Why Investing in a Photography Agency Can Transform for Your CPG Business With Four Course Media
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How High Quality Photography Can Uplevel Your Food Business…
Every business owner wants to showcase their products in the best possible light, and never is that more true than when it comes to food! One photograph can mean the difference between a potential customer clicking over to your website or continuing on their endless doom scroll. So how do you capture food photographs that actually grab attention? Enter Four Course Media…
In this episode, I’m joined by owners Laura and Rylee as they share how Four Course Media helps budding food entrepreneurs to leverage high-quality photography and stand out in a hyper-saturated landscape.
We cover everything from why quality photography is so important, to the approach they take with their clients, to knowing when it’s time to invest in a food photography agency, and more!
If you’re a food business owner who’s ready to take things to the next level, then the right photographs can help you do just that!
Plus, Laura and Rylee also talk about how they prioritize self-care as busy entrepreneurs.
Subscribe to the Food Means Business Podcast with Hudson Kitchen founder Djenaba Johnson-Jones to hear the personal stories and “secret ingredients” of abandoning your day job and starting a CPG food business.
In this episode, you’ll learn...
[01:54] What Four Course Media is and why high-quality photography is so important to food businesses
[03:42] The process and packages that are available and knowing when to invest in them
[12:31] Some of the things to look for when hiring a food photography agency
[14:54] Food photography rights and paying for specific usage in ad formats
[17:52] How Laura and Rylee prioritize self-care as busy entrepreneurs
If you want to learn more on photography can impact your CPG food business, be sure to tune into this episode:
Links mentioned in this episode…
About Four Course Media:
Four Course Media offers photography, styling, recipe development, social media management, graphic design, and branding consultation services to consumer packaged goods companies all over the world. We thrive on collaborating with brands of all sizes to get you high-quality, custom assets and strategic plans to highlight your products. We offer services focused on photography, but we also create stop motion and 60-second videos. Basically, if you can dream it up, we can make it happen.
Rylee Foer is a Denver-based food photographer and stylist, and recipe developer whose work has been featured on The Kitchn, Sur La Table, Food52, The TODAY Show, and in Time Square. She has spent most of her life in and around commercial kitchens and other hospitality enterprises. Her experience, combined with her innate creative vision, has led Rylee to focus her talents on helping boutique brands shine. Simply put, Rylee thoughtfully develops and tests recipes, ensuring the quality and integrity of the final product, and then captures it beautifully with her camera. When Rylee isn’t in the kitchen or behind the camera, you can find her soaking up the Colorado sunshine in the mountains.
Laura Scherb is a Chicago-based food and beverage product photographer and stylist whose work has been featured on The TODAY Show, Esquire, International Business Times, and Eater. She has worked with clients ranging from multi-million-dollar restaurant chains to small, burgeoning CPG brands to help bring their brands to life. When Laura isn’t behind the camera or editing photos, she’s probably on the couch with her cats, enjoying a glass of natural wine and a good book.
Connect with Four Course Media:
Visit Four Course Media's Website
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Stay Connected with Djenaba Johnson-Jones:
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[00:00:03] Djenaba Johnson-Jones: You were listening to the Food Means Business Podcast, which features the personal stories and secret ingredients behind what it's like to abandon your day job to start a CPG food and beverage business. I'm Djenaba Johnson-Jones, former marketing executive turned entrepreneur and founder of food business incubator Hudson Kitchen. So in our community of fellow food business owners and subject matter experts to learn and laugh with us as we explore a startup world that's a little more culinary and a lot less corporate these days. All right. Laura and Rylee, welcome to the Food Means Business podcast. I'm so happy that you're here. [00:00:35][32.7]
[00:00:36] Laura Scherb: Thank you so much for having us. [00:00:38][1.2]
[00:00:38] Djenaba Johnson-Jones: Absolutely. So before we jump into all the work that you do, I'd love to hear your stories. So typically on this podcast, we talk about our guests. I jump from corporate America to entrepreneurship, so I'd love to hear your stories. [00:00:51][13.2]
[00:00:52] Laura Scherb: Absolutely. So Rylee and I have been doing Four Course Media now for about three years. And prior to that, we both had food blogs. And then prior to that, we both had a little more traditional career structure. So I was working in a consulting firm dealing with disaster recovery and preparedness. And I'll let Rylee share a little bit about what she was doing before we got together. [00:01:14][21.4]
