SBA Consultation Insight
The Product That Made You Famous Is Still Your Best Asset
A family food business wanted to abandon their signature product because it was too labor-intensive. The math said otherwise. What built the reputation should remain the lead offer.
By Doug Mansfield | President, Mansfield Marketing
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The Pivot That Was Not A Pivot
I sat with a business owner recently who had built and lost and rebuilt a food business over many years. At their peak, they had 25 employees, USDA certification, and distribution into major grocery chains. The operation became too much. Employee management drained them. Taxes accumulated. They closed the certified kitchen and the cafe.
Now it was a husband operating alone with family members helping at farmers markets on weekends. The wife worked a full-time job elsewhere while supporting the business in her spare time.
They were considering whether to keep selling their signature product or shift entirely to something new. The signature product required labor. A single person making it by hand could only produce so much. Maybe coffee and boba tea made more sense. Maybe pastries. Something that scaled more easily.
I suggested a different approach.
What Made You Famous Still Matters
They had built their reputation on one product. When customers talked about them, they talked about that product. When people searched online, they searched for that product with the business name attached.
Abandoning the thing that made you famous to chase something easier is a common temptation. It rarely works as expected.
The signature product is what gets people in the door. Once they arrive, you can sell them other things. Movie theaters show films, but they make their money on popcorn and drinks. Airlines sell tickets, but fees and upgrades drive profitability. The lead offer pulls customers toward you. What you sell them afterward determines whether the business actually works.
I suggested keeping the signature product as the headline. Build the marketing around it. Let it be the claim to fame. Then use cross-selling and upselling and bundling to generate the revenue that makes the labor worthwhile.
Instead of one product at one price, create packages. A family meal that includes sides and drinks and extras. A party package with everything needed to serve a crowd. The individual item gets attention. The bundle gets the money.
The Title Tag Problem
Their website looked professional. Clean design, decent photography, functioning e-commerce. But when I searched Google for their product category plus their city, they did not appear in results.
The problem was in the title tag. That small piece of text that appears in browser tabs and search results. Their title tag said their business name but nothing about what they sold or where they were located.
I showed them a competitor who ranked highly. The competitor's title tag included the product type and the city name. That is why they appeared in search results when people searched for that product in that location.
This is a ten-minute fix with enormous impact. Change the title tag to include what you sell and where you sell it. "Houston's Best Tamales" tells both Google and potential customers exactly what they need to know. The change costs nothing and starts working immediately.
Google My Business Was Missing Entirely
When I searched for their business name, their website appeared first. Good. But the right side of the search results page was empty. No business panel. No map location. No photos. No reviews.
This meant they had never claimed their Google My Business listing.
For a local food business, Google My Business matters more than the website. When someone searches on their phone for a product in their area, Google shows a map with businesses marked. Only businesses that have claimed their Google listing appear on that map.
Setting up Google My Business costs nothing. It takes an hour to do properly. And it makes the difference between appearing when hungry customers search nearby and being completely invisible to them.
Beyond the initial setup, Google My Business functions almost like a social network. You can post photos, share updates, announce specials, respond to reviews. Every time the food truck parks at a new location, that creates an opportunity to upload photos and update the listing. Every farmers market appearance generates content.
This went to the top of their priority list.
Consumer Messaging Versus Business Messaging
The website spoke to everyone at once. Home consumers who wanted to order for their families. Distributors who might stock the product. Restaurant owners who might add it to their menus. All of them saw the same message.
The problem: these audiences care about different things.
Consumers want to know the product tastes good and arrives fresh. They care about family recipes and authentic preparation and convenient delivery.
Business buyers want to know the product has shelf life, consistent quality, reliable supply, and favorable economics. The word "frozen" that might turn off a consumer is actually a selling point for a distributor managing inventory.
I suggested creating two clear paths on the homepage. One button for consumers ready to order for their family. Another button for distributors and restaurant owners interested in business opportunities. Each path leads to messaging tailored for that audience.
The signature product remains the same. The way you talk about it changes depending on who you are talking to.
