Anna and Hamish Orbell from Clayton Station have been keeping us updated on their sales tour of the USA; what’s been happening, where they’ve been and the reception that Mountain River Venison is getting.
Here’s a quick recap of some of their exploits around the mighty USA:
4 September 2018:
“Just finished a great day going around a lot of restaurants in Atlanta, I think there were about 8 in total. Seemed to get a great reception from all the chefs and we were asked a lot of good questions. They seemed to enjoy our photos and learning about our story. Here's hoping it was a successful day for sales in the future”.
5 September 2018:
“Another successful day. Ted [D’artagnan] managed to secure a couple of orders and also enlisted a new client with multiple restaurants who he has had on his radar for some time. Not sure that it had anything to do with us though! They loved the venison and we were fortunate enough that a couple of the chefs cooked it for us. Both of whom I believe may have ordered or who plan to shortly”.
6 September 2018:
“We have just finished our time in DC and it has been an exciting and rewarding experience. What I feel we have learned, however, is the importance of sitting down with each client, preferably at a table and having the opportunity to have an engaged conversation between all parties, rather than a sales pitch in their kitchen or office space.
Secondly, and more crucially, the importance of the chef cooking and eating a sample while we were sitting in front of them… the feeling we got after walking away from meetings, and then to see their expression when they were able to cook and eat the sample of meat, completed the whole picture that we were presenting.
“We received some great feedback over the last couple of days from each meeting and have some interesting questions and ideas to relay back to both D'artagnan and Mountain River. It was a privilege to see chef's of such high calibre, get genuinely excited about our product and to listen to their ideas of how they intend to portray it on their Autumn menus. It's been a very long but rewarding couple of days”.
7 September 2018:
This update is a bit shorter than the last one, but the main point was:
“Chicago is a very big city. The reps here have been really friendly and we’ve had some great feedback from chefs that will hopefully turn into sales. Most chefs are keen to use Mountain River fresh venison!”
That’s what we like to hear!