[00:01:14] Rylee Foer: I was working in the social work field for about a year until I was very burnt out. Plus, all the social workers out there, they are a godsend. And then I switched to teaching pre-K to just kind of get my mind right. And that's when I kind of also fell into food blogging photography at the same time. So I was kind of juggling those both at the same time. [00:01:38][23.6]
[00:01:38] Djenaba Johnson-Jones: Wow. So you're a pre-K teacher as well, said that this very special person you are. [00:01:43][5.1]
[00:01:46] Rylee Foer: Yeah, I. I would like to never go back to school. It is hard and teachers are amazing. [00:01:54][7.7]
[00:01:54] Djenaba Johnson-Jones: Yes, they are. They are. Yes. So tell me all about Four Course Media. What do you guys do? [00:01:59][5.0]
[00:02:00] Laura Scherb: When Rylee and I first started chatting and decided that we want to start a business together, we wanted to start a photography agency that focused on the small to medium sized startup businesses of the world. So we knew that Coke and Pepsi were not going to be our target audience here. We really wanted to get involved with the businesses who are just starting to build something really special from the ground up, and we wanted to provide those business owners with really high quality images, gifts and recipes that they could use to really brag about the amazing products that they were creating. Rylee and I are super passionate about food. We've both been obsessed with food since day one, and that's what brought us to be really close friends. And we also are really passionate about entrepreneurship. So just giving these businesses the tools that they need to build something incredible was on our minds from the day that we started Four Course Media. [00:02:53][52.6]
[00:02:54] Djenaba Johnson-Jones: So why is photography important to food businesses? It sounds like an obvious question, but like I never really like good photography. Important because you can take something on your cell phone, but it's really not that great. So tell us all about that. [00:03:05][11.2]
[00:03:06] Laura Scherb: I would say just to start off in a very simple way, if you want to sell your products, you need something that is going to catch the eye of a consumer, whether that's in a grocery store and whether that's a photo on your packaging, which we've done a ton of packaging photography as well, or if that's scrolling through Instagram, social media or whatever it is to just get someone to stop scrolling, be like, that looks enticing. Let me click through to learn more about their product. And I think that's like really where it starts. [00:03:40][34.4]
[00:03:42] Djenaba Johnson-Jones: So can you talk a little about your process, like after you've taken on a client, like how do you work with them? [00:03:46][3.8]
[00:03:47] Laura Scherb: We really focus from day one on learning everything that we can about the brand, the products and their identity. So we have a pretty intensive process where we talk through all sorts of things, from the colors that they use to the target customer that they're trying to focus on. And we do a lot of work to pull together all of that into one sort of guide for us to use as we create assets for the company. Once we sort of gotten on the same page about that, we put together a shortlist and our shortlist is very detailed because a lot of the work that we do for clients is done remotely and that's part of what allows us to keep our costs a little bit lower than our competitors. So our shot list will include everything from the backdrops that we're going to use, the type of lighting the crops of the photos, the destination of the final photos that they're going to basically all of the nitty gritty details to really allow the business owner to get a picture of what we're going to create for them before we even pick up our cameras. And then we have a meeting and we talk through that shot list to make sure that all of our expectations are at the same place. And then Rylee and I take that checklist and make magic in our studios and turnaround assets. We do all of our own post-production work, and that really allows us to export photos so that they can be used across platforms, anywhere that these small business owners can use them or need to use them, which tends to be social media of course, but also websites and sell sheets for retailers. The possibilities are endless here, so we want them to be able to use them in as many places as they can. And from there we hand them over and you can take them and run with them. [00:05:21][94.0]
[00:05:21] Djenaba Johnson-Jones: So the client is sending you the product to your studio or to your home and you're you're creating this experience there. So really, by the time you're to the photo shoot stage, the client has already signed off on the look and feel and everything, so they won't be there when that's happening. That's so weird. Like the control freak in me would want to just be standing there watching you. [00:05:42][20.3]
