Verde Farms is on a mission to expand its market share in the better-for-you beef category.
The brand has refreshed its packaging, increased its investments in digital marketing campaigns and expanded its retail distribution, all within the past few years, according to Kirstyn Lipson, senior director of marketing at Verde Farms.
The beef brand launched in 2005 and was primarily a private-label brand manufacturer for organic, grass-fed beef products including ground beef, steaks and fillets. Five years ago, Verde noticed that the consumer demand for organic, better-for-you products that had disrupted the milk and eggs categories was now migrating to the beef section of a consumer’s plate.
And the brand knew it had potential to capture those shoppers’ interests and dollars. Its beef is:
- Organic
- Grass-fed
- Free range/pasture raised
- Regeneratively-farmed
- Humanely-raised
- No antibiotics or added hormones
Verde Farms decided to shift its strategy from private label to sell more of its own branded product. This enables the brand to increase its product margin and allows it to control its brand story.
Market Research Drives Marketing Decisions
After ramping up selling direct-to-consumer, Verde Farms started marketing directly to shoppers. It conducted consumer research to discover what was important to shoppers when purchasing beef and to have that information lead its messaging. The brand discovered that consumers wanted their whole plates to be organic and to have a more emotional connection with their food.
In April 2023, it debuted its first-ever campaign for its brand, “Beef From a Better Place.” Verde Farms updated its package to be more joyful to tap into shopper’s emotions, Lipson said. The new package has bright colors and non-standard font, a departure from its previous packaging, which had dark browns and dark greens and had more for a rustic cabin vibe, Lipson said.
This has helped make its product pop on the shelf, as beef products aren’t heavily branded right now, she said.
Verde Farms Touts Organic for Growth
Now, Verde Farms is in the next iteration of this overall campaign. Instead of focusing on the “place” the beef is from (sourced from Uruguay), Verde Farms discovered that the top priority for better-for-you beef shoppers is if the product is organic. So in January, the company debuted its new packaging with the word “organic” more prominently displayed and the USDA certified organic seal bigger than it has in the past.
“Organic is the No. 1 attribute that consumers under the age of 45 look for. And adding organic to grass fed has an additional 27% incrementality when looking at shoppers’ priorities,” Lipson said. Focusing on its organic product in its marketing message will be top driver of future growth.
Educating Consumers Drives Category Growth
The brand also added “non-GMO” to its packaging, which the research also indicated was another top priority for shoppers. The brand’s products are non-GMO, but this was previously not displayed on its packaging. Understanding this “hierarchy of claims” is important for the brand as it wants to quickly educate shoppers at the store.
Customers and retail wholesalers have responded positively to the new packaging, although Lipson declined to share any early results from the relaunch. It did launch its product in Publix grocery stores within this timeframe, and “they have been having trouble keeping it on their shelves, so it’s doing very well,” she said.
Verde Farms also has a QR code on its packaging for shoppers to scan and learn more about its claims. Retailers suggested the QR code to Verde Farms as a way to educate consumers before the purchase. For brands that are not well known, the package is a way to educate the consumer and to go deeper into some of its claims, such as regenerative farming, that are lesser known.
What’s more, as the brand educates consumers about the benefits of better-for-you beef, that instills trust in consumers about these claims and has a “halo effect” for its private label products, Lipson said.
Speaking Directly to Consumers With Marketing
Beyond its packaging, Verde Farms now runs marketing campaigns with retailers where it sells its branded products, such as on Amazon, Target and Instacart. It purchases banner ads and offers coupons with engaging copy and graphics, and it also hired an agency to handle media relations.
It’s return on ad spend in channels such as Amazon and Target is about $7-$15 for every dollar it puts in, Lipson said. She is pleased with these results. Other campaigns also exceeded the benchmarks providers outline for the brand, Lipson said, without sharing specifics.
“Since the launch of the brand overhaul two years ago, that really propelled us to some of the highest velocities in the better-for-you beef category. And we’ve stayed there,” Lipson said. “We’ve consistently remained as a velocity leader in the category. So consumers are coming back and buying our product at a higher rate than competitors.”
For grocery and other non-data-centric partners, Verde Farms looks at coupon redemptions and click-through rates as measurements of its success.
Verde Farms Now a Mostly-CPG Brand
These changes have helped grow the brand into a true consumer packaged goods company, in which 70%-80% of its sales are its own brand. This is the inverse of roughly five years ago, when about 80% of its sales were private label and only 20% were for its branded Verde Farms products.“We weren’t really a branded company. We were a company with a branded product that was out there,” Lipson said.
For the rest of 2025, Verde Farms is planning to invest more in social media and experiential initiatives and hired a social media agency in December 2024 to create and execute a plan for that marketing channel.
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