In this episode of Missing Half, Bill is joined by Jaime Underwood, the founder and principal of Edible Chemistry Consulting. Jaime shares her expert insights on the intricate process of bringing food and beverage products to market, from formulation and scalability to branding and go-to-market strategy. Jaime emphasizes the importance of thorough market research and a well-designed go-to-market strategy, noting that many founders make the mistake of falling in love with their product before understanding their target audience. Jaime also shares examples of both successful and failed product launches, underscoring the importance of being open to feedback, adapting your brand as needed, and maintaining alignment between R&D, marketing, and sales teams.
Bill: Thank you for joining the Missing Half podcast where we're discovering what's missing in manufacturing and B2B marketing. Today, my guest is Jamie Underwood, the founder and principal of Edible Chemistry Consulting. Jamie, thank you for joining us.
Jaime: Thanks for having me, Bill.
Bill: So Jamie, I got to know you through a colleague of ours and a friend and was just fascinated by the niche industry that you operate in and how much work goes into food before we see it, before it's on the shelf, before we get it at the, whether it's at the grocery store or at the restaurant, the amount of planning research and process that really goes into it. I'd really like you to take some time here, maybe just introduce yourself a little bit, introduce your company, and then really talk about where you guys exist in the life cycle of products, and specifically food products.
Jaime: Yeah, absolutely. So I'm a food scientist. I actually started out in biotechnology in Florida and went and got my graduate degree at Kansas State University. Food technology process engineering is kind of what I've been doing for most of my career. I founded Edible Chemistry a little bit over six years ago. I enjoyed some of the perks of working for very large multinational companies doing research and development, but didn't necessarily like the pace those companies moved at. So I wanted to get a little more innovative, see what's out in the market, maybe support some entrepreneurs, some small businesses that were really doing some cool things in the marketplace as far as our food, our beverages, our dairy, our dietary supplements. So from there, we've grown to a company of seven people. We have two locations. And we're very niche for two reasons. My background is more on hydrocolloids and stabilization sciences. So anything that shouldn't work together from a chemistry standpoint, we try to make it work. The other half of that coin is we're scalability experts. So you'll get a lot of formulators or chefs or research chefs that can do the R&D work, do fabulous work on the bench, but they don't have the knowledge to actually scale and get you on the shelf. So that's a niche we really, really support is not only can we formulate the product, we understand all the food safety guidelines, we understand how this is gonna be processed. The last thing we want is 50,000 pounds of broken cheese sauce. So we are really experts in helping take those bench concepts and actually turning them into commercial products on the shelf or in food service.
Bill: That's interesting. So we had a client a number of years ago that we worked with that participated at the Hatchery in Chicago. And it was amazing to me the various opportunities and ways to market that they had to navigate and the choices they had to make, whether it was direct to consumer, co-packers, being a wholesaler direct to restaurants. It really feels like if there's an entrepreneur who has an idea around food or a company that has an idea around food that isn't in their core competencies, that they need expertise from someone like yourself to really navigate those waters. Because I was just absolutely flabbergasted by the number of decisions that they had to make and the options, which none of them were necessarily wrong. It was just choosing the better of the best for their specific innovation in food. Do you see that as like the biggest challenge with a lot of these ideas is just so many opportunities and so many ways to market that you have to decide between?
Jaime: Yeah, honestly, one of the biggest pitfall I see with entrepreneurs and startups is their complete lack of go-to-market strategy and understanding who their target is. That's a big thing I push. I actually have a couple friends in the marketing space. One is more on market research and one is more on market, you know, go-to-market strategy that I pull in from time to time. But we get a lot of entrepreneurs that will come to us and say, I have this great product. I make it in my kitchen. My family loves it, can you help me bring this to market? It's like, okay, short answer is yes, we can make this shelf stable, food safe, processable and scalable, but who are you selling this to? Do you understand your target audience? Where does your target audience live? Are you going to be going through e-commerce? Do you need brick-and-mortar retail? If you have brick-and-mortar retail, do you understand the distribution? What about your supply chain? Nobody ever thinks about supply chain and how complicated that can be. So these are things we try to talk to our entrepreneurs about before we even take on the project. Now keeping in mind, we're a formulation house and we're a scalability house. We don't do marketing, we don't do insights, we don't do any of that, but we know how critical that is for our clients to be successful.
