Key Takeaways
• Food promotions remain underutilized, presenting distributors with opportunities to capture additional sales.
• Creative packaging and printed materials can turn edible gifts into memorable, multisensory marketing experiences.
• Seasonal food gifts can strengthen customer relationships and generate repeat business.
Humans have five senses, and a good promotional campaign can engage all of them. Print and apparel appeal to sight and touch, a Bluetooth speaker delivers sound and a branded candle adds a pleasing scent. But bring taste into the mix, and you create a sensory experience that other promos simply can’t match.
Yet some industry pros say edible promos remain an underutilized ingredient in the promotional marketing mix.
“According to ASI, we’re only doing food as 1.3% of our business as an industry,” says Kristina Beal, national account manager for Totally Chocolate Promo (asi/44897). “And my goal is to raise that to 2% at least.”
Beal says that it’s not for lack of trying on the part of the distributor or the supplier. Rather, the customer just might not think about food promos or realize it’s something readily available.
“Distributors don’t let their customers know that they can sell food,” says David Miller, president of Counselor Top 40 supplier NC Custom (asi/44900) and a Counselor Power 50 member. “And those customers end up going to Harry & David, Godiva or to Walmart down the block. Not only can the distributor leverage these relationships, but they can also provide them with a product from a manufacturer.”
Whether sweet or savory, distributors can deliver food gifts with personalization that a direct-to-consumer brand might not be able to pull off.
“The distributors are losing out on sales because they don’t mention it,” Miller says. “It’s not that the customers aren’t getting food. They’re not getting it from them.”
Bringing Food Into the Fold
Edible promos can stand alone as gifts or complement other promotional items. Think about pairings with printed collateral like cards, including them in a larger themed kit or matching them with related products, such as hot chocolate mix with a mug. Since acquiring Sweeter Cards last year, Maple Ridge Farms (asi/68680) has combined print and food promos through customizable greeting cards containing chocolate bars. One recent case study centered on a sponsored hole in a golf tournament, where golfers received s’mores and sea salt caramel chocolate bars from Maple Ridge Farms and Sweeter Cards.
“We can use customer budgets more wisely in the marketing scheme and enable buyers to invite recipients into the experience by creating a multisensory item,” says Joelle Stahlecker, marketing coordinator for Maple Ridge Farms.
A distributor or printer can include features like a QR code on a wrapper to deepen the “epic storytelling,” as Stahlecker puts it.
“You’ve taken an information packet, and you’ve now elevated the art of the experience,” she adds. “You’re getting into the limbic system. The emotional core of your brain moves faster, so these food or tactile experiences engage that limbic system before a person has even a moment to process the logic behind the gift.”
Borrowing from one of fiction’s greatest chocolatiers, Beal says that tucking small “golden-ticket” print pieces into a chocolate bar evokes a sense of excitement for the end-user.
“It’s about experience gifting,” she says. “That’s probably my personal favorite.”
To borrow the phrasing of another beloved fictional character, using a bit of sugar helps the “medicine” – the information the promo is trying to convey – go down. As the end-user savors the food promo, they’re all too happy to sit for a second and consider the wrapper or other packaging the piece just came in.
“I call it the cereal box effect,” Beal says. “You know, it’s like when you’re sitting there and you’re reading the cereal box, and because you’re just eating, you’re like, ‘Why did I read all of that?’ The same thing with the promo material. You’re eating it, and you’re actually obtaining the information that the people want you to read.”
Even without purposeful messaging or information, the packaging of a food product is still part of the experience. It’s an instant association with the logo printed on the wrapper or box – and well worth it for distributors to encourage clients to go beyond a plain wrapper or blank box.
“Packaging is huge,” Miller says. He notes that NC Custom prints its packaging in-house, including full-color film for bagged items, foil wrappers and boxes available in small quantities. It also handles die cutting and box assembly. “Because we also print on these substrates in-house,” he adds, “we don’t have any inventory problems with packaging, which I know is a concern in the holiday season because inventory is much needed. It goes quickly during that time of year.”
Gifting Seasons
While promotional food gifts work all year, the holiday season is when sales really seem to jump, especially for popular seasonal items like sugar cookies or peppermint bark. When combined with creative and distinct branded packaging, clever messaging and perhaps even paired with other promotional products, these items stand out from the other gifts that might’ve come from common retailers. This makes a difference.
“When the client gets it, not only are they thinking, ‘Oh, thank you for your business this past holiday season,’ but they think of our customer the next time an opportunity arises,” Miller says. Distinctive, high-quality products stand out amid the flood of holiday gifts.
Beyond seasonality, distributors need to account for other considerations that are food-specific.
“There’s the obvious, like an allergy factor,” Beal says. “With any food gifting it’s going to be that way. We include ingredients on everything. We’re a peanut-free facility, so that helps a lot. But the nice thing is that you don’t have to worry about sizes as with apparel.”
There are also perishability concerns, but Stahlecker says that Maple Ridge and other suppliers provide work-arounds like nonperishable “sister pieces” for items such as cheese.
These considerations add steps to the selling process, but managing them well demonstrates a distributor’s attention to detail. Delivering food gifts that arrive fresh and ready to enjoy can build clients’ confidence in your ability to handle their next promotional project.
That extra work can pay off because edible promotions leave recipients hungry for more. They’re consumed – often immediately – and when recipients want another bite, the opportunity for repeat orders begins.
