The Startup CPG Podcast


In this episode of the Startup CPG Podcast, host Daniel Scharff sits down with David Heiser, Co-Founder of Grassroots Marketing, to walk through a new, free report analyzing 34,000 in-store demos at Whole Foods, Sprouts, Central Market, and Erewhon, and what it means for where, when, and how brands should spend their demo dollars.


Grassroots runs demos and in-store sampling events across the country at major natural retailers and independents alike. Daniel first met David’s team while launching his own beverage brand at Erewhon, where Grassroots is the retailer’s official demo partner, and the two teamed up to turn years of Grassroots’ data into a first-of-its-kind resource. The analysis covers demos from 2021 onward, more than 500 brands, over 1,000 stores, and 19 states.


Daniel and David break down the best days and times to demo, the strongest regions and states, and the top-performing individual stores at each chain, including a few surprises. They also share practical advice on demo kits, paper coupons, five-second pitches, handling skeptical shoppers, and why winning over store employees can change a brand’s trajectory at a store.


Listen in as they discuss:

  • Why Saturday leads the pack for demos, and why Monday midday was one of the biggest surprises in the data
  • Why every top time slot falls between Friday and Monday, and when midweek demos still make sense
  • Which regions perform best for in-person sampling, and why dense metros win
  • Where to focus Sprouts demos, from Arizona and the Southwest to a standout San Diego-area cluster
  • Why Arizona and Florida stand out for Whole Foods, and why Orlando tops the store rankings
  • How Erewhon’s top stores, led by Calabasas, differ from the iconic locations most brands expect
  • Why Central Market’s Austin stores are among the best places in the country to sample
  • How dollars sold per demo compare across chains, and why Erewhon trades revenue for engagement
  • Why paper coupons, table runners, and simple demo kits convert better than most brands expect
  • How to craft a five-second pitch, handle skeptical shoppers, and turn store employees into advocates
Grassroots x Startup CPG full demo report will be released soon - sing up to our newsletter to get the full report when it is released (sorry for the delay! Finishing touches!)

Book a call with Grassroots Marketing (special Startup CPG community rate): https://bit.ly/3FOybIP


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Creators and Guests

Host
Daniel Scharff
Founder/CEO, Startup CPG

What is The Startup CPG Podcast?

The top CPG podcast in the world, highlighting stories from founders, buyer spotlights, highly practical industry insights - all to give you a better chance at success.

David Heiser
If you were to do a Coachella event, imagine all the things that you would do to make it look cool and attractive and engaging. You need to treat a demo as a micro version of that. So many times, you know, brands don't have resources, they don't have marketing materials. We go and we have a standard set that we use. But we always advise brands that if they want to make them most of this spend that they need to have things. The little stuff, table runners, postcards, a one pager, a sales sheet, stickers, coupons, all the hits. Those things convert more than you could possibly believe.

00:46
Daniel Scharff
Get ready guys. You are going to love this one. We have just released a major new resource. Together with our friends from Grassroots marketing, we analyze the performance of 34,000 demos that they have done at Whole Foods, Smith Routes Central Market in Erewhon. And we've now released a report with all of the major insights from it that you can download for free. It's going to tell you things like what are the best days and times of the week to demo, what are the best regions for each of those stores, and even what are the top actual store locations for each chain where I can get the most out of my money when I'm running demos. There's so much in this. Demos are a huge investment for brands dollars time spent. I want all of you to get the most for that brand.

01:31
Daniel Scharff
Boost your velocities, get trial and awareness with all of the customers and be on your way. Today on the podcast, we're talking through a lot of the key insights. You're going to love it, but you're going to want to download the full report if you want access. Check the show notes. It's free. You can have it right now even as we're talking through the podcast. And lastly, you're probably going to also want to connect with David and the Grassroots team to talk about their support for your demos. That's what they do for a living. They are a partner of ours. We have a negotiated community rate. Check the show notes and you can book a call with them and learn more. All right, here we go. This is going to be amazing. All right, David, my friend, this is the big one.

02:13
Daniel Scharff
This is honestly the most important resource I've ever seen around in store demoing. All the questions that brands have around, where, when, how should I demo? They are all in this beautiful report that we got the chance to work on with you. It was honestly really fun for me because with my management consulting background, this is the stuff that I love to do. And you have more experience actually running demos in stores than almost anyone and just troves of data. And were able to go through that stuff together to have real deal insights for brands. You're spending all this money on demos. This is the best way to actually spend that money to give a big lift to your brand. So, first of all, David, welcome. Can you just give us a quick intro, please?

02:56
David Heiser
Absolutely. My pleasure. So I'm David with Grassroots Demos. So what we do is we do demos all across the country, events all across the country at places like Whole Foods, Sprouts, Erewhon, Central Market, big guys, independents everywhere, trying to get items from brands into the hands of shoppers everywhere.

03:14
Daniel Scharff
Okay. And actually the way that I met David and his partner Bridget is because when I had a brand, were launching an Erewhon, and the Erewhon team let us know, hey, our official demo partner is Grassroots Marketing. So get set up with them because you need to run some demos or no one will buy it off the shelf. And got to know them through that and then learned about the massive coverage that they had and then they became a partner for the community. And we just started talking about this because in our Slack channel all the time, like maybe even more in person brands just ask each other in la, like, hey, which are the good Erewhon stores to demo in? Which are the best ones?

