Nikki McNeil is a Co-Founder at Vividly, a trade spend management software which aims to deliver clear value through efficiencies when analyzing trade spend dollars. Whether you’re a founder managing trade spend for one partner or hundreds, having the right system in place can ensure you stay on budget and receive proper payment from all of your distributors and retailers. In this episode, Sarah got to sit down with Nikki to discuss managing trade spend, and what kind of systems you can put in place to support you and your team at any size.

Sourcing the best ingredients for your good food product has many implications for your business. Eran Mizrahi co-founded Ingredient Brothers to support founders in this process.

In this episode, Sarah and Eran connect over their shared buyer and finance experience, building a relationship with your purveyors, and Eran shares an approach to strategically reducing ingredient costs that was spot on and totally new to us!

Emily Dyer-Schiefer traded her chef's knife for a business blueprint, and she hasn't looked back since. Tired of the conflicting advice and clichés saturating the food business landscape, Emily founded two platforms designed to streamline success. Whether through bite-sized lessons at Food Biz School or a dive into strategy at The Kitchen Think, she's committed to helping foodpreneurs build strong, thoughtful businesses that defy the status quo.

In this episode, Sarah gets to connect with Emily after years of following each other’s careers online. They become fast friends as they discuss all the common pit-falls they have encountered while working in the food industry and supporting Good Food Founders.

When it comes to building a business, it can be tempting to skip to the tactical work that feels like action, but we really need to make sure we get a few foundational pieces of strategy in place first to get all those tactical decisions optimized and working together as part of an integrated plan so have the ability to be proactive and cohesive vs feeling like things are disjointed.

In this episode, we are taking a step back and doing just that. Sarah is joined by Katie Mleziva, a Food Brand Strategist with over 20 years of experience in Brand & Marketing Strategy. Katie walks us through her step by step process to develop a brand strategy that is authentic to you and your business and will connect to your audience.

As a Food Founder, knowing your costs is the first and most important step you can take toward profitability. Having a tool that helps guide that work will make your life easier, and give you the confidence that you are on the right track. In this episode, Sarah talks with Percy Swint, founder and designer of Prophit App.

In November 2022, Percy launched Prophit, and he’s on the podcast today to share the evolution from spreadsheet to online tool, how it works, and how it can impact founders across the good food industry.

In this episode, Sarah is joined by Paul Christian. Paul is an industry veteran with over thirty years of experience working with powerhouse companies like Hormel, Coca-Cola, Unilever Ice Cream, and Smuckers.

When you are ready to grow your food business beyond your backyard, you may seek the support of a broker. And how you build that relationship can make or break your business. Paul is sharing all that knowledge and experience in this conversation all about building an effective and successful partnership with a broker.

In this episode, we’ve invited individuals from throughout the food industry for a discussion about the true cost of food. Sarah is joined by food industry members from up and down the supply chain as they start to crack open the layers and consider all of the costs (financial and otherwise) that create the food system that we work within today, and discuss the changes that could benefit producers and consumers.

In this episode, Sarah is joined by Cat Turner, Founder of CZero. Cat is an entrepreneur, software engineer, and scientist who is passionate about using technology to empower people and solve hard problems. CZero is a company that’s providing a solution for CPG brands to distribute their products without the need to have warehouses or transportation facilities. And with their platform, brands can now have access to carbon accounting, enabling them to shift towards eco-friendly logistics and achieve carbon neutrality.

In this episode, Sarah is joined by Arik Keller, Founder and CEO of Mable, the B2B wholesale platform designed to make it easy for grocery & convenience stores to easily discover and buy emerging, local brands.

B2B E-Commerce sites can be a great channel to expand your business beyond your backyard. And a platform like Mable can serve as a bridge to growing into national distribution on your own terms.