Marcela Flores Newburn

Rico Mexican Kitchen

Marcela decided to launch her business after a few drinks in the pub one afternoon with friends. Her home-made Mexican salsas and sauces have proved a big hit amongst friends and at local food fairs in Belper, Derbyshire and beyond. Following one particularly successful recent food trade show that her sauces are now stocked in Harrods and are being trialled at Selfridges!

However, Marcela is still preparing the salsas and sauces herself in the home kitchen as well as trying to manage all other areas of the business. Can she juggle the demands of the business, the cooking and being a mother of two and take advantage of these fabulous business opportunities? Follow Marcela in Fishbowl 2 over the coming weeks and months to see.

http://www.ricomexicankitchen.co.uk/

Wednesday, 3 March 2010

Olé for Mole!: Turning PR and Marketing Activities into Sales

...read the Olé for Mole feature about one of our products in the March issue of BBC Olive Magazine!

A few months ago, I got an Innovation Support Grant (ISG) from the Food and Drink iNet. The purpose of the grant was to help me improve my marketing and PR. Here are some things we did with the ISG grant:
-we engaged a web designer to develop our website www.ricomexicankitchen.co.uk (with sections still under construction, but almost there);
-we improved our packaging and included suggestions on how to use the products we make;
-we worked with a PR agency to hopefully help us get some editorial coverage in magazines and newspapers...and yes, we are in Editor’s feature, page 8 of my favourite magazine, BBC Olive.

This is a small mention but I hope we can build from here.

The best thing about this grant was its emphasis on working with experts so we learned the tools required so we could sustain the work they had funded. And yes, I learned lots about copywriting for the website and packaging. I also learned that if you want to be in magazines, this is a labour of love and perseverance: you need to contact each magazine, phone the right person, agree to send them samples, then the samples get lost, you follow up, and start again.
Imagine what I felt when I opened the magazine in the shop... and yes, there it was, the article “Olé for Mole” feature and a photo of our Mole (pronounced Moleh, a wonderfully rich Mexican cooking sauce). I got on the train and I wanted to show everyone the feature- but I resisted the temptation.

Now we are going to appear in some glossy magazines, the question is: How can we turn these articles into real, tangible outcomes, e.g. sales? Well, as it happened, I was visiting our newest stockist- Partridges of Sloane Square in London. He said he would stock salsas, but not the Mole sauce because people wouldn’t know what to do with it. I showed him the Olive magazine and he suggested I laminate it and place the article by the chiller. Perfect. However, I won’t be able to do this everywhere, so the question comes again- how do we use these articles and turn them into sales?

Please contact me through twitter if you have any suggestions... and watch this space!

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