03:46
Daniel Scharff
Because you can go to one and it's totally packed and another and maybe it's near offices and it's totally empty on a weekend. And it's important stuff because as a founder, you're taking three, four hours out of your day or you're spending a lot of money to send a demo person into these places and actually knowing where to point that person can completely make the difference. So I was so excited to leverage this incredible data set that you have from years and just tens of thousands of customer engagements at these demos to build this first ever resource that I've actually seen from a data perspective, giving brands all of this good stuff. So I guess, David, I mean, maybe this. The first question I would love to ask you is like, was this surprising to you?

04:29
Daniel Scharff
Was it mainly stuff that you kind of knew but maybe hadn't, like written down in a way just from having done all of it? Or did you really learn a lot actually, when you finally went through all of these numbers?

04:39
David Heiser
This was a long process. So we've always wondered ourselves. And when were collaborating with you and talking to you, Daniel, like, we thought, okay, let's dig deep let's do everything. So this is all data from 2021 and onwards. And there were some big surprises. I mean, it definitely is changing the way already that we've scheduled. Changing the way that we think about the different days of the week, different months of the year, peak seasons, lower seasons. We had these assumptions before, but when we did this data dump and we put it all together, it really validated certain assumptions we made, but also contradicted others. I mean, a big surprise, for example, is that we never would have thought that Monday midday would have been a successful time slot.

05:18
David Heiser
And that turned out to be our second highest performing time slot after Saturday from 11 to 2, which I don't think anyone would assume.

05:25
Daniel Scharff
That's so interesting to me. And okay, so when I started working with you as a brand, these are exactly the questions that I was asking you. Like, David, what regions should we demo in to get the biggest lift? Because hopefully everyone does well across the entire chain and everything. But I've talked to a lot of buyers and I'm like, hey, when you're measuring the brand on velocity, do you look at it at the store level or just kind of aggregate chain average? They're like, just aggregate. I don't have time to look at the store level. Okay. And there are huge differences between stores. When I was doing demos, there are stores where I might at one store do 50 units on a demo or more and there are others where you could do 10. And just do the math on that.

06:03
Daniel Scharff
You're paying somebody to actually go and spend all that time in the store. Gosh, wouldn't it be great to have all of them do the better ranking stores, the better ranking regions give you a better chance to have lots of trial and awareness and maybe you're trying to prove out a case to stay on shelf. So this is my dream. David, I just can't thank you enough for actually being totally up for this to just take all that beautiful data and then come up with this really insights driven report. And we're about to get into it all of these answers that I really wish that I'd always had. So the first thing you mentioned already was about the best day and time to actually demo. And like, for me, as a beverage brand, that was a big question for me.

06:41
Daniel Scharff
Even, like, I had an energy drink brand and we learned very quickly, maybe don't do that at night because a lot of people are like, no thank you, I don't need an energy drink. So even right now. But can you just talk to me a little bit More about what you saw about the best days of the week and times of days of the week and like how big is the actual difference?

07:00
David Heiser
So it is what you'd expect to an extent. You know, not everything was a surprise here. When you look at Saturday, your average Saturday is going to be around 20% higher in terms of your engagement. It's going to be like 14% higher in terms of dollars sold than your average weekday demo or really the rest of any of the days. So Saturday stands above everything else. It is the, I think one shopping day of the week that is really a hit no matter almost where you are. So it's always a safe bet that if you as a founder want to do, whether it's one demo or whether you're doing a big campaign that targeting Saturdays is a no brainer. There is a trough in the middle of the week in terms of like your Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday period.

07:40
David Heiser
You're not going to see engagement as a baseline as high as you would on the weekends. Now that said, there is an exception to this. There are stores that are in highly urban areas that throw a wrench into this notion. So let's say you're demoing in New York or in Los Angeles and Santa Monica on the west side, you are going to see differences there. So don't take this as the gospel truth. Saturday isn't the average best heavy hitter day followed by Friday afternoon followed by Monday. Really Monday midday and afternoon followed by Friday. So those are your peak days of the week. And Sundays are also good. But don't just write off the midweek period.

08:20
David Heiser
It can be a great period of time if you're at a store that is surrounded by a certain demographic such as office workers, a lot of midday shoppers for whatever reason. So don't write it off. But Saturday is the clear winner.

08:32
Daniel Scharff
I like that. And I mean just to remind everyone, so this analysis is based off 34,000 demos that you guys have done with over 500 brands. It's based off over a thousand stores focusing on those 19 states. You know, six years of data. But I think it's a really good point that like take the insights from this but also just recognize there are some things that are not going to be universally true. And even the example that I mentioned, like yes, Saturday midday is great but if, yeah, if you pick a erewhon location that is near a bunch office parks, they will not be in there on the Saturday and it will be a ghost town and you'll come back and be like, well David, And Daniel told me that Saturday afternoon is the best.

09:08
Daniel Scharff
Or telling you right now, maybe also just, you know, think about those things and learn it. But the good news is we actually have retailer level rankings for stores also. So hopefully you at least are going to learn a little bit about some of the best stores by retailer. So just to read through the best days and times and you can get this in the full report, which you can access. Check out the show notes for that. So number one, Saturday morning. Honestly, it doesn't surprise me, but I wouldn't have known if you had asked me. I would have been like, yeah, probably. I don't know, Saturday and Sunday, I guess, like kind of more midday. I don't know, but that's really clear. And it's based off having done 2000 Saturday morning demos. So that's a great number.

09:44
Daniel Scharff
On average, your Demos are showing 12.79 units per demo.

09:49
David Heiser
Yes.

09:49
Daniel Scharff
Okay, after that was Monday midday, 12.13. And after that, Saturday midday. And then Sunday midday, Friday midday. So actually a big cluster kind of around Friday to Sunday. But interesting that none of those were evening times. Right? A lot of like morning and midday slots there. I guess that Monday one is the one. I would not have known. But I guess people just do a lot of their shops Monday midday.

