With Love and Quiches (24 page)

At Love and Quiches, we’ve had a complex branding journey. As a company that now sells primarily desserts, our name doesn’t quite tell the story or define who we are. Yes, we started out with quiches, but our primary products and growth have been in the dessert arena ever since that first pecan pie we sold forty years ago at the request of one of my first quiche customers. To date we have flown hundreds of millions of portions of our delicious brownies, blondies, and oatmeal chewies on airlines all over the world with our name printed right on the top of the package.

By the time the dessert segment of our business became dominant, it was too late to change the name. “Love and Quiches” was an established brand in the business-to-business arena, and we decided that it would be too harmful to change it and lose the reputation and recognition we’d built behind it. Instead, we decided to trademark the name “Susan’s Sweet Talk” in the mid-1980s and to tout it on packaging and in marketing materials as the “sweet goods division” of Love and Quiches. But, as described, we struggled for ten years to get our market to recognize the name. In 1995 we finally gave up the ghost and changed the name to simply “Love and Quiches Desserts.” It’s a contradiction in terms by any measure, but we had used it for almost twenty years. Yes, we were stuck with the name, but at the end of the day, it had served us well. Most people comment that they love the name. (We
do
face a challenge in the business-to-consumer arena, where we are not yet an established retail presence, but we’re working on it.)

Despite the “quiches” in our name, we constantly look for ways to strengthen our brand. One of these is to let graphics tell the story of who we are. Our retail packages show our mouthwatering cakes and other desserts, which makes the oxymoronic nature of the name less apparent. We have tons of fan mail—from handwritten notes
back
before
the computer age to the many emails we still get today—praising our dessert products and asking where the sender can purchase them.
No one
, so far, has chastised us for causing confusion or asked why we’re called “Love and Quiches” when we do desserts. It goes to show how effectively you can communicate your brand through strong graphics and a consistent product alone!

Branding is ongoing, and to remain au courant we update our brand as needed, making changes that reflect the evolution of the business without fundamentally altering our name and image. We have just completed our fourth rebrand since our founding. In part, this has involved restyling and modernizing our logo in line with current marketing wisdom. We are losing the old-fashioned lady (which I originally got from a children’s coloring book) and using more chic, of-the-moment colors. Now we are in the corresponding process of redoing our stationery, business cards, packaging, printed film, truck graphics, cake boxes, the overhead sign at our building entrance, trade show graphics, point-of-sale material, and a thousand other little details. All the while, naturally, a complete overhaul of our website is on the agenda, too. From now on, we will be known as “Love & Quiches Gourmet,” with the tagline “Desserts from the Heart.” The battle raged for months on the exact wording, but we all finally agreed, and we love it.

We also work on other aspects of our brand, including our trademarked “Gourmet Grab and Go” line of prewrapped snacks and the phrase “Dessert Partner to the Industry,” which connotes one of our premier services.

As you can surmise, we will
never
be done branding ourselves. Our name, our high-end products, the images we use, and our reputation for good service are all part of the brand, and we pay close attention to each, making sure that our message is
very
clear. When you define who you are, what your company has to offer, and you deliver on that promise, you’re on your way to having a great brand.

Of primary importance is to identify the
market
for the product or service being offered. The most fabulous upside-down widget is utterly useless unless someone can be persuaded to pay for it. First, research if there is a need; then, research whether that need is already being filled. Last, determine whether the product or service you’re offering will be a little better or sold at a better price.

I now live in Manhattan, and we spend a lot more time walking around than we do in cabs, so I’ve noticed on our many walks that a new cupcake store seems to be opening up practically every week. There’s one every few blocks,
they all look the same
, and some are from the same companies. To me, these stores never seem to have enough customers in them no matter what time of day it is. It is almost as if they are competing with themselves. Of course, some of them will be here in years to come, but I am giving this example because I fear many of them will fail. Again, to distinguish your company from that of your competition, you must learn what they are doing and then create a
point of difference
in the product or service you’re offering. You need to distinguish your product or service to market it effectively.

What I did, purely by accident, was create a need. While I didn’t invent the quiche, what I
did
do was start the trend that popularized it as an alternative to the hamburger, available to the middle market rather than served only in fine French restaurants. And there are millions upon millions of people in the middle market nationwide. Just think of the chain restaurants, pubs, convenience stores, catering halls, hotels, cafés, supermarkets, and on and on, all of which offer quiche. We have plenty of competition now, but
my
company was first. Desserts came later, but quiche has become a staple in the American diet. And
we
did that; we made our mark.

We target our marketing messages specifically, gearing the message to each individual channel. We do business in quite a few different
areas—restaurants (our sweet spot, and we put a lot of muscle into it), airlines, convenience stores, military feeding, export, and retail—and we treat each area as its own niche, ensuring that we meet that specific customer’s needs as best we can. There is no point in offering a prewrapped brownie to an upscale restaurant chain, no matter how delicious it is, nor does it make any sense to offer an elegant Espresso Mousse Cake to a convenience store chain located in gas stations where they have no way of serving it and would have to sell it for $5.99 a portion if they
could
serve it. So we tailor the message, the samples, the presentation of the particular product, the PowerPoint slides, and the pricing on a channel-by-channel basis. This saves time both for the target and the company, and it will more likely lead to a sale—which is our reason for making the call in the first place.

We exhibit in four or five major trade shows a year, some of which are visited by tens of thousands of buyers. That is a
lot
of potential customers, but we choose those shows carefully, as exhibiting can become rather costly. We can gather enough leads at these shows to keep us busy all year. Sometimes all you need is one good hit to make all the expense worthwhile.

