How Fruut Found Key Retailers at the Wabel Grocery Summit

The Company

100% Natural, healthy, and without any artificial ingredients, Fruut entered the market in July 2013. This Portuguese company has only 1 objective: to create natural and healthy dried fruit snacks. The company believes in “zero waste”, meaning what the general public considers as “ugly fruit”, they use to make delicious crispy snacks. Fruut takes it one step further and uses production waste to be recycled as animal food or fertilizers.

Learn more about Fruut here.

The Challenge

So far, Fruut has been a hit. They were awarded the Nutrition Award 2013 in the categories “Product of the Year” and “Food Sustainability” –which is considered to be the most important prize in the food and nutrition industry. But like all other companies, Fruut is looking for continued growth in Europe, and have started looking for big retailers/supermarkets in their targeted countries.

In a crowded market, Fruut has many competitors that are false-healthy snacks. For their expansion in Europe, it was essential for Fruut to get in front of buyers to show them real natural, healthy snacks. However, with buyers changing positions often and getting in contact with them was an ongoing challenge.

The Strategy

Fruut has identified several strategies to overcome these challenges and conquer new markets. One key decision Fruut made was to partner with Wabel, a company that puts suppliers in contact with head buyers of international retail groups. Together, Fruut and Wabel came up with a plan:

1. Identify target prospects

Wabel took on the responsibility of finding ideal retailers for Fruut. Out of the hundreds of buyers in the Wabel community, Wabel was able to narrow down the best-fit groups for Fruut based on their needs, and ended up identifying 15 groups for Fruut, which included groups in Fruut’s target locations, groups that shared Fruut’s vision, and best of all, groups that had already expressed interest in healthy snacks.

2. Set up a meeting with the decision-maker

Next, Wabel arranged times for Fruut to meet with the head buyers and decision-makers of these groups at one-on-one, 30-minute meetings. Wabel was able to schedule meetings for Fruut with all of their 15 targeted groups within 2 days at the upcoming Wabel Grocery Summit.

3. Let buyers try Fruut for themselves

At the Wabel Grocery Summit, Fruut then met with their target groups including Scamark, TJ Morris, Pao de Acucar and many others. The buyers tasted Fruut’s healthy snacks for themselves. At the Summit, Fruut was also able to display their products to all the other attending grocery buyers.

Results & Future Plans

Fruut is seeing positive results from the Summit. The 30-minute meetings gave Fruut solid relational foundations with their prospects, which made it easier to continue contact with their prospects in the following weeks. They also continue getting exposure all year around from the 1,000+ buyers on the Wabel platform.
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