You may never have stopped to think about the journey a new product like our Frosty® Pocket has to go through to secure a spot on supermarket shelves.
In this short article, we’ll give you a brief overview of everything that goes into every Frosty® Pocket you see at the supermarket.
🎯 That moment when you reach out and pick up a product from the shelf… that’s when “the magic” begins for you, but for us, it’s the end of an obstacle course. Very few people realize just how much effort so many people put in to make any given item available to you on a store shelf.
🤝 It all starts with a very long and intense sales process. Locating the category manager, preparing samples, passing a tasting committee, then an assortment committee—all while ensuring the commercial proposal is compelling and that we resolve differences regarding pricing, logistics, returns, and so on. And there has to be shelf space available. This process can sometimes take several years before a supply agreement is reached. And now it’s even more difficult, since the market demands “fewer SKUs and higher turnover”—every product’s survival hangs in the balance, measured in centimeters.
🛠️ Once the deal is closed, someone in R&D grapples with impossible formulas; Production fine-tunes the machinery down to the millimeter; Quality checks, measures, and measures again; Sales fights to defend its client as if they were the only one; and Logistics juggles trucks, ships, and schedules. All of this so that Frosty® Pocket makes it to the shelf.
🚚 And along the way, all kinds of unforeseen issues pop up: supply problems, supplier stockouts that affect you, carrier strikes, customs officials scrutinizing your shipments… and so on. Every pallet that enters a customer’s warehouse is a medal that should hang around the neck of the entire team,
👶 But the big moment comes when we place the product on the shelf and let it go—just like letting go of a child on their first day of school: your heart sinks, and you think, “Will they treat it well? Will the happy consumer like it? Will it live up to expectations? Will they recommend it?… ” Phew! Poor thing, what a lot of pressure!… At that moment, all we can do is hope that it fulfills its mission and makes the consumer happy.
🙏 To everyone who makes this adventure possible: suppliers, our team, distributors, and consumers. To all of you, I just want to say THANK YOU for pushing us further every day.
