By Darla Martin Tucker

The La Sierra University School of Business is helping a Riverside wholesale food producer’s new venture take aim at Hispanic grocery stores.

Mark H. Sterner, president of legume ingredients company Inland Empire Foods, is testing the waters for a new business called Alimentos Interiores de Imperio. The venture bears the Spanish version of the wholesale company’s name.

With the business school’s assistance, Sterner is plotting his first foray into the retail industry selling Alimentos Interiores de Imperio’s instant bean soups in Hispanic retail markets.

Inland Empire Foods sells bulk legume products to Knorr, Best Foods, Rosarita and other national companies. The 23-year-old manufacturer is also supplying ingredients for the startup’s bean soups of which there are currently three flavors -- Sopa Charro or cowboy bean soup, Tarasca or tortilla bean soup, and Borracho or drunken bean soup. Sterner wants to take on the Hispanic retail soup niche, a market currently dominated by one player, Ramen, he said.

Sterner is deciding next steps for the new business following marketing and packaging advice from business school professors and students, and tests of the Sopa Charro soup that produced favorable results. “They did a good job. It was quite informative,” he said. “We’re potentially looking at a business plan aimed at the marketing of the product.”

“This analysis was to get a feel for the product and its acceptability within the mixed group at the university. It gives us some level of comfort to delve deeper …and an idea of what we need to do if we proceed to other phases,” Sterner said.

The new company is planning additional taste tests with Mexican grocery stores in the Los Angeles basin and possibly a closed test of the product and label through La Sierra’s business school, said David Macias, marketing director for Alimentos Interiores de Imperio. Macias is also sales director for Inland Empire Foods.

Neysa Erlandson, a 1993 La Sierra business school graduate and Sterner’s daughter, serves as finance director for Alimentos Interiores de Imperio.

Business school marketing Professor Elias Rizkallah provided the new venture with market entry strategies, suggesting it aim first at Hispanic food retailers and gain shelf space by offering stores higher profit margins for a period of time. The school also suggested a co-branding strategy of selling the packaged soups at certain restaurants to build name recognition with consumers. “The strategy is tailored to the resources of the company,” Rizkallah said.

The business school’s students helped create a taste test questionnaire and participated in a preliminary, 12-participant product test in early April. The company held a large-scale trial of the Sopa Charrro soup on April 21 involving 131 students and staff from the business school. The students received business colloquium credit for participating in the survey.

Company leaders set up a canopy and cooking station near a patio outside the business school. Participants sampled the soup and filled out yellow questionnaires. Tasters indicated on a scale of 1 to 5, their respective dislike or like of the soup’s appearance, taste, smell and texture. They were asked to rate its “chili heat,” or spiciness – was it too hot, a little too hot, just right, or not hot enough? Participants were also asked their ethnicity and gender, whether they would purchase the soup and how much they might be willing to pay.

“Just add hot water and in five minutes you have soup,” company Marketing Director Macias said as he stirred a pot of steaming, dark brown Sopa Charro and handed cups of the soup to students. The soup name derives from charro, a broth left over from cooked beans and commonly served in Hispanic households for its nutritional value. “As a kid, I grew up eating charro,” Macias said.

“It’s very thick, kinda’ spicy. I like more mild things,” said marketing sophomore Aline Ueno, sampling soup at a round patio table with several other students. “But it’s very good with chips.”

“The Mexican cheese really works with the soup. I think it’s awesome,” said Helder Costa, a freshman business major.

In the days following the taste test, under Rizkallah’s supervision two students entered survey data into a computer and ran frequency analytics and cross-tabulations using social sciences software from predictive analytics software company SPSS Inc. in Chicago, Ill. “The results were really positive,” Rizkallah said. Of respondents, 45% indicated they liked the soup “a lot” and 38% checked the survey box titled “Like a little.”

Of the 131 survey participants, 37, or 28.5% were Hispanic, 23.8% were Asian, 23.8% were Caucasian, 10% were African-American and 13.8% described themselves as “other.” According to computer analysis, Hispanic respondents indicated “they like it a lot more than Caucasians or any other [ethnic group],” Rizkallah said. Additionally, more females than males liked the Sopa Charro and the majority of females were willing to pay $1.99 for the product, a higher price than most males were willing to shell out, he said.

“We cross-tabulated everything. There were a lot of interesting results,” Rizkallah said.

The school did not charge Sterner’s company for its work. However a fee may be negotiated to compensate students for their time if the company requests more detailed testing and analysis, business plan development or other activities, Rizkallah said.

The business school sometimes undertakes marketing projects for local organizations and businesses for nominal fees. Between April and June last year, the school and its students performed a marketing analysis for the Riverside County Philharmonic that ultimately involved 664 respondents. The philharmonic paid the school with a $25,000 grant. Currently the school is developing a proposal for a local company offering market feasibility studies for a fee, Rizkallah said. “It will be an effort on the part of the students and we’re trying to compensate the students,” he said.

PR Contact: Larry Becker
Executive Director of University Relations
La Sierra University
Riverside, California
951.785.2460 (voice)