In addition, members of our sales staff and our executive chef attend a few much smaller, more casual, and targeted conferences each year. These niche events, where you can often find some of your best opportunities, are very effective. For instance, our staff meet and exchange ideas with other suppliers in the industry—and sometimes with our competitors—and they are able to talk one on one with targeted accounts to pursue sales opportunities or new menu items for existing customers. These conferences don’t come cheaply either, but they in no way require the extensive funds, planning, or personnel that major shows demand.

When we first started exhibiting at the NRA in Chicago, there was an exhibitor from Texas who was a direct competitor. The proprietor was a woman about my age who spent more time marketing herself than her goods. Dressed like a hippie, although this was already the early 1980s, she wore long, colorful skirts and a big straw hat (despite it being an indoor event). She also would have gone barefoot if they had let her! But however strongly she marketed herself—I definitely remember
her
—either her products or her service was probably not so good because her company disappeared quickly without leaving a trace. The lesson here is that you need to deliver the goods, not yourself. She caught my attention, and she might have caught others’ attention for about a minute, but that wasn’t long enough to build a brand or a company of value.

We have become a brand, and our customers know what to expect and what we can do for them—so they seek us out. We learned early on that we could not be everything to all people. We are bakers, and we have always done what we do best. Knowing who we are has always helped to clarify our image and keep our message consistent.

No matter how many products we offer, from exotic bread pudding to praline tarts to mango cheesecake—and we do offer a wide array of these unique desserts—most people go for the comfort of familiarity. We still primarily sell cheesecake, chocolate cake, carrot cake, and brownies. We answer people’s desire for this familiarity, and that keeps them coming back.

Our sales force represents us and are our face out in the field, so they must be company rather than ego driven. We train them well so that they never communicate any mixed messages. We provide them with the tools and ammunition to bring the sales home.

But our quality, consistency, and service always speak the loudest. Ours is a
very
busy test kitchen, as are our operations, quality, warehouse, and customer service teams.

For the past several years, we have felt rather strongly about several causes, and so we’ve introduced programs to contribute what we can. We factor in the value of these efforts while we’re planning our marketing campaigns—as do most other companies—and we broadcast each program for not quite selfless reasons. But more fundamentally, we are happy to participate and to give back.

In 2009 Love and Quiches launched its ongoing Cakes for Kids program in partnership with the Long Island–based nonprofit Island Harvest through their network of distribution centers. The program distributes birthday cakes monthly to disadvantaged children all over the island. Monthly birthday parties are held, and the donated cakes are served in recognition of the children’s special day. At Love and Quiches we think birthday parties should be a part of everyone’s childhood, and we are happy to help make that happen. From time to time, we travel to some of the schools and day-care centers to serve the children ourselves, and it brings a smile to see the children’s lit-up faces with frosting all around their mouths.

More recently, our charitable activities expanded to include the Wounded Warrior Project administered by the R&DA Military Assistance Project. We support our fallen heroes by donating a portion of the company’s profits each year. And as a vendor to the military, we are also honored to supply our brave servicemen and women in the field with a taste of home for dessert.

Not to forget the Salvation Army, which adores us, and will send a truck on a moment’s notice to pick up any unneeded inventory or overruns.

Our charitable activities have been met with tremendous approval both from our employees and our customers. Logos for both programs have been added to our Gourmet Grab and Go snack product line, as well as on our corrugated packaging and some of our brochures.

________

When all is said and done, it is our customers that provide the fuel for our success. The focus of our marketing efforts is to keep them informed of positive company developments and thus build customer loyalty and retention. Your best customers are the ones that stay with you.

Nevertheless, our most important ammunition is the quality of our products—we
never compromise
. Excellence first, marketing later. We never falter in staying on top of our game in marketing and branding our products, though. Fortunately for us, the trend toward upscale, high-quality desserts is growing across all channels—even fast food—and that further helps to fuel our growth. We are lucky to be in the food business. People always have to eat—and that’s a good thing!

You are what you share.
—Charles Leadbeater

T
he web and social media have brought us some great things, but in many cases they have also caused the death of relationship selling. Communication becomes clipped, quick, and less personal; relationships become shallower; the experience of the product becomes less tangible. But this is not the case in the food business, which is still a taste-before-you-buy kind of business. Our sales team members are all road warriors. They meet people in person and have them try real samples of our products. No matter how crisp the image or enticing the description, the experience of tasting—savoring—one of our scrumptious cakes or pies could never be re-created on a screen. Just about everything else is done digitally—from the PowerPoint
presentations to the pricing spreadsheets to the final contract—but it is the taste that seals the deal. And
that
is our advantage.

I draw a distinction between the computer age, which began in the 1980s, and the digital age represented by social media. The first is a triumph. The second concerns me more than a little. What hath the digital age wrought? I am not exactly a Luddite. I love my laptop, my e-reader, my iPhone, my iPad. I can find things on the Internet with just a few touches on the keyboard. I can stream movies, record my favorite programs, download music onto my iPod (on which I now have more than three thousand songs, or nine days’ worth!).

What I
am
worried about is this: I fear society is unraveling on the Internet; that so many people so depend on all the devices we have, that we are becoming more
isolated
than
connected
as entrepreneurs, as business owners, and simply as people. The closer the world gets to our fingertips, the further away it moves from our real selves. I use all these connections as tools, but I am not consumed by them as so many of my fellow human beings are, especially the younger ones. Of course, from my vantage point, almost everybody qualifies as a younger one.