Bill: Sure. Elon Musk said this, the mistake engineers and scientists make is they often optimize something that shouldn't exist. And I imagine you're presented with food ideas that are the, like you just said, the number one most popular in that home or in that family that should not be taken and scaled and brought to market because there is no end user for it. When someone comes to you with their idea, could you maybe walk us through what you would see as a potential roadmap for what they would need to think about? Like, do you start market first? Because obviously you don't want to invest a ton of money into the chemistry and the development and all those things until we've done some type of feasibility testing, product-market fit, whatever. Like, what do you see as that roadmap that makes most sense for someone who wants to start to manufacture and distribute at scale a food product?
Jaime: Yeah, we really talk to our startups about making sure that their front end is really tight. So, you know, what is the product that you're trying to make? That's obviously the most important thing. What is your market? What application space are you trying to fill? So let's just take something like a bar. If you're trying to make, a protein bar or a nutritional bar, that's a very overcrowded space. So if you're going to enter that space, what is your value proposition? What is your target market? What are the claims you want to make without getting too crazy? You know, we'll have consumers. Well, consumers can really only pay attention to three things is what we've learned. So if you're trying to make six or seven claims, you're wasting your time. So we try to guide them through that. The other thing we try to really push on our startups and our entrepreneurs is, do you have any idea how much money is going to this is going to cost you? Because the R&D, I mean we're the cheapest part of that your whole commercialization stage gate process. R&D and prototype development is going to be the cheapest part. You're going to spend thousands on ingredients tens of thousands at a manufacturer and I always tell people if you don't have at least 150,000 somewhere for a marketing and advertising and research for marketing and advertising like just don't just don't get started.
Bill: Sure. I think one of the myths that's been perpetuated in this internet economy is that you can start with nothing and you can bootstrap everything. And there are some segments that that may be truer than others, but certainly in the food products development space, that is not true. I mean, there's certain barriers that exist, whether they're regulatory hurdles or, you know, insurance and liability and testing and those type of things. I mean, certainly food is one area where I think you have to have at least somewhat of a pocket. Certainly medical, anything dealing with... I mean, there, were talking a whole other scale of magnitude of testing and investment to get there. But no, I agree. I've, I've seen a couple of companies that have approached us and clients and we've worked with them. And one of them particularly was very undercapitalized and struggled mightily. Another was very well capitalized, but it was still a lot of money. And it takes a lot of resources and energy to do that. When you look at, and I'll pick up certain things you say and really dive into, when you talk about three things that you can say to a consumer, could you maybe characterize that a little bit? Because one of the things we geek out about here at 50 Marketing is messaging and trying to look at some of that positioning and your unique value proposition. When you talk about those three, not seven, could you maybe talk a little bit more about that in detail, please?
Jaime: Yeah, absolutely. And I'm glad you picked up on that because I think it's so important for consumers to understand that. Not consumers, sorry, the clients to understand that when they're marketing a product. When a consumer is walking down an aisle in a grocery store, and again, we'll use bars because it's an oversaturated market, you got to grab their eye. The packaging's got to be slick, but your messaging has to be concise and to the point on the front of the package for them to even pick it up and look at it. So if you have a box full of claims and stickers everywhere, that's too much for most consumers. Clean packaging, think with three claims, seems to be what sells the best that I've seen, whether it's bars, whether it's dairy, whether it's candy, whether it's dietary supplements. So I really say what are your top three claims and then you can put other stuff on your website. Get your QR code, put your stuff on your website. But if you want to be I have 20 grams of protein, five grams of fibers, and I'm vegan, those are your three claims. You can't also have on the front of the package, in big bold letters, we're also organic and free from artificial dyes and free from artificial flavors. And that's a very big pitfall I see a lot of people make when they're starting their own brand.
Bill: When you look at the D2C communication, which you're talking about, the direct-to-consumer packaging, how important is it also for us to be that narrowly focused and specific in our communication whenever you're developing the product and taking it to who's purchasing it from your manufacturing? So like if you're going to approach retailers, if you're going to approach convenience stores or you're going to approach distribution, does it also ring true that those buyers also can only process about three claims in their process as well? Do you see that parallel between D2C and B2B?
Jaime: We do. I mean, humans are humans. And in this day and age of technology and everybody is getting pulled in a lot of different directions, your brain's always splitting in three or four places. So we see that. I we have customers that present into Target, Costco, Whole Foods. And so we've noticed that, you know, you do have to grab them within those first three claims, but you also have to have your backups behind you because they're going to ask more questions. But also those, marketing claims are going to change depending on who you're presenting to. Obviously every successful product has more than three claims or three value propositions. You're typically at five to seven, but you've got to grab them within those first three claims. I mean for Whole Foods, might be messaging, you know, right now they're very anti-alulose. So you might be messaging not made with alulose, sugar-free but not made with alulose. Might be one claim you're making, but when you go to Target, you want to say, this is healthy but cheap. So it really, you do have to change your messaging depending on who you're talking to.
