Financial Management | Edible-Alpha® Learning Center

CFO Savvy for Growing Food Brands

1 hour 16 minutes of Free podcast by Edible-Alpha®

In Edible-Alpha® podcast #65, Tera interviews Heidi Huntington, vice president of finance at AVL Growth Partners in Boulder, Colorado, which lends finance and operations...

Podcast about Financial Management for businesses that are Pre-Venture | Growing and Scaling | Startups

It’s Go Time! Act Fast to Save or Shutter Your Business

10 minute read of Free article by Edible-Alpha®

In this crazy new world we’re living in, small businesses nationwide are torn on how to proceed, especially those suffering significant sales losses due...

Article about Legal for businesses that are Growing and Scaling | Startups

Huddle Notes from April 6th, 2020

10 minute read of Free article by Edible-Alpha®

The huddles this week focused on how the current situation for food and farm businesses is going to go on for a while and coming out of it will be very slow.

Huddle Notes about Business Models for businesses that are Growing and Scaling | Startups

Is Bankruptcy Best? How Food Businesses Can Decide

1 hours of Free podcast by Edible-Alpha®

With the COVID-19 crisis assailing most food businesses, entrepreneurs must take a hard look at cashflow and decide: try to keep going or close up shop? Consultant Bartlett Durand talks with Tera about the realities of bankruptcy (it’s not a moral failing!), the leverage that small businesses have, how bankruptcy lawyers can help, and the measures that can best protect companies’ interests whether they opt to forge ahead or fold. This podcast is loaded with useful information and strategies to help food and farm entrepreneurs through the current economic downturn.

Podcast about Financial Management for businesses that are Growing and Scaling | Pre-Venture | Startups

Help Is Here: Survival Strategies for Food and Farm Businesses

20 minute read Free by Edible-Alpha®

This on-demand course features FFI Director, Tera Johnson, walking you through how to use FFI’s 13-week cash flow template. We encourage you to follow along...

Article about Financial Management for businesses that are Growing and Scaling | Pre-Venture | Startups

How Food and Farm Businesses Can Survive This Pandemic

1 hours of Free podcast by Edible-Alpha®

Ted LeBow of Kitchen Table Consultants joins Tera to offer guidance for food and farm entrepreneurs affected by the coronavirus pandemic. They discuss the importance of staying calm, knowing your cashflow, prioritizing certain expenses to free up cash and communicating honestly with vendors, suppliers and banks.

Podcast about Business Models for businesses that are Growing and Scaling | Pre-Venture | Startups

“Rolling Up Your Sleeves” – How KTC Does Effective Food Business Consulting

1 hour of Free audio by Edible-Alpha®

The heart of Kitchen Table Consultants' work is one-on-one coaching with food and farm clients, but as their work has grown they have started helping other organizations provide better technical assistance. Rather than just make plans or recommendations for clients, it is critically important to their firm’s mission and values that they “roll up their sleeves” alongside the clients to help them implement their recommendations.

Podcast about Operations for businesses that are Startups | Growing and Scaling

Cash Is Like Oxygen

25 minutes of Free video by Project Nosh

The reason to pay attention to cash flow is that when cash goes away from you it really starts to hurt in ways that maybe you didn’t anticipate. Brands must always have realistic forecasts for sales, revenue and growth.

Video about Financial Management for businesses that are Growing and Scaling

Forecast Templates

Free forecast templates by Edible-Alpha®

These helpful templates help you build your financial projections, including, your sales and distribution forecast; cost of goods sold (COGS) and other expenses forecasts; capital expenditures forecasts; and your accounts receivable (AR), accounts payable (AP) and inventory forecasts. These projections can help inform your proforma financial statements.

Tool or Template about Raising Capital for businesses that are Pre-Venture | Startups | Growing and Scaling

Gary Hirshberg Stonyfield Organic On Taste Radio

Growing Organically With Stonyfield Farm Co-Founder Gary Hirshberg (Taste Radio Podcast)

1 hour & 20 minutes of Free audio by Taste Radio Podcast

The founders of Stonyfield were running a nonprofit organic farming school on a small New Hampshire farm when they began what became Stoneyfield farms. After starting with seven cows, now Stoneyfield sells hundreds of millions of dollars per year in dairy and other products in supermarkets, natural food stores and colleges across the country.

