How To Get Chateau Dumplings In Your Local Market

We get two questions almost daily on the Chateau Dumplings email. One is “Where are your liver dumplings?” We recently addressed this in a blog post that you can read here. The second question we get is “How do I get dumplings where I live?” This can be a slightly complicated question to answer, so we thought it would be easier to address it in an article than answering individual social media comments. The process of bringing a product to market is also quite interesting.

Our family took over the dumpling business close to five years ago. We are the fourth generation of family members to own this nearly century old business. In the last five years, we have grown the business to 16 states and thousands of retailers nationwide.

We have worked very hard to get the dumplings to these states. We most recently launched into ALL Gordon Food Service Stores Nationwide, yes even in Florida! If you aren’t familiar with Gordon Food Service Stores they are sort of a mini warehouse type store that you do not need a membership to, anyone can shop there. They sell a lot of bulk items but our dumplings are sold in single boxes. They look like this.

You have probably seen these stores in your area and never thought to go in. In addition to the dumplings they have lots of great food and some awesome items if you’re having a party. To find other retail locations near you, you can click our store finder here, enter your zip code, adjust the distance in miles you are willing to drive and a list of stores near you will pop up. If you do not find a store location near you, we also ship anywhere in the continental United States. We ship our dumplings out twice a week, and they usually arrive in one to two days, depending on which day of the week you order. They ship frozen, with dry ice and shipping is included in the price. You can order a 6 pack or 12 pack and you can mix and match the quantities of bread, potato and soup dumplings. You can order the dumplings by clicking here.

We continue to work on expanding the brand across the country and maybe one day to Canada, but there are a couple of things we learned when we took over the business that many people do not know so we thought we would share:

1. There is a lot of competition in grocery retail for shelf space in a store. ESPECIALLY in the frozen food section, as there is limited space. As a food manufacturer you are competing with millions of other brands to get a spot on that shelf and it often costs us tens of thousands of dollars to secure that space.
2. Grocery stores operate on something called planograms that stipulate where items go in the different departments. They only do whats called “resets” once a year for the frozen food section of the store. In order to get on that plan-o-gram, you have to work to find out when that retailer is doing a review, get a meeting, present your products and wait for them to reach out. A lot of times they don’t, and when they do you have to pay to get into a distributor, pay the stores and often have enough product in hand to IMMEDIATELY send thousands of cases to the warehouse. For a brand that still makes all their products by hand, we have to be very strategic when we approach stores about placing our products to make sure we can fulfill the order at a moments notice.

These are the main reasons we slowly expand to just a few new markets each year. We know that everyone wants our dumplings and we are so grateful to know that we are a fan favorite. Something that makes it easier for us to get into stores is by having customers request our products instead of us reaching out. Here is how YOU can help.

1. We are now in most national distributors across the country including KEHE. KEHE is a major distributor that services almost every retailer. If your store doesn’t have our products, you can tell your store manager either in person or in an email that you want to see Chateau in your store and you can even let them know we have distribution with KEHE amongst others. To make it easier, we have links to our “sell sheets” that you can find by clicking here.
2. Sell sheets have the information store managers and frozen food buyers (the people who decide what goes in the stores) need to have on hand to search our products to be able to order to place them in stores.
3. You can also ask stores who their frozen food buyers are and email them this information.

Stores want to have what customers want, so a customer asking always leverages more action when it comes to getting the products in the store, then us trying to get a meeting and get the products on the shelf.

That is the long and short of it! We continue to strive to get Chateau Dumplings in EVERY store in America and we slowly but surely are making headway. We would love your help. In the meantime be sure to order online for all your dumpling needs and also be sure to check out our recipe section for weekly recipe updates!

Thank you for supporting Chateau Dumplings!

 

Be Sure To Look For Our New Soup Dumpling Packaging (formerly known as Mini Dumplings)