Building Great Financial Systems For Your Food Business

Building Great Financial Systems For Your Food Business

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.

Food Business Brands Evolve With The Consumer

Originally branded as Ethnic Spicery, Flavor Temptations changed their brand to fully communicate the joyful, family-building experience of making memories through Indian cooking so that their brand resonated more deeply with their target consumer. They also changed their packaging to better share their values and to stand out on grocery store shelves.

The Capital Conundrum of Rural Economic Development

USDA programs serve not just agricultural producers but also rural businesses and rural people more broadly, including programs meant to incentivize and leverage private dollars for investment in rural areas. However, there is a big need to educate investors and entrepreneurs about realistic opportunities for investment and business development in rural America.

Midwestern BioAg and the Business of Biological Farming

Midwestern BioAg is a company that provides farmers with consulting and products (mostly inputs) that help improve yields, resiliency and profitability by using biological farming methods i.e. treating the farm like an ecosystem and preserving the long-term health of the soil.

New Product Development and Rollouts For National Food and Beverage Brands: A Process

Big food and beverage companies start the new product development process by focusing on their target consumer and the value proposition they are offering that consumer through their brand promise. Discovering and defining a consumer driven product is much harder to do than making a food product.

Shared-Use Kitchens And Their Tenants: A Shared Path to Financial Sustainability

FEED Kitchens is a shared-use kitchen that also serves as a business incubator for food businesses. Currently, about 80% of their revenue is from fee-for-service kitchen use. They would needabout 45%-50% use (24 hours a day, 365 days a year), up from their current 35% and with a few more anchor tenants to completely cover costs with fee-for-service revenue only.

Considering Manufacturing In-House? Waste Can Be A Resource That Improves Your Food Business’ Bottom Line

Zero Waste Facility Certification can improvea food business’ bottom line while helping them meet existing standards for building design, construction and operations. LEED and Zero Waste Facility Certification also give them a framework to exceed standards where it makes business sense.

How Much Is My Company Worth? Company Valuations With LBW Wealth Management

Company valuations should be done based on a rational justification of the future growth rate and future earnings of the company, as well as the fundamentals of the business model. For example, whether the company is defensibly unique and how long its competitive advantage can be sustained are both key drivers of company value.

SBA 504 Loans with Diane Byler of WBD

An SBA 504 loan is a special product that can only be offered by a Certified Development Company (CDC) like WBD in partnership with a local lender. The 504 loan is designed to help small businesses grow and create jobs by financing fixed assets like real estate and equipment through low, fixed rates and lower down payments (10%).

Food Hubs with Tara Roberts-Turner of the Wisconsin Food Hub Cooperative

Due to its business model, Wisconsin Food Hub Co-op needed to reach at least $3.3 million in sales to break even. To maintain their margins, they built capacity through adequate staffing and have cheap warehouse space close to their farmers which serves only cooling and aggregation/distribution functions, rather than other forms of value-added processing.