Meal-delivery service Feast & Fettle managed to grow during its first year in business thanks in part to an evolving, cost-effective marketing strategy, says owner and executive chef Maggie R. Mulvena.
“I’m very particular about what we put our energy into,” said Mulvena, a graduate of the Johnson & Wales University culinary-nutrition program. Like many small-business owners, she prefers high-impact, low-cost marketing strategies.
The Warren-based company, which delivers ready-to-reheat, “chef-created” meals to homes, employs a full-time community manager, a part-time sous chef and a part-time dishwasher. The business, which celebrated its one-year anniversary last month, delivers to 30 members’ homes twice a week, on Mondays and Wednesdays, on a route that stretches from Bristol to Lincoln.
Mulvena counts on search engine optimization: “We want to come up first if people search ‘meal delivery Rhode Island,’ ” she said.
To date, Mulvena said she’s spent $15,000 of the company’s $200,000 annual budget on the website – a new iteration of which will launch this month.
“We don’t have a big marketing budget … that’s why we use social media and referrals,” she said.
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Isabella Cassell, director of food initiatives at Providence-based Social Enterprise Greenhouse, said creative marketing is often what distinguishes businesses in the state’s saturated food industry.
“Because there are all these different support systems looking to help food entrepreneurs, there is more encouragement for people to start food businesses,” she said. The best marketing advice for small food businesses fighting to stand out, said Cassell, is to build a following by sharing their story.
“Telling your story and letting people connect to that story is the best thing you can do for your company,” she said.
Over the past year, Mulvena has used social media, local ingredients and her delivery van to grow her business. She relies on social media “to ramp up prior to an event” and as a platform to expand brand awareness. Feast & Fettle posts often include information on current menus and tags of other Rhode Island-based companies whose ingredients they plan to incorporate.
“Last summer we made a fruit parfait at Warren-based incubator Hope & Main’s farmers market using yogurt from Providence’s Narragansett Creamery and granola from Sacred Cow [another Hope & Main company],” she said. “We also did a similar dill chicken salad using Baffoni’s Poultry Farm chicken, out of Johnston, and pickles from [Providence’s] Fox Point Pickling Co.”
Another Feast & Fettle marketing tool is their delivery van – a white 2015 Nissan NV featuring their white and orange logo – a knife, a whisk and a fork.
“It’s very well-known and we’ve had people sign up for our service just from seeing [it],” said Mulvena. “[But], if I had it to do over, I would make it even louder. You get so many eyes on your brand just from having your car wrapped [with your logo].”
Now in its second year of business, Mulvena said growing the company will be harder.
“When you first launch, it’s very exciting and people want to hear about your business. Now that we’re entering our second year, we’ll have to put together a strategic marketing plan and put more of our budget toward marketing,” she said.
In addition, she said, Feast & Fettle’s greatest marketing challenge is that it doesn’t have investors. She prefers to call the company’s financial strategy “bootstrapping.”
She hopes her marketing efforts will boost customer growth in communities on Aquidneck Island and throughout South County by the end of the summer.
At Hope & Main, Luca Carnevale knows the importance of funding to the sustainability of a small business.
“In any small business, capital and cash flow is a big issue,” said the food incubator’s executive director of operations.
Which is why, he said, strong marketing is paramount. Carnevale has helped license 85 small food businesses in his 2½ years at Hope & Main and met with “a couple hundred” others.
He’s seen myriad marketing tactics – from conventional, online campaigns to mascots in businesses that found success through Hope & Main.
Similar to Feast & Fettle, gourmet-donut maker PVDonuts spent two years building a social media presence prior to launch, he said.
“They didn’t have a space, but they spent so much time building up this groundswell, [when they did open] everyone was like, ‘I have to have these donuts,’ ” he said of the business that opened a retail space in Providence last year.
Another small, Hope & Main business, cocktail and soda-syrups producer Bootblack Brand, “spent a year looking for the perfect bottle that looks good on the bar and stands out on the shelf. It’s different enough to make you want to pick it up and you’re attracted to it,” said Carnevale.
The owners of Fox Point Pickling Co., which specializes in pickled vegetables, wear pickle hats, pickle T-shirts and place a pickle figurine on their table at farmers markets, which engages kids, he said, and then draws in their parents.