You’ve made your retail-ready list, and checked it twice … okay, more like a million times. Product ready, check. Packaging ready, check. Labeling in compliance, double check. Now it’s time to launch your product into…
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A reader recently wrote in after reading our CPG Sales Career FAQs. She’s the CEO of a chocolate company and runs a small sales team. She wanted to know how to structure a CPG sales…
Incubators and accelerators can be useful to entrepreneurs who are looking to move their start-ups forward. In addition to mentorship and training, many food startup accelerators will offer funding. (Note that this funding is often…
Moving from in-house production to a contract packager (co-packer) is a big step for food and beverage startups. It can be difficult to reproduce your original flavor when you move from a commercial kitchen to…
You’ve started — or have an idea for starting — a business. You’re ready to make it official. How to form a company in the US? Where, exactly, do you begin? This quick guide will…
Bootstrapping comes from the phrase “pull yourself up by your bootstraps.” While the term is also used with reference to computing and statistics, today’s post covers what bootstrapping means in a startup environment. To bootstrap…
Startups are not simply small businesses. As Steve Blank famously stated, a startup is a “temporary organization designed to search for a repeatable and scalable business model.” There’s a lot of jargon in that. Let’s unpack it. What…
As an entrepreneur with four businesses under my belt and with a bunch of time on my hands after my latest venture, The Brighthouse, was largely taken down by Covid-19, I’m thinking about starting my…
In my last post, I walked you through how my data-driven process led to the launch of Boreal Botanical Brewing, a medicinal mushroom-based beverage for the sober-curious. In this post, I cover the market research…
Over 50% of all newly launched food businesses fail within their first five years. Most were started with passion and energy. Many produce excellent and exciting products. Sometimes business failure is due to financial mismanagement…
Most CPG businesses are looking for that next step to increase sales. Some of us dream of seeing our products in stores like Target or Whole Foods, and others just want to have a few…
I spoke with a young woman today who was curious about CPG sales jobs at plant-based CPG startups. She had a lot of great questions about how the CPG sales industry works. I’m writing up…