10:14
David Heiser
What it is what my theory is that, you know, you're catching customers that are not there on the weekend. Because if you didn't shop on the weekend, when do you shop? You're going to probably go first thing on Monday or after work on Monday to go grab the essentials that you didn't get on the weekend.

10:30
Daniel Scharff
I guess, I mean, there are different kinds of people in the store. You may be shopping for yourself, you may be shopping for your family. You may have like, some families may have a housekeeper that is going to come in and work on the Monday and then go and do the big shop for the family. So a lot of different people may be in the store. Like, yeah, Monday does seem like the natural date. Like, yeah, great, go get the food for the week. That's the day to go get the supply. You're going to be cooking up some meals, all that stuff. So. And then basically on your top eight, every single one of them is Friday through Monday. So that is pretty interesting to me to see.

11:02
Daniel Scharff
But again, think about your kind of product because, like, if you actually have the perfect product for like the lunch crowd, you should think about, you know, stores and places where like, no, I just want to hit that crowd. Just popping in during the week for their grab and go lunch, something like that. So do look at this full report, but do also think about maybe some of the, I guess, contextual ways that you'll need to adapt it. Okay, so moving on. I love that day and time of the week. That is definitely the first thing that I would always ask people next. So here's my scenario.

11:31
Daniel Scharff
When I got into the innovation set for sprouts, I was like, I have a certain amount of money that I want to use to run demos and I want them to be the highest impact ones possible. As a brand, we have strategies around like the kind of regions we're trying to do really well in. But across the board we want to crush it with sprouts. We want to get into the main set after this and prove it out to them. Where should I point those demos? So the first question really is around regions, but even, I mean specifically for sprouts. So first, can you just give me the overview of like regionally, which demos perform the best and then we're going to talk about sprouts specifically.

12:04
David Heiser
So our home region over here in Southern California led the way in a big way for us across the country. So we've seen that Southern California is a high performer. We've seen good performance in Florida, in New York and in Texas. So pretty much. But if you're going to broaden this out and you're going to talk like just whole regions of the country, the Southwest, all of California and the Northeast focused around areas like Boston, New York and then the Southeast with Florida. Florida is almost the second California. It's a huge market and it's becoming bigger and bigger for natural. Those would be the regions. But Southern California is the by far leading region for the country.

12:44
Daniel Scharff
That is interesting. And let's dig specifically into sprouts regions and stores in a second. But I guess when you say that, I remember when I was an energy brand looking at what are the biggest markets for energy overall and it's the four that you actually just mentioned. It was California number one. I think Texas was number two, then followed by Florida, then followed by New York. And you're saying actually those are really just some of the overall best states to be demoing in general. And so I guess maybe it follows like a population overall thing and just a economic indicator, dollars. But like also you'd think, well, there'll be more stores there than if there's more money there. We were, I don't know, dispersed, but it sounds like. No, actually you demo in the big places. You're going to get bigger numbers overall.

13:25
David Heiser
Density also in the country here. It's funny, it's just that California alone, out of the top five regions, I mean out of eight regions, two of the top five are California, one is Southern, one is Northern, Southern being number one, Northern being number four. So it's just about where are your super dense metros? Like there are a million ways to spend money and promote an item in a store, right? But demos are about getting in front of as many people physically that are going to be in the store in that three hour window as you possibly can. And what better place to do that than these highly urban areas with huge concentrations of locations. There are great promotion methods for other places, but those are what we have found to be our best regions for in person support.

14:07
Daniel Scharff
This is so much fun, David. I love getting into this data. I hope everyone listening is enjoying this as much as I am. And definitely like check out the report. This is free. You can get it. Check out the link in the show notes and you can read through it along with me as we're going through this podcast. So maybe do it right now. Okay, so I like getting into the real weeds of this report. Let's talk about Sprouts for a second because I know that is one of the most common retailers where people are doing demos. So if I come to you and ask that question, hey David, I have budget for this specifically at Sprouts. Where can I do the best?

14:39
Daniel Scharff
Let's go into the states where I can do the best and let's talk about some of the best stores out there. So states first, David, where can I crush with Sprouts?

14:46
David Heiser
So Sprouts is still super dominated by their southwestern stores. So this is important to note for all the brands listing if you get selected to Sprouts, if you're in Sprouts already even, you'll know this. Sprouts has a lot of new stores. They are a growing market. They've opened a lot of new locations. So remember when you're looking at their AB rankings that new stores, they start not as an A or a B, they start as a C before they get in evaluation period of time and then they get assessed as higher or lower letter grades. So don't just write off stores just because maybe it's not an A store. They're a young chain. There's a lot of stores that are young stores. To answer it in a nutshell, the Southwest is where you should be with Sprouts think their home base, right?

15:31
David Heiser
They're based out of Phoenix. So where do you want to be? You want to be there. So you want to be in Arizona, you want to be in Nevada, you want to be definitely in Southern California. You want to be in Texas, and you want to be in New Mexico. Those are going to be some of the best places to be for Sprouts, in that order.

15:45
Daniel Scharff
All right. And I'm looking through here, and these are real differences, too, because, I mean, based off all the. I know you've run so many demos, and it is a difference of almost 50% when you look at the Arizona stores to the Colorado stores, for example. So. Yes. Okay. And then if I look at Even the top 10 stores that you listed out here in the report, that's pretty cool to see. So there is the Valencia store in Santa Clarita, and that's at almost 20 units per store per week. And followed by that, there are a couple other California locations. La Quinta, Westlake Village, I should add.

