Authors Posts by Edible-Alpha®

Edible-Alpha®

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

Keewaydin Farms

Rightsizing The Ship: A Farmer’s Tale of Scaling Down

1 hour & 40 minutes of Free audio by Edible-Alpha®

This hub discovered that the bigger the business got, the more money it lost and that moving aggregation functions off of the owner's farm caused the operation to be less efficient at that level of sales. The owner chose to contract the business to focus on getting profitable and repaying existing suppliers.

Podcast about Business Models for businesses that are Growing and Scaling

When Should Food Businesses Go Online

When Your Food Business Should Go Online

10 minute Free read by Edible-Alpha®

Food businesses should know the role that online sales will play in their revenue stream and in their business model. Consumers are starting to become omnichannel in their food shopping expectations. Like most things in food entrepreneurship, it is best to let your customers lead the way, and if they expect to find you online, go online and conquer.

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

Know Brainer

Scaling Innovative Food Products At The Right Time

40 minutes of Free audio by Edible-Alpha®

The ideal market for Know Brainer's individual creamer products has been online with Amazon and their own online store while their multi-serve product is more of a conventional grocery item. They only started to scale their product after extensive customer research and testing.

Podcast about Business Models for businesses that are Growing and Scaling

Growing Chickens

Why and How To Think About Social Impact Investing In Food

10 minute Free read by Edible-Alpha®

Because food businesses need to be financially sustainable to achieve their goals, including impact goals, they need to understand their business model and align their efforts behind the model.When speaking to investors, they should to clearly communicate how their business will make money and on what time horizon.

Article about Business Models for businesses that are Growing and Scaling

Cogent Consulting Impact Investing Ecosystem

Impact Investing In Regenerative Agriculture

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

There are investable opportunities in companies that provide support for regenerative agriculture systems and smaller, donation-supported loan funds combined with technical assistance in the $15,000-$50,000 range fill a market gap for small entrepreneurs as they scale up and seek larger sources of financing later.

Podcast about Raising Capital for businesses that are Growing and Scaling

Farmers Building A Brand

Farmers: Let’s Build A Brand!

10 minute Free read by Edible-Alpha®

Food consumers have been seeking more "premium" experiences from the food they purchase, including better connections with their food and understanding where it comes from. Developing brands for agricultural products can help farmers produce products that earn them a premium and are meeting a real consumer demand.

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

Seal The Seasons Blueberries Berry Blend

How Seal The Seasons Matches Mission With Scale

1 hour of Free audio by Edible-Alpha®

Seal The Seasons began production in one of the partitions of a shared-use commissary kitchen facility where they installed an Individually Quick Frozen (IQF) production freezer, later partnering with a co-packer in 2017 and almost doubled their gross margin contributions as a result, passing more money to their farmer suppliers.

Podcast about Operations for businesses that are Growing and Scaling

When Is the Right Time For Your Food Business To Pivot?

How You Know It’s The Right Time To Pivot

10 minute Free read by Edible-Alpha®

Decisions to pivot should be based on a food business' target consumer's preferences, category growth (or decline) and other general market trends. Many traditional food and beverage companies have been slow to respond to changing consumer preferences, loosing market share and profits in the process.

Article about Operations for businesses that are Growing and Scaling

Top Note Tonic

How Top Note Tonic Pivoted Beverage Categories and Understood Their Market

50 minutes of Free audio by Edible-Alpha®

Top Note has pivoted away from syrups towards niche ready-to-drink, already mixed sparkling tonics, using their foray into syrups to further understand the mixer category and build their brand. Mary reflected that having a good bank as a partner is important and that learning about money has been the most useful thing that she has picked up as an entrepreneur.

Podcast about Business Models for businesses that are Growing and Scaling

Creativity In Food Entrepreneurship

Creativity Is Essential To Food Entrepreneurship

10 minute Free read by Edible-Alpha®

Figuring out the best way to finance food businesses by optimizing their capital structure to reach minimum efficient scale is an undervalued creative exercise. But the myriad of challenges that confront entrepreneurs, from finding the right suppliers, co-packers, distributors, brokers or even the right target customer also demand creativity.

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

Mobcraft Brewery And Taproom

MobCraft Beer’s Creative Sourcing of Recipes and Financing

45 minutes of Free audio by Edible-Alpha®

MobCraft beer is a brewery and taproom with a unique business model of crowdsourcing ideas for beer recipes from their customers. Knowing how much equity they needed vs. debt to finance their facility build out and equipment needs helped them pitch specific asks to both banks and investors, including for their $2 million tap room and production facility.

Podcast about Business Models for businesses that are Growing and Scaling

Madison Sourdough Dave Lohrentz

Growing Madison Sourdough Intentionally Through Vertical Integration

1 hour & 15 minutes of Free audio by Edible-Alpha®

Madison Sourdough has grown using a vertically integrated business model by adding a restaurant that highlights their baked goods and bakery. They have also added an artisanal grain mill to their production processes, sourcing much of the flour themselves from local producers.

Podcast about Business Models for businesses that are Growing and Scaling

Customers Are Always Right?

The Customer Is Always Right (Or, At Least They Are The Ones Who Pay...

10 minute Free read by Edible-Alpha®

Food businesses should align their products and branding with their target consumers and should use market research to understand what the marketplace is asking for. Acquiring and keeping customers is what drives successful businesses and customer preferences must be met in order to have a financially viable business.

Article about Sales and Marketing for businesses that are Pre-Venture | Startups

Underground Food Collective

Jonny Hunter Of Underground Food Collective On Thinking Bigger in the Food System

1 hour & 30 minutes of Free audio by Edible-Alpha®

Jonny Hunter of the Underground Food Collective talks about his wish that values around local and sustainable food could be used to create systems that have scalable efficiencies that are affordable to consumers. He advocates for working together to build and sustain the infrastructure that would support processing and other means to scale up the local food system.

Podcast about Business Models for businesses that are Growing and Scaling

Focus And Discipline

Focus And Discipline Are Key To Food Business Success

10 minute Free read by Edible-Alpha®

Focus is what gives food business owners clarity about their strategy and about the tactics needed to carry it out. Tools like the business model canvascan provide focus and clarity to their business model and the strategic implications of choosing a particular business model path or going after a particular target customer.

Article about Operations for businesses that are Growing and Scaling

Clare And Matt Quince And Apple

A Steady, Slow Growth Path For Quince and Apple’s Niche Domination

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

Because Quince and Apple has labor-intensive, artisanal products, the best strategy was not to compete on quantity or price. Instead, they chose to compete by dominating an emerging niche (pairing their products with specialty cheeses) while telling the defensibly unique story of their artisanal processes.

Podcast about Business Models for businesses that are Growing and Scaling

Change

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

Love The Wild Box

How Love The Wild Built A National Brand For Frozen Farmed Fish

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

Within six months of launching their company they got their product out in front of consumers, trying out 127 product variations over an additional 18 months in just two stores. Once they honed in on their product, they rapidly expanded into distribution and raised multiple rounds of funding to support their growth.

Podcast about Business Models for businesses that are Growing and Scaling