Bill: Yeah, we definitely see the parallel between D2C communication principles and B2B. It just seems that we're always a little bit behind in the B2B, right? And we're still over complicating things, maybe haven't adopted the new approach, but certainly we agree that humans are humans. And whether they're looking at, let's say they're on the buyer committee at Whole Foods and they're looking at your presentation, they cannot unsee that or see it without the lens of them walking down the aisle. When they're exposed to those other bars or dairy products or whatever they are. So yeah, I think that's an interesting thing. And I think we as marketers and those who really work to position products need to be wary that we don't overcomplicate things at times. The hook, the headline, the top three points, three points in a poem, be funny, be short, be seated, right? It's those type of principles that are so important. When you go through these processes with founders and they come to you with a product, what do you think is the key whenever you're trying to find product market fit and you're trying to see if this actually has the opportunity to scale and getting the founder through the process of, okay, you were heading north by northwest and we really need to head north by northeast with this product because there is viability over here, but you want to go here. How do you kind of navigate those waters and really try and help them understand a path forward if there is one for their product?
Jaime: Yeah, I think one of the places where founders do not spend enough money is the initial market insights research. I think people are creating products with no target market in mind, no target consumer in mind. And I think if you get, you know, we'll use a protein shake, for example, you want to launch a protein product onto the market. You know, you want it to be a protein beverage. You know, you want it to be in a nice little UHT bottle. Somebody can throw in their bag and just go with. But okay, so that's the product. Now who are you marketing that to? Is it kids? Are you marketing to the moms of the kids? Are you marketing it to the guys at the gym? Are you marketing it to college athletes? So I think having that initial research and spending the 30 or $40,000 you need to spend on the insights research is so important because then you can really focus in your target consumer. And once you have that target consumer in mind and you launch a product, you can grow out from there.
Bill: Sure. Whenever you consider that roadmap, at what point in time do you feel branding becomes important? Because we can have the best chemistry. We can have product market fit, or i.e. people like it, it tastes good, those type of things. then certainly there are a sea of brands in, there's no unfulfilled need. There's no unfulfilled need currently. So you're trying to break in and grab share. At what point in time in this roadmap does branding become very important and maybe even brand concept testing as part of the process as well?
Jaime: When we're doing R &D, because products change so much from what a founder will hand me and say, I want to do this, and then the feasibility of it from a chemistry or processing or just availability of ingredients might point us in a slightly different direction. So I would say until we have the first round of prototypes done and we know what's going to work and what's not going to work, then you start your branding, the work on your branding. But I really like to have that first prototype done, because if you have your heart set on, say, this really crazy new chickpea protein in your product, but we can't get it, you can't, you know, build your brand off of that.
Bill: No, that's great. I think sometimes what we run into is we have this vision of the next Coca Cola or the next Nike, and we're so wrapped up in that. And then we come back to the product. And in this business, specifically in this niche industry, it feels like it has to be product solution first, then wrap brand around it, as opposed to, I have a brand. And now I'm going build products underneath it, right? And that to me seems, well, founders often get that process backwards when we've dealt with them in these types of spaces and not just food, like that's not our niche per se, but just in new products taking them to market, they often get that process backwards and that becomes, you know, they fall in love with the logo and the tagline and an idea and then you get to the final product and it has nothing to do with those principles of that brand and that becomes a challenge. Well, that's an interesting insight. And I think one of the things that whether you're dealing with food that, you know and you're looking at the whole life cycle of the product, right? So you not only have to look at how you're going to source it, how you're going to manufacture it, distribute it the whole way through to on the shelf when the consumer's picking it up. I mean, there's a lot that goes into that entire process. We deal with a lot of clients that are in different segments of that process. So they might make components that are then sold to someone that are then assembled and manufactured. So sometimes our communication strategies for clients is less like 360 degrees or from birth to eventual consumption. But no, that's interesting. Whenever you get out of that research phase, and you have viability, right? You think you have something and then you enter the branding stage. What are the biggest mistakes or what are some tips or tricks you could offer anybody who's looking at branding? Whenever they have a product and they have viability and they have product market fit, what do you feel are the next steps in developing that brand or mistakes you've seen made in that process?
