Todd's Premium Foods: Manufacturer of multiple Food Brands including Dotty's, Barnard's, Mad Butcher and Todd's.
- KLS
- May 8
- 6 min read
For the 181st feature of our "Together Talks" campaign, we collaborated with Todd's Premium Foods and Brand Manager, Antony Diener. Todd’s employs many residents of the MidWest in 3 separate areas of operations. Todd’s is a small-business that has grown into an award winning and publicly praised producer of fine products.
"Together Talks" feature # 181: Todd's Premium Foods presented by KLS - Your Trusted Shipping Solutions In The USA
What separates you from your competition? What have been the biggest challenges? Share a decision that you made that was detrimental?
Story of how it was created?
The company started in 1926. The focus at that time was in seasonings, especially to the meat industry. For companies or people making jerky and beef sticks and summer sausage, that kind of thing. It's changed quite a bit since then. It's still a family business, under a third ownership.
We still do the seasonings, but in the 90s to early 2000s, the company started co-packing for other companies as well as adding more capabilities, like a liquid line, package sauces. Since the current owners took over, the co-packing side of the business is mainly what's grown. Seven or eight years ago, one of our co-pack customers wanted to retire and get out of the business. We didn't want to lose that business, so we just bought it. Then another customer about three years ago, same thing, different brand wanted to get out, we bought that brand as well.
About a year ago I joined the company with the responsibility to grow our own brands. Our goal as a company, the co-packing side is doing great, but we haven't really focused on growing the brands. We want to create more of a balance in the company. The co-packing side can be not always reliable, it's very up and down. You're in a lot less control. It's good to have a little more stability in the company. We're trying to grow our own brands to a higher percentage of the company than it is right now.
What separates you from your competition?
The brands we've taken on, that are ours now, one is a salsa brand. The taste is a little different, texture is a little different. I was a customer for about seven or eight years before I worked here. I've only been here about a year and a half, and I enjoy our salsa products very much. The salsa category is quite crowded, but I like to say it's definitely the best salsa you can get for the price.
There's other salsa out there as well, and I like good variety, but, one advantage we have is we're manufacturing ourselves. We're not paying a co-packer to package for us. We have control over our own costs, and it's a good salsa, so I think it's a good balance there.
The other brand that we bought is a breading brand, for fried food that's used for fried chicken and fried pickles, onion rings, etc. What's unique to it is it's very simple to use. There's some other breading, you've got to add your buttermilk or egg wash or few other ingredients, but ours you can just take the product and roll it in a breading and then fry it. Our focus on that product has been in the food service side, where a lot of fried food is made in the restaurant industry. Not as many people making fried food at home, as the restaurant industry, definitely time and labor is a critical thing in the restaurant industry. Having a product that saves time is critical. The other benefit is we are often selling against pre-frozen products. Using our product gives a fresh taste, with barely more work than a pre-frozen product.
What have been the biggest challenges?
I didn't have any previous experience in the food industry or with CPG products. I was in a completely different industry. The challenge for us growing our own brands, there was no one else really focused on our own brands in the company. It has taken some time to learn the industry. I wish I had found a few more resources sooner than I did, but it is part of the journey. For example, Startup CPG, a lot of useful information in their webinars and their YouTube channel. I definitely learned a lot from that and just the Slack channel going on there. Oftentimes people have asked the questions I've wanted to ask and find the answers you need through there.
I've had to learn the sales cycles, that has been interesting. In CPG you're selling two ways, one to the retailer and then to the end user. That forces us to have two sales plans. Then on our food service business it is a distribution challenge. With our brands that are in stores we had to learn that more stores, don't always mean more sales. Instead we decided to focus on velocity in our stores instead of just expanding. We needed to prove our business model worked so other retailers would be happy bringing our product in.
How did your past experience help?
I was in sales before. That helped a bit, definitely customer relations. But outside of that, marketing was a new position for me to learn. As the brand manager, I am involved with everything that's involved in our brands, pricing and marketing sales efforts. Prior experience dealing with the importance of cost transitioned over, but then I had to learn about logistics and supply chain. Overall it has been a big challenge, but a good challenge.
Share a decision that you made that was detrimental?
I think what we've learned is we've been trying to do many different things. That's a challenge. We need to figure out what product we're going to have. What's our best product? Where do we have the most potential? Just focus on that and don't worry about everything else until we maximize those one or two products. That's probably one of the main things we've learned. It's spending too much time, whereas if you're focusing all your efforts on one product, your efforts are multiplied.
Pricing is another constant lesson for us. Figuring out the balance between keeping our price low versus giving us more room for trade spend, what the right balance is. Being a manufacturer mainly, we've focus on keeping our costs low and know how to do that, but figuring out the trade spend side is constantly evolving.
What is your why?
I like the industry, especially around the Des Moines area, where we're at. Oftentimes, talking to other people, they have been a customer of ours for years. Knowing that people are actually enjoying what you're making, that's definitely a key driver. Another thing, in the food world, you've got your big companies or the conglomerates, giving people the option to eat something with a little more personal connection is nice. Providing your community with a brand that matters a little more than just a big conglomerate that's more or less controlling the food world is unique. I love that. We're working on and wanting to do more of being part of the Better For You movement that has been increasing over year and year. As the Make America Healthy Again campaign has been increasing, I think we have potential to be part of that. The chance to change the food system that we're, what people are eating and making it better for the next generations, motivates me.
Favorite way to enjoy one of our products?
Probably the salsa. I definitely consider it a staple in my pantry, for sure. We do have queso with that as well. Yeah, the salsa and queso, I use a lot of that stuff.
Piece of Advice
For anybody that is starting out, I would say focus on locally first. Don't try to get that hundred stores. Go to your store down the street and work your local stores. Do your demos and get it into the hands of people there. If you can win there, then I think that's definitely a key learning curve, a key thing to know starting out.
Community Callout
In Closing
KLS wants to thank Todd's Premium Foods and Brand Manager, Antony Diener, for today's "Together Talks" feature. Follow along for their journey with their social handles below!
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