“ Marketing is everything,” CJ Katz says emphatically. “You have to put the time in to think — you have to.”
Consumer marketing
“The biggest problem is that people who market to the consumer, who create new products, they do so in a vacuum,” CJ Katz says. They don’t realize all the trends going on in the marketplace that affect their sales. The trends she’s referring to are things like convenience, health concerns, and the desire of consumers to know the story behind the food.
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“Go outside your comfort zone,” advises Katz.
For farmers, she says, that means thinking about marketing as well as production. When marketing today, she counsels, remember that people are looking for an experience. They want to feel a connection. “Tell the story behind your product, don’t just put it in a jar,” she advises.
Katz links it all back to her recipe for decisions: “If you learn to think critically, you’re half way there. It’s very, very important. You have to learn to think for yourself.”
Katz speaks on food trends and marketing at a conference on rural food production, organized by Tourism Saskatchewan.
Katz recalls her discussion with a pork producer who was often left with a lot of lesser cuts. ”You’ve got to market your products,” she advised, explaining, “You have to help the restaurateur think about what to do with that pork shoulder.” Think outside the box, she advises. Be proactive.
“I still purchase conventional product,” Katz says. “I still purchase conventional beef.” While she shops for conventional, though, she sees more and more farmers trying to gain a marketing edge by advertising the use of fewer pesticides, antibiotics, and hormones.
It doesn’t surprise her. “What was originally this organic, radical fringe movement… is becoming more mainstream.”
The next big…
Looking ahead, CJ Katz expects to see more farmers markets — even year-round markets. Why markets? “People want to experience their food,” Katz explains. That means personal interactions.
She tells me about her mom’s visit to Regina. Her mom stopped by Katz’s butcher to pick up steaks. But…the butcher wouldn’t sell Katz’s mother the steaks at which she was pointing. “No,” he insisted, “Katz prefers a thicker steak than that.”
Beyond the buzz about local food and markets, Katz also hears a lot of people talk about natural and organic foods. She attributes much of this to the fact that baby boomers are aging. “We’re getting old and we’re getting creaky; we’re looking for a fountain of youth,” she says. “We’re looking at our food not necessarily as a way to indulge, but a way to keep us healthy and strong.”
