Sweet New Look for Local Hive Honey
By Lorrie Baumann
Sometimes, it’s just true that the more things change, the more they stay the same. Rice’s Honey is proving that old saying even as the company departs from its long-standing brands in the marketplace, L.R. Rice and Rice Family Honey, in favor of a new brand that reflects another aspect of what the company has always stood for, Local Hive. The change was intended to communicate more immediately to shoppers the difference between this product and other honeys on the same grocery store shelf, said Tony Landretti, Rice’s Honey CEO.
“The rebranding effort is to bring forward what we do: local honey. When shoppers are standing at the grocery store shelf, we wanted the first thing people to see is ‘local,’ and then for them to pick up and look at the label to learn more about the product; for example, seeing the floral notes that make up the honey,” he said. “We wanted to create a point of differentiation on shelf.”
Rice’s Honey specializes in raw, unfiltered honey, as it has through four generations since the company was founded in 1924 by L.R. Rice, the great-grandfather of Scott Rice, who today buys all the honey for the company. The company produces 16 honeys that are specific to different areas in the U.S. and another three that emphasize other attributes: Amber, Clover and Wildflower. The 16 local variants reflect the floral sources that are prevalent in each region. Colorado Honey, for instance, has floral notes from alfalfa, clover and wildflowers, while So Cal has notes from citrus, sage and berries as well as alfalfa and clover.
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The honey is sourced from more than 150 local beekeepers across the country through relationships that have often survived from one generation to the next, Landretti says. The honey collected by the beekeepers is tested on-site to validate quality and consistency and then shipped to Greeley, Colorado, where it’s packed and labeled for retail sale as pure, raw, unfiltered honey that retains all of its natural nutrients. “Bees travel. We validate what the beekeepers are saying before we bring it here — with every single load we buy,” Landretti says. “It’s honey from your backyard. Transparency in food is important. People want to know where their food is coming from. It’s local honey that’s from closer to home than a lot of the processed honey sold that you can’t identify where it is from.”
In conjunction with the rebranding, the company also has a new website at www.localhivehoney.com the provides consumers a way to engage with some of the beekeepers who provide the Local Hive honey, tips for starting a backyard beehive and information about the company’s partnership with Butterfly Pavilion’s Pollinator Awareness through Conservation and Education program. A portion of the proceeds from every bottle of Local Hive Honey sold goes to support the PACE program. “We’re trying to bring all this to life through our brand refresh and bringing it to shoppers across the country,” Landretti says.
The site also highlights the company’s heritage and four generations of involvement in beekeeping and honey packing. Landretti himself is the new kid on the block. He joined the company in late 2013 after a career in consumer packaged goods that included various executive positions with Quaker Oats, Campbell Soup and Pinnacle Foods. He’s known the Rice family ever since he met his wife Carol, who grew up across the street from them, so when the family needed some help with the business, they reached out to their old friend to join their hive. “As I continued to get more involved in the business, we started working collectively as a team to drive the business,” Landretti says. “The family is still involved, with Scott Rice doing all the honey buying and Mike Lordemann, Julie Rice’s husband, running the manufacturing facility.”
