The Startup CPG Podcast

01:33 Jessi - Hi, Wade. Hi, Alex. Welcome to the show today. So happy to have you both here.

02:50 Wade - Hey, thanks for having us, Jessi. I appreciate it. Good to be here.

02:50 Alex - Yeah, thank you, Jessi. I echo exactly what Wade just said.

02:53 Jessi - Awesome. Yeah, and it was really nice to meet you both in person earlier this year at Expo West. That was super fun. And then it's great to get to back together again. So I'd love to hear from you. If you could each tell us a little bit about yourself and your background. And then if one or both of you could also talk about your podcast, that'd be great just to get us started.

03:18 Wade - All right. You go first? Go first, Alex.

03:20 Alex - I'll go first. OK. So yeah, my name is Alex Bayer. I'm the CEO and co-founder of Genius Juice. Been running our company for way too long. 10 years now. We're going on our 10th year. And it's been a really cool year. We have organic coconut smoothies. We're distributed in different natural stores across the country. We're also online. Shark Tank in 2020, which allowed us to offer our product online because before Shark Tank we had almost zero presence. And then we also are coming out with our Genius Boost wellness shots in June, depending on when this episode is released. It may already be on the market. We're launching June 2023. So that's really exciting. So our main flagship slogan is that we bring nutrition to the mainstream with better for you products that are functional and make you feel better. And we're now getting into more of the nootropic cognitive space. So that is about our brand, Genius Juice.

04:19 Wade - Great. Yeah. So my name is Wade Yenny and I'm currently the vice president of Center Store for the Fresh Market in Greensboro. We've got 160 stores in 22 states. Before that, I've spent the last, call it 20 years, probably too many like Alex said, but call it 20 years in various degrees in the retail space, in corporate buying, in category management, spent time in Ohio and Louisiana on the conventional side of the business and spent time in California on the organic specialty side of the business. And of course here now in my current role, it's primarily focused on the specialty and national organic side of the business. So yeah, that's me in a nutshell. And Alex, who's talking about our little podcast that we do? Is that you? Is that me? Is that both of us? Who's doing that?

05:04 Alex - I think, yeah, we can tag team it. I mean, that's the best way to do it. Two heads better than one, right? Two bald heads are better than one. So, I mean, our podcast, I'll just start it off. It's called CPG Vibes. We originally we were named, our former name was Friday Vibes. And we realized, well, we'd have to do it on Friday, our podcast for the rest of time. And that may not be possible. So we really wanted to be more about the CPG community because that's what we are about supporting the CPG community, supporting the brands. So we actually are now, according to my metrics that I looked up, we are the number one LinkedIn Live CPG podcast, again, for LinkedIn Live. And we love doing LinkedIn Live because, number one, you can't press stop and say, wait, I said something wrong. Let me do that over again. So you're under the pressure of doing it live. We also get to interact with others in the LinkedIn community, all the CPG people, the David Delcourts, the Scott Hartmans, the Belal's and everyone else that we love. That's, you know, part of our CPG community. So there's comments right on LinkedIn Live where people shout out and we shout them out and recognize them. And I think it's pretty cool. So we love what we're doing. We were in the top 20 in Ireland, Canada and also maybe Dubai. I'm trying to think of the third.

06:28 Wade - I was going to say, was it Chile or somewhere? Chile, it was Chile. Yes. Yes. We're international, you could say. And I think just to kind of piggyback on what Alex said, I think, you know, we're having fun doing it. It's not a job. It's not a chore. It's something we both enjoy doing. And really just that sense of community and the space that we're in. For me, it's kind of like a decompression at the end of the week. It's, you know, I come home on Friday and just kind of exhale and just chat. Right. And that's kind of one of our taglines is no script, just chat. And Alex and I really, if you can't tell, if you listen to the show, we don't really prepare for it. So, you know, we might talk about, you know, obviously it's focused on CPG, but we might touch on what we're doing this weekend or, you know, I'm moving or what have you. It's just all over the place. But it's really a sense of community. And, you know, we have guests periodically. Sometimes it's just Alex and I. And, you know, we've touched we've touched on a lot of topics that if you're in the CPG space, that I think a lot of people would find useful, whether you're talking about distribution or getting into stores, you know, my background being retail, Alex being a founder, there's just a nice synergy as far as both sides of the business. I think we cover all the walls.

07:40 Jessi - So, yeah, that's awesome. And yeah, I love tuning into the show when I can live or, you know, listening on a podcast player. And I'll definitely link it in the show notes. And then I've listened to Alex's 15 Minutes of Genius show in the past, too. So, yeah, always appreciate the content that you both are putting out in the world and the community that you create. So, yeah, today I kind of figured with both of you here in your combined 35 plus years of CPG experience that, you know, we could talk a little bit just about, you know, best practices for working with retail buyers. And we're doing our new buyer series. And, you know, we just want to try to give our community members kind of some tools and some some background in how to best work with buyers, approach with buyers. And so I wanted to just kind of start with kind of a more general open question of for each of you, when you think of like, is there anything that comes to mind first when you think of like working with buyers of, you know, best practices or something that's worked really well or it could even be a pet peeve. But like what comes to mind? You're like, oh, I wish people knew X, Y, Z. Anything come to mind, you know, right off the bat that we kind of to start us off?

