With all of the bad, fear-inducing news filling the media streams, I won’t repeat what’s already out there. You’re reading this because you own or work for a food brand. Which means, comparative to other businesses, you work in a space that is essential to people’s livelihoods throughout all economic climates. People will always need to eat. People will always want to eat. And especially with more and more quarantining by the day, if you are a D2C or company with retail products, they will consume your products more than ever before.

Early data on site traffic and conversions at the start of the coronavirus epidemic are already pointing to these consumption patterns in the food space. While many industries are seeing a decline in traffic and website conversions, the food industry (not including restaurants) received an over 20% bump in traffic and nearly 60% increase in conversions.

That’s the good news. However, that doesn’t mean all food companies will survive and thrive through this uncertain time. Plans and actions need to be taken to help every company work strategically through the bumps ahead. And there are absolutely ways to do well and do good through this economic climate. The question now is how? That is what we seek to answer in this white paper.

To Double Down or To Retreat? That is the Question

Whether the contraction carries on for a few or many more months, businesses need to make a plan to weather the storm. The obvious move during an economic downturn is to retreat. For many, that means keeping operating costs low, laying off a portion of the workforce, and putting a stop to new initiatives and investments. According to Harvard Business Review (HBR), the problem with this type of prevention-focused methodology is that it stunts the type of creative-thinking necessary to innovate and operate more efficiently. This is crucial to ensure quality is not jeopardized. Because when quality is sacrificed, so is the brand itself. A brand, after all, is nothing more than a company’s reputation – the consumers’ perception of its quality – at scale.

On the other hand, being too aggressively opportunistic hasn’t proven to be the right move through a recession either. While the aforementioned risk-averse approach tends to place companies into the pessimism bucket, being overly ambitious during a recession creates a culture of optimism that often ignores customer feedback. For example, if the recession makes your target customer more budget-conscious, yet you continue to innovate and create a more premium product, this approach won’t get you very far.

The remaining white paper can be found in the link below.