Hi [First name],

I took one week off from your inbox. And somehow Melbourne packed in a Food and Wine Festival, a rock cabaret and the start of my 3rd new company of 2026 into the gap. I'm blaming Mad March — and the energy of a brand new cohort of strategic marketing students at RMIT who reminded me exactly why I love teaching.

Why MFWF sells out in minutes while restaurants fight for bums on seats

The Melbourne Food and Wine Festival has concluded and I've been to Taxi Kitchen and Carnitas Tacos. Both sold out.

The World's Longest Lunch — 1,600 seats across 600 metres of table through the King's Domain - sold out before most people had finished their morning coffee.

Meanwhile, many of the restaurants in Melbourne are battling half-empty tables on a regular Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday nights.

So what is the difference?

Experience design.

MFWF doesn't sell food. It sells a moment you cannot manufacture at home — the table, the setting, the
storytelling, the exclusivity of time and place. Research from CommBank iQ shows experiential spending on dining and leisure grew through 2025 even as discretionary spending tightened in other categories. Consumers are not spending less — they are spending more selectively on what feels worth it.

The marketing lesson for small business owners is direct:

An experience cannot be commoditised the way a product or service can. When you give people something to feel, remember and share, price resistance drops and word-of-mouth goes up.

Ask yourself — where is the experience in what you are selling? Think of the moment, the texture, the feeling of being in the room with you.

I started a new company and the first marketing move was not branding.

I incorporated my first new company of 2026 this year back in January, it's called Red Royale. There is nothing to Google yet. No website, no social presence, no announcement. This email is the first time I mention it outside of family and friends and yes, you're one of the first to learn about it :)

But there is a distribution channel already locked in.

Red Royale is a parent company for products I am bringing into Australia in partnership with an Chinese entrepreneur I consulted for in 2019-2020. Our first product is in the food category — a crustacean product we have been developing over the past twelve months. The first shipment is getting ready to sail, and I am pretty excited about it!

Here is the strategic marketing principle behind this move:

Distribution is your first marketing decision, not your last. Before we invested in branding, packaging or a single piece of content, we secured the channel to get the product in front of end consumers.

Many small business owners and startups today build in reverse — they perfect the brand, design the packaging, and then scramble to figure out who will actually stock or carry it. That is a very expensive order of operations, or potentially a lesson to learn.

Peter Drucker said that the purpose of business is to create a customer. Distribution is how you create access. Without it, your brand is just a beautiful object in an empty room.​

I will share more about Red Royale when the time is right.

For now, consider this: what is your distribution strategy, and is it the first thing you planned or the last?

Their arms went up, and I wondered how many of them still dream about their younger dreams

Last month, I attended the opening night of Amplified: The Exquisite Rock and Rage of Chrissy Amphlett at the Comedy Theatre — a theatrical rock cabaret about a woman I barely know before walking through the door.​

I walked out carrying a fire that refused to go out.​

Sheridan Harbridge's performance was extraordinary, but what moved me most was the audience. A generation older than me, the teenagers who first met Chrissy in sticky-floored pubs in the eighties — were throwing their arms in the air, mouthing every word, rocking in their seats with a kind of restrained abandon.​

And I kept thinking one thing:

"The dreams they abandoned at 28 didn't disappear."

I am in my 40s. I have three new companies incorporated this year. Some may not work. Perhaps all might fail. But will the 50-year-old me care? No. So, in what most would say it's time to do less, I am still writing, still building, still showing up on stages I build for myself.

Chrissy Amphlett faced MS and breast cancer and still performed. She said, "We must never be afraid."​

That is the standard I hold myself to — not perfection, but presence.

Not fearlessness, but the refusal to let fear make the final call.

​Read my full review of Amplified on Glamorazzi →​

Your marketing action this week: Map the experience gap

Before your next post, campaign or offer launch, answer these three questions:

1. What does the customer feel in the moment of engaging with you?
2. What is the distribution path between your product and your ideal customer, and did you plan it before or after you built the product?
3. What is one area of your business where you have been building a beautiful thing in an empty room?

Answer them honestly.

If something comes up that you'd like to talk through, hit reply. I am here for you.

Keep showing up,

Roslyn 💛

​P.S. Got more time? I explain in this short video why you should care less about your LOGO.​

To make sure you keep getting tools, stories and strategies like this, add showup@roslynfoo.com to your address book or safe senders list so my emails don’t disappear into spam.

ROSLYN FOO Marketing Strategist & Mentor, M. Comm Marketing CEO of Glamorazzi | Founder of Show Up School Paul Harris Fellow & Victorian Ambassador of Opportunity International Australia

How I can serve you:

• Would you benefit from a private marketing and business mentoring session? Book ​here​
• Want strategic marketing insights and tips to deliver consistent marketing efforts for your business with clarity and creativity? Browse my free resources.​
• Join Marketing & Mindset Instagram Channel for quick tips, fun ideas and creative nudges to elevate your marketing journey

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