How brands like Olipop and Belgian Boys are trying to reach U.S. shoppers outside the coasts
When breakfast food brand Belgian Boys first launched in 2015, its founder Anouck Gotlib thought the brand’s core consumer would be a big city dweller who wanted to recall their European travels.
“But over the years we understood that our core customer is actually the busy parent all over the country,” she said. “Now our business is driven less from New York bodegas and more from big-box chains in the Midwest and Southeast.” Belgian Boys products are now available in nearly 10,000 doors including Target, Walmart and Kroger.
In turn, Belgian Boys is adjusting its ad spend accordingly. The company is focused on investing the biggest portion of its ad dollars in retail media networks to grow its sales within these mass-market retailers.
Belgian Boys isn’t alone. While many companies vie for the stamp-of-approval of retailers like Erewhon and Whole Foods, the majority of Americans don’t shop at specialty stores. In turn, CPG brands like Olipop and Willa’s are now honing in on hyper-localized marketing opportunities, while shifting their messaging, to reach new customers in these regions.
Considering a different type of customer
One of the biggest differences when marketing in small and medium-sized cities is that their population shops differently than those in major urban centers, like New York and Los Angeles. Many of these shoppers tend to have bigger family households and cars, meaning bigger trips to stores like Costco and Walmart.
As her company has expanded its retail presence, one of the most interesting takeaways for Gotlib has been the insights she’s been able to gather on what else people are buying at mass and club retailers, alongside Belgian Boys products. “We also saw our shopper’s baskets had basic items like eggs and Special K,” she said. That’s when the company started investing in retail media networks and local creators to help get the word out about Belgian Boys’ convenient breakfast food. For example, it promotes sponsored searches on the sites of retailers like Target and Meijer to reach people searching for breakfast ingredients such as pancake and waffle mix.
In the first few years, the company tried to grow awareness through digital content and city pop-ups while establishing distribution in specialty stores. Now, it’s focused on more localized messaging. Gotlib said Belgian Boys now also leverages retail-specific influencers who push club retailers like Costco. “We figured out that we grow through mom groups,” she said, which is largely helped by word-of-mouth.
Plant-based milk startup Willa’s is also honing in on the Midwest, where founder Christina Dorr Drake grew up. She told Modern Retail that while trendy shops like Erewhon offer brands great cultural cachet, it’s not where velocity is driven.
In June, Willa’s launched in about 200 Target locations, its first major retail partner. The company promoted the products at the Minnesota State Fair in August, which was attended by nearly 2 million people. Drake said that choosing to launch in a smaller market allows brands like Willa’s “to test and learn quickly so they can create a blueprint strategy that will scale.”
“We met so many people who have never tasted plant-based milk,” she said. The company ended up giving out hundreds of samples with redemption coupons at the Minnesota State Fair.
Hyper-localized creator marketing
As more brands look to reach customers in Middle America, more tech and marketing startups are also popping up to help them do just that. Hummingbirds, founded in 2022, is a platform that connects brands with local creators for campaigns targeting specific cities. The company now operates in 16 cities across the heartland, with the latest expansion this summer being in Chicago and Houston.
Hummingbirds COO Charise Flynn said that in the past year, the company has been increasingly working with food and beverage startups. Prebiotic soda brand Olipop is one company using Hummingbirds to drive local activations at retailers such as Costco. Other clients include Fly by Jing and Goodles. Demand for Hummingbirds’ services platform is also growing quickly, with the platform bringing on 100 new brand clients in the first half of 2024.
“We’re 100% Midwest-focused at the moment,” she said. Part of the reason brands come to Hummingbirds, Flynn said, is because they need to push sales in specific geographies once they get into a big retail chain. “One of the pain points we hear about is that if you can’t move products once you get on a shelf, you might not stay on it,” Flynn said.
Hummingbirds’ database currently boasts over 6,500 creators — and is set to double in size since the beginning of the year. “It’s the average everyday person who has between 500 and 1,500 followers and isn’t doing a ton of promoted posts,” Flynn said.
Through the platform, brands can create hyperlocal campaigns in one or multiple cities, where the platform matches the content opportunity to micro creators based on geography and product fit. The creators receive a perk that can be anywhere from $30 to $200, which covers the cost of the product and their time creating and posting the content.
Flynn said she expects more demand from brands that want a customized, local approach to influencer marketing without spending thousands of dollars on a post.
Drake of Willa’s said that by going small with hyper-localized efforts, like hosting sampling events at festivals or markets, brands are more likely to encounter people who are open to tasting and trying something new. “Those moments are incredibly memorable and have lasting, less tangible impacts on brand love and affinity,” Drake said.
Drake said that while it’s often challenging and expensive to execute physical campaigns in a big city like New York, “the impact can really be felt in these smaller cities.”