Alright – so today we’ve got the honor of introducing you to Josh Schipkowski. We think you’ll enjoy our conversation, we’ve shared it below.

Alright, Josh thanks for taking the time to share your stories and insights with us today. What’s the backstory behind how you came up with the idea for your business?

I was fortunate enough to have the opportunity to help a couple of friends build their business – a food marketing agency – into a great success over the course of nearly 14 years. The scrappy startup lifestyle grew on me. It was tough, hours were long, but there was never a dull moment!

Over time, my position evolved from hands-on creative to leading teams to a business strategy position where I spent a fair amount of time in new business development. The agency had grown, and the budgets of smaller brands were difficult to accommodate, yet we received a lot of leads from small and startup companies. We often had to turn them away.

I was inspired by the conversations I was having with small companies. While I enjoyed working with larger companies, the idea of using my skills to help the underdogs was enticing. I missed hands-on creative, and was a bit on autopilot in my business role. I decided to talk to ownership about taking on the leads that weren’t a fit on the side.

They agreed, and before long I was working two more-than-full-time jobs. It was apparent there was significant opportunity for a company to provide high-end, strategic, full-service branding and marketing work at a competitive price point, and the expertise I had gained in the food space would be invaluable for that clientele. I left to launch Upstart Food Brands. The idea took years to come into focus, but once it did, it was obvious there was a market to serve.

Great, appreciate you sharing that with us. Before we ask you to share more of your insights, can you take a moment to introduce yourself and how you got to where you are today to our readers?

Upstart Food Brands has been in business for just over 7 years. In that time we’ve grown from a company that was exclusively focused on providing creative agency services (naming, storytelling, identity, packaging design, photography, websites, sales tools, etc.), to one with a comprehensive understanding of how to commercialize food and beverage brands. That’s a benefit of being in such a niche space. In working directly with startups, established brands, and other businesses across the industry, we’ve developed a robust network of resources we can bring in to help our clients – co-packers, food scientists, food brokers, product developers, packaging suppliers, printers, logistics companies, food law experts, etc.

Our creative stacks up with any branding agency, as we’ve been very deliberate about building the very best, experienced, passionate core team of brand specialists, but our food expertise is what gives us an advantage over the typical generalist branding agency.

Our intimate understanding of the entire commercialization process gives us unprecedented perspective on what’s needed to build not just successful brands, but thriving businesses. The work is infinitely more informed and effective because it’s grounded in real world, hands-on, food and beverage industry knowledge. We understand product pricing concerns, food packaging regulations, what’s needed to sell in various channels (retail, online, foodservice), how to connect with both buyers and consumers, etc.

It also allows us to see the big picture of what a brand’s trying to do, and to make introductions to the right partners when needed. We can suggest a co-packer for manufacturing, a food scientist to reformulate or scale up a recipe, a fulfillment partner that can accommodate web and retail sales, etc. Launching and running a food brand is hard. Most don’t succeed. A lot of companies make a lot of missteps. In addition to being able to ensure a brand is primed to compete at all touchpoints, our ability to smooth the learning curve (and save companies a lot of money in the process) by bringing in vetted professionals in a variety of areas is what sets Upstart Food Brands apart.

Any advice for growing your clientele? What’s been most effective for you?

Our sales strategy is based on two key principles: specialization and planting seeds.

Being so focused in the food and beverage space allows us to make connections with a vast array of partners that also work with the exact same clients that we do. We seek reciprocal relationships where we can be a resource for them and vice versa. It’s about building networks and planting those seeds to create a constant pipeline of leads from a variety of sources. And it usually results in vetted, recommended opportunities – in many cases, without any competition for the work – which is a lot better than cold calling and pitching new business to companies that you may have to convince to do business!

For instance, we have some great relationships with food brokers. A brokerage’s success is largely dependent on having differentiated, well-positioned, professionally designed brands that will appeal to buyers and consumers and perform well at retail. This is what we do. Conversely, our brands need help getting to market. By connecting them with the right food broker, everyone wins.

Or sometimes we find a company where we can be a resource for their community. We have packaging suppliers where we’re listed as a resource on their website, and people looking for what we do can easily find us. For example, we do a lot of work in the coffee space. There’s a great coffee bag printer called Roastar. Being a resource on their website has brought us several strong leads that turned into great clients. And through our affiliation with them, we can be more efficient in our work, as we’ve come to understand their processes, lead times, and quality of work.

We also join organizations that are focused in our industry. We’re an enterprise level service provider on RangeMe, a member of the Food Consultants Group, members on the Startup CPG slack channel, and more. This not only gives us access to potential clients, it allows us to tap into a network of other resources that can also potentially send work our way.

Planting seeds can also mean effective marketing, but our approach is focused on earned exposure, not paid. While paid advertising/promotion can certainly be effective, being so specialized allows us to become an authority on relevant industry topics. When we write posts for our blog, promote clients and capabilities on social media, add case studies to our site, do podcast interviews, etc., this content gains us reputation (with people and with Google’s algorithms), so we get a lot of great, qualified leads from the web by simply talking about what we do, and demonstrating our expertise.

Over time, these tactics in combination allow us to grow our clientele by showcasing our specialty, which increases our brand awareness and reputation. In a niche market, this is key. The result is a steady and increasing stream of qualified leads that helps us exponentially grow our business.

Can you share one of your favorite marketing or sales stories?

One of my favorite examples that highlights our brand value is the time we were given an opportunity to develop a website for a big food brokerage. This was a rare occurrence where the client invited us to participate in their RFP process, so we were up against big, established web agencies for the work. While our web capabilities are strong, it was our industry expertise that won the day. We were able to showcase that we knew their business nearly as well as they did, and that all things being equal, our work would be more effective because of our intimate knowledge of their business.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://upstartfoodbrands.com
• Instagram: https://instagram.com/upstartfoodbrands/
• Facebook: https://facebook.com/upstartfoodbrands
• Linkedin: https://linkedin.com/in/joshschipkowski/
• Twitter: https://twitter.com/foodupstart

Image Credits
Chris Malacarne (CMP STUDIO)