“One does not simply create private label crab cake mix.”
David Klein, 2020
In early 2020, a year that will live in infamy, our supermarket company found itself struggling under a new environment of pressures like we’ve never seen before. Our company is almost 100 years old, so we have some history of navigating challenging business environments; however, this was something totally new to us.
Flashback 2020
In early- to mid-March 2020 society was in a mild panic. COVID-19 had taken possession of the shared psyche of our society. Consumers were flocking to retailers nationwide to fill their closets and pantries with vital supplies for the coming hard times and new patterns of life. People bought goods in excess of their needs, but that wasn’t the only thing adding stress to retailers.
Restaurants & Bars were shuttered or became virtual no-go-zones for many customers. For a variety of reasons people had to cease their normal indoor dining routines. Some people switched to carry-out and maintained their normal dining patterns with their old regulars. Yet, many more meals than normal were planned and purchased through food retailers such as our supermarket than normal. A boon for sales but a stress on our business we were not prepared for.
Regionally, this flux in shopping patterns caused all sorts of mayhem. Supply chains that were used to running at X capacity were now being asked to run at X+Y capacity (some truckers went on strike). Manufacturers couldn’t get their products from their warehouses to the distributors. Then suppliers couldn’t get their raw materials to the manufacturers. Supply chains broke down, production on many lines ceased; many varieties disappeared entirely.
Supermarket Problem
Locally, in our stores we had a plethora of problems. From staff not showing up to work and calling out sick, fears of COVID and now compliance with new regulations. Product shortages and constant streams of customers coming for certain key, difficult to find, items.
We are Maryland based. One of our unique problems was that we could not get ANY McCormick Crab Cake Classic mix, the #1 selling crab cake mix in the market. Marylanders know crab cakes and will not accept a mix or flavor that is not right. Worse yet, for retailers, its impossibly hard to sell expensive lump and jumbo lump crab meat with a good crab cake mix. We were out of crab cake mix and, seemingly, out of luck too.
Out of Adversity, Comes PRIVATE LABEL CRAB CAKE Mix
We could not let this situation slide. We had to get crab cake mix. It had to be GOOD crab cake mix, too. It also had to be done right — not just some crab cake mix dumped in a deli container and sold with a sticker. It had to look good and feel right to the customer, an informed consumer of Maryland crab meat and crab cake mix.
Next time we explain some of what we had to do to get it done and what led us to create our own Private Label Crab Cake mix.
5 packs pictured here. We made 9,776 units on this run.
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