A roadside diner in rural Virginia grew into a national peanut brand, and its story carries a lesson for every local media seller. Borrell Associates explores how legacy brands can open opportunities with programmatic advertising and why sellers should think bigger.
The Virginia Diner is the latest subject in the Local Marketing Trends Podcast series on small businesses that grew into national brands. Borrell Associates’ Gordon Borrell hosted with guest host Jim Brown, who filled in for regular co-host Corey Elliott while Elliott works on an update to the firm’s forecast. Borrell said the update, which expands categories and reflects media shifts driven by AI, is expected in early November, with a webinar to follow.
Borrell said his team was building websites in the mid-1990s when it put the diner’s salted peanuts online and quickly received a large order from Japan.
Virginia Food Group VP of Direct-to-Consumer Lydia Pittman said direct-to-consumer sales are the company’s largest source of revenue, with wholesale accounting for the rest through retailers such as Harris Teeter and Kroger. The Virginia Diner is its biggest brand, and she believes wholesale ships to 27 other countries.
Pittman said the company is moving away from catalog and banner advertising toward programmatic, and that AI agents are making testing faster and cheaper. Search advertising is its largest expense, followed by other upper-funnel channels, while print and outdoor are used mostly to win back past customers. Advertising costs equal about 17% of direct-to-consumer sales. Social media and influencer marketing are not the right fit for the brand right now.
Streaming video ad insertion and podcasts are the channels she considers most overlooked for finding new customers, with streaming CPMs she estimated at nine or ten dollars.
The brand’s traditional audience is 40 and older with middle-class or higher incomes, built on gift buying. Pittman said the company is now targeting younger audiences and everyday snacking with seasoned flavors and lookalike audiences by geography, with new products planned for next year.
Pittman stated, “I think it’s important to try to source locally when you can, because they understand a little bit more about the product and about the history. I think that maybe one of the downfalls that we see is that sometimes people think too locally, like we’re trying to get big. So if you’re out there and you’re trying to level up a business like ours, when you approach them, go after the big stuff. Quit thinking about the mid-Atlantic.”
Pittman remarked, “It’s a changing business right now. To put it very briefly, you know, AI is changing the world in marketing at the moment. We’re really making a switch from catalog and more, you know, banner ad type or linear marketing. So we’re really digging into programmatic right now, using a bunch of different strategies to corner key markets and make sure that we’re going into places we’ve never been before.”
Pittman noted, “I mean, your biggest heavy hitter is always going to be Google Ads. They really have the full funnel approach. But I will say bang for the buck, the one that gets missed the most, I think, is programmatic TV and podcasts. I think that those really drive new customers at a level that you can’t get almost anywhere else.”
Borrell Associates guest host Jim Brown commented, “I think one of the best questions I’ve ever asked clients is to tell me more about what their ambitions are, what the future state looks like. It’s easy to get stuck in a conversation about here, today, and make my phone ring. Great. You have to do that. But when you can step back and ask that business owner, where do you want to be? What’s the future look like? Where do you see the biggest opportunities for you to grow?”