Jaime: Yeah, branding is always interesting to me. It's definitely not, you know, I'm a scientist. I don't come from that world, but I've been with, I mean, I've been with, you know, dozens of clients down this road. And, you know, I think to your earlier point, getting, falling in love with something that maybe isn't viable. And again, market testing it, you know, I always, SurveyMonkey can be free, right? Or it's very cheap to do surveys. Why don't you send a couple concepts out for what your logo looks like, what your branding looks like, what your messaging looks like, and get some feedback from actual consumers? I get too many founders whose stakeholders in the room are too close to them, and they're like, this brand message is perfect. And I'm like, ugh, no, it's not. I've cringed a couple of times with some branding messages that I've seen. And I think that's a big mistake with founders. They rely on friends and families, people close to you. You need people that have nothing to do with you to give you honest feedback. But you also have to have the mental fortitude to take it. And that's another thing. I've had people cry when I've told them they can't have what they've had this vision and been in love with this concept for years. But the supply chain doesn't exist to actually create it or what they want to do won't survive the process they want it in. So they have to change. So I think that's kind of the biggest mistake I see with branding is just being too in love with something and keeping your network of decision-makers too close to you.
Bill: So one of the challenges I think that you face in your role is as a scientist is translating very technical concepts into consumer benefits, right? Communicating, because you started by talking about words I won't even try to pronounce or spell, which is fine. I don't do chemistry. You know, I had a short relationship with chemistry in high school and we decided to part as friends because and as Taylor Swift said, we decided never to get back together again because it wasn't for me. But what do you see whenever you're trying to communicate those very technical items that end up in those three bullet points or that end up really presenting that product properly? What do you think are some of the keys or what have you learned as you've gone through that process many, many times? That may be helpful like as a tip or a trick or just an idea of how to walk through that process.
Jaime: Yeah, it's science communication is always interesting, right? Because I know very big technical words, they make total sense to me, but they don't make sense to 99% of the population. Communicating things to not, you know, I don't just want my client to understand, I want them to then be able to take it and communicate it to their customers. So I have a lot of props in my lab when I am talking to people. So when we talk about functionality, things like slinkies and Whiffle balls and things like that, so they can visually see, like if I'm talking about emulsions, like how that works. If we're talking about, just say, amino acids and protein functionality in your body, like I'll use puzzle pieces to show them how things kind of fit together. So I try to bring it back to almost like, I learned pretty on in my science communication career, because I've done a lot of science communication over the decades that if you speak to everybody like they're an eighth grader and you show them props like you would to a middle school class, that works pretty well. I've always encouraged my employees to go speak at a career science day fair at a middle school or a high school. Get used to that because you're going to have to talk down to that level and it's it's not dumbing it down per se, it's just putting it in terms where a layman that doesn't have the 25 years of background in the chemistry will be able to visualize it.
Bill: Yeah, because if our target audience for changing the way food is demanded and consumed, then, you know, that'll fall back through with the demand curve to the way it's produced and sourced. If it's going to rely on PhDs speaking in Latin and using calculus, that will never change. People want to, hey, I want to eat healthier. I want to feel better. I want to lose weight. I want to whatever their goal. I want to gain weight. I want to be more muscular. Whatever those health and environment and eating goals are, we have to translate that into the end, like those end illustrations that they can gather and they can consume and they can really relate to. Whenever you look at that, have you seen vehicles? So, you know, when we think about marketing, we think about case studies, we think about videos, testimonials, referrals, and certainly you're talking about these illustrations you've used to help communicate with your founders and the teams that they're involved with. What have you seen those companies then do to take that presentation or that information and extend that into their brand communication to the end user? Have you seen any carryover where they've really accepted some of that science communication and leveraged it in their brand communication?
Jaime: 100 percent. Especially like our sports nutrition clients that have sports nutrition brands. We explain to them how the ingredients that we're putting into their products, how they react in the body. But we use it in very simple terms. Like if you're an older guy playing golf, I love golf, so I'll use that as an example. You've got some arthritis, or you've got some aches and pains, and you're trying to communicate, well, we've got this product with turmeric and ginger in it, and it's going to help reduce the inflammation, which is going to make it less painful for you to swing the club, and easier for you to walk around the course. So these are things that we've seen translate down the line from how we're communicating to our customers, and it's showing back up in their branding, makes me very happy because that means we did our job from a science communication standpoint.
