Entrepreneurs are loving the availability of crowdfunding today. There are very few industries that are really off-limits to this method of raising capital. It is common to see campaigns running for new technologies, board games, music, and educational products. Many projects fail without anyone ever hearing about them.
One of the fastest growing industries on Kickstarter today isn’t in a field one might expect. It’s the food industry. These three exciting ideas were recently funded on the site and became part of the 40% that get to see the money that they raised. If you’re hungry, try out one of these snacks to cure the hunger pains.
1. The Green Pea Cookie
With 5 months of development time on the recipe, three cookie lovers came up with an amazing concept that you’ve literally got to taste to believe. The Green Pea Cookie is made from crumbled green peas that have been roasted. The roasting gives the pea a sweet flavor that has a bit of a savory tang to it. These cookies are gluten-free, vegan compliant, and you can eat 6 of them before you hit the 100 calorie mark.
To be fair, the Green Pea Cookie isn’t new to the global stage. CEO Sean Tan brought the cookies over from his native Singapore on a trip to California and couldn’t believe how fast his co-workers would eat the treat. He decided that there was a lot of potential in creating a commercially viable version of the treat and teamed up with a pair of partners to help get the recipe just right. They met their goal in just 7 hours.
2. PMS Bites
“It’s that time of the month.” Those six words bring a shudder to the average man. There are mood swings, food cravings, and up to a week of general uneasiness. To make this monthly event become a little easier to handle, CEO Tania Green wanted to create a product that women could eat without feeling guilty about the calories.
Of course there is chocolate in the PMS Bites. There’s also a number of herbs and organic, vegan compliant ingredients that are known to reduce the effects of cramping and bloating. They’re also gluten-free and come in pecan and coconut flavors if chocolate isn’t the flavor of the day. Best of all, men like eating PMS Bites too. They met their Kickstarter goal in just 15 hours.
3. Savory Harvest
Like many other successful Kickstarter campaigns, Savory Harvest began as an educational project. Instead of dealing with the snack bars that are packed with short-term energy components like sugar, co-founders Tom Senters and Lisa Murray looked to create a 100% unique snack bar that tasted great, but was packed full of healthy ingredients.
What will you find in these snack bars? Kale, sun-dried tomatoes, almonds, spinace, and peppers. There are three initial flavors that have been proposed for the Savory Harvest bars: Sriracha, Italian, and Barbecue. Senters and Murray spent a full year testing their product out before deciding to tuurn the educational project into something a little more real.
The results speak for themselves. It took them just a few days to reach their goal of raising $10,000. Best of all, these snack bars provide real energy without having any sweetness added to them whatsoever.
What Are the Lessons To Be Learned?
There are three lessons that can be learned from these 3 successful Kickstarter Campaigns.
1. Test the product thoroughly.
All three campaigns knew they were onto something based on how people reacted to their product.
2. Take time to develop it.
Each project spent multiple months perfecting the recipes that they would later introduce to the public. This is R&D time and it costs money without a guarantee for return, but an undeveloped idea has a much higher risk of Kickstarter failure than a fully developed idea.
3. They built a reputation.
Through the successful testing of their products, each campaign built a local reputation of success that made backers want to get involved. Once success was achieved for funding, then even more people wanted to get involved.
Crowdfunding might seem like a shortcut to the land of capital, but there are no shortcuts in business. To taste sweet Kickstarter success, follow the steps that these successful campaigns followed. If you do, then it may just be the wonderful scent of money that will be headed your way.
Strong proponent of individual liberty and free speech. My goal is to present information that expands our awareness of crucial issues and exposes the manufactured illusion of freedom that we are sold in America. Question everything because nothing is what it seems.