16:18
David Heiser
It's a big nugget for those San Diego brands out there for anyone. That's our most successful cluster in the country. For Sprout, Stor and Daniel, you'll see that here. And any brand that checks out the report, you can see these for yourself. That is our most successful cluster of stores over a long period of time is that region. That's a great region for us. Even though it's relatively small versus the country, it's a great area to support young brands.

16:40
Daniel Scharff
And I see. So in your top 10 stores, eight of them are in California, but your top state is Arizona, which tells me it's very important to know even which are the stores you should go into, because Arizona as a region does better. But these California stores, some of them are topping the charts. So know which stores those are and hit them up, people. Yeah, I love it. This is such good stuff. And remember what day and time to actually get in there. Okay, so let's do the same thing, but let's talk about Whole Foods for a second. Okay. So when I look at Whole Foods, the first thing that's actually pretty interesting to me is that the top state that you called out here is actually the same as Sprouts. It's Arizona. That's pretty interesting.

17:21
David Heiser
I wonder why I have to give credit to our wonderful ambassadors out there. That's our longest tenured region. So those people have been with us for almost 10 years, since almost the founding of the company. So I got to give them some credit, too. They've done a lot of these. But in general, I Mean, think about, there's so many demos that are involved in this that it goes beyond any one or two or three people. So Arizona is a high performing region. You know, people tend to kind of write it off in favor of like the bigger areas that are like, you know, your New York and your Los Angeles and your Miami's. But in reality, Arizona is filled with relatively affluent shoppers who are curious and who grocery shop in their local community stores all the time.

17:58
David Heiser
And that's what we're talking about here. There's a lot of suburbs, there's a lot of people who grocery shop and do full shops, and a lot of people who have the time to do it and to take a minute or two to engage with you, to learn about your brand, to talk to an ambassador. So in store sampling, we have found performs very well there.

18:13
Daniel Scharff
Gosh, that's interesting. So, and just kind of going down the list here, by the way, I used to, I've been at brands where I was the one pulling store level data for Whole Foods and I could only see our performance, but I remember the top stores or we're just seeing crazy performance and they weren't in, by and large in Arizona. When I look at your top 10 list of the actual Whole Foods stores that have done the best, there are two Arizona stores on there, but number one and two are both in Florida. And so Florida is coming in second in terms of the states. And just to put this into perspective for people, like 11 units per demo in Arizona is the overall average. If we look at the state that you've ranked seventh on here, which is Illinois, it's at eight.

18:53
Daniel Scharff
So again, that's a big difference. That's a, you know, 30, 40% difference that you're seeing from the best state to the lowest state. Typically. I think like when you work with a brand on doing demos that a chain like this probably you are looking for clusters. Right. Because the way that demo agencies are staffed up is by cluster. Right. Like, cool, you want to run a bunch of demos in that region? Yes, I have a couple people and they do hit that cluster. So we'll run a bunch of those. So probably it's not like, okay, cool. Yeah, David, I would like for you to hit like, you know, 20 different stores all over the country, just totally random ones. Like, you do need to have kind of a cluster support.

19:26
Daniel Scharff
So I think it is really good to look at the states and specifically groupings of stores that you feel like these are good choices for us as a brand. So when I'm looking at the ranking, I see Arizona, Florida and then California, no surprise. And then Texas and then Nevada is the top five. And then the store ranking. Wow. Orlando, Florida coming in as the number one store in Whole Foods in the country for your demo averages. And it's by a lot.

19:48
David Heiser
Yeah, 87 events, as the sample says. So that one bigger than any of the other stores with the exception of Del Mar. And it's like that number is supported by a ton of events. I mean, we've seen really good results in Florida, especially with the Whole Foods there. And you'll notice that the Whole Foods list is completely different. Like the state distribution here, California is not as dominant. Totally different than the sprouts list. So we see a lot of success at those big format stores. And if you've been to the stores, those beautiful Whole Foods in Florida, they're large format. They're a lot of the time there's not as many Whole Foods in general in Florida as there is in a place like California. So the Whole Foods that are there are even more important. That's something to keep in mind.

20:26
David Heiser
If you're doing Oklahoma Whole Foods, Oklahoma City Whole foods. There's not five or 10 stores that are going to be close to each other there like there are in Los Angeles, you know, and so that's important to remember. So you see a lot of condensation there. And just to your point, Daniel, about clustering, that's what we go for because we want to make sure that we make the biggest possible impact for you in a given area.

20:47
Daniel Scharff
All right, David, this is the good stuff. Let's hit up a couple more chains here. Everyone travel, let's go grocery shopping virtually. Okay, next one I want to talk about is Erewhon, because I did demos at Erewhon with you and that was always on my mind. And I remember always talking to my friends at leisure like, hey, which are the best stores? Which days and times? And they would share their experience. But now we have the full data to look at. So very interested here to see of the Erewhon stores coming in at number one is Calabasas.

21:14
David Heiser
Yes. So Calabasas is really a top store in the chain. So it's important to remember that people may write it off. Because when you think of Erewhon, what do you think of everybody thinks of the Los Angeles locations, the iconic Beverly location, all of those things. That's where people go to take pictures. Right. But it's the thing is that Calabasas is a store with a built in community this is important to think of with any store. Calabasas is in a suburban area. It's the only store in the area that sells natural foods that is the closest other than the Whole Foods in Thousand Oats, which is far away from this community. And it is a ton of people doing full shops. Again, this is an important point. You want stores where people are grocery shopping.

21:53
David Heiser
You do not necessarily want to focus unless you're more of a grab and go item on stores that are more focused on just serving lunches or cafe items. You really want to, as a brand, try and get those grocery shoppers. They are the ones who are going to support you.

