With another holiday season upon us, it's always a time of reflection for us to consider all that we have to be thankful and hopeful for. This year we are thankful for our growers who executed another stellar harvest, even in the face of many challenges with weather that impacted our crop. They were able to adjust and overcome, ensuring that our product will maintain the quality and excellence we rely on. We are thankful for our customers who continue to give us new opportunities to sell our innovative line of value-added items. And we are thankful for a company of outstanding professionals who show up to work every day to continue to drive our business forward.
I'm excited for our future and all that is to come this year and beyond
Happy Holidays!
David Baxter
Director of Marketing
IN TODAY'S ISSUE:
Data Review & New Item Review
Company Updates and Wins
Market Challenges
Global View
Data
All data is IRI Date Category Data latest 52 Weeks, ending 10/30/22
Natural Delights growth slowed a bit in Q1 as reported by IRI, but as a company, we grew 19% which includes international, alternative channels, and non-reporting customers.
Natural Delights market share is still hovering around 45%, our goal is to push that number up this year and hit a 50% market share as we continue to expand our Deglet offering. This is going to be key in gaining share around the holidays, a hot time for Deglets.
Sundate and Joolies are seeing solid growth in $$ sales and volume, but their availability to consumers through retail is minimal. One of our key points of difference with consumers is that we are broadly available at retail.
New items are off to a very strong start and are gaining distribution as we bring on existing and new customers.
The shift from Date Rolls to Mini Medjools continues to show its value in growth. Cacao Pecan did lose distribution at a key customer which set us back on that SKU.
Wins
These past few months the brand has seen several wins as we work to grow the business through innovation and new customers.
New customers
Safeway/Albertsons Portland - Regained distribution
SEG - Southeast retailer and a first-time customer for BVDG
South Florida Produce - A SE distributor
Refocused our trade efforts on generating new contacts/leads adding 188 in Q1
Attended the newly rebranded IFPA trade show in Orlando which was met with great success and led to several new customers
Challenges
As our price increases have now flowed into the market there may be some adverse effects. We are managing that by adding value to our programming through extensive marketing programs that elevate our value to retailers. The crop this year was adversely affected by late summer weather in the Bard Region of Arizona and California. Our growers and quality team have been hard at work to ensure our standard of quality is maintained, leading us to cull more fruit than usual. The brand remains in the position to service all the volume commitments and fulfill our growth projections.
Trivia Question
Since we are heading into the holiday season, today’s trivia question is:
What is the most popular date-based dessert in England?
World Tour
This past quarter has been busy for our international team with a lot of international trade shows in preparation for the Ramadan season. With shows in Bangkok and Paris, it was an onboarding opportunity for our new Sales Rep out of Indonesia, Anggarda Putra. Additionally, Shayna Telesmanic was promoted to Director of International Sales and was busy attending the above shows and visiting Costco Japan to continue to build upon that developing relationship.
Consumer Marketing - The marketing team has executed a variety of marketing plans put in place for the year. We kicked off our Catalina program, influencer marketing, planning for our Sweet Delights promotion, and much more. Most excitingly we have started testing our website based direct to consumer sales channel that will further enhance our ability to reach new consumers with offers for them to purchase products directly from us to generate trial.
Trade Marketing - Trade marketing has been busy this quarter with the execution of marketing to drive Ramadan sales internationally, highlight our new crop offering, and highlight all the exciting things we have going on to drive sales with retailers. We have brought in 188 new trade contacts and 70+ new followers on LinkedIn.
Product Development - We have added Kyle Oliver as our new Product Manager who is helping us accelerate our efforts in many areas of product development, innovation, packaging, and more.
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Trivia Answer: Sticky Date Pudding find a great recipe here
