3. ClientSummary
Sweet Heat Gourmet is a locally owned business by Shellie Mierwald. Her slogan
is “Meet Your Farmers” because all of her sauces are made from local ingredients
from local farmers. Shellie has won numerous awards for her sauces including
the most recent, Best Hot Sauce by the State College Magazine in their 2015 Best
of State College article.
4. Needs
● Increase Shellie’s understanding of Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram
● Make a list of places we could sell her sauces out of
● Write a press release and pitch letters to the media to promote charity hot sauce
● Research competitors
● Create a media kit that she can take with her to festivals
5. TargetAudience
Family owned and operated business
Targets adults in the State College area
As well as “Chilli Heads” all over the country with her online sales
6. Strengths
● High quality product
● Satisfied customers
● Actively attending hot sauce competitions around the country
● Has won about five first & second place prizes for various hot sauces
● Popular in remote locations around the Northeast / Midwest
● Promotes that Sweet Heat only uses fresh
ingredients from local farmers
● Partnered with the Future Farmers of America to
make a hot sauce with 100% of the sales benefitting
charity
7. Weaknesses
● Unknown in State College and surrounding area
● Not sold in popular stores in State College (aka no retail location) so customers
could only get sauces through shipping
● Shipping was almost the same price as one bottle of sauce ($6.50 for a bottle, $6
shipping)
● Active Facebook page, but Twitter, Instagram, and Pinterest sites were lacking
relevant engagement
● Wasn’t very willing to improve the less popular social media accounts
● Away from State College often for sauce competitions, so it was difficult to follow
through on ways to make Sweet Heat’s presence in the community more
prevalent
8. Opportunities
● The owner of Sweet Heat is friends with many other small business owners and
could partner with them for some promotions
● Creating quick “How To” videos for recipes to go with her hot sauces would
engage more Facebook users
● Having samples/taste tests locally
● Promoting Sweet Heat’s gift box BBQ and Hot Sauce sets during the
Thanksgiving and Christmas holiday seasons
● Local Farmers Markets available during the fall months to sell at. Students
frequent these places often and enjoy buying fresh/local
● Promoting sauces to a new demographic (students) in the local area
10. Threats
● There is another local Hot Sauce/BBQ maker who sells his products at the
Downtown Farmers’ Market on Tuesdays
● During the winter months, State College Farmers’ Market relocates to an indoor
building on Atherton Street which many students do not drive to
● Buzzfeed Foods has very professional/high quality videos. If Sweet Heat doesn’t
match their tutorial videos to that level of quality, they might be ignored by
Facebook users
● If people see Sweet Heat’s Twitter, Instagram, or Pinterest accounts, a potential
customer might not take the company seriously because not all their posts are
relevant, recent, or interactive
11. SWOTAnalysisofFacebook
Strengths:
❏ Relatively consistent posting
❏ Share frequent updates and achievements
❏ Promote local events and the community
❏ Interaction with customers
Weakness:
❏ Profile picture is unidentifiable
❏ Much of the content is the profile picture
changing
❏ Relatively low engagement (but improving)
❏ No posts with site links or information on
how to buy
Opportunities:
❏ Share content relevant to brand values
❏ Incorporate more links to site and where
to buy
❏ Create profile picture incorporating
brand logo to make it instantly
recognizable
Threats:
❏ Relatively low engagement
❏ Low incentive to follow
❏ Content not relatable to audience outside of
State College
12. SWOTAnalysisofTwitter
Strengths:
❏ Utilize image posting
❏ Interacting with fans
❏ Sharing achievements
❏ Sharing event information/updates
Weakness:
❏ Infrequent posting (less than Facebook)
❏ Reposts from brand advocates too often
❏ No links to site
❏ No information on how to buy them
Opportunities:
❏ Continuous link sharing could increase
online sales
❏ Ability to share multiple images and/or
videos already utilized on other
platforms
❏ Very vocal brand advocates
Threats:
❏ Hardest platform to break through the
clutter
❏ Consistent content is absolutely
necessary to stay relevant
13. SWOTAnalysisofInstagram
Strengths:
❏ Most posts get more than 20 likes
❏ Product & food posts do particularly well
❏ Use of hashtags
❏ Promotional pictures are relatively good
quality
Opportunities:
❏ Completely separate personal and
brand accounts to avoid confusion
❏ Promote account more often and
include icon on website
❏ Take advantage of platform’s
popularity
❏ Craft vibrant visuals
Weakness:
❏ Managed as her personal profile as well
as Sweet Heat’s
❏ Could make better use of food popularity
❏ No social icon for Instagram on their
website
Threats:
❏ Stiff competition with food images
❏ Potential to lose followers due to personal
use
14. ListofPotentialPartners
We found over 50 different local stores/restaurants that Sweet Heat could potentially
sell its various products at. As well as places where Sweet Heat could sell its charity
hot sauce.
15. SweetHeatandFFA
❏This semester sweet heat gourmet was working with the FFA, Future Farmers of
America, and State College High School to create a charity hot sauce
❏We wrote a press release to generate news for the charity hot sauce, but also to
promote Shellie’s brand
❏We all crafted the media list in order to find suitable places to send our press
release to
❏We researched an array of various media outlets around the Centre County
region
❏We collected a list of newspapers, magazines and online publications that
targeted various age groups in the area
18. EndResults
As a result of our media pitch, we heard back from Spoon University. We were able to
create an event with them where Spoon University wrote a promotional article
beforehand; the event was held at Herwig’s Austrian Bistro and was a tasting of
Sweet Heat’s charity Peachy Sweet & Raspberry Heat Hot Sauce.
19. MediaKit
❏The purpose of the created media kit was to create an overview of Sweet Heat
Gourmet and its owner, Shellie, by summarizing her story, her business, her
accomplishments and her achievements
❏The media kit will serve as a promotional tool for Shellie to distribute to
businesses and consumers at farmer’s markets, competitions, exhibitions, and
more. It will provide people with a keepsake to increase knowledge, awareness
and recollection of Sweet Heat Gourmet
❏Our Media Kit Includes:
❏ Simple Backgrounder
❏ Bio about Shellie
❏ Fact Sheet
❏ Press Release
❏ List of Awards