22:08
Daniel Scharff
Okay, so Calabasas number one, followed by Santa Monica number two, Venice, which for me, that's always the Erewhan that's in my mind because I lived near there in Marina del Rey and that's the one that I would go to. And it's iconic, the design of it. You always. That's what you see a lot of celebrities coming out of there. I always see friends. Every time I go there, I'll see friends demoing there and in the store. I've never been there and not run into someone that I know from the industry. Number four, Manhattan Beach. Number five, Silver Lake. It's so interesting to me and I know it will vary based off if you're like, definitely the time of day. Right. Like, I would look at that, be like. I know.

22:43
Daniel Scharff
I mean, Venice is going to be popping on the weekends for sure, because people come there like tourists, you know.

22:48
David Heiser
Yes.

22:49
Daniel Scharff
It's on the ledge, like right off the legendary Abbot Kinney Boulevard. So hot on the weekends for sure. So it is bumping in there. But that is really interesting for me.

22:59
David Heiser
To see you see the comparison, though. I mean, not to skip ahead, but if you see Bristol Farms as well, their number one biggest location for us and most successful has been Palm Desert, which is also probably not what people would think of when they think of Bristol Farms. It's going to be something similar. You're going to think of the Manhattan beach or Newport Beach. They're going to think of the iconic locations in Los Angeles. But Palm Desert is our number one performer. And again, you're seeing a captive audience sort of full grocery shoppers.

23:25
Daniel Scharff
And it's double almost any of the other ones. You have palm desert at 19 units.

23:30
David Heiser
Yeah.

23:30
Daniel Scharff
And then Newport beach comes in next at 13, and then Manhattan beach at 10.7. So. Wow, that's a good store. That's a good insight.

23:37
David Heiser
Yes.

23:38
Daniel Scharff
Okay. I love it. And then we've got to talk about Central Market. I know people have heard me say this. I hope nobody from other retailers will mind me saying this, but Central Market, my favorite place in the world to demo. Because you can absolutely rip. I couldn't believe it when I was in those stores. Once I sold through 200 units myself. We were on an end cap and were on sale and I just stood next to it. And because were, I think were two for five, there was nobody who only bought one. And it was so much fun because people come by. It's not like, you know, when you're demoing for Erewhon people, they're very high value consumers, but they do take a lot of effort to get on your side.

24:15
Daniel Scharff
And they will ask you extremely pointed questions about every single ingredient because they're very conscientious about everything. And then after 10 minutes they'll like, maybe like, okay, I'll take one. We're at Central Park. But like, it's great to win them over. They might have like a million followers. You never know. And you know, even like I had my demo team even gave a sample out somehow and it ended up instagram. Post in the fridge of Brooklyn Beckham or isn't this crazy stuff? And then. But at Central Market, people come by and they're like, hello. They look you in the eye, they're like, this tastes good. I'll take 20 of these. Can you load up my car? Like, this is great. Thank you. And it feels like you're doing so much business there.

24:53
Daniel Scharff
So when I look at your rankings, I was really interested to see because I don't think I've demoed at all of them. I know I've done like Lovers Lane, some other ones, but the ranking here, can you talk me through it?

25:04
David Heiser
Yeah. So there's 10 stores for the chain. We based this data off of the eight that we did service and then we added a ninth one. So these are the top five. Right. But they are both in Austin. That's important to note here. The top two central markets for us are both in Austin. This chain, by the way, is really responsible for a large amount of the Texas numbers, like for making Texas as dominant as it is in this data report. Because Central Market, to Daniel's point, to all the brands out there, it is a great place to demo. The shoppers love supporting the brands. They love trying the brands. It is a wonderful place to be in Texas if you are looking for a market to go into there. And if you are looking For a market to sample there.

25:43
David Heiser
It is also great. So you got Austin Westgate is number one with 22.6 units. That's based on 100 events. Austin north is 20.6 units, also based on almost 100 events. So those are pretty clearly dominant over the other ones. The next one is Dallas at 17.3. Below that is South Lake at 16.8 and Fort Worth below that at 16.3. So those two Austin locations for us have been our most successful. But Central Market in general is a wonderful place to sample your product.

26:11
Daniel Scharff
And I remember I don't have the numbers in front of me, but like, you know, I was talking about Erewhon and like, okay, you might talk to them for a while, like, and then, I don't know, a lot of them will frown at an ingredient and walk away. Or Erewhon is. It can be an amazing store for brands. But I also have never felt the kind of shame that I felt in an Erewhon trying to get people to try the product and they just look at you and shake their heads and walk by. You're like, oh you really. I feel like I'm in high school, like getting dissed by the cool kids.

26:36
Daniel Scharff
But I think your data, I don't have it in front of me but I think would support about the conversion rate even of like how many people try to sample there or how many people try to sample actually bought the product. Like it's. Those are just tough for consumers to win over. Right. It's going to be lower at a store like Erewhon versus other stores.

26:51
David Heiser
Oh yeah. I mean you can see that even here. Look, not based off of like completely like the conversion percentages, but just look, these are all based off of four hour events. Everything we're looking at, these baselines are all based off of that. So when you're seeing Austin Westgate, our top performer For Central Market, 22.6 off of 100 events is a super solid number. And you have Calabasas and we've done hundreds of events there. Multiple hundreds of events, maybe thousands by this point. Calabasas is 12. Palm Desert for Bristol is 19.1. So Austin Westgate for Central Market outperforms all of them. And that's a really interesting takeaway from all of this. The customers there, they do convert, they do buy, they really enjoy it. And they. You find chains like this place or Jimbo's.

