Mobilizing Your Customer Base to Drive Sales
Jordan Schenck, Chief Brand Officer at Flashfood, shares some unique strategies for mobilizing your customer base to boost sales and brand awareness even without Coca-Cola dollars.
[MUSIC]
>> Welcome to Pipeline Visionaries.
I'm Ian Vizan, CEO of Caspian Studios.
Today, we are joined by special guest, Jordan.
How are you?
>> I'm doing well.
>> Decided to have you on the show.
We're going to chat marketing,
we're going to chat brand,
we're going to chat all things flash food.
As always, our show is brought to you by our good friends.
I qualified, you can go to qualified.com to learn more.
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First question, Jordan, what was your first job in marketing?
>> I initially had this brand vision that I was going to,
I'd studied Mandarin Chinese and Finance,
and I had assumed that I was going to go the route of banking and for whatever
reason.
My giant live stream was to go into mergers and acquisitions or some form of
Asia-Pacific
center work.
I did not do that, obviously, because I am here with a background in doing a
lot of marketing.
My first job was actually, was out in New York City.
I had decided to not take the route of finance and some of the situations were
like a friend
of my mom, knew some people at Interbrand that had just started a sort of spin-
out agency,
and they hired me as a contractor, though I think I was a glorified intern to
essentially
do a whole bunch of market research, UX research around a couple of projects at
a time, one
was rebranding the country of Mexico, which was a really interesting body of
work.
Another piece was repositioning this company that everyone experiences, but no
one knows
about, it was underwriters laboratories, which is essentially the governing
body of approving
the safety of products.
That was what I was doing, but I was also a contractor living in New York, so I
had 19
other jobs working, doing data entry for a hedge fund, and then working at a
bar on
Thursday so that I could have my tab paid for kind of saying, it was very true
to its
form.
There was not a lot of glory at the time.
And flash forward to today, tell us a little bit about what you're doing at the
amazing
company, Flashfruit.
Yeah.
So I think a lot of folks in the States, at least, won't have heard of Flash
fruit yet.
We have just started the journey in building market here in the US, but company
started
about a little over seven years ago, initially in Canada.
What we had seen was something that is true globally, is that within our
grocery stores,
40% of all food is thrown out.
The majority of that food is fresh food, so meats, produce, dairy, you name it.
And it's thrown out for a number of reasons.
I mean, it can be anything from over ordering damage, didn't sell.
While we still have an issue of food insecurity is greater than ever, and you
even compound
that with the past couple of years, post-pandemic, where food has become more
unaffordable than
ever.
And so our mission is effectively to partner with the best grocery retailers,
to feed families,
not landfills.
We've started that journey in the States.
We're sort of on the edge of what I would say is sort of a moment of reintrodu
ction that
brands do.
But I am the chief brand officer there.
So I oversee our marketing function, our comms function, and our marketing
function is inclusive
of our marketing technology, as well as our retail and brand marketing.
That's a pretty cool job.
And I got a lot of things I could say about it.
I feel like you got a lot of questions.
Yeah.
Well, first off, obviously, a slightly different type of company that we
normally have on here,
a lot of B2B tech companies.
But you're a technology company, and you're obviously making the world a much
better place.
Let's get to our first segment, the Trust Tree.
Trust Tree is where we go and feel honestly trusted, and you can share those
deepest, darkest
marketing secrets.
You told us a little bit about what y'all do, but who do you sell to at Flash?
Yeah.
We're a double-sided marketplace, and we're a double-sided marketplace that's
moving into
sort of that hyper-growth side of things.
So we sell to a couple of different people, right?
We have to sell to our retail partners and brochures because we are an
infrastructure
change, not only in terms of the, call it more, I mean, software tech that we
have, but
we also have quite a bit of hardware.
It's not deep hardware tech, but we have giant refrigeration units that end up
in sort
of the front of the grocery stores near a rent box or wood, is where you
typically
seen where you would typically encounter us.
So that's one interesting part of my job in terms of how we sell, how do we
integrate,
how do we market G-Well?
The other side of our marketplace, which is our consumer side, so how do
consumers shop?
How do they buy the suit?
How do they think who are we acquiring, how do we command?
So that's, it is separate, but it's also integrated.