08:50 Wade - Well, I was going to say, I've talked about this. I feel like a lot of times I just regurgitate stuff over and over again. But for me, I think the first step is always just knowing who your customer is. And if that customer is shopping at the target that you're approaching as a salesperson, meaning, you know, if you're looking at a high end specialty market, if you're trying to sell a low end commodity, I don't know, let's call it canned beans, probably not the right fit. So I think for me, it's always knowing your customer and is that customer shopping your target before you even think about where you want, you know, approaching your target? Is it the right target for you? And I think that's the start of things for me. Alex, I don't know what's what's what's your take?

09:34 Alex - Yeah, I mean, the beauty of this whole dynamic is, as Jesse said, you're on the buying side, I'm on the brand side. So they get, you know, the people listening get both both perspectives. You know, for me, I mean, I echo what you just said, right? You got to pick the right retailers where your product is going to be a fit, because if it's not a fit and you still move forward on it and you get approved and both the buyer and the vendor don't see that it's not a fit, it's going to be a world of hurt for both sides. It's going to be wasted space, right? It's going to be a slot, two slots, three slots that are filled, which could have been filled by something else that would have sold a lot better. But on top of that, so the retailer is going to lose money by lost sales. And then the brand is also going to lose money from spoilage and the product not selling well and having to be on promotion, right? To try to promote your way to better sales, which is never a great way. It's good to do promotions to get the product going and to get into get it into consumers hands so they become repeat purchasers. But to rely on promotions is a big no, no way, as you've seen in the past. So and the only other thing is how do you treat buyers? How do you follow up? Right. All the etiquette, which we've talked about ad nauseum on CPG Vibes, which is, you know, you want to be pleasantly persistent, as Matt Cotton says in his podcast, where it's following up by being professional, not pushing too hard and also recognizing that, you know, the buyer is not, you know, like they got a thousand things going on. They might have a re if they're not responding to your email, maybe there's a reset. Maybe they're on personal leave. Maybe they're not reviewing your category. And this is not a maybe this is a probably this is a definitely one of these things. So it's good to know the signs on when they're not responding. Don't push too hard and just follow up. Have a cadence of following up. And eventually, when the timing is right, then you can have a meeting and then also samples. Right. Which I want to flip back to Wade sending samples and how that works. So, Wade, what are your thoughts on that?

11:38 Wade - Well, yeah, those are all good points. I think for me, you know, the word buyers, people think, you know, they're just making decisions on category reviews or they're just writing POs or something like that. And I can assure you, you know, when you look at the role of we were using the word buyer, but if you say category manager, what have you, program director, whatever the case may be, those people touch on so many facets of the business, they're touching supply chain, they're touching marketing, they're touching operations, they're touching merchandise, and they're touching all these different buckets of the retail business. And just a fraction of that time is spent actually reviewing a category. Then you have to also I didn't mention space planning. Where does it go in the store? And all these different things factor into what that person does. And so when the emails, you know, and they believe when I say you get hundreds of them, you know, when when those become antagonistic or negative or for the last time, or this is, you know, you know, just very negative as far as following up, that's where that pleasantly persistence comes in. Right. As far as having an understanding of what that person is going through, whether it's professional, which I'm touching on, or even personal, whatever the case may be, if you're following up is not the right tone, you know, not that you have to treat someone with kid gloves, but if it's not the right tone, it does more harm than good. And really, it can be a deterrent as far as establishing relationship and moving things in the right direction.

13:02 Jessi - Right. Yeah. No, that's that makes a lot of sense. And I think Alex, you mentioned samples and was there, Wade, did you want to add anything on the sample piece of sending in samples or getting samples?

