#90 Buyer Series: Earth Fare with Mitch Orland

This is the first episode in our new buyers series and today we’re joined by Mitch Orland, VP of Merchandising and Procurement at Earth Fare. Earth Fare is a health and wellness supermarket with 20 locations in 8 states in the Southeast US. Mitch has deep food industry experience including being a restaurant owner and former Executive Chef at Earth Fare, and he now manages a 15 person merchandising team at Earth Fare. Listen in as Mitch shares about: - How Earth Fare’s product submission process including category reviews - Best practices for engaging with buyers from email content to timing follow up - How brokers add value for buyers - Different models of distributing to Earth Fare from self-service to local distributors to UNFI - Best practices for promoting with Earth Fare, educating employees, and in-store demos - How and when a brand’s on-shelf performance is evaluated by the Earth Fare team - Industry trends - And more! And stay tuned at the end for a story from Startup CPG founder Daniel Scharff about recently getting into Earth Fare with Machu Picchu - and thanks for Mitch for that great idea - he wanted you all to also hear from a brand that recently worked with Earth Fare, which I found really helpful. This episode was sponsored by Social Nature. Go to business.socialnature.com. This episode was sponsored by Promomash + Crisp. Go to promomash.com/startupcpg. This episode was sponsored by IFT. Go to iftevent.org.