Loggi Fine Foods: At a Brand Equity and Expansion Crossroad Matt Loggi and his sister Anne were destined to be entrepreneurs. Their father, mother and grandmother were entrepreneurs - each owning and operating retail businesses to support their creative talents. Their mother, a talented chef, started a line of specialty foods in 1990. Then, in 1998, the family opened up a mid-size specialty grocery store in Toronto. With a passion for food and retail and a strong head for business the brother and sister team followed in their mother's footsteps into the family business. Five years ago, when their mother retired, they took over the reins at Loggi Fine Foods with Matt taking on the role of President and Anne as CEO. Matt manages the product development, design and manufacturing of the Loggi-branded specialty food products (currently sold in over 100 specialty food retailers across North America through their wholesale business), while Anne manages the retail operations for the Loggi Fine Foods retail store, located in downtown Toronto (8000 square feet and employs over 50 people). The Loggi Fine Foods brand plays a dual role of both retailer brand and manufacturer brand. The retail brand is known for its exceptional customer service while the packaged foods are known for its high quality ingredients and sophisticated packaging. The Loggi-branded products include gourmet-healthy spreads, crackers, soups and snacks. The retail store carries the full selection of Loggi-branded products as well as several hundred different specialty brands. Their store focuses on fresh foods including fruits, vegetables, meats, fish and a wide selection of take- away items for healthy and quick meals. Their packaged goods are all organic, healthy or specialty in nature. They try to stay away from national brands that can be found in the mass market since they can't compete on price. Although they have recently began competing with Loblaws, due to its new higher end positioning (organic produce, fine baked goods, cheese wall, butcher etc.), they have traditionally competed with stores such as Pusateri's, Whole Foods and other high-end specialty food retailers. It is currently end of September 2022. With the recent explosion of "foodie" trends, online food reviewing, and a growing focus on healthy and organic eating, the specialty food store experienced its highest ever sales and profit figures in 2021. With this influx of cash, Anne invested into store renovations and she secured two celebrity chefs to do promotional events at the store in February of 2022. Hiring celebrity chefs was expensive but she figured the publicity they received was worth the investment: they received coverage in the Lifestyle section of a major newspaper and an interview on CityTV. Matt, as head of product development, design and manufacturing, invested some of the 2021 profits into introducing several new flavours within the cracker and snack line. He also recently collaborated with a celebrity chef to build a new brand extension of co-branded gourmet pickles and relishes. This new food line will launch in Fall 2022. There are several ways that Loggi Fine Foods gathers feedback from their customers. They have a "suggestion box" in every store, feedback section on their website and an annual feedback survey to customers in their database (about 2000 names). The Marketing Manager compiles all the feedback and summarizes it in an annual Customer Feedback Report. This year, the report included 50 comments from the suggestion box, 339 website requests and a 7% response rate from the annual feedback survey. Anne and Matt just received the latest copy of the report on their desks.