Like the deepest, darkest marketing when you're in startups that I would say
are early market,
pre-market are one, sort of all of the things that you would have once known
around.
Like how do we deploy a traditional campaign or what does this, what does a
cyclical calendar
look like is important, but in some ways, Austin's age of the company.
So when I think about my job was just scaling on either side of it, oftentimes
the tactics
that you would once overlook and other roles become that of your greatest
success.
So I'll use impossible as an example.
In the early days, we built this sort of crazy amount of press.
The whole launch strategy was around, but these big partnerships was shaft.
The amount of events and launches I did was like, I saw like a hundred within a
year kind
of thing.
So what was happening though was the pull through in places that impossible was
not.
So if you think about it, we were effectively in a couple of places in New York
City with
like billions of impressions.
We had no scale across the country.
We also didn't as a company philosophically believe in let's deploy like big
advertising
campaigns because we wanted to create advocacy from the ground up.
So what we did was knowing that we had this massive email list of people who
had opted
in to just learn about us, the majority of them obviously were not based in the
United
States.
We created like a campaign that was a demand generation campaign where we and
this is a
crazy thing about retail.
So grocery is still very much.
It operates very close to its community.
So things like submission boxes in a grocery store are still used to pull
products in.
You like that gender that manager reads those still like it's paper.
Like if you want something new in your grocery store, you will still request it
to your store
manager or put it in the box.
And we knew that was a reality even at the level of the biggest supermarket.
That's how it is.
And they actually read them.
That's I think a really beautiful thing about retail.
You don't realize is that they care a lot about those sort of groups or
communities they
serve.
There are meetings where they'll go over it.
So we were like, what if we totally blitz those boxes and mobilize this base of
people
to go out and do the submissions for us and we'll figure out some sort of like
reward
system, which I think was a tote bag at the time.
Like my team was like packing thousands of tote bags like in the office.
But what we did was employ our fan base like our building sand base to
essentially go out
and be our sales team.
That's a crazy thing to do.
It's a ton of manual labor.
Like we had to have like people emailing us back pictures of like submissions
that they
had made.
And then we like honor it.
And it's just this whole sort of like on and on kind of thing.
But it was a really cool campaign because it allowed the retailers to obviously
they
to read the press, then they would go to their submissions box was going to be
like,
when are you getting impossible here?
And it would happen with food service as well.
So I thought that was just like a one of those, it feels so tactical, but like
the impact
of it brought us into some of the biggest grocers and restaurants in the
country.
And so those are the things that I often in growth don't it's not to overlook,
but to
actually over leverage on because you can do a lot with the community or the
sort of
customer early adopters you have to make things sticky.
And we know that the word of mouth side of things is what drives the sale.
So the more you can mobilize that, that's the better.
Yeah.
And the squeaky wheel gets the grease.
Exactly.
And a lot of times you can't ignore what your customers want when you're sort
of dealing
with this like B2B, B2C sort of thing, which was the same impossible was no
different.
Like we still had to sell the technology to the industry in addition to
generating consumer
demand.
The product itself was like, you know, meat tech, not, you know, tech tech in
the way
that we would like British define it.
And then you think about like when you're dealing with double sided marketplace
is so
like, okay, how do I leverage customer demand?
Well, then how do I connect that back to the retailer demand?
I need to generate.
So then what we would do is have a really robust LinkedIn play where we would
be building
lists and cloning lists off the emails and LinkedIn profiles of the hundreds of
people
that reported into any one person of sort of power and targeting all of that
media back
at them at LinkedIn.
So we never lost the sort of relevance in the feed.
So we had these sort of, there was a play going on there, or we would have
really smart
buyouts of certain publications at certain push periods.
We even marketed the campaigns.
We were marketing on the consumer side on the side of the retailers.
Because one thing that I think is also overlooked is like people on the
business side are consumers
too.
We often forget that like they're not like it's all of a sudden you become a
business
person and then you don't know how to be a consumer.
So we would actually just parlay that off of each other so that we were using
both sides
of it to generate just excitement and demand.
And I think it were.
Right.
Yeah.
As you're thinking about the two sided marketplace, how do you budge it
accordingly to both sides
of the market?
Is there like some sort of calculation that you do there?
There's never a perfect equation for any of this and it all comes back
ultimately like
the volume of customers you need to sort of make the call.