13:15 Wade - I do a series about sales sales tips from a buyer's perspective and just kind of give some insight into what I would do if I was selling product from my perspective. So, you know, when I talk about samples, I talk about the first thing is to make sure that you're sending it to the right address. I think that, you know, some of this stuff is just so elementary that it seems laughable. But it's believe me when I say that these things happen. Beyond that, you want to make sure your contact information is with the sample. So it's great that you sent this awesome package and, you know, it has this wonderful product in it. But then if I have to Google to find out what the product is or where it came from, you know, you believe it or not, that happens. In addition, it has to be packaged securely. Part of part of what I'm going to show when I talk about this tomorrow is a package that came in today. I'm not going to name the brand, but it was it was a box of a product that was glass in glass jars. And as soon as we cut the box open, one of the jars was busted and product was leaking all over. So guess what happened with that package? The entire thing went in the trash. Now, there might have only been one jar that was busted. But if you think I or my teammates are going to go through broken glass and seeping products through a package to try and find some usable product, that's not going to happen. And then beyond that, I always say to personalize the package, I always say to make sure include a note to address if you're sending it to me, to address it to me, who it's from, etc, etc. Just to put a little personal touch on it so that it's not just, you know, an Amazon package that we all get every day. And the last one I would say is, you know, make sure that there's two more. Make sure that it was solicited, that I know it's coming. I mean, well, it's great to get free things you think it is. You don't, you know, so many so many buyers, category managers work out of a small space. And if they just got samples all day, there's no space to work, you know. And so people are sending cases and cases of products that can make it look like a warehouse as far as as far as their workspace is. The last one I would say is perishable product to make sure not only to make sure that your buyer category manager knows it's coming, but also to know that your appropriate refrigeration has to be there, whether it's dry ice, whatever the case is. And then always you want to always send that at the beginning of the week, because if you send it out towards the end of the week and it's sitting somewhere over the weekend, you know, in an office or in a UPS facility or something like that, odds are it's not going to be, you know, still good come Monday or Tuesday. So I always I always say make sure you know it's coming and then you make sure you know when your when your buyer's in the office, because so many people are on hybrid schedules right now that, you know, if you send it on even if you send it on Monday, but they're in the office on Tuesday, you know, you might they might not get it till the following weekend just to assume that someone is going to be there to receive it, to handle it, to to store it until that buyer gets back in the office. That's a bad assumption.
16:08 Alex - An interesting thing, too, is that since we started our podcast or CPG Vise podcast together, we're receiving samples at home, you know. And so Wade's been doing this for a while, so he knows the game of getting samples and he's used to a bunch come in and the box and you know, and then where do you put the samples and how do you handle that kind of volume? Obviously, much larger volumes at a retailer than a single person, right? You would think, you know, we have one of our receiving boxes is a UPS store. OK, it's not a big corporate headquarters. You know, we're not the Apple campus in Cupertino, even we'd love to be, but we're not. So a lot of the mail goes to this UPS store, which is our listed address just to save money. And there's like boxes to the ceiling that are directed for CPG Vise for Alex, Alex and Wade. And so I got a little taste of what it's like to get samples. And just, you know, last week, I got, you know, six cases or four to almost six cases of this energy drink, functional energy drink. And there's just no way, number one, I can fit it in our condo here in L.A. Number two, it can't go into the refrigerator, right? You know, we're a three person household. And so I had to give some away. So I think like it's also sending the right amount as well. I think that's really, really big because like, number one, if you send too much, there's no way the buyer is going to be like drinking 20, 24 cans unless they just love your product, which would be amazing. So send like a small sampler pack just out of respect for the fact that there's limited space. But yeah, that's my advice.

17:45 Jessi - Yeah, that yeah, more is not necessarily better. And, you know, as an operations person, I appreciate the like space planning and like thinking through the like the actual logistics of what a person's space are like before you send them something. So, yeah, that's super helpful. And there's multiple things I want to dig into and what you both shared. But I want to kind of go back to each of your first point about making sure that a retailer is a fit for your product. And I'm curious if you have tips for like how to how to research, how to, you know, how to decide, because I think I've heard Wade in particular, I think on a panel you shared a little bit about using Instacart as a resource. And I've shared that with multiple brands are like, oh, like that, you know, what a great idea. So I'd love, you know, for you to expand on that or any other ideas have. And for you, Alex, like what research you find helpful when you're deciding like to pitch to a retailer, like, you know, so that a brand can kind of do their homework first to know that they're going to be a fit.

18:33 Wade - Yes. So you hit it right on the head for me. I did kind of I am passionate about that whole aspect of it simply because in this day and age, there's no reason you pretty much can be inside a store when you talk about you mentioned Instacart. If you go to Instagram and look at their is it Reels or what's the short stories at the top of your feed, you know, follow on Instagram and see what they're posting on a daily basis. Go to their face. What are their social medium is that they focus their efforts on? Look at their weekly circulars, go to their website and see what they're promoting in the ad is, you know, and sign up for their email newsletters and see what kind of marketing they're doing via email and all those things. I mean, you can tell a pretty good story real quick, just following a retailer for a week.  And if you go step by step, all those things I mentioned, if you look at their shop, like you're going to shop their store on Instacart, you do their socials, you sign up for the email newsletter, you do all those things, you're going to find out pretty fast how they're going to market, what kind of products they carry, what kind of products they promote, and just a good idea of, in my opinion, whether or not you're going to be a good fit for that retailer.

19:27 Alex - Yeah, and a lot of brands are just all about growth or like, we need to grow. We need to grow. We need to boost our bottom line. We got to our top line, I should say. We have investors that we're reporting to. So there's this constant like push and pull that a lot of CPG brands have. And so there's a lot of push and pull on with brands and what they need to be doing. And I think like, you know, the bull market, which was 2014, 15, you know, coming out of the 2008 crisis, going into, you know, the teens of the 2000s into 2022, it's been a huge bull market. And Wade, you noticed that too. Companies raising a lot of money, new growth opportunities, growing at all costs, you know, very, very slim margins, not profitable at all. That was the model, right, that used to be. And I know this is a hot topic. So when you make the wrong decisions in out of just the sake of growth, that's when you start affecting your bottom line and you're losing money, because you have to spend all this extra money to support your product when it should be moving organically off the shelf, if it's the right fit with that consumer that's shopping at that store and a genius juice. So we made mistakes just like any other entrepreneur. We launched in Publix. We launched in Target, all great retailers. We just weren't ready for those retailers. We didn't have the awareness yet. We weren't pushing people to the store. And we thought, hey, you know, if we launched in 600 Publix is and Publix, you know, they're a great retailer, we should sell right? Completely wrong. We didn't do the research on all the competitive analysis on the other brands. What's selling well, what's not selling well, looking at the spins data. We just went in there because Publix is a great retailer. And what ended up happening is after four months, we were discontinued, which I've been very, you know, public about and no pun intended. And we also spent all this money on advertising BOGO deals. So, you know, like Wade said, the brand needs to do their research. And also the brand needs to tell their investors like, look, just because we're not growing this quarter, that's not a bad thing. Let's look at the bottom line. Let's look at the profit because having a sustainable company, especially in this environment is more important than growth. And what worries me about this industry is that there's so many companies, just the big guys that are raising money, raising money, raising money and going into new retailers. And they have to keep spending money to make money. So I think like what's smart for, you know, 95% of all brands are under 10 million, right? In revenue and top line revenue. We're all the smaller guys, you know, we're the Mark Samuels of the world. We're the, you know, David Delcourts of the world where we want to be bigger. So because we're not that big and we don't have an unlimited marketing spend, we just have to be really judicious and careful on where we go and just get to the retailers where you know your velocity is going to be best and it's going to organically move off the shelf. That's the smartest way to run your business in this environment. And maybe when you get bigger and you have extra marketing spend, then you can take your chance and start going into the larger retailers. But most brands make the mistake where they launch too early in like Kroger and they're in 2000 stores. How the hell are you going to support 2000 stores? If you're a brand that's doing 3 million in sales and have no marketing budget. It's just so a lot of this, there's a lot of bad decisions that happen in this business, unfortunately.

