Hello Reader! Finding customers as a consumer brand is a phenomenally expensive exercise. If you’re selling in a supermarket, they’re taking somewhere around 30% margin for an ambient grocery item. If your product is $4.60 ($4 after GST), the store is taking $1.20 on every sale. But that’s just for your product to be sitting on shelf and have the chance for a consumer to pick it up and buy it. And that’s not a given. Different categories have different dynamics, but some categories are bought...
8 days ago • 4 min read
Hello Reader, Frances Cook recently shared that the Reserve Bank found that firms are setting prices based not on costs or competitive activity, but on what the market will bear. As a consumer marketer, this obviously piqued my curiosity, so I've been digging into the Reserve Bank's docs on this. It's possibly not as pronounced as the quote makes it seem, but I think there's a real story here. It's a story not just of businesses' greed, but of a fundamental break in the gap between prices...
15 days ago • 4 min read
Hello Reader, This week we ran factory tours at Dr Bugs Popcorn. Gave a few kids a disposable camera on a few tours. Forgot how nostalgic the colours come out 3 days of chaos, questions, and way too much popcorn being tasted. And I'm figuring out how quickly we can do it again (if you're in Christchurch - head to https://drbugs.co.nz/products/factory-tour-ticket-1 and jump on the waitlist if you're keen to come along) One of the best parts of running tours is seeing the factory through fresh...
22 days ago • 2 min read
Hello Reader, Australians didn’t taste NZ apples for 90 years Officially, it was a biosecurity measure. Fire blight was identified in NZ in 1919, and it’s not great. It’s a bacterial disease in apple trees that without management will get down to the roots and kill the tree, and it can rip through orchards. So in 1921, Australia banned imports of kiwi apples. At the time it was probably excusable. No one really understood the transmission pathways for the disease. But by the 80s, it was...
29 days ago • 3 min read
Hello Reader, Cinnamon used to get you killed. Well, that might be a stretch. But sourcing it was tough. Cinnamon came primarily from Sri Lanka, and it was a big deal in the west. Over time it got used for everything from flavouring wine, mummifying pharaohs, making sauce, and burning at funeral pyres. It was a key product traded down the Silk Road (which was used for more than just silk, and also wasn’t a road since much of it came by sea) nd it was expensive. Pliny the Elder puts 327g of it...
about 1 month ago • 4 min read
Hello Reader, We pay less for yoghurt today than we did in 1997. In April 1997, a 1L of Fresh'nFruity had an average national price of $4.55 - which is $9.24 in CPI-adjusted 2026 dollars. Today, my local Paknsave has it for $4.89. And in fairness, the 90s were not kind on consumer dairy in New Zealand. 2L of milk opened the decade around $1.99 in real terms with the Woolworths Milk Flavoured Milk product, and closed the decade around $3. Through the 90s, processors got purchased by the NZCDC,...
about 2 months ago • 2 min read
Hello Reader, Quick! How much would you expect to pay for a hand-sized portion of baked chocolate-flavoured cake batter with various decorations or accessories on the outside? The answer, it turns out, depends on whether it’s a slice of cake, a muffin, a cupcake, or a cake pop. 90% the same ingredients, very different price ranges, and different places you’d buy them from. And this is one of my favourite concepts in marketing: redefining categories. Everything you buy sits in a category in...
2 months ago • 3 min read
Hello Reader, These days I’m not sure we could get 86% of kiwis to agree on many things. That Marmite is better than Vegemite? Unlikely. That the All Blacks are the world’s greatest rugby team? Doubtful. That Christchurch is the best city in New Zealand? Dubious. But it’s the stat that the Green Party kicked off their Commerce (Excessive Pricing in Retail Grocery Industry)Amendment Bill draft with. According to their research, 86% of kiwis supported introducing a bill that is similar to the...
2 months ago • 5 min read
Hello Reader, Protein doesn’t mean what it used to Don’t get me wrong, it’s a macronutrient with real benefits. It’s got the highest satiety per calorie, which keeps you fuller for longer. It’s necessary for muscle growth and maintenance. It’s a great macro But I wonder if we’ve hyped it up partly based on what it used to mean. Traditional protein sources are generally valuable - meat, dairy, seafood, nuts. They also tend to be foods that are good on their own or with minimal preparation,...
3 months ago • 2 min read