I'd say on the account side, there are a lot more implications that goes into
sort of standing
up a public partnership.
It's not going to be just based off of can I in the same way with performance
marketing,
you know, move folks through whether it's social or digital ads.
Like there it's actually less of a formula there.
When I think about the, let's say on the business side of it, I'm always
thinking more about
what are the milestone events that I need to do in terms of like where I'll see
central,
you know, moments of gathering of the right people.
If I am running performance or anything in life cycle, how much of that I need
to do,
I can oftentimes like, I'll just be real.
Like it's a hard one to predict and project.
And a lot of times like with our org, for example, you know, marketing is a
service function
to making sure that like awareness is scaled.
And when our, you know, our growth team gets out there, they've actually shown
up and folks
know who we are.
That's sort of my KPI and how I think about it, which a lot of it is like Palm
's Lead.
So my budgets tend to be relatively light there just in terms of if you're
going out
for customer acquisition, where I know when I'm turning on a market, I need at
least a
you know, a hundred thousand people to know about this sort of knowing where my
conversion
data sits and then the estimates I can make in terms of like retention, that
can be a
little bit more formula.
But that's how, I mean, it usually nuts out that you'll put more in consumer
demand and
then more in sort of like longer sort of term activation that deals with it
different.
But there is no formula.
This is like the art and the science of it.
So who's in the committee that you were talking about on the account side, like
these retail
partners who's making those type of decisions and who in the proverb.
Yeah, I mean, I think it ranges.
You know, for us, we've something I heard earlier is that we're different in
that when
a CPG like a straight sort of call it an average, if you will, or a piece of
impossible
meat ends up on the shelf.
It's a very different relationship at a grocery level.
Given that there's the buyers, there's the preexisting sort of shape of a shelf
in
category.
When we're coming in because we have refrigeration units that pick up on a
space, we have new
ways in which the store is potentially calling food and moving food instead of
it going out
on the dock and then out to the landfill, it's now going, you know, into a
fridge.
Like there's some big infrastructure changes that do happen.
We tend to work with leadership teams, but we're still engaging and we work
with leadership
teams with like how we move it in.
We need that's where the alignment comes from.
But then the actual activation of it is at a store level.
So we work with full.
We have to ultimately get by in at the sort of lead level, but we also get by
in the regional
manager level.
And we're still done training store to store.
We go with everyone when we do it.
And there's a lot of stakeholders that have to get by in.
And I'm sure it's similar with when you're talking to different folks sort of
in the SaaS
realm.
Some of these infrastructure changes are like the stakeholders go up and down
the chain.
Yeah, I think that the most recent statistic was if it's a hundred thousand
dollar deal
or more, there's 17 stakeholders in a BDB sale at this point.
Or like the buying companies like 17 people.
Yeah, I would say that it's still that and more depending on sort of the size
of what
you're rolling out.
And one interesting thing for us is because we have so much sort of mission and
goodwill
tied to what we're ultimately doing and the why behind what excites brochures
about us
is going back to brochures care about their communities.
They don't.
No one loves throwing out.
That's not something it's that anyone goes into business for.
What tends to happen is our value proposition becomes like an incredible
marketing and comms
vehicle for them as well.
So not only are we building technology to integrate into their handhelds, like
there's
this whole technical side of it where IT security, the tech teams are coming
together.
Then you've got the store teams, which is like, how do you train the store
floor to
like move product?
Then you've got the whole other side of it, which is how are we building the
marketing
story, the comms stories that ultimately help build a greater sense of goodwill
for the
brands that we work with.
So we end up, you made me think 17, I was like, man, I wish it was 17 because I
feel like
some days it's 80 that you end up working with.
But again, it just comes down to like the value chain is so expansive and like
the
change that we are sort of moving through on the floor is really neat.
We celebrate even on assistant manager level.
So a big program that we created to recognize as we have our sort of store
champion program,
right?
We recognize the champions or the leaders within the stores, whether that's on
LinkedIn or
sort of in our regular newsletters.
And that's again, going back to it's not even just like the regionals aren't
the ones sort
of in the in it doing the work with us on the sort of floor on the floor level
outside
of our champions.