[00:05:42] Laura Scherb: Yeah. I mean, we're always down to have clients participate remotely. You know, that was one of the benefits of having to go through COVID, is that we are all so equipped to participate digitally and Rylee and I have the technology that allows us to share our screens and show exactly what our camera is seeing. So if people want to participate, you know, they're always welcome to. But it's our hope that the service that we've worked so hard to create is not only pretty foolproof in terms of turning out photos that are exactly what you expect to get, but also that, you know, you trust us enough as a founder who's busy and has a million things on your plate to hand this over and not have to worry about it until you get these gorgeous images and you can decide where to use them. [00:06:24][41.4]
[00:06:24] Djenaba Johnson-Jones: That's true. So talk a little bit about at its most basic level, like what should clients be purchasing for me? Like what should they be getting as far as like a photography packages concerned? [00:06:32][8.0]
[00:06:33] Laura Scherb: Well, I think it really depends on a client's specific needs. So each client is super individual and something Laura and I like to say is please don't pay for something you won't use. And we like to say that the assets that we give you are able to be used in various formats, whether that be cropping or leaving space for them to add text to create ad space. And I think overall, when a client comes to us, they're looking for something that is just going to help put their product on the map a little bit more. And mostly that's photography. But recently that's been a lot of stop motion as well to just keep someone's attention a little bit more. So it really just ranges and depends on the client. [00:07:25][51.7]
[00:07:26] Djenaba Johnson-Jones: So speaking of stop motion, I think it's really great. I always love looking at those videos and I'm wondering like, how long does it take in their production process? I'm just curious. It it, it seems extensive, but. [00:07:36][10.4]
[00:07:37] Laura Scherb: It is, yeah, because the stop motion is taking, you know, a bunch of photos and stitching them together so that you can showcase an action or the product in use so they can be up to 70 or 80 frames, which is a lot of photos to stitch together. And then the final video is somewhere around 3 seconds. So we always tell people, you know, like, let's think about the actions that we actually want to convey and include in these and see if we can pair it down a little bit because it can turn into a whole morning spent on one asset that's going to be 3 seconds. Yeah. And also we only have someone's attention for so long before they continue to scroll. So if someone is asking us to create a stop motion that is like a full how to of how their product works, sometimes we would recommend a short form video. In that case, just because that can go quicker, it's a little bit more smooth and people are just more inclined to watch videos longer than they are. A bunch of moving images and that's just the truth. [00:08:40][62.4]
[00:08:40] Djenaba Johnson-Jones: Yeah. So what is. The right time to invest in services like yours. At what stage in business should someone be doing this? [00:08:46][5.9]
[00:08:47] Laura Scherb: Yeah, that's a great question. And that's one that we you know, we always coach our clients through as well. We get on the phone with people who are everywhere from pre launch all the way up to, you know, like launching in a major retailer across the country. And I think the right answer, unfortunately, is that it kind of depends. Right. So there are some people who, you know, before they even launch their business, they have investors and they've raised capital and they know and they have a plan of how this is going to roll out. And for them, of course, it makes sense to invest in assets like photography for a pre launch situation. But there are other people who are going to be bootstrapping this whole operation. And for those clients, I think that Rylee and I would coach them to take a pause and wait, you know, get your business off the ground. As important as we think that photography is, it is not going to make or break what you're doing from day one. So wait until one you have a good idea of exactly what you need. So you're not going to be paying for things that you're not going to use. And two, you have enough of a need that it's worth your while to engage our services. So, you know, photography, you're not going to be the one taking the photos, but you are going to be the one getting on a call with us to talk through a shot list and doing that discovery process. And that's going to take time from you. And it's also going to take a decent amount of product. So when you're ready to invest the time and resources in photography, I think that if you have enough of a need built up, it becomes super worthwhile and you'll be able to make the best use of those assets for the longest amount of time. [00:10:11][84.3]
[00:10:12] Djenaba Johnson-Jones: So I have to imagine you're counseling people out of using you. Sometimes in the beginning, it's just kind of just too early. [00:10:18][6.1]