27:35
David Heiser
There are markets where shoppers are more curious and where in store demos do even better. This is definitely one of those Places.

27:41
Daniel Scharff
Okay, so just backing up because this analysis is really based off four chains and the crazy number of demos that you guys have done at them. So Whole Foods, Central Market, Sprouts and Erewhon. And so if we're looking at just the dollars sold on average per demo, there's a really interesting roll up slide in here, which is chain wide. Number one is Whole Foods at $129.50 average dollars sold on demo. You know, it makes sense to me. Just, I mean, Whole Foods has great traffic, right? Everybody loves that about them. They're like, just the amount of volume coming in through their stores makes it such a great launchpad for brands. Second in total dollars per demo was Central Market for a lot of the reasons I think that we've talked about. $3Rd sold per demo was sprouts and then 4th was erewhon.

28:28
Daniel Scharff
Like, which we've talked about, I think as a combo of it can have good traffic depending on the time of day in the store. But my experience having demoed there is like a lot of people might be coming in and just buying only a couple things. And so like, yeah, then maybe they're coming in and just getting a sandwich and a drink. Not. I mean, it's an expensive store, right? So I mean, there's a lot more people getting a couple things versus doing a full basket shop at a place like Erewhon, because that could bankrupt you. It's all like, very nice stuff. Honestly, like when were at. When we have stuff going on in LA as a team, I love taking my team to Erewhon for a team lunch, but it definitely costs as much as a fancy meal out.

29:05
Daniel Scharff
Depending on what you get, it could be like 50 bucks a person by the time you get the hot bar and a drink or something. And I'm like, holy cow. Like, but do you guys want to come here again tomorrow? Like, yes. Okay. It's so good. So you know that it won't have maybe the same traffic as some stores. But then also that like, how many of the people who are in there are going to let you demo for them? And of the people that you do demo, how many of them are going to convert and buy something? Like all of that leading to it being maybe a lower overall dollars per demo. But again, we're talking about like, those are some very influential people.

29:34
Daniel Scharff
You're in the most, arguably the most influential part of the country from a cultural perspective, let's say, like influencers. Like so many of them at a SoCal, they like your product. There's so many people who are like, you know, health leaders and just, I don't know, have big followings for whatever reasons. And just so much innovation that comes out of SoCal. Like, it is just, I would say, the tastemaker region in the country for.

29:58
David Heiser
So many regions, it has a high engagement number. So even though you're seeing that lower. So for brands, when you, if you look at this to give context, it's like Air One might have a lower revenue, like a lower average sales per demo in terms of dollars, but you are reaching a lot of people. So it's our highest average engagement numbers coming from those stores, but the lowest average revenue numbers. And a big part of that is the item mix maybe that we personally have represented there that's informed of this data. So don't be discouraged by that if you see that's what we've had. And this is across 6,000 events with a range of items. But you are probably going to see something like this dynamic play out if you were to go sample yourself.

30:38
David Heiser
And to Daniel's point earlier, the AirOne shoppers are very picky. So if you have an item that Maybe isn't an Air1 exclusive like type of item that is very ultra clean, you may run into some challenges over there, which is another reason that, you know, the revenue is a little bit lower there because customers there are picky.

30:57
Daniel Scharff
I mean, you're not, probably not getting in the store too if it's not pretty clean. Because Erewhon definitely has a long no list out there.

31:04
David Heiser
Yes.

31:06
Daniel Scharff
But, yeah, definitely was the place where I got more advanced, picky questions from shoppers there than any place that I ever was. And then, yeah, if you win them over, they might just buy one because they're just like, okay, I'll have this today. But they're not filling up the basket for, you know, that big barbecue they're about to have in Texas or whatever.

31:24
David Heiser
Yeah, there's no shopping carts there. I'll say that. Not often.

31:27
Daniel Scharff
Okay, so I guess, man, I could spend hours honestly going through all of the data in here, across all of the chains and like mixing the data all the different ways because. And I think people should. And again, if you want to get access to this report, the link is in the show notes. You can have the full thing and dig through it yourself. I know you'll just have more questions when you do it. But it's so much fun to go through and see it this way. And I really hope it helps everybody out there just have better, more impactful demos. But I would love to just shift and maybe just talk about. Because you've done so many of these, let's talk about overall tips for brands doing demos. So you talk to brands all the time.

32:01
Daniel Scharff
What is the 101 that you give them of? Like, okay, you're about to make an investment in this thing. What is the right way to do demos? What do you need to make sure that you have ready, whether it's your team doing it or them doing it, to really make the most of a demo?

32:14
David Heiser
It's a good question. You know, it's a big question. It's one that brands ask all the time. What I'll say here is true. Whether you're doing it yourself, whether you're doing it as an individual or have a team or use us. What I would say is you have to prepare your ambassador team and you have to think of the demos as a branding opportunity. If you were to do a Coachella event, imagine all the things that you would do to make it look cool and attractive and engaging. You need to treat a demo as a micro version of that. So many times, you know, brands don't have resources, they don't have marketing materials. We go and we have a standard set that we use.

32:51
David Heiser
But we always advise brands that if they want to make the most of this spend, that they need to have things, the little stuff, table runners, postcards, a one pager, a sales sheet, stickers, coupons, all the hits. Those things convert more than you could possibly believe. And you know what, I have to say it. I know we're in a digital age, but paper coupons are the single biggest lift of any marketing item that you could have. Even in 2026 with all the technology around us, people love them, and it does help convert.

