Project 1: Create Brand Ambassadors in Restaurant Sector
Impossible Foods is a manufacturer and global market leader of plant-based foods. With new-to-the-world products, extensive research showed that their products were often misrepresented or misunderstood. The results were inconsistent brand messaging, customer confusion and dissatisfaction, and missed sales opportunities. To address these issues, the Impossible marketing leadership established a brand ambassador strategy. The focus was to help restaurant operators and their FOH/BOH teams to confidently and effectively cook and sell Impossible products.
The audience
Owners, managers, and front-of-house team members working in full-service, limited-service, and quick-service restaurants.
The challenge and opportunity
Impossible has over 50,000+ restaurant clients that offer Impossible, from single-unit family-owned full-service restaurants to global QSR chains. The spectrum represented operators with no formal employee training, up to large chains with established eLearning programs and platforms. The challenge was to develop a set of blended training resources that could be used for training in any type of restaurant environment. Another challenge is that many operators devote little or no time to developing product knowledge for specific menu items.
The opportunity was to develop training resources that operators would value and want to use, and that employees would enjoy learning from.
The solution
We worked with Impossible to develop an operator focus group that included training leaders within 20 restaurant operators representing small-medium-large FSR-LSR and QSRs. This group provided valuable real-world feedback and guidance throughout the training resources design and development process.
The training deliverables include interactive microlearning modules, videos, PDF’s, Quick Reference Guides, and FAQs. All assets are available for operators to utilize from the Impossible website, or deployed directly from their LMS.
Terry Splane
Channel Marketing Director
Foodservice
"We went through a very diligent training partner selection process, and Bob and his team didn't rise to the top, they were at the top! Bob has a keen thirst for insights and foundational learning, and to drive strategic direction...there's an ongoing focus on how to measure results and ROI.
The process of asset building was tremendous, well prepared with invaluable consultation and guidance all along the journey.
The program is blowing restaurant trainers away and will be a solid strategic plank in the Impossible value-added toolkit for years to come."
Project 2: Develop Product Knowledge in the Grocery/Retail Sector
When Impossible Foods began offering products within large retail and grocery outlets, they found a similar challenge. Research indicated that retail and grocery store employees could also be brand ambassadors. Due to the success of the restaurant ambassador program, the Impossible retail marketing team chose Restaurant Playbooks.
The audience
Customer-facing managers and employees working in food retail and grocery stores.
The solution
The dynamics involved with employee interactions with grocery store customers are typically a lot different than in restaurants. Based on needs analysis and feedback from training leaders, we determined that video was the best approach. We developed 3 videos with a total run time of 6 minutes, along with a set of quick reference PDFs for deployment via phones and tablets.
Sophie Moscovici-Troyka
Marketing Manager
Grocery I Retail
"We partnered with Restaurant Playbooks on a series of training videos for Impossible Foods retail clients. Bob and his team were incredibly responsive to all our requests, knowledgeable about effective & scalable training, and flexible in meeting our needs. Bob was hands-on, communicative, proactive, and so fun to work with.
Bob's team created extremely high-quality content and we love the final product!"