BRC Internship: Week 2

This week was busy, so I didn’t get the chance to post daily about what was going on at my internship. I’ll do a recap now about it…

Monday
On Monday, I sat down with Brad and Tom to talk about what we have been working on recently. I updated the guys on what I did with the blogger follow-up at the end of last week. I told them how I found the folder and saw that nobody followed-up with the people that we sent samples to, and proceeded to log the information in a spreadsheet and create personalized emails and surveys to send out. When I started on 6/21, 3,190 fans were on our Facebook page. By Monday, 6/28, we had around 3,210 fans (+20), partly because of my daily posting with questions, news articles, and other things to engage the fans. We are now averaging 10-20 comments per post on Facebook with around 75 interactions a week and as of today, we are at 3,258 fans (+48).

After the recap, Brad expressed that he wanted to switch my focus to getting more stores. I was told to contact the Whole Foods stores directly in the states of Arizona and California as well as a few in Florida and Massachusetts that we had leads to, thanks to our Facebook fans and the bloggers who reviewed us. I managed to contact four Whole Foods in Arizona, one in Florida (Miami Beach), and one in Massachusetts on Tuesday; sample boxes were packed and sent to them.

During the day, I discovered a page on the Whole Foods website which gave specific instructions to new vendors about submitting their products and samples to the regional offices first and not directly to the individual stores. There are hundreds of Whole Foods in America, including 59 stores in California alone, and it would not be feasible to call each and every one of them with a new product. There are regional grocery buyers (RGB) assigned to each region, and it was my assignment to use that contact information about the regional offices to find out information about the grocery buyers and hopefully send samples. Most specifically requested to contact them via email or leave a voice mail regarding new vendors and products, so that’s what I did.

Tuesday
Again, a majority of the day was spend working on the Whole Foods regional office information. When I was done getting the RGB information from all of the regions, I created a summary of what I did and listed the contact info that I found. A total of three regions were sent sample boxes while all the others were contacted and would be followed up on in a few days.

On a side note, my experience working with the Census is actually coming in handy when it has come to cold calling these stores these past few days. As it turns out, calling stores all over the country and pitching a product has been much easier than calling homes in my area and asking people to fill out their Census forms. I can tell that my phone skills have gotten better because, while I wasn’t too bad in the first place, I am considerably more confident than I was a month ago with speaking on the phone with people that I don’t know. That is a great skill to have and improve on. If all else fails, I know I could always be a telemarketer…

Wednesday
After all of the regional office information was gathered and we reached out to the RGB’s (we had replies from some already), I was told to make a list of only the Mid-Atlantic stores that we are not in. The list ended up being about 20-30 stores, and I called each one of them to get information for future reference so we can send out samples. I also made a spreadsheet with competitor information and ended up getting a client list from one company with 56 potential leads for new stores.

Thursday
Day off to take care of some personal things. I needed to go to Rider to figure out some financial stuff, i.e. how the hell I am going to pay for the summer class that starts on July 6 and what book I need for the class (which I am going to definitely have to buy, since it is an online class and I will probably be teaching myself a lot of the material.) It should have been a relaxing day, but actually wasn’t because I was out for the majority of the day, running errands and taking care of things.

Friday
I was back at work today and completed quite a few tasks. I entered the info from those 56 stores into a spreadsheet; edited a page on the website to add the blogger testimonials and links; created Squidoo pages for Brad and a few of the chip varieties; made sure everything was correctly tagged in the blog, Youtube, etc.; and posted to Twitter and Facebook, as always.

I was happy to hear that they are shutting the company down for the weekend and giving everyone off on Monday, since the 4th of July is on a Sunday this year. Needless to say, I’m looking forward to a three-day weekend. I don’t know what I am going to be doing yet to celebrate the 4th, aside from going to my friend’s party tomorrow night, but I would like to find some fireworks to go to and maybe hit up the beach. (I know the beach is going to be super crowded, though, so I probably won’t go there after all. )

With that said, I hope everyone has a happy, safe Fourth of July holiday weekend!!

BRC Internship: Day 5

I came in at 8:00am today to find that the door was locked and nobody was in the office part of the building. Hmmm… I went around back to find that, thankfully, the back door was open and there were people working in the back. It was the best day of the week! I was by myself until about 10:30am or 11:30am, very peaceful, and managed to get quite a few things done.