But you know, every department in a grocery store participates in a program
like Flash
Food Meat, produce dairy, everyone's a part of making sure that the food that
they're
moving to sell through the platform is coming from their department.
It's pretty massive when you think about letters of one individual behind every
single
one of those departments in a grocery store that runs that particular
department.
And so we do a lot of work to recognize that because without them, the food
doesn't end
up on the platform, right?
You know, a lot of how I would I've been comparing it like lately internally is
if you remember
Airbnb in the early days, do you remember like before they trained house, help
make
things interesting?
And it was like, totally wild west.
All the photography was like, we're sort of in that, I would say that equitable
stage
in that we've got a labor like an amazing force that takes pictures of the food
, gets
it on the platform.
It's similar to that of the house, right?
It makes it attractive to be merchandise and sold on the platform and
everything we sell
is 50 to 75% off.
So you're working with like highly discounted, which is super cool, affordable
stuff.
And then you have to like connect the consumer to it.
It's like truly a very comparable reality.
And we have products like our tech products are built for both of those, right?
Which is similar to that of Airbnb.
Like you have to have a posting platform in the same way you have to have a
market place
to shop.
But we're early days in sort of that journey as far as like, how do you sort of
mobilize
a one group to like, A, do something completely different that they haven't
done and B, make
it like super interaction to the consumers that are going to come in and shop.
So I don't know if you check the app out, but like that's the easiest way to
compare
what we're doing and where we're at, which I think it's a super cool challenge.
So I was going to ask that I did check out the app and also I checked out the
website.
So I'm curious, you know, it's very much built for the consumer.
How do you, uh, no figure out a way to speak to both audiences?
Yeah.
So the consumer app you engaged with will always be the app for the consumers.
Right.
Yeah, web is there's an update coming next year, which will be exciting.
But then on the question of the technology we develop for retailers, we, that's
where
I said we have a full separate product there.
So our technology integrates with our retailers.
So we on our sort of, we, on our retailer, the retailer tech that we've
developed is,
it is obviously connected by how data moves through the two because obviously
we need
to make sure that the products that are getting posted on one side end up on
the marketplace,
but the actual tech itself is different because we're integrating into door.
Some super new, some 25 years old, you know, and we actually build that tech to
integrate
within those systems so that there isn't disruption to the day to day way in
which grocery
stores, um, essentially manage their inventory and make this where things go.
So it's very technical.
And I wouldn't put that on the sort of full shrine of like customer, like it's
not going
to drive consumer demand, but when we go into sort of our sales cycles, it's
much more,
um, it's much more robust with that.
So typically we'll sort of hit that with the usual face to face conversations,
you know,
we're developing some more sort of explanatory video content to help make that
a little bit
more simplified so that as we think about scaling beyond chains, because we've
worked
with sort of larger chains to grow as we think about, you know, a strategy for
independence
or bringing on our goal would be all brochures, right?
And that doesn't just mean the big ones that have 10,000 doors.
It would mean, you know, the family chain down the street that's got a couple
of like
really solid restaurants that are still dealing with food waste and want to do
it.
So it's a lot of stuff that we're like in progress of building today, which is,
I mean,
it's super cool.
Like I said, you're catching me on a day, fresh out of planning, fresh out of
like all of
that.
So I'm like, ah, come pull me back on in six months and you'll be like, dang,
what we
are first shot and everything you said was true, Jordan.
It all came true, but it's a perfect time to chat about planning.
And that's what we're going to talk about in our next segment, the playbook
where you
open up that playbook to talk about the tactics that help you win.
What are your uncuttable budget items?
So philosophically, this is then this is me as a marketer.
We I think that we should always try to operate in a world where we're getting
as close as
we can to sort of the zero sum marketing game, like in terms of how we don't
get ourselves
in a situation where we're sort of on that always on burn of performance
acquisition.
How do we rely on our product itself to do harder work for us, like incentiv
izing pearls
or, you know, drumming up a much tighter sort of life cycle system?
Like those are not just like where I operate philosophically.
So naturally, when I'm looking at the scope of my budget, things that I'll
always the
always on things that I'll always make sure we have is a healthy level of sort
of commitment
to owned and earned.
Like how are we thinking about the storytelling piece of this with how we
leverage, whether
it's things at a press level, things at an influence level, things that I am.