The Frozen Problem
The website used the word "frozen" repeatedly. From a consumer perspective, frozen sounds like a compromise. Less fresh. Less desirable. Something you settle for rather than seek out.
Compare this to high-end food delivery companies that ship steaks or seafood packed in dry ice. Their websites show beautiful photos of grilled meat on plates. The shipping method is explained in the checkout process, not featured in the marketing headline.
The product is frozen for shipping. That is a logistics detail, not a selling point. Lead with quality and taste and authenticity. Let the shipping method be an order detail that customers learn about when they are already committed to buying.
Testimonials On The Homepage
The business owner mentioned that customers regularly told them their product was the best they had ever tried. Better than what they had eaten growing up. Better than anything available elsewhere. Customers drove significant distances specifically to find them at farmers markets.
None of this appeared on the website.
Three testimonials on the homepage would transform the message. Not a page full of reviews buried in navigation. Three quotes, prominently displayed, where visitors see them immediately.
The business owner worried about asking customers to write reviews. Nobody has time for that. I suggested a different approach: write the testimonial yourself based on what customers have actually said, then ask the customer if they would endorse that statement. Do the work for them. Most people happily agree to sign something that accurately reflects their opinion if you save them the effort of composing it.
Visual Authenticity
The website had food photography, but it looked generic. One photo had been converted to grayscale for artistic effect. For most products, grayscale can work. For food, it fails completely. Food photography needs the reds and browns that make viewers hungry.
More importantly, the website showed only product shots. Packaged items against clean backgrounds. This looks like every other packaged food company. Nothing distinguishes it from corporate producers who claim authenticity but manufacture in industrial facilities overseas.
What was missing: photos of the food truck. Photos of the family at farmers markets. Photos of customers eating the product and enjoying it. Behind-the-scenes images of preparation. The people and places that make the business real.
A picture of the food truck communicates something no words can match. Real people operate this business. You can find them in person. They stand behind what they make. This is not a faceless processing plant printing "authentic recipe" on packages produced in bulk.
Instagram For Food Businesses
Their daughter had created an Instagram account but they had not done much with it. For a food business, Instagram offers more potential than Facebook because it is built around images.
I brought in someone younger on my team to share perspective. She suggested using Instagram to show off the food visually with a consistent color palette. The colors of the cuisine's cultural origin. Photos of packaging, of people eating, of the preparation process. Behind-the-scenes content showing how the product goes from kitchen to customer.
Instagram rewards consistent posting of visually appealing content. A food business has natural material for this every time they cook, every time they pack an order, every time they set up at a market.
The Instagram feed can also be embedded directly on the website. This keeps the website looking active without requiring separate content creation. Post to Instagram, and the website automatically shows fresh imagery.
The Delivery Scalability Problem
The husband personally packaged and delivered every order. The family helped with production on weekends. This arrangement allowed them to operate without employees but created a ceiling on growth.
I raised the concern directly. Delivering individual orders to consumers consumes enormous labor relative to the revenue each order generates. If you account for the time spent on packaging and driving at any reasonable hourly rate, the profit margin disappears.
They knew this. It was part of why they were considering abandoning the product entirely.
The alternative is pursuing distribution relationships. Selling to restaurants or grocery stores in larger quantities. Trading the direct-to-consumer relationship for volume that makes the math work. Or finding third-party delivery services that handle the logistics while they focus on production.
Neither option is perfect. But the current model of one person handling everything from preparation to delivery does not scale to the revenue level they needed.
The Priority Sequence
I ended with a specific order of actions.
- First, Google My Business. Free to set up, immediate impact on local search visibility, functions as an ongoing marketing channel.
- Second, title tags on the website. Ten minutes of work that determines whether the business appears in search results for relevant queries.
- Third, testimonials on the homepage. Three strong quotes that communicate quality better than any self-promotion.
- Fourth, authentic photography replacing generic product shots. The food truck, the family, customers enjoying the product.
- Fifth, Instagram with consistent posting of visual content that tells the story of the business.
The business did not need to spend money on advertising yet. These foundational elements needed to be in place first. Once they were, the conversation about paid promotion would make sense.