As always, I cleaned up the Facebook and Twitter pages, gave Facebook fans happy birthday wishes, and posted some updates on both sites. I had that file folder that I got and started working on yesterday, full of correspondances from bloggers who were emailed about sampling and reviewing our chips on their websites. Nobody ever followed up, so I created a big Excel spreadsheet with all of the information, made a survey of 10 questions for the people to take to let us know how they liked the chips, and then emailed all of the people who did reviews. So far, a people got the review link and filled out the survey. After I made the blogger survey, I made a survey for the Facebook and Twitter fans to take. It will be interesting to see how many of the 3,204 fans on Facebook end up taking the survey by the time my 5 weeks with the company are done.

I started going through the client list after I was done with the bloggers and surveys. I wanted to do a Google search on some of the clients to see if they had websites, Facebooks, and Twitter profiles that we could add to our records and pages. I was able to add some of the larger stores that sell our chips.

By the time Deb came in, I was working on a spreadsheet that I am going to use to keep track of my hours, work, and other things. After packaging up a few small internet orders to be finalized by Deb and then shipped out, I ended up leaving about an hour early, since I had two longer days at the beginning of this week and had put about 28 hours in. Quite honestly, I’d love to modify my schedule and work a few longer hours at the beginning of the week and shorter hours at the end of the week. I might mention that to Tom after this following week is over and see what he says. If not, it’s no big deal, but it wouldn’t hurt to ask.

BRC Internship: Day 4

Tom, the person I normally work with on marketing, was out again today; he must have taken the day to recuperate after not feeling well yesterday, and rightfully so. I was working with Deb again, helping her with phone calls to update clients’ contact information and check on their store inventory of our chips. I was told by one client that the chips didn’t sell well at all and they ended up putting the last batch they ordered in the clearance bin. He was very nice about it, but they probably won’t be ordering any more from us. News like that is discouraging, but what are you going to do? Not everyone is into the raw foods or at least willing to try new things. It’s just business.

Other people I spoke to over the phone were also friendly and the conversations were less discouraging. Most told me that they were good for a while, but some wanted to place orders over the phone that minute. One store that placed their first order last week re-ordered from me today when I called to check up. They turned out to be the biggest order that I took that day: $240 for 4 cases. Each case they ordered contains 12 chips, but we can customize orders for any sized store. Some locations, like a few large Whole Foods stores, apparently order by the pallet, but I have yet to see an order that huge. The biggest order I think I saw was for the Whole Foods in Princeton and that was around a $600 order. The wholesale price is $5/bag and they sell for $7, so that’s not a huge profit compared to some products and everything is handmade including the bags.

There were two other orders I took for $100 and $60. I made invoices for all three of the orders using Quickbooks, but I jotted the info down on a piece of paper for Deb to review – just in case. She also needed to add the shipping information, because there is a certain way she figures it out that I didn’t know, as well as any other information that I didn’t know how to add. Quickbooks is good to know, so I am glad to be getting some experience using it. It seems like a very powerful program, but the interface is relatively easy to navigate and self-explanatory.

BRC Internship: Day 3

Today was a productive day even though the person I generally work with was out; he came in this morning and was having this weird allergic reaction, so he left after an hour or two to go to the doctor. As far as I know, he is doing okay, so hopefully he’ll be back tomorrow.

Before he left, he showed me how to put together the sample boxes that we send out to bloggers, webmasters, potential clients, celebrities, etc. Yes, celebrities. I was sitting at my station when I noticed a box on the desk with some sample chips and a piece of paper that had a famous celebrity chef’s name on it. I asked him about it and he told me that they didn’t want to pay for the overseas shipping, since he was currently in England (hint, hint…), but that he does call up agents for celebrities to see about sending out samples. I thought that was so cool!!!! I actually might influence them tomorrow to spring for the shipping. Come on, if this particular chef is really doing a lot to get healthy snacks into schools everywhere (another hint, oops) and, better yet, if he likes them… zomg, that would just be cool.

After that, I was assigned to work with the person who is in charge of the bookkeeping (managing the accounts, doing payroll, making invoices, processing the orders, etc.) and she is great, a real hard worker; I had a lot of fun talking and working with her today. She let me call some clients to follow up on invoices that have been open for more than 30 days. After I was done with that list and was able to secure payment from two clients who sent checks out in the mail today, I started at the top of the clients list and worked my way down, calling to make sure their contact information was up to date and asking if they had additional information (website, Twitter account, Facebook page) to add to our records.

During those calls – and most people were so friendly! – I spoke with one person who was able to give me some really great information. She gave me the names of two potential contacts in Sarasota and Des Moines, two places where we don’t have a lot of stores and contacts yet, and told me to take a look at their raw food Meetup.com groups, both of which are very active in their respective areas. She also told me that the one person actually received a sample package of chips that we sent out and wrote (or might write) an article about the company that will be published in Purely Delicious magazine, a popular raw foods magazine. While researching the other day, I actually came across that magazine and jotted down some information to see if we could get an article written, so that was really great news to hear. The founder and other employees were really happy to hear that, and the founder himself actually might call her to talk about it with her. We’re all interested to see the article and the magazine, so I hope she comes through and gets it to us.