And how do we maximize that with a Juliet, for example, like how can we
maximize that
with different publishers to drive that?
Because as we know, and the reality is the media will always generate sort of
that halo
effect, especially for growth startups, because we don't have Coca-Cola dollars
Like we can't go out and buy a bunch of out of home.
That doesn't fundamentally make any sense for the business.
We don't also have the budgets to be doing like full digital takeovers on a
certain website.
And we also should be really sort of stringent with how we look at the
performance budget.
And so that would be sort of the first thing.
I'm always very I'm always looking to make sure that's funded in a way, because
what
I've seen in my time, whether it's with my own business and even with
impossible, obviously
with flash food, the amount of awareness and what I say awareness directly
attributed to
downloads or sell through that can happen when you have a viral thick talk
video that
ends up on Good Morning America that cost you all of a nothing to do because
the person
did on their own free will.
We just happened to parlay the story up at the right time.
Has a greater impact than going out and spending hundreds of thousands of
dollars on a campaign.
And then when I think about campaigns, where I start to where I don't budget in
the budget
is always looking at my year and saying, and this is what all sit with finance
or other
things like, what is the push periods that we are going to pick a bet on.
If we don't have the data that tells us exactly when we've seen sell through be
the easiest or
or building a new product, like when can we when do we as a team want to choose
a moment
in time that we're going to anchor spend around because what I've seen with a
lot of businesses
is the second you start to get in that flow of just we always have to be
spending 100 grand
is the second you stop looking at and asking yourself why and how do I make it
work harder.
So what I'll usually do is plan to have that moment in time to really
galvanize the teams and the organizations to to put action around something
versus getting in
that cycle of spending just to spend. And you can sort of center that around
your sales calendar.
If you know you've got these launches coming, let's do it. If you know in Q1,
people are like
the cheapest time to advertise, but people are much more interested in trial
because it's less
crowded. Don't spend all your money in Q4. And it's actually quite hard because
what you'll find is
you know, you'll have those early conversations with finance and as you want
this whole budget
to be secured and you want all these resources and I'm actually probably the
first one to be like,
I don't need that because I am not going to spend it because I'd rather have
that resource
though to make sure that the product gets sharper because if I can put that
investment towards a
build on the product side, it's going to be way better for my martech side or
my acquisition side.
But if I can get you to commit to this quarter, we're really going to go for it
. It's always going
to end up a little bit better. But I think we're naturally inclined to think we
have to score
all as much as possible. It's what's the period that we're putting our chips on
the table and then
like, how are we investing in programs that can get us sort of those like PR h
alo moments that get
it done. I always try to out a settling one moment in time where we invest in
research,
where we say, hey, we're going to go out and do this is going to be the one
time a year
and it's again, it could be multiple times a year, but this is the time of year
that we're going to
say, who's our customer base, we're going to say, and who is out there to
acquire and interrogate
that. And that work typically not only sort of sets the standard of where and
who our customers
are today, but it also informs the product roadmaps, right? Like maybe where we
went,
didn't get us there. Maybe we acquired more of an audience that we didn't
realize and why. So I'll
always have a period where probably before a push period that we invest in some
quantitative as
well as qualitative understanding of our customer base, because that's where
you know how to like,
where to throw the spear. And I think again, going back to like when people
sort of get in
that flow of like, always spend to spend, you don't have those moments where
you're like, okay,
how do I spend effectively? What about like sort of like,
experimental budget? Is there something that you want to be investing in over
the course of next
year or something that you're trying to invest in or debating thinking about?
I'm always keen on, as we think about where we spend, I mean, actually always
where we spend on
sort of the various like social channels and digitally is always like, it's an
interesting one
that like with Sunwing, for example, Sunwing company co-founded mission is to
essentially
make plant-based wellness accessible. We have beverage and powder line. I would
say the success
stories is like within the year that we developed a powder line, we were
already, you know, moving
into national park at Walmart, all of these things. There was a lot of hyper
growth with
sort of the product market in the world like, oh my god, how are we going to
support the velocities
that we need? And so we we really got sharp on how do we double down on certain
channels? Like,
I was mentioning that of TikTok and what tactics outside of like traditional ad
development,
like deployment, can we leverage to either sort of scale up acquisition and or,
I mean, maximize
spend to be real? So we developed this alchemy of white labeling as well as
organic influence that
directly drove our sort of success and that of different retailers like Target
or others to move
product on the shelf in a way that was like competing with some of their
biggest sort of
whales, like the vital proteins of the world. And we were just doing it all
through
paid influencers and then occasionally like boosting white listed. And that was
really
surprising to me because if I had again come from like the world priority even
impossible when I
was at a place like widening Kennedy, I'm dealing like a hundred million dollar
ad budgets, right?
