Chef's Basket ups the ante at HyperCITY

Chef's Basket, the ready to cook brand from the house of Fizzy Foodlabs Pvt. Ltd. recently rolled out an exciting in-store activation campaign at key HyperCITY outlets in Mumbai and Bengaluru. Executed by SAB Creations, the objective of the campaign was to instigate trial generation by live sampling, communicating to the consumer about a 100 per cent natural product that they can cook with ease.

On the activation at HyperCITY, Kusum Singh, Brand Manager-Trade Marketing of Fizzy Foodlabs shares with P-O-P, "We selected HyperCITY because it is a priority customer for us with a right mix of consumers (aspirational - The Millennials and families). Secondly, the team of HyperCITY is extremely professional, supportive and shared the vision of growing the category by driving activation and sampling, giving the opportunity to a start-up brand Chef's Basket for the same. This is the first time we had worked on major project together and SAB Creations did their best to meet our expectations and we will be working together in future as well.”

Balaji Murugesan, Director of SAB Creations Pvt. Ltd., shares, "Seeing our previous work done at HyperCITY, Fizzy Foodlabs got in touch with us for the re-launch of their pack. The primary objective was to showcase the new pack and also to promote the brand in general. They had also arranged for product sampling during this period and fresh pasta was prepared in the kiosk and then distributed to shoppers inside the store. It took us about two weeks to design, iterate, manufacture and execute. It was an uphill task to complete this as per the deadline. We did multi-material fabrication and thus, these displays were made with a wide range for materials and processes, like FRP, MDF, Acrylic, Metal etc.”

The agency faced many challenges while executing the activity. Balaji informs, "This kind of activity is always a major challenge for everyone involved. This is more so due to the size of this unit, which makes transportation and deployment an extremely difficult exercise. These units were installed overnight by a team of over 30 people and thus special considerations for health and safety need to be addressed. The biggest challenge in this activation was creation of the Bandra Worli Sea Link. The brand wanted to showcase monuments made completely of pasta, thus, creating a visual connect between the product and a famous landmark. Like, the outside pillar had the "leaning tower of (pisa) pasta” placed over a pack, highlighting the Italian origins of pasta. Taking this idea forward, the canopy mock display had a rendition of the "Bandra Worli Sea link” being constructed by pasta falling out of packs kept on either side of the bridge. This was created to connote that the pasta (a traditional Italian main course) is now available here in India. This bridge also served as a reminder that pasta has now become a common food here and that can consumed by everyone.It required the involvement of everyone in the team to make it happen and proved to be an uphill task from day one. Connecting these elements is huge logistical challenge. Since these units are huge, they required multiple vehicles to move goods to the store that too at night.”

On the impact of the activation, Singh mentions, "We sold 30,000 units of pasta from just three stores of HyperCITY in October, which is a historic number for HyperCITY as well. The repeat rate is almost 35 percent in a month's time from modern trade and it is even higher from e-commerce. We are already present in Mumbai, Pune, Delhi-NCR, Bangalore, Ahmedabad, Surat, Baroda, Chandigarh, Ludhiana and are expanding 60 percent quarter-on-quarter. We have a team dedicated on trade marketing and tertiary activation in each Bangalore, Delhi and Mumbai that is capable of executing the activation in these three respective regions.”

Additionally, they have a SWAT Team that comprises of 4 members who have expertise in their respective domains of capability building and training, merchandising excellence, Spartan Sales Execution and Trade Marketing. This team travels from city to city to fix the issues on systemic level having an outside-in perspective and strengthen the local team for executional excellence on all fronts.
 
Going ahead, Chef's Basket will soon be introducing the 'Noodles Range' post-diwali.

"We're doing close to Rs 1.2 crore revenue a month (in MRP terms, it is almost 1.9 crore). All of this is mainly from three SKUs. The Noodles range will add another Rs 3 crore in 4-6 months. So a topline of Rs 5 crore per month by March-April is our target. Apart from this, there are three more parallel categories on which we're working on, which would be commercialised by February”, signs off Singh.