Small Direct Local Food Brand

All food and beverage businesses have an overwhelming amount of stuff that they have to sort through to launch their business. These questions help new and aspiring food and beverage business owners navigate the plethora of considerations, everything from incorporation to permits to designing your business to be defensibly unique.

Food and Beverage producers should always work backwards from the selling price to determine the wholesale price. Sometimes both retailer and distributor margins can be lower in certain competitive product categories and in large scale conventional distributors and retailer. However, it is difficult to sustain at a Gross Margin Contribution of less than 35%.

From the USDA 2015 Local Food Marketing Practices Survey: In 2015, farmers produced and sold $8.7 billion of edible food commodities directly to consumers, retailers, institutions, and a variety of local food intermediaries such as distributors and wholesalers that market and sell locally branded products.

How do you get started in local food production and marketing? What do you need to consider? Like any business venture, establishing the entire concept and developing the initial steps may seem overwhelming. You must learn a whole new set of skills and be proficient at them for your business to succeed.

poSaNa organics is a manufacturer of best-in-class gluten-free cooking and baking mixes wholesaling to grocers and retailing directly online. This pitch deck is an example of an optimized pitch deck template to successfully raise money and communicate the company's business model.

Bill Anderson of Creme de la Coulee is a Wisconsin local artisan cheese maker who uses a CSA model through a cheese of the month club to connect directly with consumers. He talks about what it takes to grow a local artisan cheese company and what you have to consider when thinking about scaling that up.

This podcast outlines what it is like to work with alternative lenders and CDFIs like WWBIC. WWBIC offers a combination of relevant business classes, business loans up to $250,000, assistance with personal financial management, and connections to people who can make things happen for business owners and entrepreneurs across the state of Wisconsin.