Like these are bucco bucks that just kind of go everywhere. And in this day and
age, I'm like,
wow, I can tell you that with that campaign with, you know, that small like 40
grand of money,
we were able to like become a compact like a meaningful competitor on shelf.
And so I get
really excited about like new platforms that are coming out because I think,
yeah, I mean,
any of us sort of get wild west, you can test, you can break, you can figure
out like ways to get
the algorithm to savor you. So those are the things that I get a little bit
excited about.
I'm excited to continue to scale it. Another big thing for next year, like bets
would be
there's one piece of it, which is like the affiliate marketing side kind of
going back to
one is cool thing about our product is we have an amazing amount of just like
the fandom at
flash food is like unbelievable. And this is what got me, you know, I was on
the board of the company
initially. And so you sort of see these like tidbits of, you know, what's going
on and you're working
with the company, the things that always got me really excited was like the
amount of positive
customer outreach the company has is like unparalleled. Most of the times you
see that as like
bulk complaints or resolutions, but you know, in any given week, there's
hundreds and sometimes
even more just positively reaching out saying thank you so much for existing.
Oh, that's awesome.
Which you don't which to me is like a marketer. And like something that I've
always been really
passionate about is like, how do I mind for, for like fandom? And it goes back
to like demand
impossible campaign. Like, how do I understand that there's like a deep fan
base there? And
we absolutely have that. So as I think about next year, things like affiliate
programs that
incentivize our base to continue to share the message of what they love, you
know, outside of just the
like email and feel rewarded for that is something that I want to drive. We
also want to drive that
on the side of our press partners. Because what I also have found is the, you
know, our relationships
as we build this with our journalists is also really positive. So how do I
create like an incentive
structure not only for them and then also the rest of the influencer. So I'm
very eager to sort of
mobilize that for next year. Because again, it goes back to like, how do you
get to sort of like
the zero some marketing budget if you will. And if I can leverage this amazing
group of people that
love us to do, you know, the work of helping share our message, that's much
better than like
cranking something out all Facebook, you know, it just means something. And so
I always write like,
if you can get your brand to be loved so much, like, this is a bad Jordan KPI
that someone get
the tattoo of your brand, like you've made it. Like as soon as someone like
physically puts your
logo on their body, like you have created a brand that like, is like deeply
loved. We had that with
impossible in the first like 18 months when we launched, people were getting it
like tattooed on
their bodies. And I was like, wow, like we've really built something that works
. And I'm hoping,
like I said, if we talk again, you could ask me, you know, has someone gotten
the tattoo yet of
a slash now whole thing. This is on a different show, but I interviewed the one
of the marketing
leaders at liquid death and their CEO got a tattoo of one of their customers
who I think had a tattoo
or something, but it was like a whole crazy thing. But they basically they have
customers that have
tattoos and so their CEO got a tattoo of that customer. That's so funny. I
think it's a KPI that
sort of sits in the realm of folks that like to push the boundaries of culture
and the zeitgeist and
a lot of like stuff that I've dealt with, like with impossible, we had to like
we just shift the
zeitgeist around like what I am faced was right like it wasn't, you know, the
burgers in your frozen
aisle that like felt like weird, you know, hard rock had it like that was the
consumer perception.
I was also we also had a product that like has GMOs is made in a large
seemingly
scientific looking bioreactor like a lot of headwind, right? So like, how do
you sort of take all
those things like know that they're sort of real challenges and get it in there
into the heart
of what consumers want? I think a lot what excites me a lot with flash food is
we're taking something
that's like the whole industry knows that it's bad and no one likes to do it,
right? Consumers
are sort of like, why would I? It's like you say in one sentence like when you
're out the shelf,
like, why would I buy something near its best buy? But then like go to your
fridge and you like eat
whatever, like if you sniff it, you're like, I'm fine. So there's something
really interesting in that
tension for me to like, how do we actually if you can change behavior or you
can create a
really full movement around doing something totally novel and I'm like, how can
we make this idea of
food that's like near its best buy the same with like how cool it is to shop
for vintage clothes?
