How TikTok is giving Mingle Seasoning a touch of social spice
Mingle Seasoning’s social media community drives brand awareness and helps the company determine what to develop next.
Jordyn Evans, the founder of spice business Mingle Seasoning, says social media can be a powerful tool for growing brands — and she is putting her money where her mouth is, so to speak, by tapping into trending topics of TikTok to inspire her company’s latest flavour combinations.
Mingle Seasoning was founded in 2016 while Evans was cleaning out her kitchen pantry and discovered that the seasoning she had been using contained nasty ingredients. It was then and there that she decided to shake up the spice aisles with healthy seasoning with lots of flavour.
As well as being stocked in more than 2,000 stockists across Australia, Mingle Seasoning has recently secured a $1.5 million deal with Coles that has seen the brand launch four new seasoning blend products — Mingle’s Green Goddess Seasoning, Mingle’s Citrus Pepper Seasoning, Mingle’s Everything Spicy Bagel and Mingle’s Greek Garlic Seasoning — into Coles stores nationally, growing the company’s range in store to 22 SKUs.
The TikTok effect
The inspiration for these new flavours can be traced directly to TikTok, reveals Evans.
About a year ago, Mingle Seasoning launched Everything Bagel Seasoning into Coles, and when the team shared the news on TikTok, they soon had a viral video in their hands.
“Everything Bagel Seasoning was something Australians were wanting. This trending flavour started in the US and we had many customers requesting this Down Under,” explains Evans.
“After posting a video announcing this flavour was finally in Coles on TikTok, we sold out of Everything Bagel Seasoning in 200 Coles stores. This just shows you the power of this platform.”
This led to numerous customer requests for extensions of the Everything Bagel Seasoning, which Evans says prompted the most recent launch of Mingle’s Everything Bagel Seasoning spicy edition in Coles.
“We also saw the Green Goddess salad go viral on TikTok,” she adds.
“This prompted our R&D team to develop a seasoning that reflected the vibrant, herbaceous flavours of this salad that was going gangbusters on socials.
“We often test these products on our online store first, before pitching these to retailers. This product was one of our best performers online so naturally Coles were keen to take this flavour into their stores and this flavour also launched recently nationally.”
@mingleseasoning Part 1 of how i grew my small business & went from blending spices in my living room to having 17 products stocked in Coles Supermarkets across Australia! #smallbusiness #smallbusinessjourney #smallbusinessstory #femaleentrepreneur
Nurturing a community
Mingle Seasoning now boasts a community on Instagram of 75,800 followers and has a growing TikTok community of 13,200 followers.
“We use it to drive brand awareness, especially on TikTok, tell brand stories and nurture our community,” she says of the brand’s social media use.
“Through open conversation with our customers on social media, myself and my team try to reply to every comment, we are open ears to what customers are wanting next and what feedback they have.
“Social media has been growing ever since we launched. We invest a lot of time and energy into creating content every week, partnering with like-minded brands and sharing our business stories as the milestones and challenges happen.”
Coles deal “a long time in the making”
Evans says she was stoked to see her brand launch into Coles nationally.
“It’s been a long time in the making,” she reveals.
“In 2018, I got Mingle into my first Coles store. This journey has always been a marathon, not a sprint and I wanted to start small, get the foundationals right and scale with Coles nationally over time.
“We started with two spice blends in the herbs and spice aisle in 2019, and now we have 10 seasonings in the herbs and spice aisle nationally.
“The brand certainly has achieved significant presence on shelf now and it’s something the team and I are incredibly proud of.
Mingle Seasoning is also preparing to launch more products, says the founder.
“My vision is for a Mingle product to be in everyone’s pantry across the country so we still have a lot of work to do there, to drive brand awareness,” she says.
“We are just about to launch Mingle’s Better For You Tomato and BBQ Sauce into Coles ,which is exciting to give Coles consumers this better for you option as previously this product was only available in Woolworths.
“We also just had confirmation for some products into the Mexican category that will be landing next year which we are very excited about.”
Evans says Mingle Seasoning has continued to grow at over 50% year-on-year consistently for the last four years and has five full-time employees, with the brand also utilising a range of different freelancers.
“Our online store continues to grow as our retail distribution grows,” she adds.
“This is something our team is really passionate about growing concurrently. It continues to give our FMCG an edge, allows us to build data internally and diversifies our business sales channels.”
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