Bill: Yeah, absolutely. Because what I didn't hear you say was anything about some type of biology, anatomy, biochemistry, organic chemistry, explanation of why that those elements do to reduce the inflammation. You brought it into terms of, I'm going to feel better. My shoulder isn’t going to hurt. My knee isn't going to hurt because it's reduced inflammation. That's all I need to know. I don't care why it happens. I just care that it does happen. So that that's great. One of the things we really try and do is we really look for clients that are 100% authentic and we don't have to actually do any advertising. We just have to do marketing. So we don't need to make bold and salacious or outsized claims to attract business. We can just present the truth and core information that is real features and benefits that can be scientifically replicated. And certainly if you're seeing that availability of when you do your research, you're proving it, right? So then you can just communicate that the whole way through the end market. That's to me a marketer’s, not an advertiser’s, but a marketer’s dream because it's real and true. And you just have to find better ways of communicating that to your target audience. So that's, that's interesting. And we like that because we deal with a lot of very high science clients that are very technical and we have to help them repackage that communication to the various stakeholders in the process. When you look at maybe, and this is where we get into maybe some fun, where have, without naming names, where have you seen some of the marketing strategies of your clients go horribly wrong, where they've had to pivot really hard because it just like, and maybe it was that founder who grasped onto that one idea whatever, right? Like, have you seen any of the companies make really big branding mistakes on launch and have to recalibrate?
Jaime: Yeah, I've seen big mistakes on the science side and the branding side and those two things typically go hand in hand, which a lot of people don't think science, branding, and marketing go together. But it's really, really important. We had a client a couple years ago that wanted to launch a product. They wanted a no preservative claim, but where they were manufacturing and the kind of shelf life they wanted, they really had to have preservatives in the product. And we talked to them and talked to them and talked to them and they just would not budge. This is our branding message. This was another one that started branding before they came to us to develop the product. And they were not food people. They came from the tech world. So they knew nothing about food at all. So I'm like, I'm like, you're gonna get mold, you're gonna get spores, you're gonna have a recall. Recalls can cost hundreds of thousands of dollars. You don't wanna do that. It ruins your reputation. Your brand's gonna be dead. No, no, no, no, no. So we did it the way they wanted to. Had them sign a waiver that they were going against our advice. They weren't even in the market a year before they had a recall and everything was shut down.
Bill: Yeah. Well and I think that there's a situation where if you have someone from the tech world, I think that world always dreams and possibilities and breaking down barriers because technology innovates and improves so rapidly that they can they can challenge norms. They can challenge the rules of today and say, OK, we can break those. Right. We can fix those and get going. In food, we are not seeing that rapid of development. Preservatives still need to exist, mold still grows, these things change, so that's interesting. Have you seen any other, what about wins? Where have you seen it all come together, maybe some alignment issues, where you've seen a new product launch go really, really well, and what were the key components to that big win?
Jaime: You know, from a branding perspective, it kind of goes back to what we've been talking about a little bit, is they had a very, very clean packaging, very clean messaging. They stuck with three concise claims. They were very truthful in their claims. Some of the claims they wanted to make, we needed to make sure they were backed up by research. So we went and found some clinical studies, some papers that backed it up. So if consumers had questions, they would be able to answer them thoughtfully. But I think the other thing they did is they went out regionally. So they went out large enough so they're not throwing ingredients down the drain, right? Because you have MOQs when you produce and you have to buy MOQs of ingredients. But they weren't so large that they just kind of went all in. So that was a success story. They're branding was on message. They understood their consumer. They went out small. It was like, you know, it was like the littletortoise that could. They went out small and steady and they grew from a tiny regional brand to now they're national. Yeah, so I think that's the way to do it, but it is. It's clean, concise marketing. It's being truthful. Honestly, consumers are getting pretty savvy. I think the days of outlandish advertising are going to come to a close here pretty soon, which I'm very thankful for. Yeah, but that's where I think we're headed.