23:08 Jessi - Yeah, yeah, that's what my entry into the CPG industry was at a brand, you know, earlier on, during the bull market of, you know, kind of growth at all costs, doors at all costs. And yeah, you end up launching with retailers that just aren't the right fit, or you're just too early, there's not the marketing to support it and you get discontinued. So yeah, those those are super important points. And I think, you know, to Wade's point talking about like looking up the, you know, the promotional flyers and everything on the website of retailers, I think I love that tip. Because I think also once you get to the promotion planning stage, which I'd love to hear both of your, you know, insights on planning good promotions, but I feel like that's so helpful. So that when you pitch to the retailer, and they say, hey, sign up for our XYZ program, you've already done your research and are like, oh, yeah, I noticed that you run this spring sale that I think we'd be a really good fit for because it's all organic products or whatever, like you really, you then understand where your brand fits into the overall stores promotion, you know, schedule. And I think that that could be super valuable. When you're like, otherwise, if you're just looking at an Excel sheet of like, well, which promotional like thing should I sign up for the store? If you've been doing your research, you'll know what the stores look like what the flyers look like what the shoppers are looking for and those kind of things.

24:22 Wade - Definitely, definitely. I think, you know, just just promotions, you know, we could probably do an episode just on that. But I think when you when you look at those, those vehicles that you talked about, I talked about, you can see is it a is a high low retailer is a BOGO driven, you know, if you're in the conventional markets, you know, some of the higher end conventionals, like some of the companies that I've worked with over the years have have monthly flyers dedicated to whether they call them specialty, whether they call them healthy living or health and wellness, something like that, they put out specialty flyers. So that's a vehicle, but then they've got their weekly ads that is all driven on price and really trying to get people in the store. So, you know, there's there are just a number of things. I think, as a someone from the retail side, I think, you know, for the most part, my my what I'm looking for, what my team looks for is is support, right? You know, what's important to us, what vehicles are important to us and knowing when you sign up a new brand or, you know, you have a relationship that what the expectation is, as far as how frequent. And just that support is going to be there because I say this all the time, too. And Alex can piggyback off or just kind of go off on his own. You know, the easy part is getting on the shelf. Alex, you know, his example of Publix and Target and getting on the shelf. I won't say it was easy, but it was compared to selling the product. Right. I mean, the work starts once you're on the shelf, because typically, especially in this channel, if you're a new brand, you're giving a free fill or slotting some sort to get on the shelf. And so you're really not even making money until that first product goes out the door and the retailer reorders product. And so that's what I say. It's getting easy to get on the shelf. That's you're there getting off the shelf is that next step. And that's where that hard work and elbow grease and everything goes into you know, whether you talk about promotions and socials and just working all those aspects to to Alex's point to move product and making sure it moves once it's on the shelf. And Alex, what do you have to say?

26:18 Alex - Yeah, I mean, you know, velocity is going to be key. Less locations, more velocity. I mean, that's like most brands need to be running their business that way. Just pick the right retailers. Velocity is king. You can always duplicate your velocity down the road. But brand awareness is also really huge. And I think like the best product is one that's already bought before it even hits the shelf. Right. We talked about that last week. It's like, you know, I think Adam said it. Adam Brown, who was a guest in our last episode. And so that's really important is like building that demand and creating destination shopping. But it's becoming harder. You know what I mean? Like there's there's all this noise now. There's social media, there's all this noise. Everyone's trying to, you know, clamor for you know, your attention right on social and the algorithms are all weird, right? You don't know what's going to work and what's not going to work. Ad spend to me is really hard to get it right. And you have to spend a lot of money to get it right. So it just goes back to my point where I'm a big fan of DSD. We talked about that a few, I think, five or six episodes ago. I'm a big fan of regional and late game is when you go national, not the first three, four years. Like to me, that's like five, six years in unless you got a product that is very difficult to get right. And I think that's the biggest thing. Unless you got a product that is very different, very special, and you have a lot of VC money behind you to support whatever happens when you go national, all the marketing support. But for 95% of the brands, if you can be regional, you can do DSD, which stands for direct store delivery. So companies like Rainforest, companies like high touch, you know, companies like Seacoast, right down in San Diego. Those guys are great. And they pay their entire invoice. There's no chargebacks are very few. Maybe like $5 if you know, they buy you a coffee or something like that. That's the only chargeback. But you know, I'm a big fan of going to dependable, reliable partners that will pay you in full, get your product on the shelf, your business matters to them. So not to go off on a tangent, I think because Wade knows where I'm going with this. But when you start going to national distributors, it becomes infinitely harder to support and you know, support the retailers to make sure that the distribution centers have enough product, you have to have a real great team managing that or else it's going to eat you alive if you start going national in distribution and retailers.