[00:10:19] Laura Scherb: Yeah, occasionally, you know, we're always willing to talk to people and see where they are and see if it's a good fit. But the reality is we know a ton of people in this industry and not everyone is at a place where they should be investing with us to get quality photography. And a question that we get a lot is for a service like Soona, for example, where the photos tend to be a little bit cheaper and a little bit easier to pay for if you're in that early stage, like if that's what's right for you, we will be the first people to tell you that, right? Like Soona is not our enemy. In fact, we always tell people like that could be a great compliment to the services that we offer. You know, if you need those just straight up product on a colored piece of paper shots like get this from them and then come to us when you're ready to invest in a service with food stylists, recipe developers, people who really understand how to create a scene as opposed to just that product. Yeah, especially at the beginning. [00:11:16][57.5]
[00:11:17] Djenaba Johnson-Jones: Yeah, I love that. I actually send people away quite a bit actually from our kitchen just because they're not ready. So we give them a resource that they can go to and find, you know, find something that they need first. I think it makes a difference. And I've had people come back a couple of years later when they're ready. And it's just just the fact that you're not trying to just take somebody money just makes the biggest difference in the world with the type of company. It says a lot about who you are as a person. [00:11:37][20.5]
[00:11:38] Laura Scherb: Sure. And you're laying the groundwork for a relationship in the future, which we really pride ourselves on. We just love to build relationships and become extensions of these brands teams. So they will want to continue to work with us, making sure. [00:11:52][14.7]
[00:11:53] Djenaba Johnson-Jones: It's good too, because it helps like people manage their own expectations, because you're because you're you see what your competitors are doing or what this big company is doing. You want to do that thing. And so you want to go pay for the pretty pictures. Well, maybe you need to be making an investment into something else. [00:12:06][12.9]
[00:12:06] Laura Scherb: Yeah. We've also done things like talk classes for founders who know they aren't ready to invest in, you know, paying a photographer on how to capture good content on their iPhones with what they have. And, you know, just little things like that, I think always really help people also to understand the value of the service that you're offering and how it's going to add on to their business and enhance what they're doing as opposed to just feeling like a line item on a budget. [00:12:29][23.2]
[00:12:31] Djenaba Johnson-Jones: Right? So say somebody is ready to retain your services. What should they be looking for when they look for an agency like yours? Just in general, I'm wondering, like as are they kind of evaluating who they should work with? Is there a specific list that that they should think about? [00:12:45][14.4]
[00:12:46] Laura Scherb: Yeah, that's a good question. I think, you know, for us, the most important thing on our end is that we have good communication with you and your team. You know, we always want to be setting expectations up well in advance so that we're not rushing and we're not panicking, trying to get things together. We have an open channel communication and I think that someone that you trust and really get along very seamlessly with is really important as well. Rylee and I always love, like Rylee just said, becoming sort of an extension of your team. So it's important to us that we have those open channels of communication and that you trust us to be the experts to make your business look its best. [00:13:20][34.4]
[00:13:22] Djenaba Johnson-Jones: Yeah, for sure. You guys have worked with a lot of clients. Can you give an example of a CPG client that you've worked with and kind of like what their goals were and possibly the kind of what the outcome was? It was after you created images for them. [00:13:34][12.1]
[00:13:35] Rylee Foer: Sure. I think that when these brands come to us, their biggest goal is how can we increase sales? And we want to be able to help them achieve that by creating these assets that they've imagined to help these brands get into these big retailers. Newsletters drive the DTC sales. When we see our clients using these images, you know, it's sometimes helpful for us to ask feedback because one of the ways we work is on a retainer option or a subscription model. And so sometimes it's helpful for us to ask, how did sales look this month as opposed to the month prior? How did these photos help you get there? So I think that's typically, I would say, the number one drive, especially because something special that Laura and I do is we always include rights in perpetuity for these brands to use our assets across any platform ads, whatever it is, which a lot of photography companies don't do. You have to pay, you know, yearly fees. They're very expensive. So we want our clients to be able to take these assets and use them. So it really will help them drive sales without breaking the bank. [00:14:53][78.1]
[00:14:54] Djenaba Johnson-Jones: Right. Can you talk a little bit about that, about rights? Because I don't think people realize that when you retain a photographer to do photos for you, you may be paying for specific usage versus you being able to own them outright. So is there something that people should be thinking about as they're signing contracts? [00:15:08][14.5]
