Having a well-defined brand strategy in place for your natural food company helps you clarify a message that resonates with your consumers, and makes stakeholders like buyers and investors to want to learn more.
Today on the Real Food Brands Podcast, host and Brand Strategist Katie Mleziva talks to Maria Garcia Brennan and Pete Brennan, co-founders of Soñar! Foods, an organic grain-free tortilla chip company that brings a focus to uplifting the Latino community as part of everything they do with their business. Katie highlights Soñar! as an example of a natural food brand that is well-aligned on both the front and back end of the business when it comes to supporting the brand strategy, or “north star.”
Nourishing and Empowering a Nation of Dreamers
In Spanish, soñar means, “to dream.” “We are on a mission to nourish and empower a nation of dreamers,” Maria says. As the first person in her family to go to college after they immigrated to the US, Maria wanted to use her and Pete’s experience building brands at big CPG companies to create something that “would have the power to bridge health and cultural divides.”
Maria and Pete met working together at E. & J. Gallo Winery, working on different sides of the business and sitting in the same cross-functional meetings together, which really helped them hit the ground running with Soñar! “We definitely leveraged the training, the experience, the models, and the lessons that we picked up along the way,” Pete says. That means they were able to plan their brand strategy from the top-down and ensure that everything was in line with their vision.
B Corps and the Triple Bottom Line
The other big choice that makes Soñar! different from other brands is their status as a pending B Corp. That means that they’re committed to the idea of a triple bottom line of people, profit, and planet. “We want to make sure we’re using our business as a force for good,” Maria says. “It helps us by providing that grounding in terms of credibility as to what we stand for,” Pete adds, “and how they’re represented within in the choices we make in the business practices we’re building.” One thing that’s made it easier is that they’ve been focused on getting their B Corp certification from day one versus retrofitting business practices after processes are established.
As mentioned above, Soñar! is organized around a mission to “nourish and empower a nation of dreamers,” but what does that look like in practice? For one thing, it’s about quality organic ingredients that are good for you and good for the planet. But more importantly, as someone who actually spent time working in the fields, Maria has a unique understanding of how a brand can protect farmworkers as well by providing a safer working environment free of dangerous pesticides and herbicides.
Further aligning their business practices with their brand strategy, Soñar! provides at least one percent of their annual sales to the Latino Community Foundation. They also highlight change-makers in the Latino community on their packaging. “Our packaging has a photo of a person, which is not typical,” Maria says, “and that person is someone within our community that is doing great work to provide for more vibrant and just communities where all can thrive.”
How Events Have Helped Soñar!
Growing as a small brand can be challenging, but Soñar! has been able to see success so far in their first year in business. Expo West was a great start, providing them with write-ups, reviews, and connections, including meeting Katie. They continued hitting the events circuit by participating in the Pitch Slam at Expo East and as a member of the Next Program and a finalist in the Winter Showcase at UNFI. “Being able to meet some great people along the way has given us the opportunity to go back and be able to work with them,” Pete says.
“A huge part of why we’ve been able to align is because it’s so personal, what we’re doing, and we have such a passion for our brand and our company,” Maria says, “so make sure that you’re in it for more than just profits.” Stay tuned for more exciting announcements from Soñar coming this January.
Now, let’s go shake up shopping carts!
In This Episode:
- Why a question from their daughter lead Maria and Pete to start Soñar!.
- How Maria and Pete met and combined their experience to start Soñar!.
- What it looks like to align a company with your brand strategy from the top down.
- What it means to be certified as a B Corp.
- How pursuing more than profits helps keep Soñar! grounded.
- How their mission extends to their packaging.
- The trade shows they did that helped them grow their brand.
Quotes:
“We are on a mission to nourish and empower a nation of dreamers.” – @SonarOrganic
“Our packaging has a photo of a person, which is not typical, and that person is someone within our community that is doing great work to provide for more vibrant and just communities where all can thrive.” – @SonarOrganic
“A huge part of why we’ve been able to align is because it’s so personal, what we’re doing, and we have such a passion for our brand and our company, so make sure that you’re in it for more than just profits.” – @SonarOrganic
Resoureces:
