Hey , 

This has been a heavy year. Friday's Supreme Court decision to reverse Row v. Wade is devastating. This on top of recent school shootings, an ongoing war in Ukraine, and countless other issues affecting our every day. I know it's taking a mental and emotional toll on me, and maybe you as well. It can sometimes feel hard to focus on your business when everything else feels like chaos. That's why today I want to focus on how to better control a chaotic part of your business - Supply-Chain.

PS. If you were forwarded this newsletter, please 

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. 

  3 No-Cost Ways to Improve Your Supply-Chain 

It seems that every brand I talk with is experiencing some sort of problem with either their in-bound shipments or out-bound deliveries. Today I want to talk through some ways of mitigating these disruptions.

Pre-pandemic we lived in a world of just-in-time delivery, where you could get almost anything within a reasonable delivery window. Then the pandemic completely disrupted global and local supply chains. Now that things are starting to normalize a bit, we're still working through great uncertainty.

The biggest issue is one shipment arrives right on time in two days, while another can be delayed by 4 weeks. It's very difficult to coordinate the on-time delivery of so many components. If you're feeling the pain, you're not alone. 

Here are a few tips to better take back control.

Localize Your Suppliers

Find ingredient and packaging suppliers close to your manufacturing facility to reduce shipping costs and time. When I sourced almonds for TeaSquares, we found this great wholesaler in Washington State that had an amazing product. Only thing was that our manufacturing facility was in Chicago. Shipping cost was almost the same as the product, and it took about 1.5 weeks (pre-covid) to arrive. 

So what did we do? Eventually, we found a regional nut wholesaler in Chicago and were able to get a great quality product at the same price, but without the additional shipping cost or time. 

Localizing your supply chain is a big way of eliminating shipping delays. Can't find someone in the same city? That's ok, expand your search to the nearest hub city.

What's the best way to find new suppliers? I'm a big fan of

ShelfLife

. It's a B2B marketplace for wholesale ingredients.

Develop Redundant Suppliers

You should have 3 qualified suppliers for every ingredient in your product. That means having a contact person there, pricing, and all the Quality Assurance documents on hand. This may seem overboard, especially if you have 10 different ingredients in your product. But trust me, it comes in handy when your main supplier is suddenly out of stock and you need product fast. 

Ordering ingredients that are grown overseas? Find wholesalers who source from different countries. 

For packaging if you're printing overseas, have a domestic alternative, even if it's a higher price. That way you can produce short runs to fill in the gaps. 

Inventory management systems like

Fiddle.io

make it easy to track multiple suppliers per ingredient, including pricing, MOQs, and lead time. 

Simplify Recipes

The fewer ingredients in your product the better. At TeaSquares we had 18 differnet ingredients between each of our 3 flavors. This meant a lot of work ordering and tracking ingredients. In addition, we had 2 ingredients that were unique and we could only find 1 supplier each who could deliver them. That meant if the supplier was delayed, we had no other option. 

I highly recommend you revisit your recipes and look for ways to simplify your ingredient list and make sure you can find at least 3 suppliers for each ingredient (as mentioned above). Otherwise, your product is at the mercy of that one supplier.

What other supply chain tips do you have? Shoot me an email and let me know.

Jordan Buckner

Foodbevy

WEBINAR: 3 PRINCIPLES TO SCALE FROM 7-8 FIGURES THROUGH D2C DESIGN

FRIDAY, JULY 1ST AT 11AM PT | 1PM CT | 2PM ET - FREE

Are you looking to update the look of your website but don’t know where to start? Join me as I talk with Ben Sung, founder of D2C Design as we discuss how to improve the design of your D2C site to improve shopper education and increase conversions.

BRING SAME-DAY DELIVERY TO YOUR E-COMMERCE SITE

I'm testing out a new service,

XpressRun

, which enables Same Day & Next Day delivery for DTC brands at ground shipping rates while maintaining your brand identity from start to finish. 

It's as easy as downloading the Shopify app and setting up your pickup preferences. Customers can select "Same Day / Next Day Delivery" at checkout, and see live rates appear.

XpressRun

partners with companies like DoorDash and others to come to your facility, pickup, and deliver to the customer up to 100 miles away.

For it to work, you need to have a facility with pickup capabilities.

Let me know if you want an intro to their team to learn more

PARTICIPATE IN LIVE SHOPPING EVENTS

Are you looking for a new way of building brand fans? Crafted just launched their sign-up page for it's shoppable livestream cookalongs. It's designed to get your products in front of potential customers as they're following along with cooking videos.

How it Works:

1. Add products

2. Creator purchases products to use in cooking video

3. Creator goes live and uses your product

4. Viewers can purchase your products directly from the livestream

Sign up as a brand partner today

NEW CREATIVE HAVEN PODCAST

Marketing, design, and branding can make or break a brand, but investing in any of these can seem daunting to an early-stage founder. Our friend Mitchel from

Creative Haven

teamed up with Naturally Austin and had nine discussions with experts in branding, marketing + design whose insight and thoughts could help you get to the next level.

NEW PODCAST EPISODE: 46. Building a Brand That's "Not Healthy, Just Delicious"

Almost every product on the market today is leading with a health claim, but what happens when you lead with "Not Healthy, Just Delicious"? Let's find out on today's episode with Sam Tichnor, founder of FFUPs. What are FFUPs? It's a line of crunchy puffed snacks that are designed for the couch potatoes at home.Sam has a rich background working in Brand Innovation at Harry's (the DTC razor company) and took that consumer research experience and launched a brand all around taste and flavor. We dive into his process and what makes the brand stand out.

Listen on Spotify | Listen on Apple Podcasts

DISCOUNTS

- Mindful Goods 

is an awesome Amazon expert that can quickly get you started or optimize your pages for strong ROI. 

Get 10% of their services 

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- Maverick Lab 

allows you to create individually personalized videos (with a customer's name) welcoming them to your community. Foodbevy members save 40%. Reply to this e-mail for an introduction.

Check out their demo here.

- Chop 

is a

rebate platform

that allows you to drive in-store trial, collect customer shopping data, and build customer profiles to further drive your business. Foodbevy members save 20% off. E-mail me for the discount.

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is now providing $20,000 in fee-free processing for new and EXISTING customers.

Save over $600

The Accountrepreneur 

is your go-to outsourced CPA and CFO firm for the food and beverage industry. Receive

 a free financial assessment + Foodbevy Members get 20% off services for one year.

- Airtable

 can store information in a spreadsheet that's visually appealing and easy-to-use, but it's also powerful enough to act as a database that businesses can use for customer-relationship management (CRM), task management, project planning, and tracking inventory. 

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With your help we're building an amazing community of Food and Bev entrepreneurs helping each other!

Jordan