Bill: Absolutely. That just clogs up the market. Excellent. Whenever you look at this, this is a word that I talk about a lot in marketing and I think it's in product development and branding and the whole life cycle of creating companies because we are my family's owned and operated and started a number of companies. You we had a number of exits and one of the things I think that's missing today is patience. A lot of people go on the internet and they see the story of a founder in a SaaS company that came up with this little program. And within weeks, they were a multimillionaire. And within years, they're a multibillionaire. There are those opportunities in some technology spaces. But when you come back to manufacturing, when you come back to B2B services, and when you come back to specifically what we're talking about today, food production and distribution, this stuff doesn't happen overnight. Do you see a lack of patience sometimes from those founders who come to you or these companies where you have to explain, listen, this is a realistic 36 month roadmap, a 48 month roadmap of what this is going to take to get it to it. Like the one you referenced, it's national. My guess is that didn't happen in six to nine months. That was a multi-year major investment. Lots of problems and opportunities for growth along the way. Do you see that patience as something that's missing with a lot of folks today?
Jaime: Yeah, I do. A lot of people have exited tech as you know, tech kind of took a pretty big downturn. And a lot of these tech guys are going into food. And they think it's easy. They think it's going to be quick wins because everybody eats, right? Everybody eats. But because everybody eats, we have an oversaturated market of all these options. So it takes a really long time to differentiate yourself. But yeah, I get consumers that we're going to launch this brand and we're going to sell in two years. And I'm like, no, you're not. It's going to take you a brand on average in food from what I've seen takes about five years to start breaking even and making money. And most of them don't sell for eight to 10 years if they can sell it all. The other pitfall segue into this because this is something I've been dealing with right now with somebody. These guys coming from the tech world where they're selling companies for 22, 23 times EBITDA, right? Food is like three and a half to eight times EBITDA if you're lucky. If you're lucky.
Bill: If you're lucky, right? Yep. Well, I think that goes back to the whole patience and perspective. Maybe that's the second P when we're talking about multiples, because I've done some M&A in my career with some of our other businesses and family enterprises. But there was that one case study we read where this one guy got like 44x. And then you look at the details and it had nothing to do with fundamentals. It had to do with positioning or a multi-billion dollar corporation needed like it was a defensive player. I mean, there are all types of factors that had nothing to do with the fundamental principles that like Warren Buffett and Benjamin Graham taught us in value investing. So I do think we get this deer in the headlights or maybe it's like we see castles in the sky that we're going to whatever it is that isn't tech, we're going to invent or find or create this company that's going to get 22x or 20 or 15. And multiples just aren't that high. I think this capital has gotten tighter with the cost of capital in where we sit today in August 2024. It's expensive now. Money isn't cheap. people are just going to outlay huge sums of money on a whim, hoping for the best. But that's an interesting perspective. I love that. The yeah, we're gonna we're gonna do this in two years. We're gonna get four times the normal multiple and sunshine rainbows and cupcakes. Let's go right?
Jaime: Yeah. I hear that a lot from founders and it's just like, okay, let's walk it back and level set a little bit.
Bill: Sure. Whenever you look at business branding, and so like we talk about our company, 50 Marketing, and how we're brand, like how we're communicating our brand to the market. And then you're communicating your brand and trying to figure out how to message Edible Chemistry Consulting to your target market. What do you see as some of the challenges you've faced or are facing or some wins you've had in marketing your own business?
Jaime: Yeah, it's always interesting. I mean, when you have a brand, you have a product you're, you know, you're repping and you have a target consumer, right? It's a little bit different when you're a research and development company. And we have evolved a lot in six years. And I think that the hardest thing for me is we're actually going through pulling in some of our advisors to say, okay, we started here six years ago, but we're actually here now. And how do we communicate that? Now, if you need me to communicate science to people, I can communicate that to people all day long. I am struggling with retooling our messaging to where our company's actually gone. Because we started more on the just startup R&D, strictly R&D, food safety guidance, nutrition panels, things like that. And we've moved, slowly moved into more of a scalability commercialization company. So we, we still do all of the product development, founders, small businesses, large businesses. We have some huge multinational companies we do work for. But really what we're learning is our value isn't necessarily in the products we develop because there's lots of scientists that can develop products. It's knowing how to take that bench, move it through pilot into full commercial scale up without any issues and making sure that we're not making too many changes to the product that are gonna affect the label, the claims, the regulatory, the process authority. So that's where we've learned over the past six years that our value is actually in scaling everything and making it successful through mass production and getting it into the trucks. That's the other thing. Product might find coming out of the plant. It might fall apart on a truck somewhere. So making sure we have all that and they actually get to the stores and the consumers actually have a good experience. So that's what we've realized in the past probably six months is our big differentiation point. Now we're trying to figure out how to message that and rebrand the company a little bit. It's, I'm taking a lot of Excedrin these days. It's been a headache. It's been a headache to redo everything that we've spent so much time and money on doing already, but it has to be done. It has to be done to keep the brand fresh, keep the brand relevant, and help us continue to target those clients that we want to work with.