[00:15:09] Laura Scherb: Yeah, absolutely. I think that those are really important questions to ask as well when you are beginning to search for a photography partner. Another thing that you should you should be asking those questions to any models that you have as well, because there's often usage rights associated with any sort of photography, any sort of model. And, you know, sometimes even brand partners that you have, if you have a couple of brands in one photo, those are all really important things to ask about. And, you know, most often where we find that clients get tripped up on that is when they're paying for usage in ads. Specifically, a lot of photographers or agencies will include clauses that say you have to write up your licenses in order to use those photos, because the ROI on those photos, specifically when you're using them in paid ads, can be so high. And just because we don't do it doesn't mean that it's not right for other photographers. And there are certainly situations in which it makes total sense. But we were just finding that for a lot of our clients who are on the smaller side of their business and, you know, just getting started out, it was just starting to feel like we're like principals hunting people down and writing them traffic tickets. So we wanted to really give them a solution that meant that they didn't have to worry about that until they got bigger and until they found a bigger agency and they were hiring models. And those were things that they had the bandwidth and the money to worry about. But when they're working with us, that's something that is just any use taken off of their shoulders. [00:16:35][86.4]
[00:16:36] Djenaba Johnson-Jones: That's great. Can you talk a little about how you guys work together, since I believe you're in different states? Is that right? [00:16:42][5.2]
[00:16:43] Rylee Foer: Yeah, I'm in Denver and Laura's in Chicago. So at the beginning, for course, what we did was typically split shortlist. So we would have a client send us each the same amount of product. And Laura and I would split the shot list in half. I would typically take anything food forward, recipe development forward, and Laura would take anything product heavy. But you know, going into year three, that was just no longer feasible and it was really bogging down our schedules way more, trying to split each dollar. So now what we do is we own clients and we just own them based off who has more flexibility in their schedule. Maybe a client is more food heavy, maybe a client is more product heavy. So we'll split it that way. But we are always in constant communication. I talk to Laura more than anyone else in my life and we are never not speaking, so we are always on top of it and chatting through shot lists and brand development and all of the nitty gritty of business. [00:17:51][68.0]
[00:17:52] Djenaba Johnson-Jones: That's amazing. So talk a little bit about each of you. Please answer. What do you do for self-care since you know you're busy entrepreneur, you're working remotely. So I don't know. I find when I work remotely, I can, I work longer and I try to do more. So I'm just wondering, like what you guys do to take a break and take care of yourselves. [00:18:08][16.1]
[00:18:10] Rylee Foer: I love that you're asking this question. Yeah, it's. It's kind of a breath of fresh air to hear this question being asked for me, Something I just started implementing. And Laura knows this. I'm like, I will not have my phone on me till pretty much 830 every morning. I'm going to go for a walk without my phone. I don't want to listen to anything. I don't want to hear anything. I just want to be outside, get sunshine in my eyes and get some movement. And that's pretty much my non-negotiable for every day at this point. As well as the occasional sit on the couch at the end of the day and just literally do nothing. [00:18:49][39.1]
[00:18:50] Djenaba Johnson-Jones: Yes. [00:18:50][0.0]
[00:18:51] Laura Scherb: Yeah, absolutely. This is something that Rylee and I have been talking about a lot this year. I think that as as like Rylee mentioned, going into your three, we were just feeling like we have a lot of clients and we're excited about all of them and we want to be able to do our best work for everyone. So how can we make this more realistic and sustainable for us And something that we started implementing at the beginning of the summer that I actually think we're going to continue doing for the foreseeable future is we call it no calls Summer Fridays. So we have every Friday all day blocked off on our calendar. So if you are trying to book a call with us, you will not see any Friday options. And that doesn't mean we're not working on a Friday, but it does just give you that extra space to know that, you know, if you want to take off at noon and go to the beach or if you want to just, you know, like work on a personal photography project for fun, you have that day and you don't have to worry about getting roped into a call. And, you know, it's not exactly a three day weekend every weekend, but it does give us the option to sort of take that extra time. And it has been absolutely incredible. I think we both really love it and that's something that we're going to really try to maintain in the future. [00:20:00][69.0]