28:32 Kim - Hey there, this is Kim on the Startup CPG team. Did you know that over 70% of in store promotions are not effective? And over 80% of brands will fail while promoting at the shelf. But you have to run promotions with retailers. So what's the solution? Thankfully, Promomash, the only all in one promotion management platform and Crisp, a leading retail data platform that integrates with over 40 retailers have developed a joint solution that gives CPG brands a level of visibility and control they've never had before over their trade spend and promo performance. A free 30 day risk free trial is available exclusively for startup CPG members. Just go to promomash.com/startupcpg. Promomash is spelled P R O M O M A S H. To see for yourself what more effective promotion planning looks like. That's promomash.com/startupcpg or the link is in the show notes.

29:44 Jessi - Are you looking to get your products in front of 17,000 foodies? Consider exhibiting at the IFT First conference happening in Chicago, July 16 through 19. The Expo is put on by the Institute of Food Technologists, IFT and filled with buyers, investors, product developers, research and development and innovators. There will be a startup pitch competition giving away $15,000 in prizes plus 100 scientific panels, more than 800 exhibitors plus the startup pavilion featuring 100 food and food tech startups. Booths in the startup pavilion are affordable at just $575. The theme of this year's IFT first is innovation in a time of crisis. Can we future proof the food system? To learn more about IFT first and how to get a startup kiosk, go to IFTevent.org. That's I F T as an Institute of Food Technologists, IFTevent.org and the link is in the show notes.

31:00 Jessi - So I'm curious for, you know, for each of you just a little bit more on the distribution side, like, you know, navigating finding, you know, those smaller like DSDs and making those work and how to still build out a great relationship with a retailer that you want to get in without having to use a national player that you're might not be ready for.

31:42 Alex - You know, what do we say five minutes ago, this could be an entire different episode, right? You might have to bring us back for this one. But, you know, without really getting into specifics and getting in the weeds, just regional DSD to me is, is the best friend for a brand that's emerging, that's natural. I pick up the phone, I can call Zarr at high touch, I can call Amari over at Rainforest. You know, we're not with Seacoast, but I'm sure I can reach that guy Val, right? At Seacoast. So, you know, and you can go to their office and you can see someone, a human being, right? So I'm a big fan of that. And then you also get better margins, obviously, with less chargebacks. There's some national distributors that are better and there's some that are worse, right? But no matter who you go with, there's going to be more chargebacks through activations because the reality of this business, which is really a challenge to many emerging brands is that the big national distributors, and they've said this on record, whoever it is, right, is that they don't make that much money off delivering product. They just don't. Freight rates have gone up, gas has gone up, labor has gone up, workers comp has gone up. So they have a lot of overhead, their distribution centers, they make, they have a profit center off of chargebacks, right? Whether it's a valid chargeback, whether it's an erroneous chargeback, they make billions of dollars in profit. So this is where it's important that if you're going to go into that ocean, right, where, you know, you have national distributors, just go in with two eyes open and know that you're not going to see 100% of your check coming back. And I would highly recommend, highly, I can't recommend enough to hire a deduction specialist. We've talked about that on our show as well. Someone, whether it's V driven, whether it's, you know, I work with a great woman named Mary Burnett, she's like just a solo entrepreneur that all she does for 20 years is fight deductions. That's all she does for a living. She knows every code in the book, getting someone like that, that can go through your chargebacks and identify this one's valid, this one's not. And when it's not valid, it's not that they're trying to pull one over on you. It's just distributors make mistakes because they're doing thousands and thousands of these processes, right? These chargebacks. So just be careful if you're going to go national, eyes wide open. But I would say direct is the better way to go. I mean, that's an obvious statement. But if you can go direct with Publix instead of KeHe, go direct. If you can go direct with Albertsons, go direct. But obviously, there's some partnerships, right? Whole Foods, Sprouts, where you have to go with a distributor. And that's where it gets more difficult for the smaller brands.

34:25 Jessi - Wade, for you, in your experience with different retailers, has a brand not being in a national retailer, does it affect your judgment if somebody's like, oh, I'm already nationally distributed? Does that help a brand? Or is it more like their willingness to use a, say, a regional partner that already works with the retailer? I'm curious how that can influence the buyer side in your experience, where a brand's already set up for distribution? Or if it's okay that maybe they don't have any distribution and this is going to be their intro to a regional distributor, this retailer.