Like what de-pop did for Gen Z is really cool, right? And we've got that same
sort of thing going
where like, how do we sort of create that sort of spirit and moment around the
perfect window
of this food? Like truly, it's the perfect window. It's like food ready to eat
and the cheapest,
like boom, go. You shouldn't it shouldn't be that much more complicated than
that.
Yeah, and it's doing, um, doing the world a lot better. Yeah, great. But you
know how
consumers are, we want to care about it, but oftentimes accessibility around
things that
are sustainability, like it's just not there, right? You've got like plant
based is amazing,
but it's still 10x a commodity. So like, until you get there and you're like
truly
beating it, like good luck, right? But when you think about things like where
we are, like we're
actually beating commodity prices and it happens to be doing better. You know,
the consumer doesn't
have to think about it. They don't have to think about it or put their dollar
out there to make
it. So I just think that's like really cool. Aside from like the, you know, the
things that we figure
out is like an early stage startup with the clunkiness that happens with
technology we all know,
but I think that's again, it just goes back to like the most exciting kind of
business to get
the grow. And then I think on the side of our retail partners, it's a great
value proposition,
right? And retailers obviously like they sell food, they shrink out food. They
're
margin sensitive businesses. We help alleviate some of that while supporting
the community
that they serve in terms of accessibility and not again, no one wants to like
put this stuff
on the trash truck. And even at the landfill, like the land sold guys, we like
the big problem.
We like to figure out how to break down telephone calls and chemicals. If we
could actually not
have this whole place filled with food, we're in a better situation, just sort
of what you'll
hear sometimes when you're engaging with waste management, you know, nobody
sort of wants that
to be the outcome of all of the work, right? The labor that goes into making
food and how it gets
from point A to point B. So let's get to our final segment. Quick hits, some
quick questions,
quick answers, just like how qualified helps companies generate pipeline
quickly. Tapping
your greatest essay website to identify your most valuable visitors instantly
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conversations right there on your website, go to qualified.com to learn more.
Quick hits,
Jordan, are you ready? Yes. Do you have a hidden talent or skill that's not on
your resume?
Not on my resume. Insane cook posts, epic dinner parties that you see vast
anyone in the
berry I have attended are like, that's crazy. Where is my invite Ben? You can
have one if you
want to come out to one. They're a good time. We just did like a surrealist
dinner party and I like
crazy. Followed all did a bunch of like thing from Dolly's cookbook, but then
also like a bunch of
other weird stuff. It was a good time. Fun. Do you have a favorite book,
podcast or TV show that you
recommend? Oh, I so favorite book, business book I've ever read, making of a
manager. My team is
just reading that right now. Julie Joe wrote that. It's one of the best books I
've ever read in terms
of tactical. A very tactical sort of description of what happens to that point
when you become a
manager or how to be it like straight up through the one on ones reviews
everything. It's a beautiful
book. It also gets it makes you really uncomfortable. Like you wonder if you're
actually doing a
good job, which I also love about a good book and then favorite podcast right
now is normal gossip
because I love good tea and I love comedians unpacking random events that
happen with strangers
like the drama on a kickball team. I need to hear that because I think the
world's really heavy
and it's more fun to hear like some of the levity that happens in the world
around the gossip around
the corner. Last question. What is your best piece of advice for a first time
chief brand officer
or CMO? Partner with your finance org early. Partner with your security org
early. Become BFFs
with your legal org early. I love it. Jordan, so awesome having you on the show
for listeners.
Just go download the flash food app and it's going to become a California scene
which is extremely exciting. We're going to follow along. We're so excited for
all the
progress that you're sharing and that you've achieved any final thoughts,
anything to plug?
No, you guys are on the journey now. We've got to, if we want to solve this
stuff,
we got to do it. There's only so many pretty looking things that I can put out
there,
but it's on a lot of us to sort of get in there and do it.
I love it. Austin Jordan, thanks so much and take care. Thank you.
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