Tags For Entrepreneurs

For Entrepreneurs

The resources below help entrepreneurs get their food, beverage or value-added farm business profitable and raise the money they need to grow.

Food Supply Chain

Building A Defensibly Unique Food Supply Chain

10 minute Free read by Edible-Alpha®

Building markets and the supply chain relationships necessary to support them requires a long-term vision that aligns consumers, suppliers, funders and their brand. But, if it is properly built and capitalized, it can lead to a defensibly unique business model that allows that food company to be built to last.

Article about Operations for businesses that are Growing and Scaling

ReGrained

ReGrained, A Business Model For The Long Term And The Planet

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

ReGrained launched their product at scale in January 2018 after multiple iterations of their product (in the crowded bar category) and now are working with other businesses to help them produce/co-brand new products using their production facility and the expertise embedded in their proprietary process.

Podcast about Business Models for businesses that are Growing and Scaling

Amazon Prime

Food Businesses Need To Pay For Space And Attention, Even on Amazon

10 minute Free read by Edible-Alpha®

Because the food space is competitive, online and off, emerging food companies have to spend lots of marketing and sales dollars to get consumer attention and trial by paying to have their product in the right place with the right positioning.

Article about Business Models for businesses that are Growing and Scaling

Marketplace Strategy Logo

Grow Your Food Brand On Amazon, If You Constantly Optimize

10 minute Free read by Edible-Alpha®

The Amazon platform provides a means for small and emerging brands to find an audience and generate sales if they dedicate time and resources to ensure discoverability on the platform by constantly optimizing product pages with the right keywords and features once the user is on the page, in addition to paying for keyword-based advertising.

Podcast about Operations for businesses that are Growing and Scaling

Median On Farm Household Income

Shifting Farm Business Models

10 minute Free read by Edible-Alpha®

Median on-farm household income has been negative for the past 20 years, with many farms keeping their cash flow positive by increasing their debt load. Finding new business models that allow farmers to be profitable while meeting changing consumer demand will require high-quality technical assistance and coordinated effort from multiple actors.

Article about Business Models for businesses that are Growing and Scaling

Food Companies Grow In Stairsteps

Food Companies Grow In Stair Steps, Not Incrementally

10 minute Free read by Edible-Alpha®

While established food companies can grow slowly and still be profitable, this is much harder, if not impossible, for emerging food companies. Food companies, because they deal in physical products often produced from a long and complex supply chain, grow in stair steps, not incrementally, in order to reach the right scale to be profitable.

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

Apple Orchard - Brix Cider

How This Hard Cider Business Is Learning From “The Struggle”

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

Brix Cider began producing in small batches and self-distributing throughout southern Wisconsin. Their ultimate goal is to open a cider tasting room (increasing margins and cash flow); however, through the struggle to find the right space, they have learned business problem solving skills and financial literacy.

Podcast about Raising Capital for businesses that are Growing and Scaling

Alignment

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

Great Basin Food Co-Op

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

Goal Setting

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

Old Fort Market Gardens

The Farmer Education Continuum In The Colorado Mountains

55 minutes of Free audio by Edible-Alpha®

The Old Fort at Hesperus' team sees farming education as a continuum where different people are best served by discreet programs, depending on their interests and stage of development. Their sustainable agriculture program includes an educational garden internship, a farmer-in-training program, and market garden incubator.

Podcast about Business Models for businesses that are Growing and Scaling

Packaging Design and Private Label

Why Private Label Might Be A Great Business Decision

10 minute Free read by Edible-Alpha®

Grocery stores have introduced their own branded "private label" products on their shelves, offering an opportunity for food producers to increase cash flow, maximize production efficiency and diversify revenue streams without having to do all of the brand building and customer relationship management themselves.

Article about Business Models for businesses that are Growing and Scaling

Tribe 9 Foods

How Tribe 9 Foods Balances Economies Of Scale With A Changing Marketplace

55 minutes of Free audio by Edible-Alpha®

Tribe 9 Foods secured growth capital to bring manufacturing in-house for the three brands that merged into their portfolio, something that has allowed them to have control over batch timing, batch size and product quality. In addition, in-house production allows them the flexibility to try new things and have a co-packing line of business for their core product types.

Podcast about Business Models for businesses that are Growing and Scaling

Food Manufacturing

Should I Manufacture Food In-House Or Use A Co-Packer?

10 minute Free read by Edible-Alpha®

The inevitable question food entrepreneurs face when scaling is "should I manufacture food in-house or use a co-packer?" The food entrepreneur's business model, stage of business, financing capacity (i.e. how well they can raise money) and the availability of co-packing capacity for their specific needs all make a difference in deciding how to answer that question.

Article about Operations for businesses that are Growing and Scaling

TRIBALÍ

Angela Mavridis Of TRIBALÍ Foods On Resonating With Your Tribe

45 minutes of Free audio by Edible-Alpha®

TRIBALÍ's clean, simple packaging communicates their organic, grass-fed and Paleo certifications, stands out on the freezer shelf and helps communicate their brand's promise to that tribe. Angela Mavridis, TRIBALÍ's founder and CEO reflects that the investor pitch process forces you to learn every single aspect of the business.

Podcast about Business Models for businesses that are Growing and Scaling

Customer Relationship

Build The Brand, Build The Food Business Ecosystem

10 minute Free read by Edible-Alpha®

Good brand building is built on an understanding of your target customer and what problems you are solving for them. While it is not the only thing that is needed to build a successful business, those consumer relationships are the lifeblood of all food businesses.

Article about Sales and Marketing for businesses that are Growing and Scaling

Union Kitchen

How Union Kitchen’s Ecosystem Helps Build Profitable Food Businesses

50 minutes of Free audio by Edible-Alpha®

Union Kitchen is a shared-use kitchen and food business accelerator in in Washington D.C. While having a shared-use kitchen eliminates the need for capital for kitchen equipment, there are many other things food businesses need to raise capital for, which is why they have distribution and retail outlets as part of their model.

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

Economic Gardening As Part Of An Ecosystem

Grants, Loans, Investments…Welcome To The Food Funding Ecosystem!

10 minute Free read by Edible-Alpha®

To come up with a realistic strategy for action and growth, food entrepreneurs should make efforts to understand this entrepreneurial ecosystem and whether grants, loans, investments or a combination of capital sources makes sense to fund their growth. Only then can food entrepreneurs plant the seeds for a profitable and sustainable food business.

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

Misty Farmstead

Value-Added Producer Grants With Jim Gage

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

While the VAPG grant can be complicated (for example, a 75 page application plus Business Plan and third-party Feasibility Study), it requires applicants to critically consider expansion of the customer base and the marketplace for products as well as demonstrate how they will have sufficient business structures, profit and cash flow to operate in the long-term.

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

Food Business Reality Check Ahead

Reality Keeps Your Food Business Grounded

10 minute Free read by Edible-Alpha®

Being a food entrepreneur is in some ways about balancing empirical reality and a belief in something you cannot see clearly, like where your business will be in 3-5 years. Food entrepreneursshould clearly state their assumptions about the future and test their assumptions constantly, asking the advice of people who they can trust to ground-truth their ideas.

Article about Operations for businesses that are Growing and Scaling