Bill: So we've certainly experienced the bench pilot scale model with a lot of our clients who are engineering or science heavy. And it does, I agree with you, there's a lot of people, it appears in every market that can really do the lab work, right? They can handle the bench and they can get that to happen once or twice. But then when we go up to pilot it, it feels like that pilot step to scalability step to optimized efficience scalability is really where the difficulty lies. So if you guys have that niche in like the second to third, and I guess then the third to fourth would be the pure commercialization and, know, end user experience and those types of things, that really seems to me like a great niche. If you're able to solve that problem for companies, that seems like a really great value proposition and something that, yeah, you'll have to figure out how to say that, right? And how to communicate that to your market. But I think the clarity that you have around just to give you some encouragement, the clarity you have around that already is half the battle because we deal with a lot of companies who can't even articulate what their unique value proposition is. And we have to work really, really hard to extract that. So I feel like you guys are on the right track to really positioning yourselves to handle that task. That's great. So yeah, know who you are, know your superpower, and then go tell the world. So that's the key.
Jaime: Well, it also goes back to just not falling in love too much with your branding. Like we love our current branding. It's not relevant anymore. And it happens and you evolve. We always used to say when I was on an innovation team, you know, 20 plus years ago, evolve or die, innovate or die. That's your brand. You live and die by being able to evolve and innovate.
Bill: Well, yeah, and I think this is, know, we, we struggle with this at times at 50 Marketing, and I'm sure you're doing it with your company. You know, we talked early in this conversation about founders having this vision and then trying to wrap their product or service around the vision and the brand. And you're doing the exact same thing. You're taking your own medicine and you're saying, Hey, I've got a product that's ending up or a service in this case, that's ending up differently than where we started and what we thought. And now I've got to change that brand to reflect that. So that, I mean, that to me says you guys are absolutely on the right track because you can have that introspective moment and really look hard in the mirror. And that's not fun, right? I get the Excedrin comment because it's not fun. It's usually very painful and takes a lot of swallowing pride and ego and all those things, right? Because that's real. We're all humans. That stuff gets in the way. Jamie, this has just been a fascinating conversation. I've been involved in some food product founder launches before and talked through that. I was never involved specifically on the chemistry side and that R&D and testing. They were always bringing that to us, right, after that was kind of done or when they were in process or in some cases when they were skipping that and just wanting to get a brand and get a market. Yep, but I now know after talking and learning today, and then also just through my experiences that we would want only to work with companies that have done that due diligence in the beginning, because the ones that did no testing and didn't do that due diligence were not successful and very quickly. So, and not that that's the only part to success. Like you said, there are companies that do that, but then they don't listen to the testing and the research and they also fall on their face. Well, one of the other things I'd just like to quickly go through is you not only in your career experience, you were a technical salesperson. So you've really been able to see, guess, a force in your career, a full life cycle of this entire prospect or process for food development. What do you think, are there any lessons you could share with us that you feel would be valuable when you're looking at marketing and sales alignment? So, you you're a technical salesperson receiving R &D and information, and now you're the one who's developing that R&D and information that then the sales team's gonna have to take to market. Are there any lessons you think you might have learned or guidance you could give someone who's going through that process?
Jaime: Yeah, think what I see a lot of, I saw a lot when I was a technical salesperson and I still see a lot today, even in very small companies is your commercial arm, your marketing arm and your technical arm are completely disconnected. So there's not a lot of communication. So sales, what I used to run into being in specialty ingredients is marketing would say, we're gonna innovate this really cool thing. Sales would go out and sell it, but nobody talked to the plant to make sure they could make it. So we dealt with that a lot. So I think, you know, it's not so much around the messaging itself. It's more that these three parts are usually very disconnected. I mean, even, I deal with small companies. I've got one right now. There's only four people in the company and I've talked to their technical person and their sales person and they won't let me talk to the marketing person. And I'm just like, we're missing, we're missing a huge piece of the puzzle here, guys. So, you know, that that's the biggest pitfall I see is the lack of communication. And then, and some of this is a lot of scientists do have a hard time communicating to sales and marketing in a way they can have useful, meaningful information. So technical really, really explaining to be like, look, this is what we can do. This is what our value proposition is from the R&D side. and then let marketing build a case around it and then let sales go sell it. I mean, that would be the proper life cycle, but we don't see that very often.
