The Hustle - 📈 Opportunities in the future of meat

Happy Trends Tuesday!

Today we’ve got:

• 1 trend alert

• 1 piece of operator wisdom

• 1 lesson from failure

Let's get to it.

🚨 TREND ALERT

The day that Rudy’s Vegan Butcher opened in London, there were queues around the block for hours. They received 100 online orders in the first 10 minutes and were sold out by the end of the day.

Now there are vegan butchers in New York, Los Angeles, the Bay Area, Toronto, and Victoria, Canada.

The appeal is in the fresher products (vs the plant-based section of a grocery store), variety, and a boutique shopping experience.

Some ways to capitalize on this trend:

• The obvious: There are still plenty of cities and neighborhoods without a vegan butcher, so there’s ample opportunity to start one near you.
  
  
• Go upmarket: Explore other upmarket vegan niches such as vegan cheesemongers, fishmongers, or wine shops.
  
  
• Dining experiences: Explore vegan versions of meat-focused restaurants like steakhouses, sushi restaurants, and fried chicken spots.

🛗 ELEVATOR PITCH TEMPLATES

🧠 OPERATOR WISDOM

The Trends community is always looking for new approaches to lead gen.

One of the more unorthodox strategies we’ve seen recently: an application-only agency, where potential clients have to pitch you to take them on.

Might sound crazy, but agencies like this exist, and they work. Here’s how to put this into action:

1. Position for fit: Many companies use (real or manufactured) scarcity to drive applications (hurry! applications close in 1 hour!). While this can work, it may rub some people the wrong way. Instead, position the application as a tool to make sure you and the potential client are a good fit.
   
   

2. Get specific: It’s important to be clear about the kinds of clients that are and are not a good fit. Let prospects know your preferred:

   • Revenue
   • Industry & company size
   • Tech stack
     
     
3. Creating your application: Short and simple is usually best. Or, go one step further and use a tool like ScoreApp or HubSpot (shameless plug) to create a smart form. Set up calls with the qualified leads while providing other resources to those that don’t make the cut.

🔥 LESSON FROM FAILURE

We all know the stat: 90% of startups fail. That means being an entrepreneur requires overcoming setbacks more often than not.

But we spend a lot of time reading about success stories, and not much learning about the valuable lessons founders take away from failed ventures.

So we’re changing that by having honest conversations with founders who shuttered their startups and collecting all those hard-won pearls of wisdom for you.

Check out this advice-packed post-mortem with the founder of a project management app on The Hustle blog.

P.S. The deadline to apply for the HubSpot for Startups “Million Dollar Pitch” competition is this week, June 9. We'd love to see a Trends reader win the whole thing. See you at INBOUND! 

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