The Online Community for Food and Beverage Startups

   HOW TO LEVERAGE       VIRTUAL ASSISTANTS        TO GROW YOUR CPG BRAND   

Hey ,

Life as a CPG founder is hectic and full of challenges. If you find yourself with too much to do and not enough time to get it all done, then a Virtual Assistant (VA) may be right for you.

But wait!! Can I trust a VA? What can they even do for my business? Nothing can work without me, won't I just be doing the same amount of work and paying someone else? Everything is so CPG specific, how will they know what to do?

I’ll be honest, these were my fears as I’ve literally been thinking about hiring a VA for 5 years, ever since I read Tim Ferris’ 4 Hour Work Week.

Guess what? This year I finally decided to do it because I was at my wits end with an ever growing to-do list and constantly feeling like I was falling behind.

What made the difference? Honestly, I got a cold email from a VA Agency offering a free 4-hour trial and thought it was worth a shot. I was paired with a great VA and we’ve now been working together on a full-time basis for 4 months now and I couldn’t be happier.Shoot me an e-mail if you want a free 4-hour VA trial.But what can a VA actually do for you? I interviewed Zach from Wildland Coffee, David from D'Vash Organics, and Tal from FUN Seasames to share how they're using VAs.

JOYFUL CO. REDESIGN

    THE TRANSITION CHASM   

So I'll be honest, as I started the transition to Joyful Co., I realized I've left Good Food Brands in a strange no-mans-land and have been pretty terrible at updating our website and keeping customers in the loop.I think it's because our corporate gifting orders are still coming in strong, but our individual item orders have pretty much fallen flat. Also, we're low on inventory and I don't want to order a ton of new products just to have extra inventory on hand.But just last week I had a corporate customer reach out through our chat because our Black Founded Brands box was out of stock but listed a restock date of March 6th... It was April 27th. Ooops. Totally missed updating that. Luckily I was able to follow up and looks like the customer will be ordering 40 boxes. Woohoo.I've also neglected our Klaviyo E-mail list... which, is a huge miss. I should be taking our customers on a journey of this transition just like I am with you, so that when we launch, I have a waiting and willing group of customers. Looking back, my last campaign to this list was in November, OUCH. At this point, my e-mail list is close to a cold audience, as I'll now have to do a TON of work to re-engage with them to regain their trust, if that's even possible. Has this ever happened to you? How did you go about your transitions? Hit reply and let me know. 

WEEKLY UPDATES

    BUILT FOR YOU     AFFILIATE MARKETING     PROGRAM   

Krik Angacian is a two-time CPG snack food brand owner (Protes and CandyCan) with one exit under his belt, and most recent founder of CPG Affiliate Partners LLC where he will build and run your affiliate program for you. He created the most brand friendly structure and value including:

• No Retainers - there are no monthly fees or management costs, if they don't perform then you don't pay (we do ask for a 1-time $1,000 set up fee because it takes ~2 weeks to launch a program)

• Only Pay on Sales - they only run CPA traffic, meaning you only pay if a sale occurs! 

• No Locked-In Periods - they operate on a day-to-day agreement, cancel at anytime

• Live Dashboard - brands can see their campaigns performance in real-time and can match their Shopify orders with our dashboard making us a fully transparent solution

Request an introduction

  CREATE YOUR     3 YEAR FINANCING     PLAN  

Do you have a financing plan to navigate the next few years? I partnered with Keith Kohler to help every founder in our Foodbevy community create a 2-3 year financing strategy including debt, equity, and alternative investments. Keith is our most recommended partner in the community, here's what other founders have to say: 

Thank you for setting up a call with Keith Kohler. I don't say this lightly - it was one of the most productive and meaningful calls I have had recently. He listens, offers suggestions, and is knowledgeable. In short, he is someone I want on my team. - Sharon Chamberlin, Catalyst 4 Fitness

I am so grateful that Jordan and FoodBevy recommended a financial review session with Keith Kohler. As a three-time founder and CEO, I have always felt comfortable with the financials of my business, but I didn't know what I didn't know. Keith introduced me to viable, non-dilutive grants, capital and loans that I never even knew existed! Any CPG owner - or a founder from any vertical - would benefit from a session (or more!) with Keith. - Erica Levin, Globowl 

Schedule a Financing call with Keith

    DIGITAL SALES FOR     BEVERAGE, FROZEN,     AND PERISHABLE BRANDS   

If you're a beverage, frozen, or perishable brand, here are 3 tools you can use to drive sales through digital marketing:

• Shoppable Pages ”Buy Near You” functionality embedded directly onto product pages or any owned property.

• Store Locators Actionable and customizable store locators with full shopability at any retailer.

• Add-to-cart links Actively drive shoppers to your retail ecommerce experiences with shoppable links. Links drive mid- and bottom-funnel activity from brands’ free or paid media and other owned properties.

• Landing Pages Display single or multiple products available at single or multiple retailers on shoppable landing pages.

• Direct to Cart Links Retail ecommerce shoppability with the lowest number of clicks. Add products directly to retailers’ carts from your media.

Learn more here.

STARTUP TO SCALE PODCAST

111. Leveraging Affiliate Marketing to Grow Your Brand

Affiliate marketing is one of the best ways to leverage word of mouth to grow your brands, but is often incredibly challenging for CPG brands to properly execute. I invited on Krik Angacian, a two-time CPG founder (Protes and CandyCan) with one exit under his belt. He most recent founder of CPG Affiliate Partners LLC where he helps brands traverse the convoluted affiliate marketing space.

We break down why founders often fail and the 5-step process on creating a successful affiliate strategy

• SET CLEAR GOALS

• OFFER CREATION

• FIND THE RIGHT AFFILIATES

• PROVIDE VALUE TO YOUR AFFILIATES

• TRACK YOUR PERFORMANCE

Listen on Apple Podcasts or Spotify

LINKEDIN POST OF THE WEEK

DISCOUNTS

Stripe is now providing $70,000 in fee-free processing for new and EXISTING customers. Save over $2000

NielsenIQ Byzzer platform provides data for emerging CPG brands. You can access 3 free reports using this link.

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  use code FOODBEVY.

Maverick allows you to create individually personalized videos (with a customer's name) welcoming them to your community.