Bill: Right. That's funny you should mention it. We've observed this as well, that it's not really dependent on the size of the organization. If you have a multinational or if you have four, It's the nature of these type of departments and the type of people that are in each department that they don't want to communicate and they feel nobody can understand them and marketing is never going to get sales, sales is never going get tech, tech is never going to get production. And the companies that we see and work with that that achieve outsized success that is not consistent with market performance, like they're just outperforming the market. They're they're local benchmark companies, the national benchmark company and just the economy and industry in general are companies who get alignment of sales, marketing, production, tech, R&D and really create really good alignment across those. that's interesting that you're seeing that not only from your multinational experience, because you work for some really, really big companies to start with, and then now you're working with some very small companies. That's interesting that you make that observation. Jamie, let's talk. So we also love to have our guests shamelessly promote themselves. So if you're looking for a new client today, maybe tell us who that is, what they look like, what they want to and we'll give you a little 30 to 60, whatever you want to take here, infomercial where you can just pitch you, pitch Edible Chemistry Consulting. And if someone watches it and is able to then connect with you, it will certainly provide your contact details and you can promote your business.
Jaime: No, that's wonderful. Thank you, Bill. Yes, so Edible Chemistry, our client is looking to develop a food, dairy, alt-dairy or dietary supplement product. They understand their target market. They understand the types of functional claims they want to make on their product. And they maybe have a little bit of their supply chain figured out. I mean, we can help that as well. But I also want to make sure that our clients are funded and they understand how much this is going to cost. Because again, R&D is the cheapest part of it. It's going to be buying the ingredients, the manufacturing costs, costs for packaging, labeling, the distribution cases, getting it on the truck, getting it to the stores. So having a client that understands all that is kind of our ideal client. We don't want to just take your money, like we want to make sure you're successful. So when you have this together and you come with to me with an idea, we can develop a really top notch prototype for you. But our differentiation point is we're always thinking about how is this going to be manufactured? That really is the differentiation point between us and our competitor formulation houses out there is that I've been in over 100 plants globally working in manufacturing. So I know how a dairy product is going to get processed. I know how a cheese is gonna get processed. I know how a vegan burger patty is gonna get processed or how a tablet's gonna get pressed or how a gummy is gonna get made. So we always think backwards. We always start with the manufacturing piece and we'll develop your product so that it will actually make it through scalability and won't fall apart once it gets on a truck. So I would say that's our biggest point of differentiation. So anybody that's looking to go to slowly build a small scale but then end up in mass scale, that would be a good client for us.
Bill: Excellent. One of the things we do at 50 Marketing is we often have very low fee, like viability studies to make sure that there's something there before there's like a full scale investment. So that may be a takeaway for you guys like to, know, if your normal fee is, you know, five digits, here's a small five digit you know, or a six digit, small five digit investment to just see is there something here? And do you have the capital? And do you have those resources available? Because we run into that a lot as well. Like I even a couple weeks ago, someone reached out to me very out of the blue and said, Hey, I want to create eBay plus YouTube plus Facebook. How much is that going to cost? And I was like, two, three bill, I don't know. have no but you know, those are there. It's an unrealistic expectation. But if you have someone who comes to you and says, Okay, I have this idea and this goal and this much money, is there a path forward? And what I've found is with owners who don't want to communicate what they're willing to invest, they're not a good fit because they're not gonna be honest with us about other things in the future. And we're here to help. Like you're here to help. You're not here to like get all their money. You're here to help them have a successful development and launch process and scale process, not just take their money. And I appreciate that authenticity about what you've communicated today.
Jaime: Yeah, and I think it's great that you helped provide feasibility studies. I have turned down a lot of clients that have not done that.
Bill: Sure. Yeah, because it's just pie in the sky. It's just dreams. So, well, Jamie, thank you so much for joining us today. It's been an absolute pleasure talking about a segment I'm not an expert in certainly, but I've had some experiences in and it's just really neat to see specifically how much we can niche. We can niche like when we're looking at bench to pilot to scale. I mean, there's a niche just pilot to scale. That you can accelerate. it's really interesting to see that differentiation and the positioning of Edible Chemistry Consulting and what you're you and your team of seven. Congratulations on your growth and your success. And we're looking we'll be looking forward to watching and seeing how you guys can continue to grow.
Jaime: Awesome, thanks so much, Bill.
Bill: Thank you for joining the Missing Half podcast where we're discovering what's missing in manufacturing and B2B marketing. Please subscribe and share. Have a great day.