33:21
Daniel Scharff
Yeah, I think you're totally right. There's something about those paper coupons that is just a game changer because it's like, oh, no, I don't want to, like, get out my phone and sign up for something. And now you have my email and I'm getting emails. Like, no paper coupon. Walk over to that cashier. Here's two bucks off, they'll scan it. Okay. Bet I'll take that product. That makes a lot of sense. The coupons and promos can totally super juice your demo impact. You're already paying for a demo person to be there for a couple hours to get your materials to that demo person. The actual stock of supply they're going to use during that demo, which they can bring with them, but you have to ship to them if that's true or they buy it off the shelf and you're paying for that.

33:59
Daniel Scharff
So just having a mechanism to get people to be motivated to get more product while they're there is incredibly impactful. I mentioned earlier the demos that I did at Central Market because were on two for five. Zero people only bought one. So already you're doubling the output of the demo just by having a promo on. And I don't remember if I ever personally got around to having coupons. We were smaller, I think weren't paying for like a clearinghouse yet on the coupons. But. But for sure, that would have helped if I could have just handed them a coupon to get a little bit more. I think that is the chance to make your demo a little stickier. Like, okay, I'm going to try it.

34:30
Daniel Scharff
Well, now I have two, so I'm going to have it now, but I'm also going to have it later in my fridge at home. Maybe that gives you a chance of creating a little bit more recognition. Have it, you know, get into their routine. Have a better chance at that. So I really like that. And we had a demo kit. We would mail it around to the demo people. It can be a little bit of pain if, like, if you have your own demo people and then they change over, then you have to, like, get the kit, try to send it to somebody else. And if you have an agency that can be a little smoother, or at least they like manage that part.

34:55
Daniel Scharff
But totally agree with you on just like you're creating a branded experience, you might as well have a nice one and be a little intentional.

35:02
David Heiser
Keep in mind the table runners aren't too expensive. You know, you don't have to go crazy. Some brands want to do, like, full table stands. It's not a trade show. I do have to say that sometimes. I know it's hiding, but it's not a trade show. You're in a grocery store, you have maybe five feet maximum of space. So keep it in mind. But you know, table runners, coupons, stickers, these things, customers love them and they don't cost that much to produce. Make demo kits. And whether you're doing it yourself, have your own team, or use us, always have those. Those are great things to have.

35:29
Daniel Scharff
Okay, let me ask you another question, which is I think one challenge for people is figuring out how to talk about their product at a demo when you only might have five words to say to somebody. And I actually think IT demos are such a great opportunity to refine your pitch because it goes from the like, oh, I'm like a mission based founder and I did this thing and here's why I did it and I created this thing. And let me tell you about the ingredients and like the also this like nonprofit that we support and I did to. Oh, I have five, you're walking by me. I can say the best three or five word description about my product to tell you what it is and hopefully get you to stop.

36:03
Daniel Scharff
I'm sure you've learned a lot about like, what is the best construction of those things because it's coming from the brand to you and your team and they have to train you on that. What are some of your tips for? Yes, here are the things you should say about your product when you only have a few words.

36:17
David Heiser
My number one tip for the founders is get out there and do these demos yourself. Talk to the customers so that they can kind of show you when, if you're being too long winded or if it's not punchy enough, they will tell you. Customers have a way of breaking down the ego of any person doing the demo over time because people respond really quick and if you don't capture their attention right away, they might walk away, they might just keep going. So, you know, have that five second pitch. And just as a broad stroke, what is your item? Oh, it's a probiotic sparkling water. You know, come and try some. It's delicious, low sugar, blah, blah. But you want to be quick. Imagine if you had the head buyer from Whole Foods.

36:53
David Heiser
You had your dream meeting, but they only had like five minutes or less, even two minutes to give you. What would you say to them? That's almost the same as what you would do with a customer. You want to make this the most accessible possible way to talk about your product. You don't want to complicate it. And then once you get their attention, then the door is a little more open and then you can maybe go into a little bit about your mission or your story or about the other items that you have. But my whole thing would just be quick and have no ego. Just tell them exactly what it is in broad strokes and try to get attention as fast as possible.

37:25
Daniel Scharff
Yeah, they will tell you because you'll be like, yeah, here's my thing and here's what I like to say about it. And they sometimes will just look at you and say back to you like, oh, so it's like this.

37:32
David Heiser
Yes.

37:33
Daniel Scharff
Yeah, yeah, you're Right. Actually be open to hearing that from people or just like, how would you explain this to a friend? And sometimes what they'll say is like, not the thing that you want everyone to say about your product, but it might actually be much more effective.

37:47
David Heiser
And it's skeptical, guys, if, especially if it's maybe your first time doing demos for your new brand, don't take it personally if someone, a lot of the customers are going to just react. I mean, not a lot, but you're going to get people that come in and they're going to say things like, oh, it's a scam. Oh, that's too expensive. Oh, that doesn't work. Be prepared to meet that with sort of like a friendly opposition. I like to sort of be playful with the customers. And it's like, oh, this has too much sugar. Well, it's like, well, you know, a banana and apples also have a lot of sugar, but we don't think of them that way. It's an opportunity to kind of educate and engage with people. You don't have to go in there and, like, be combative.

38:22
David Heiser
And I think some founders, it's hard not to take it personally when people make the kind of comments that they do that we hear every day at the events. But if you take it with a grain of salt, it's useful. It shows you what people, even skeptical people, are responding to and what they're.

38:35
Daniel Scharff
Seeing with your item and definitely the consumers. One thing we haven't talked about, though, is when you're doing demos, the chance to also get some of the store employees to be super fans. Right. That's always my move. You know, at Erewhon, anytime one of the store associates comes by, hey, can I give you a sample? Do you want a cold can? Can I leave some in the break room? Because they can. They are very influential to customers and recommending their favorites. And also they can sometimes impact merchandising decisions. Who's going to get a little bit of extra shelf space? Right. Based off who they like. You must have seen this a ton.