Podcast about Raising Capital for businesses that are Growing and Scaling

How A Bank Can Strengthen Farming Communities Through Innovative Lending

1 hour & 10 minutes of Free audio by Edible-Alpha®

Ephrata National Bank in Lancaster County, Pennsylvania is a $1 billion community bank with 25% of their portfolio funding agricultural entrepreneurs. Lending to support new business models or premium offerings (like value-added processing) can help farmers deal with high land prices and avoid commodity agriculture's low return on assets.

Podcast about Raising Capital for businesses that are Growing and Scaling

Shared Financial Management Builds Alignment For Food Businesses

10 minute Free read by Edible-Alpha®

Open book management is sharing the company's finances and key financial drivers openly with managers to increase their buy-in and understanding of the company's performance. By sharing company finances and expecting financial literacy of managers, open-book management allows multiple leaders to use the same language and work towards the same goal.

Article about Financial Management for businesses that are Pre-Venture | Startups

Growing A Successful Retail Food Co-op By Meeting Your Member’s Needs

1 hour & 5 minutes of Free audio by Edible-Alpha®

The Great Basin Community Food Co-op first opened to the public in downtown Reno with 500 feet of retail space, eventually hitting $1 million in sales in one year. In 2012 they moved to another 3-story location of about 3,000 square feet (on the main floor) even closer to downtown. In 2017, the store had about $4.5 million in sales after rapid growth.

Podcast about Operations for businesses that are Growing and Scaling

Focused Prioritization Helps Good Food And Farm Businesses Reach Break-Even

10 minute Free read by Edible-Alpha®

Food entrepreneurs will always have lots of goals competing for their attention. Good entrepreneurs know how to prioritize goals and optimize their efforts for the goals they are pursuing as priorities. This allows them to build financially successful companies and, over time, pursue many more big, hairy, audacious goals than they would have otherwise.

Article about Operations for businesses that are Growing and Scaling

Taking Investment in Your Food Business Changes Your Business (And You)

10 minute Free read by Edible-Alpha®

Food entrepreneurs themselves often feel changed when taking outside investor capital. They feel the weight of the responsibility of paying back those investors with a return. They often work even harder than they were before because others are sharing the risk with them and are emotionally invested in their business as well.

Article about Raising Capital for businesses that are Growing and Scaling

Financial Management For Food Businesses

Refining Your Processes and Building Great Financial Packages For Your Food Business

45 minutes of Free audio by Edible-Alpha®

The more you have the ability to analyze what went right or wrong, the more useful your financial model and plan are to making business decisions. Being able to have both an accurate history and a record of making realistic projections that were met can give entrepreneurs credibility with lenders, investors and the business' board of directors.

Podcast about Operations for businesses that are Pre-Venture | Startups | Growing and Scaling

Food Entrepreneurs Are Backed By Great Teams

Building The Right Financial Team For Your Food Business

10 minute Free read by Edible-Alpha®

Behind every great food entrepreneur is a great financial team, whether that team is employed by the business directly or through an outsourcing method. Building that team helps the entrepreneur, management and board make informed decisions and allows the business' key stakeholders to focus on growing their customer base and strengthening their brand.

Article about Operations for businesses that are Growing and Scaling

Building Great Financial Systems For Your Food Business

45 minutes of Free audio by Edible-Alpha®

From the entrepreneur's perspective, the most important thing when using an accounting package is to ensure accurate setup and data entry so that they are able to produce accurate financial statements. While entrepreneurs need to understand their financial statements and financial drivers, they can often outsource some accounting work.

Podcast about Financial Management for businesses that are Pre-Venture | Startups

Cash Flow Basics (For Farmers)

11 minute Free read by Compeer Financial

Tight cash flow can be challenging, even for the most experienced grower. For a beginning farmer, however, a cash flow crunch can quickly become a disaster. An annual cash flow projection is a very useful tool for a farm. You plot out on a month-by-month basis when cash income will be received and when cash expenses will need to be paid.

Article about Operations for businesses that are Pre-Venture | Startups

Paul Dietmann on Setting Your Farm Up for Financial Success

1 hour & 15 minutes of Free audio by Farmer To Farmer Podcast

The single most important thing to do when starting a farm is to create a month-by-month cash flow projection. In the short term, cash flow is much more critical than profitability, because if cash flow is negative, the farm cannot survive once cash runs out. Profitability comes into play when the farmer is ready to retire or pass it on to the next generation.

Podcast about Raising Capital for businesses that are Pre-Venture | Startups