pain.

We monitor the overall foodservice market and operator attitudes monthly to provide up to date information to many of our clients, and our most recent look sees a market with dismal 1% growth with a few segments outperforming the rest, such as travel, lodging, and amusement.

Since price hikes by manufacturers and the pain of maintaining and paying a sufficient labor force since a brief post-COVID rebound, operators are looking for food products that affordably reduces time and labor and that can be used in multiple menu applications.

Dogged by sluggish dine-in customers, some have compensated by increasing takeout and delivery sales, but today, driving customer traffic is their greatest hot button for increasing sales and Limited Time Offers (LTOs) is their top tactic. Knowing all of this, here are some quick cheat notes on how a manufacturer sells more in the foodservice channel:

Sell Your Products As Deliciously Easy To Prep & Sell

Talk about premium, clean label ingredients that are as easy as heat and serve with great hold times for takeout and delivery.

Don’t Be A One-Trick Pony

Show them how one product can be leveraged in at least two ways, and hopefully more (e.g. as a sharable appetizer, center-of-the-plate).

Bring Them Great LTO Ideas For Your Product

Take a look at their menu and innovate with creative ideas, that with one or two ingredients they already have, can be turned into a traffic-building promotion.

Bring Them A “Gift”

They are busy and often are hungry for trends, your success stories with non-competitive operators that they don’t know. One of the top factors in winning and holding on to an operator account is to bring them gifts of insights that add value to your relationship.

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Want 4 More Secrets To Foodservice Sales Success?

There are four additional secrets we can share for accelerating sales within the foodservice channel for today’s market that we will be happy to share when we talk. Let me know if you are interested, and I’ll bring my team to a worthwhile discussion to kickstart your team’s sales now. In the meantime, good hunting. 

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