35:04 Wade - Yeah, so there's a lot to unpack there. So I've worked for a four store chain up to pushing 200, right? And so for a four store chain, 13 in Ohio, there are strong regional partners that are probably going to be able to service you and get product in faster. And the other piece of that is, you brought this up, is like, if you're a new brand and you don't really have a lot of distribution, a four store chain, or probably even 13 for that matter, probably is going to be enough to open up space in one of those national distributors, right? You need a bigger volume to occupy a slot in the warehouse and to be able to have one of those big guys bring you in, right? Four stores isn't going to cut it. They need, you know, 20, 25, whatever that number is. And so there are typically, Alex referenced some there in Southern California, but there are typically really strong regional partners. And what I would say is I absolutely 100% don't disagree with anything that Alex said. What I would say from a retailer's side, I'm just putting on my hat and not the brand hat. It's a real fine line, because what I, what I go back, the operational piece of the store. Okay. And so as you get into, let's say a medium sized chain, let's call it, let's call it 10, 15 stores. And you, you're with a smaller distributor. The challenge becomes, some of the ones Alex mentioned are different because those, those folks, some of those folks write their own orders. So they're coming in and actually taking care of the product. They're saying, oh, I need a case of this and two cases of that. And I'm bringing it in and I'm gonna bring it in. I'm gonna bring in this, the other one. And here it is. What I'm referring to is a, the more small vendors you have and you have to DSD, whatever you want to call it. And you have to have a separate order for each one of those people. What I say is typically you're going to have one person in grocery or dairy or frozen. That's responsible for what we call writing orders. It's responsible for sending the orders, whether it's national, what have you. And unfortunately, when, when you're looking at it again, I'm talking about it, maybe 30,000 square foot store, 35,000 square feet. So not a very tiny one, but, but a medium sized, medium large, those individuals that are writing those orders, their focus is going to be on their first order, which is that big order, right? It's, it's the national distributor that 70% of their business comes from. And then oftentimes right below that is not necessarily a regional one, but maybe that, you know, I reference the conventional chains with this, with a focus on specialty. They have that next one down that is kind of maybe another 20% of their business. So I've got to get that 70% order in because that's the bulk of what's on my shelves. And then that 20% orders is what's left. And then you have these little onesies and twosies to make up that balance. Right? And so what happens is the more of those onesies and twosies that you have, the time of that individual writing those orders becomes less and less and less and less. So priority wise, you start with the big boy and you work your way down and you might not get to that one down here. So sometimes that order might go a day or two before it gets placed, or it might be a week before the order actually comes in. So I agree everything from a brand perspective with what Alex said. I think, you know, it's, I always say crawl, walk, run on every one of my posts. And I think that's what this is about is simply having, making sure the cart's not before the horse and starting small and growing your business. But the caution is to make sure you have the right partner, that DSD partner, that regional partner. There's some good ones and there's some not so good ones. So it's just like with, you know, what we talked about is doing your doing your homework. You talk to a brand that's in the space, you talk to, you know, your peer in the business and say, Hey, what was your experience with Joe Vendor? What was your experience with this person? And before you dive in, you know, make sure what you're getting into. And that way, you've kind of got your your your facts in front of you to make a good decision. Right?

38:37 Jessi - Yeah, yeah. So that's, that's super helpful. I'm also curious, this is a little more on the I guess, like, operations or setup piece, but I'm curious for for both of you on like the organization side for like, so for Alex, like on the brand side, if you're reaching out to to buyers or managing store relationships that you're already in, like, what does that look like for you to kind of stay organized? You know, no, like, do you use a system? Like, how do you know how often you followed up with a buyer? How like, you know, how do you track, you know, how you've last check in with someone and then on the flip side for like, Wade, from a, you know, on your side, like when brands are checking in and saying, Hey, like, I haven't heard from you or whatever. And then, you know, you've got category reviews where you have submissions. But like, what does it look like to kind of manage those hundreds of emails in your inbox? Like, do you have systems outside of email? So kind of curious, I guess, on the organization side for both of you.

39:46 Alex - I mean, you have to pick a system that works for you. I mean, like, you know, you can go to Salesforce and there's all these really fancy CRM systems where they notify you like 40 times with 30 different ringtones or whatever, you know, a cow moo and then like a cheetah, you know, roaring out, you know, I'm just kidding. The main the main thing is that use the system that works best for you. And we're a really simple business, you know, we're not Justin's peanut butter or, you know, koia, right? We're not at 40 or 50 million a year or higher. You know, we're a sub $10 million brand. So we don't have a ton of customers directly. We don't have a ton of distributors. We have less than five at this point. So and we have, you know, less than 10 major retailers that are carrying our product. So I use one which is called less annoying CRM. And I love it. It's so simple. It's less. That's literally what's called less. That's amazing. And because it's less annoying, it's so easy to use. And you set reminders for yourself or just to go the traditional route, which is Excel spreadsheet, you know, and have a shared Google spreadsheet with your sales team. And what I when and what I do with my sales team is every Friday, we go on Zoom and we just share the screen and we just go over our Google sheet. How about this account? How about this account? But what makes Genius Juice more unique now than we were a year ago is with our smoothies. We were going after major chains, you were going after Whole Foods, we were going after, you know, you know, fresh market, all these other places, right. And so now we've adjusted our strategy with our with our wellness shots to go after independence. So the level of care on independence is like, really, really big, you know, it's like, did you talk to Jimmy at this store or john at that store? So but as far as managing relationships with national accounts, don't overcheck in and that's where weight can really, you know, talk about that. Like, don't be like, is everything good? You know, like every month, like, dude, everything's fine. Like, the review is not for another seven months. Just relax, you know, your products doing great. If it wasn't doing great, you would be hearing from me. So I think you have to put yourself, you know, and we will touch on this more in the retailer shoes, they got all this shit going on beyond current brands, they got new brands coming in, they have resets, they have discos, they have center store stuff, they have remodels, they have new stores opening, they have stores closing. So like, I from the genius smoothie side, I'm very careful about checking with retailers only when it's really necessary to submit a promotion or to look at the next review or recommend a swap. Or if I haven't heard from for four months, probably good to send an email to see how things are going right? Just so you're not in the dark, but you got to be careful not to, you know, not to annoy someone and take up their bandwidth when they have really important things to focus on. What do you think, Wade?

