JTM Food Group has been around since the 1960's, but the food production company has thrived through decades of innovation and reinvention. Now the medium-sized business is among the first of its size to embrace a host of social media tools to up its B2B sales.
JTM, located in the city of Harrison, develops and sells a wide variety of food products geared toward larger buyers like schools, the military and restaurants across the country. The company is mostly known for its hamburger and hoagies, buts sells more than 400 menu items in 10 different brand categories including Asian sauces, BBQ, pastas, soups and rolls. In the last year alone, JTM introduced more than 150 new products.
In the past couple of months, JTM has been working to get out the word to potential clients about all those products, and offer a glimpse into the food product process by pairing Web 2.0 tools like blogs, video, Twitter and Facebook with its
website.
"It's part of a larger initiative to do a better job of letting people know what it is we do at JTM," said company Director of Marketing Tom Allen. "We felt as a company we haven’t reached out with our message in a clear way so that people would know what we are all about."
On the web, JTM highlights its three chefs through a video blog called
The Three Amigos where each chef demonstrates recipes geared toward those in the food service industry.
"Clients like schools aren't competitive and they share ideas. If someone sees something on our video blog that they like - for example, Asian sauces - they could send that link all over the place," Allen said.
The company has a separate
JTM Corner blog that focuses on food service news and trends. Supplementing the blogs are a new digital product catalog and a way to directly contact the company for samples.
In the end, the company believes becoming more social will increase sales.
"As we connect with consumers and people in the food service industry who learn more about what we do, we think it will lead to more people picking up the phone and saying 'We're interested in you," Allen said.
Writer: Feoshia Henderson
Source: JTM Food Group Director of Marketing Tom Allen
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