39:06
David Heiser
Oh, all the time. This is a great point. The first thing I would do, especially if you're like a year in your first 10 doors and you're trying to support them, bring those people samples that cannot be said enough. Bring them T shirts, bring them hats, bring them hoodies, sample to them when you're there, be kind to them, Ask them how people are responding. The store staff, we always sample to the store staff, and you'll see a big part of a lot of these engagements, of these numbers that we do for every store, at least five or four of them are going to be store employees because they are your biggest advocates. And believe me, when they're making the choice, it's late at night and they're stocking the shelf and items are out.

39:42
David Heiser
And if they know your brand, you are going to be so much more likely to have that hole filled, to have that extra SKU added early, you know, to have your portion of the load broken down first. And because they're going to remember that the store staff don't get a lot of support from brands, they don't see a lot of people from brands. Most of the time, they never meet anyone from a brand. So that one contact could forever alter your course of life at that store, you know, your core growth at that store.

40:08
Daniel Scharff
I remember one brand that I was at, were at one retailer, and were merchandise in a place where the guy who ran that section of the store was not happy about it. He's like, this shouldn't be here. And honestly, a real stick up his butt about it. And then I did the demo and like, he came and tried it and was like, okay. And then he came back, like five minutes later. He's like, that was actually pretty good. Could I get another one? It's like, all right. I feel like won you over at this point. Yeah, you never know who you're talking to there, who you could influence. Just really good to have a good attitude about it.

40:39
David Heiser
And.

40:39
Daniel Scharff
And I also, I just, I really recognize for everybody that it is tough to put yourself out there and get the rejection from a lot of people. Honestly, it's like, oh, I'm trying to, like, I'm a founder. I'm doing this. Like, you really have to have that mentality of, I will do anything for my brand. I will do anything to have this dream of mine. Really want people to get to try this product and all of the care that I've put into it and get that out there in the world. Still, a lot of people are going to shut you down and just like, in a way where you're just like. You question humanity and like, what you're doing in this life. It's true.

41:09
David Heiser
Working with the general public, especially when you're like, literally putting your heart and soul out there, it can be crushing at times. It can make you sort of cynical. But I think the thing that we go back to and that I. We always talk to the ambassadors about this. Just be a good sport, you know, be a good Sport, it's not for everybody. No single item is going to be for everyone. You know, it's just be okay with that. But try to hear out whatever criticism, whether it's valid or not or whatever positive feedback you get. See what people are attentive to because that does reveal a lot and helps you iterate for your next generation of products.

41:37
Daniel Scharff
I love it. So David, again I really want to thank you for all the info in this report. It's possible because you collect all this data and you have for years about how many people did we get to sample for how many people actually got the product? What did they say about the product? It's just incredible to have access to that huge trove of data to deliver these kind of insights for brands. So thank you again. Can you just remind everybody your guys full scope of services. What, what's all of your coverage area? What are all the places that you can help out brands? And you mentioned you do 4 hour demos. Can you just give us the whole spiel?

42:10
David Heiser
Absolutely. So we have in store staff 18 different states across the country. We cover around 60% or 65% now of Sprouts stores. We are covering around 60% of Whole Foods locations. We are in all the major metros that you're going to want to be supporting, whether you're in the east coast or west coast or Midwest, your Texas, California, New York markets. And we will support you anywhere you are with event staffing, with four hour event demos in store sampling sessions. And we will be there for you flexible on time every time.

42:46
Daniel Scharff
That's what we like. And when you work with them, you do get the chance to train their staff and you know, talk to them about the kind of messages that you want to make sure are being conveyed to consumers and you'll have access to all the data and see for yourself. Okay, here's what we thought would work, what's actually working in the stores because I think the main thing is to be really paying attention to that and learning as you go. So you keep getting to improve your performance because it's a huge investment that you make in demos. It's one of the most important ones.

43:10
David Heiser
You get your reports, your analytics, so you'll have your own mini versions of these types of insights for your own brand specific to you.

43:16
Daniel Scharff
And then we'll run another big report with all that data too and we'll have even more insight. So great. We'll just keep growing this. Thank you again, David. Just a reminder to everybody, so grassroots we, they are a great partner of Ours, they have this national coverage. If you want to work with them, we have a special negotiated rate with them for these four hour demos. You also can work with them if you want to try to save a few bucks. You can do a split demo, a co branded demo with another brand that's non competitive. So they do have those options. I personally prefer the solo ones just because I want the full focus on the brand. I want, you know, just obviously can. You're splitting attention when you do that, but that is an option definitely for a lot of brands.

43:52
Daniel Scharff
So check the show notes for the links for setting up a call. Basically the link there just sets up a call directly with David and his team and they can do a little consultation with you and understand what your priorities are and give you a demo plan and definitely get access to this report. I'm just so excited about it. I'm so happy that we get to put this out there to the industry. So David, my friend, my partner, thank you so much.

44:14
David Heiser
Thanks Daniel. Appreciate it.

44:15
Daniel Scharff
All right, good luck to everyone out there. Happy demoing. Well, my friends, we've now arrived together at the end of another episode of the Startup CPG podcast, the top globally ranked podcast in cpg. As you may know, we're not just a podcast. We're a community of brands and experts and you should join. You can sign up @startupcpg.com you'll then get an invite to our online Slack community. You're going to hear about amazing events near you, all of our special opportunities to get you in front of buyers, investors, brands and more. It's a free community. So what are you waiting for? I will see you there or on our next episode. Bye bye.