42:10 Wade - Yeah, I agree with you. What I would say is like from the retail side is as you're developing that relationship, you should, you know, once your foot's in the door, which I think that's where we're at, that's what we're talking about, is to understand as that relationship's, it's like dating. I used that analogy last week, right? I mean, understanding what that person wants for you. What is the expectation? Is it a quarterly meeting? Is it a biannual meeting? Is it an annual planning session and laying it out? And just really kind of getting the guidelines for what that relationship looks like and what the expectation is. Because believe me, when I say from my side, if someone comes to me, Alex comes to me and says, hey, you know, great, we're going to start this, the product's on the shelf. When would you like to talk? I said, hey, let's play it out the next year. Let's go for it. You know, and then Alex submits promotions for the next year. That's one less brand that I have to worry about for the next year, right? I mean, he's got his promotions locked in. And yes, maybe he does check in after that first promotion runs and say, hey, how do things go? And there's a little bit give and take, but it's much better than that one that's like, okay, once a month, hey, you know, how's it going? Or, you know, it's not, it's a no news, good news is good news scenario. But there's that borderline where if you're constantly checking, it's like you don't want to be needy, right? Especially if you're, you are doing well or perceivably doing well, there's a line that can be crossed. It's like, ah, this guy just won't leave me alone. You know, and it's like, you know, looking at in most places, when you look at a category manager, they're not just until you get to the big, big national guys, you don't just have, let's say breakfast category, right? You might have breakfast and I don't know, baking and soups and you might have four or five different categories or more. And so if you think of yourself as one brand within those, those categories, and then you start looking at all the other brands within your category. And then you think, geez, that person also has that category in that quarter in that category, their workload, again, when we start going back to what I said earlier about operations, merchandise, market, all these different things, and you're one brand within one category, you want to make that person's job as easy as you can, you want to be as, you know, is, is, you know, unneedy as possible so that they can take care of your business, secure your promotions off shelf if it's applicable and move on. And you can be a helper about bringing value to them and helping them with their job as opposed to a hindrance. It's like, geez, I gotta answer Alex C email and tell him everything's fine. You know, it's just, there's a fight, you know, and in time you develop those relationships where, you know, you're going to have relationships where you get along a little bit better and maybe it even becomes a friendship. Who knows, but that's down the road. It's not, you know, after years of doing business, it's not just off the bat, you know, that you, you need that much time from that person. So, yeah.

45:32 Alex - And one thing that's everything, nail, you know, hit the nail on the head way with that is also to give buyers when you do want it, when you should communicate is giving the buyers a heads up if there's going to be a change of some kind, you know, or there's going to be an out of stock issue. You know, as much notice as humanly possible, like if you know, in two months that you're going to be out of stock on, you know, your original coconut smoothie, let the buyer know in advance and don't be scared to reach out to the buyer. Oh man, if I tell them that, are they going to disco me because I'm going to be out in two months? They're actually more likely to keep you because you're honest. You know, if you're out for six months, that's a different story. But if you're going to have a hiccup in your supply chain, everyone goes through that, especially in these times, especially a year ago, it still happens a little bit now, not as much as 2020 or 2021 during the pandemic. But honesty and transparency and getting out ahead of it is a huge value to the buyer.

46:28 Jessi - Yeah, yeah, that's that's very helpful. And we too, I was curious on the as far as, you know, tracking incoming leads kind of things like, you know, we talked a little bit about, you know, you got category reviews, but like if a brand is checking in too often or not enough and all that's just like sitting in your inbox, is that where it lives generally in your different buying experiences? Do you consolidate notes somewhere on different brands so that when it comes to category reviews, you can be like, oh yeah, this brand seems really eager. This one's a little too eager or those kind of things. Like, I'm curious how you just manage all that information that lives in the inbox to translate into when it's category review time.

47:08 Alex - I can see like a folder, like one folder. Do not respond to them. They're annoying. The next folder, they're kind of cool. Maybe three months. And then this folder. I love this guy. I'm responding this week. I'll go ahead.

47:21 Wade - So me personally, speaking for me personally, if you're, if it's in my inbox, it's something I have to do with, or I haven't addressed yet. If it's someone using your example, that's constantly, constantly, regularly following up, following up, following up, that's probably going to delete box. What typically happens is you've got, you know, on your, on your share drive, your, your personal drive, what have you, you've got a folder for your category. You know, here's my category reviews. Here's this category. Here's, here's where I'm at with submissions. Here's where I'm at with, you know, and just kind of, you know, working it through that way so that when I go to look at, I use the breakfast category. So I'll stick with it. So I go look at the breakfast category. Here's all my submissions. Here's everything that's come in. And then I typically would have a sub folder for General Mills, Kellogg's, Quaker and so on. And then inside that folder, you can put in all your emails or anything like that. If not on your, on your shared drive, hard drive would have you same thing on your email. Right. You know, you create a sub folder. Here's this category. Here's this vendor. Here's promotions. Here's new items. Here's, you know, things like that. So some kind of filing system like that so that you can reference and going back to, you know, when you're getting those hundreds of emails, you don't necessarily want to live on your inbox because you might not remember someone's name, especially if it's a new contact or, you know, so, you know, you want to, you want to be able to go back to the brand, you know, or look at it by your categories to see who's reached out to you and where you're at in the process.

48:45 Alex - I got a question for Wade, actually. I know Jessi is asking the questions. I have a question for you, especially really dating back to more in Ohio as a CM, a category manager, and also at Jimbo's because you were managing a tremendous amount of different categories in that store. Right. It's a, it's a smaller team. Right. Yep. How do you avoid review fatigue? You know, like looking at all these items and like, because you want to give the attention that every presenter, founder, whoever deserves with their product, with their story. But after like five, six, seven, eight meetings, especially in these times where it's all by Zoom and it's hard to get away from vendors all the time, not saying you want to get away from them, but you want to get a break. Right. How do you manage that fatigue to make sure everyone gets the attention they deserve? Because I imagine that's very difficult.

49:35 Wade - Yeah, it is. And so what I would say is those processes, we were a lot more nimble at both those examples you gave in Ohio and in Jimbo's. So we didn't follow necessarily a traditional set in stone review calendar. We were more plug and pull or, you know, just able to act a little bit quicker. So you weren't, you know, looking at, again, I keep using breakfast, the breakfast category and okay, it's time for the breakfast review. It was like, okay, I might look at my first meeting today is a cereal brand that once sent my next meeting might be a coffee brand that once in my next meeting. It might be an ice cream brand that once sent. So what I did in both of those examples is based on my workload and internal meetings, which are always a thing, no matter where you're at. I had designated days on my calendar where, okay, this is the day or days of the week or the month that I'm going to see vendors. And as my workload grew or diminished, I could adjust that accordingly to accommodate. And then I had, I got to a point in Ohio where I was so far in the weeds that if you were a new brand reaching out to me, I had kind of like a form letter. I had, I had an assistant and she would said, if you're interested, here's what I need from you. I need this. I need, you know, a sales sheet. I need a sample. I need this and this and just very, very structured. Like that you're not going to get a meeting if you're a new brand because my existing workload with current brands, because at that point I was handling grocery, dairy, frozen, our warehouse facility, direct store delivery with all the Coke and Pepsi's and Frito Lay's and all that of the world. So I had a huge, huge amount on my plate of existing business, new business. I wanted to see product before I even set, you know, in the beginning, when my workload was smaller, I'd take a plate with anybody. I'd give anybody the time of day and then it kind of gets like, okay, it's only this day and this day. Now it's all the existing vendors and it just kind of developed over time. But I think that's where if you're a good category manager or whatever role you want to call yourself, you really have to balance yourself with what you can do with existing business, what innovation you're looking for. And then of course, everything else internally that you have to do as far as your normal day to day. So that was me. You know, you might, you ask five buyers, they might give you five different answers, but that's how I handle it.

51:54 Jessi - Cool. Yeah, great. That's super great. And I think, you know, I think the three of us could probably talk for hours. I think there's so much here. But I think for today, that's a great note to, you know, kind of wrap our conversation up on. But I also want to make sure that everybody knows where to find you both and your show. So I'm going to link in the notes each of your LinkedIn profiles. And Wade, as you mentioned, I've been following your kind of tips that you've been providing on LinkedIn. So I encourage everybody to check those out. Follow Alex and you know, then you can join the show live on LinkedIn. And then if you want to check out Genius Juice, that's GeniusJuice.com. Super simple. So you can get there. But, you know, so when, you know, when is the show each week? What's the best way for people to tune into your show and any other links that, you know, you'd like me to, that you want to shout out that I can add to the show notes for folks?

52:46 Alex - Yeah, I mean, I'll, I'll take this one, Wade. It's really simple. We broadcast, unless there's some kind of change to our travel schedule, for 97.3% of the time, we are on Fridays for CPG Vibes, our CPG podcast. And it's at 2.30pm Pacific Standard Time, 5.30 Eastern. And as Wade said, we do bring on guests, you know, maybe two thirds of the time, and then other third is just us. We also give away prizes and giveaways at the end of each episode. So we have a sponsor, and then that sponsor gives away a case worth, usually at least 70, 80, even over $100. We had some that have been over $1,000 or even $2,000 like you've all's, you know, over at CP Genius. And so that's part of the perks of listening to our show. So anyway, you can also catch us on Apple Podcast, CPG Vibes. And Wade, we got to say it. Give us five stars, please. