Applies To All Business Models

This course provides a review of the Income Statement, Balance Sheet, and Cash Flow Statement from the perspective of lenders/investors and from the perspective of making management decisions about your business.

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.

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.

Patents, branding, and copyright...  If you want to protect something, or to stop someone from doing the same thing that you’re doing in your food business, the only way to do that in the United States (and abroad) is through IP law. An IP attorney will help you ensure that no one has made it before, branded it in a similar way to yours, or created it before you did.

The Food Safety Modernization Act (FSMA) is a complicated sweeping reform of the way food safety is regulated. This video series outlines the history, reasoning and goals behind the legislation and what your business has to do to properly comply.

Sometimes certain products or certain classes of products make more sense in certain markets than others. For example, heavy or perishable food items make less sense to sell online due to the shipping costs and logistics involved. But unconventional markets could make sense if location or customer data suggests it is a good idea.

Sometimes certain products or certain classes of products make more sense in certain markets than others. For example, heavy or perishable food items make less sense to sell online due to the shipping costs and logistics involved. But unconventional markets could make sense if location or customer data suggests it is a good idea.

Good strategies are ones that reflect current relationships with customers/partners and current market realities, and thus, can shift as those things shift. Without a well-documented strategy, even well-meaning food entrepreneurs can get distracted or fail to execute on their business’ core needs and goals.

Access to high quality financial technical assistance is the biggest gap in accelerating the growth and success of more good food and beverage companies. Companies can transform, grow and thrive when they have access to this kind of assistance and when the founders surround themselves with the right people, including technical assistance providers.

Seeded with a 2012 challenge grant of $3.75 million, the Fair Food Fund, the impact investing arm of Fair Food Network, has attracted a total of $6.4+ million in grants and program related investments from more than 20 funders. Since then, the Fund has provided more than $3.6 million in financing and business assistance to over 80 enterprises across 9 states.