Incentivizing flavor
Encouraging small businesses to explore and expand their menus
The Past
Kraft Heinz Food Service provides sauces, toppings, and other ingredients to tens of thousands of small businesses across America. While these customers are very loyal, they typically stick to a few specific SKUs (most often Heinz Ketchup). Convincing these customers to explore other products could bring in millions of dollars in ARR. The incentive program in place paid operators a small amount to try new SKUs, but was unpopular and underutilized.
The Insight
After dozens of interviews with restaurant operators, regional sales managers, and chefs, I found some of the largest pain points in the program resulted from a lack of personalization.
As these small businesses were experiencing major supply chain hardship as a result of COVID-19, they were more open than ever to introducing new SKUs into their menu. However, they lacked the culinary resources (i.e. recipe creation) to empower them to take the leap, and recurring participation in the program was rare to to lack of incentive.
On the other hand, these restaurants had a resource that KH was failing to leverage; enthusiastic communities.
The Present
The incentive program was turned into LTO (Limited Time Offer) in a Box, where restaurant operators are incentivized and aided in the creation of quarter-long LTO menu items using new Kraft Heinz SKUs. The revamped program created a tiered system, where operators were rewarded both financially and through increased culinary aid with each SKU and quarter they participated in. I also created a requirement for operators to create promotional materials for each menu item, leaving creative control up to them. The result? 600% increase in participation, 300,000 organic brand impressions, and a (free to Kraft Heinz) TV spot featuring our A.1. Sauce.
In order to supplement the program, I also created a brand impression calculator that helps Kraft Heinz quantify each brand impression earned through their food service business.
600%
300,000+
Increase in program participation
Organic impressions