[00:20:01] Djenaba Johnson-Jones: I love that as I'm recommending that you do it all year round and not just in the summer. [00:20:05][4.0]
[00:20:06] Laura Scherb: Okay, You heard it here first. [00:20:07][1.0]
[00:20:08] Djenaba Johnson-Jones: We do it every every Friday. So I am working, but there's no calls that you can book with me or talk to me or nobody can come into the kitchen. There's no tours. There's nothing like that happens in that way. That's Fridays are for us. Yeah. [00:20:19][10.5]
[00:20:19] Laura Scherb: Yeah. It's also, you know, it's been a struggle. I think all small business owners feel like you need to be on 100% of the time. But with something that we've really just been trying like, you know, if it's after 5 p.m. in our time zone, you're not going to get an email response from us because we just like, you know, our work is so personal and we are so passionate about what we do, that sometimes it's hard to separate that. But the reality is like we have lives and we'll be able to do this work longer and better if we take the time away from this work that we need to. [00:20:50][30.3]
[00:20:51] Djenaba Johnson-Jones: Yeah, I totally agree. It's so interesting, like me leaving corporate and I've been out for eight years or more, actually eight or nine years, and I'm still trying to like, get myself out of that, having to react to someone's email whenever they send it and have, you know, kind of making myself available all the time because that's kind of the way that that place that I worked was. I'm learning to have boundaries and that variety is my it's good for boundaries too, and we don't do anything after six. So that that works for us as well. [00:21:18][27.4]
[00:21:18] Djenaba Johnson-Jones: So, so we had the kitchen have what we call the money bell that we ring when we're celebrating something. It's in our lobby and people will ring it when they're, you know, got their their employee gets their paycheck or someone brings in a new retail partner or something exciting happens. I love for you guys to talk about what's going on with you personally and professionally, if you would like. What are you celebrating? [00:21:40][22.4]
[00:21:42] Laura Scherb: I mean, I feel like for us three years has been a huge milestone. And I think that when we sort of got together and first started, for course, it was like, let's see how long we can make this last. And now we're in a business that feels established and it feels like we have practices and rhythms that we're in that is going to allow this to become a huge and, you know, potentially like a business that even includes other people that we would hire in the future. So I think that this this year has really been a huge turning point for us in terms of just like thinking about the future, like having a future planning meeting, thinking about our five year goals as a business, and it has felt like such a huge win to be able to even take the time to do that, because in the past you get into this rhythm where it's like day to day and are just doing what you can, and it feels like we've been very intentional this year and that is so exciting to me. [00:22:32][50.4]
[00:22:32] Rylee Foer: Yeah, it finally feels sustainable, you know, not like not panic attacks every day, right? Yeah, just every couple time. [00:22:42][10.1]
[00:22:42] Djenaba Johnson-Jones: Some days. Yeah, yeah. [00:22:43][1.0]
[00:22:44] Laura Scherb: Yeah. The way that we've built our business, like Rylee briefly mentioned, we have retained our options. So at this point now, we've been working with some of our clients for going on to two and a half, three years and it has been so incredible to see how those businesses are growing as well and to be able to celebrate their wins as well as ours because it does feel like we're so close to them. We're really part of the team, part of the family. And when they launch in Target across the US, like we feel like we're launching and Target across the US. And yeah, that's part of why we love the companies that we work with because it just feels so exciting. But we don't have to have a CPG company to do that. [00:23:25][40.6]
[00:23:26] Djenaba Johnson-Jones: I love that. I feel the exact same way about about my clients. So that's great. Thank you. So Laura, Rylee, thank you so much for being here. Please tell us where we can find out all about you and Four Course Media. [00:23:37][11.0]
[00:23:37] Laura Scherb: Yeah, you can find us at our website at fourcoursemedia.com and on our Instagram @fourcoursemedia. [00:23:44][7.5]
[00:23:46] Djenaba Johnson-Jones: Great. Thank you. [00:23:47][1.2]
[00:23:48] Rylee Foer: Thank you so much for having us. This is so nice and we're so excited to chat with you guys. [00:23:52][4.0]
[00:23:55] Djenaba Johnson-Jones: The Food Meets Business podcast was produced by Hudson Kitchen. It is recorded at the studio at Carney Point and edited by Wild Home Podcasting. Our theme song is by Damien de Sandys, and I'm your host, Djenaba Johnson-Jones. Follow Hudson Kitchen on Instagram @thehudsonkitchen and to get Food Business Bites right in your inbox, sign up for our newsletter at thehudsonkitchen.com/newsletter. Listen, follow and leave a review on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you get podcasts. Until next time.