Chapter Two: Creating a North American Halal Brand
At the end of 1998, I was contacted by a leader of the Muslim community in the Toronto area, who asked if I would meet him. I did, and he told me that he had heard that our company was shipping zabiha beef all over the world. He went on to explain that there was a shortage of halal meat for the fast-growing Muslim population in Toronto. For example, at his mosque, a local community member went to a farm on Thursdays and slaughtered a cow and some chickens for all the members to share. That member would set up a small storefront near the mosque, put up a sign, “Ahmed’s Halal,” and after prayers on Fridays sold the fresh meat that he had slaughtered the day before.
The community, the imam explained, needed a reliable source of prepared halal products, like beef burgers for example. I explained to him that we did not make products like these, but rather we sold the beef to others, who then mixed our beef with other beef to make burgers, etc. After he explained to me the need in the community, he introduced me to some of the other imams in Toronto, who reiterated the need for such products. I decided to purchase a small machine to make halal burgers, and we made some frozen burgers and boxed them under the name “Canada’s Finest Halal.”
We decided to start selling them through halal grocers in the Toronto area. The imam took me to visit these small stores, and the store owners all said the same thing: they would love to sell these burgers in their stores, but they had no freezers. They only had refrigerators, which they used to store the meat that they slaughtered on Thursday to sell on Friday. They said they would put the burgers in their refrigerators and sell them out of there. When we left the store I said to the imam: “One cannot store ground beef burgers in a refrigerator. That would be a recipe to make your congregants sick!”
He said, “David, you are absolutely right. What we need to do is to sell these burgers at the Food Basics.”
Food Basics was the low-price supermarket chain owned by the A & P Group of Canada. The imam said there was a Food Basics very close to his mosque. He asked me to go to see Food Basics to find out if they would carry the products in their freezers. I had never done business with A & P before because we did not do business at that time with supermarkets. I cold-called the A & P buyer who took care of buying for the frozen meat section and set up a meeting with him. At the meeting I told the A & P buyer about halal – he had never heard the word. I explained to him, “Just as you carry kosher items to attract Jewish consumers, so too, if you carry halal items, you will attract Muslim consumers.”
The A & P buyer responded, “I am willing to do a trial of the halal burgers in twelve stores of your choosing. However, my stores’ freezers are full. In order to put your product into these twelve stores, I will have to remove something else to make room for your halal burgers. I will remove the slowest selling item from the freezers of these twelve stores, and I will give you twelve weeks. If after the end of the twelve weeks, your products are selling at least as much as the slowest selling item that I removed, then I will keep your burgers in the stores. If at the end of twelve weeks, the products are not selling as much as the removed item had been selling, then I will ask you to pick up the remaining product and the trial will be over.”
Then he mentioned one last thing: “In order to do this trial in these twelve stores, there is quite a bit of work to do at the store end. We have to enter the products into our system, make sure they scan at the register, get them into our inventory system, remove the other products, and stock your products onto the shelves. In order to do all that, there is a non-refundable slotting fee of $25,000.” Whether the product succeeded or failed after the twelve weeks, the supermarket chain would keep the slotting fee for their trouble!
Not expecting this, I stumbled over my words and I told the buyer I would get back to him. I left the meeting and called the imam. I told him, “Imam, you are not going to believe this. He wants $25,000 to try the burgers in his stores.”
The imam said, “David, I want you to make another meeting with the A & P buyer, and this time, I want to come with you.” So I did just that. I called the buyer and booked another meeting.
The next week I went to the A & P headquarters again, this time with the imam. He came in wearing full Islamic garb. He also brought a map with him that the two of us had prepared together. It was a map of the Greater Toronto Area (GTA). On the map were twelve green pins which were the locations of the twelve largest mosques in the GTA and twelve red pins representing the twelve Food Basics nearest those mosques.
As we were walking in, the imam said, “David, this time let me do the talking.”
We walked in to the A & P buyer’s office, sat down, and the imam began speaking. He said, “Good morning Mr. A & P.” (He called him Mr. A & P throughout the meeting.) “At my mosque on Friday afternoons, we have three thousand people attending the prayers. These people only eat halal food. Your Food Basics is right down the block from our mosque. My people do not shop at the Food Basics because you do not have any halal food. My proposal is this: if you carry David’s burgers (he called them David’s burgers throughout the meeting) in your store near my mosque, I will make an announcement after the prayers telling my congregants that Food Basics now carries halal products, and I will encourage the congregants to go to Food Basics to buy those burgers. Now, when these people go to the Food Basics to buy the burgers, they are not going to walk in to buy just the burgers and leave. No, they will buy fruits and vegetables and milk and everything else they need. So for you, it is not merely the profit on a box of burgers that you will gain. You will gain the profit on a full grocery cart of a whole new shopper who has never been in your store before.”
The imam continued, “And if you put David’s burgers in all twelve of these stores, I will arrange with the other eleven imams to also announce after their prayers that their nearby Food Basics now carries halal products, and all those people will become new shoppers for you as well.”
Then the imam concluded, “But Mr. A & P, please drop the demand for the $25,000 fee, because otherwise, this project will never get off the ground.”
“Mr. A & P” responded: “You know, every year in North America, fourteen thousand new frozen food products are developed, and the developers of each one want their products to be on our shelves. But no one has ever come to me and said that just because you put my products on your shelves, I will bring you a whole new shopper who has never been in your store before. And that is a very powerful thing to say to a supermarket executive. Therefore, I will give you the twelve-week trial in these twelve stores without charging you any fee.”
The imam and I left and did the biggest high five of our lives. We were ecstatic!
The beef burgers came eight in a box, and there were twelve boxes in one master case. Each of the twelve stores ordered three cases for the initial trial, so each store had thirty-six individual boxes for sale.
We had a meeting of the twelve imams and they all agreed to participate. We printed up twelve maps, one for each mosque, showing where the mosque was and how to get to the Food Basics from there. We printed thousands of small copies, 4.25 inches by 5.5 inches. And that Friday, the imams all announced after prayers that the halal burgers were now at the Food Basics. I could not be at all twelve mosques at the same time, but I did attend one of them.
I do not know how many of the three thousand congregants went to the Food Basics after the prayers, but I can tell you this: all twelve Food Basics sold out of the burgers on that day!
That is when I realized that I was on to something.
