How to Plan Snack Sales for Slow Seasons
Sometimes your sales just lag. Seasonal ups and downs are pretty normal for most businesses. The snacking industry seems to be vulnerable to the push for healthy eating after the holiday season. Suddenly, everyone’s focused on dieting and fitness. Or maybe you rely on the summer travel season for most of your business. If you expect an occasional market slowdown and know how to plan for it, you can ensure that it won’t affect your bottom line. Here are some ways to plan snack sales for slow seasons.
How To Sell Snacks During Slow Seasons
Be proactive
Plan some survival strategies in advance. You might want to have a liquid rainy day fund or a line of credit to pay employees and other expenses. If you don’t have any prepayment penalties, you can pay fixed expenses in advance, like rent, taxes, and maintenance. And eliminate any expenses that aren’t absolutely necessary to keep your costs as low as possible.
Plan sales
One of the best ways to attract customers is to hold sales events. Plan them in advance so you can garner excitement, order more inventory, and sell items that aren’t otherwise moving. Consider a “buy-one-get-one” event, a “Black Friday” sale, or a customer appreciation party. Get your customers to tell your friends and bring their families.
Adjust your marketing strategy
Keep generating income by rethinking your marketing plan. Instead of spending money on expensive ads, like TV, radio, or billboards, resort to social media, media outreach, sales events, word-of-mouth, and other low-cost ways. Your loyal, core customers will come in anyway, but they might come in more frequently if they suddenly get Facebook message from you or see your SnapChat story.
Strategically place your products
Place your products in strategic locations so you can tempt your customers. Anything that’s sweet or has chocolate or candy in it will attract children, so put it near their eye level. Put other snacks, both your healthy, nutritious treats and your salty, savory snacks near the checkout counter so you can capture those impulse buys. And don’t forget to include a variety of items near the drinks to remind your customers that crunchy, munchy snacks go best with a cold drink.
Partner with others
If you have some friends in other industries, try some cross-marketing efforts together. For example, ask a local salon owner or toy store owner if they can sell some of your inventory in their stores. In exchange, you can promote their business and send customers their way. Then you can partner on some social media marketing and double the audience you’d usually reach.
Stay open
Even during your slowest weeks and hours, keep your doors open. If you close, even your most loyal customers will find another store to frequent and you’ll end up losing even more business. Plus, it costs enough money to re-open and reboot, that it’s really not worth it.
Looking to boost your snack sales?
For more snacks that will sell themselves during any season? We search the world for unique and exotic foods to combine with our highest quality nuts and dried fruits so we can offer you great tasting, healthy snacks that everyone will love!
At Mister Snacks we have snacks for every taste: fruit & nut mixes with no added salt or sugar. Creamy chocolate and yogurt coated fruits and nuts. All of your favorite crunchy snacks – Sriracha, Cajun, wasabi, barbeque, honey mustard and light and fat-free Asian rice crackers. We do all of this in our hometown of Buffalo, New York.
We’re busy making the best snacks you can buy, and we owe all of our success to you, our customers! We’d like to get better acquainted with you. Please take a look around and let us know what you think of our products and our company. Contact us or call 1-800-333-6393. We want to hear from you! Contact our team today.