Part of my job is to be on the lookout for potential guest bloggers and webmasters/bloggers that we can send sample boxes to for them to try and write reviews about on their sites. There was an individual today who emailed me, expressing interest in sampling the chips and writing a review about them on her blog. Apparently someone contacted her before about that and I unknowingly got in touch with her again, so she emailed me and brought it up. I replied and asked for some information so we can send samples out to her, hopefully tomorrow if she gets back to me soon. Oh yeah, for stuff related to this business and commenting on blogs, I signed up for a new email account with Gmail on Monday when I started. I got a forwarding address from the business’ domain: anna@bradsrawchips.com. (It’s so great that I have yet another email account to try and check daily… *sarcasm*)

Speaking of bloggers, if anyone who reads my blog is a vegan, vegetarian, or raw food enthusiast; a person who really likes vegetables and stuff made with vegetables; a person who is looking for healthy snacks for their kids, or him/herself; or a person who simply likes to try new and different things, leave a comment or shoot me an email at that above address with your name and website/blog URL. We’re really looking to get the word out more, especially in areas where we might not have a strong presence. Chances are pretty good that if you contact me at that email address in the next few weeks, I will check out your site and maybe contact you about sending you some chips to sample and review.

While all of this was going on, a TV crew came in today to speak with Brad about him and his company. Apparently they were from a local news station, but I didn’t recognize the channel name. Most of us stayed in the back and just did our work. Brad, on the other hand and as founder of the company, soaked up the limelight and entertained them by showing them the chip-making process, stopping to visit everyone at their stations, and explaining his history and how he came up with the idea of the company.

So tomorrow is another day with more to come, I’m sure. Hard to believe the week is almost over. I think these next few weeks are going to come and go fast.

BRC Internship: Day 2

Second day at the internship. I spent a large part of the day learning more about the company and the employees, researching articles to post, and “scoring” the chips. To score, the chips are cut into rectangles (or something close to a rectangle) with a large pastry wheel contraption before they are put into the dehydrator to dry. Scoring them ensures that they can easily be broken apart once they are dried. I got to work with two guys that I didn’t get the chance to meet yesterday; both were my age, also students (at one point or another, if not currently), and fairly nice. The rest of the day was spent doing social media marketing- keeping the conversation going about things I post on Facebook and Twitter.

Considering how often I have to post, I need to try and keep things fresh while filtering out what isn’t “acceptable” as much as possible. It is challenging because raw foods is such a niche; there are only so many quality news articles directed towards raw foods per week, only so many recipes I can post per day, etc. I tried broadening my scope and though that vegan and vegetarian news, recipes, etc. would be good additions (things I understood and could talk clearly and intelligently about) in addition to making comments about what activities people might be doing to celebrate a beautiful day (eating outside and grilling- if you’re not a raw foodist, but still like and follow the company), but I was pretty much shot down in flames. It came down to a miscommunication about the company directive and what I should and shouldn’t expand on, but it was my first day and nobody does their job perfectly on their first day. Hell, there are some people who never do their job perfectly, those who hardly put as effort into their work or brainstorming ideas… so I’m over it.

Thankfully, I was able to find some quality links fairly quickly this morning and save them for posting in the next few days; I’ll probably do more research tonight so I can have a nice bookmark folder filled with content to post as the weeks go on. I like stumbling across nice, well-designed raw food websites that have delicious-looking recipes. Most “raw” recipes often sound complicated, calling for a lot of special or uncommon ingredients (in my pantry, at least), but there have been a few that sounded “normal” and very tempting to make. I actually might try a few someday, like one “raw” Key Lime Pie recipe I found today.

Going with the topic of recipes, my favorite question to ask people on Twitter and Facebook is what they are planning to eat for lunch/dinner/breakfast. I hope my question doesn’t get to be redundant after a while, because I posted the same variation of the question a few times already, but I feel that it is justified. Not only does the exchange of ideas and recipes stimulate conversation, but it also gives me a much-needed chance to learn more about what, exactly, raw foodies eat. The supporters of the company are certainly very active and seem to like answering the questions I ask; some even go as far as to answer different questions daily or multiple times a day. One fan even posted a recipe for “raw fajitas” that she makes often; they (honestly) looked simple and delicious when I saw the picture that she posted of them, and I was able to give her a few suggestions about what she might consider adding the next time she makes them.

Well, tomorrow is another day. Apparently a local TV station is coming in to do a feature about the company and we might visit a farm, so that should be exciting.