Our little home bakery, Gluten-Free Epiphany, has built a small but very loyal customer base that I've decided to call Gluten-Free Foodies or GF foodies for short. I do this because our biggest fans seem to fit a certain profile and defining this customer profile helps me create a target market for marketing & advertising purposes. But also, by paying attention to who our customers are, we can better meet their needs which helps us grow our business one small baby step at a time. It is not an attempt to pigeon-hole people, we certainly want all GF people to enjoy our products, but when you focus your efforts to the majority of your customer base, your efforts become purposeful and you're not scattering your energy all over the place. And believe me, when you are a small business without employees you don't want to waste an iota of energy.
So what is a Gluten-Free Foodie; what are their unique characteristics, and what are their needs? Here is a combined list of my observations & instincts, along with feedback from current customers:
- GF foodies are NOT satisfied with commercial GF baked goods. We may have found one kind of frozen bread we can tolerate for toast in the morning, but sandwiches? No way!
- GF foodies take an interest in health. We read labels and are not satisfied to fill up on tapioca starch. Why would anyone who has trouble absorbing nutrients to begin with feed their body food that has next to no nutritional value?
- GF Foodies have tastes that are well......a bit more sophisticated or maybe well-developed. We crave flavors that have a punch. Plain things just don't really excite us that much. Why have a plain bagel when you can have an everything bagel loaded with seeds, onion, & garlic? We probably ate more at ethnic restaurants than McDonald's before our diagnosis. We probably chose wheat or rye bread often.
- GF Foodies usually like to cook or eat home cooking. We would bake for ourselves if we had the time, energy, or perseverance. Some of us have tried GF baking but it was so hard to achieve palatable results we gave up in frustration.
- GF Foodies have a little sense of adventure in regards to food. We like to try new things.
I use WE and include myself in this list because I definitely am a GF Foodie. I hear my own thoughts expressed by customers all the time. Essentially, we bake for ourselves. Our reasons for opening the bakery are the same reasons why our customers buy our goods.
However, there is a category of GF customer I've identified that doesn't usually like our goods. We call them Wonder Bread Celiacs! I say this with the utmost affection and respect for their tastes. They just aren't interested in anything but white bread. White bread, white bagels, white pasta, white crackers, vanilla cake with sugary white icing. These are the customers who Scharr, Glutino, and Udi's products are marketed towards. I suppose before their diagnosis they probably liked Mueller's pasta while the GF Foodies went for the al dente Barilla. If they do like our products, they like the plain flavors, no seeds and no raisins! And that is perfectly OK! People should eat what they enjoy!
I find these customers entertaining ( I have friends who would probably be wonder bread celiac's if they were GF) and we will always have plain flavors of our goods for them and the kiddies. Yet, our plain products aren't really white bread. Our plain items are still wholegrain, which is more of a honey "wheat" flavor profile. So, they aren't our target market because there are fewer of them that gravitate to our bakery. Consequently, we are more concerned with coming up with a rye bread or a new wild bagel flavor than the perfect white bread.
This is probably a matter of genetics. I've read that there are 3 kinds of tasters: super-tasters, normal folks, & non-tasters. Non-tasters don't have as many taste buds so they like stronger flavors and bitter things like dark chocolate, coffee, & grapefruit. Super-tasters have so many taste buds many things, like vegetables, are unpalatable for them. This makes sense to me. I'm definitely a non-taster. I LOVE dark chocolate(the darker the better), black coffee(since I've had to go dairy free), and I like to eat a grapefruit every day as my evening snack. So, it makes sense that the wonder bread celiacs are probably much closer to the super-taster end of the spectrum. It also makes sense that the customers that gravitate to our products, our GF foodies, are probably more non-tasters like us.
I hope the wonder bread celiac's have a sense of humor! It is not my intention to put them down. It is my intention to identify our customer base in a way that makes sense and helps us better serve our unique GFE community. After all, being so small, we can't take care of everyone. There are other bakers who probably are more wonder bread celiac's themselves and can meet the needs of that customer base better than we ever could. But GFE will focus on satisfying the tastes and filling the needs of the GF Foodies of CNY!
I'd love to hear your thoughts on this topic. Do you identify more as a super-taster or non-taster? GF Foodie or Wonder Bread Celiac?
No comments:
Post a Comment