Faster Foodservice Growth with First Bite

How a sales team of one unlocked new opportunities with a platform purpose-built for foodservice

About Smart Flour Foods: Smart Flour provides premium gluten-free rolls, buns, crusts, and brownies to a growing network of foodservice operators, including restaurants, colleges, and universities.

An old platform’s waning efficacy leaves a sales director in a bind

Amanda Hellwig has led sales and marketing at Smart Flour for over seven years. Of the tight-knit team of six behind the brand, she’s the only one focused solely on sales.

When she joined the company, there was already a legacy data source and CRM in place. For a while, it worked just fine. But within the last couple of years, Amanda noticed the data quality drop off, dragging Smart Flour’s sales efforts down with it. She started seeing an uptick in email bounces and lower reply rates.

Amanda knew she needed a new solution. As she began her search, she discovered that many of the incumbent platforms weren’t a great fit for her needs. “There are a lot of really large data sources out there where you pay for the universe. And, being in foodservice, we don't need the universe,” she says. What she really wanted was a targeted solution that would get her the right operator contacts.

She turned to a trusted foodservice colleague for advice, and they suggested First Bite. 

Initially, she had her reservations about switching to a new platform. “The CRM that we were using before was a lot more than what we needed, but it was familiar,” she explains. “Jumping to another platform is always a little bit intimidating, like, ‘If this doesn't work, now what?’”

But she took the leap and immediately felt at ease. A seamless onboarding process set the tone, and Amanda reports feeling very supported by the First Bite team. “You guys have been there every step of the way, have answered questions super quickly, and are always willing to do what you can to help improve the process,” she says.

“You guys have been there every step of the way, have answered questions super quickly, and are always willing to do what you can to help improve the process.” - Amanda Hellwig, Director of Sales & Marketing, Smart Flour

Delivering results for a sales team of one

Now that she’s up and running with First Bite, Amanda’s workflow is completely transformed for the better. With the old tool, she had a very manual process. She says, “Before, you basically put in your parameters, your different filters, downloaded a CSV, and I was spending hours going through, line-by-line of, ‘Okay, this restaurant's good, this one isn't.’” 

With First Bite, the process to build a curated list takes 20-30 minutes total. As a platform that’s purpose-built to serve foodservice sales professionals, First Bite’s filtering capabilities are far more precise than generalist competitors. 

The First Bite platform comes pre-loaded with menu-level data for each door, empowering sales teams to filter for specific items from the start. Amanda’s seen the benefits of this ease firsthand. “I'm not spending nights at midnight going through spreadsheets [anymore], which is nice,” she deadpans.

Meaningful metrics and a path toward future growth

What has all this meant for Amanda and the team at Smart Flour? The ability to run multiple campaigns to targeted lists based on clean data has transformed their sales results.

Before, their email response rate was hovering around 1-2%. Since implementing First Bite, that number has more than doubled. “I think our lowest campaign is around a 6% response rate, which is fantastic,” Amanda reports. “We have a couple that are 8%, one that's above 10%.”

With that, the Smart Flour pipeline has grown, and Amanda is seeing positive impacts, whether the deal is won or not. “When you open deals, that builds your pipeline, it builds the conversations. And even if you don't win a deal, having those conversations improves things you can do for the next,” she says.

 “I've been able to focus on more high-level strategic points of what we're trying to accomplish instead of going through lists continuously.” - Amanda Hellwig, Director of Sales & Marketing, Smart Flour

For what it’s worth, they’ve seen closed deals, too. Amanda says Smart Flour has experienced an uptick in closed accounts since implementing First Bite.

With those efficiency gains, Amanda is also able to reinvest in higher-level work that can move the business meaningfully forward. She says, “I've been able to focus on more high-level strategic points of what we're trying to accomplish instead of going through lists continuously.” 

Whether you’re a small team or a big organization, having the space to reinvest thought and energy in long-term growth strategies is a huge win that compounds over time.

Ready to see how First Bite can create more time in your day?

First Bite empowers foodservice sales teams of all stripes to drive better results with less time, money, and effort.

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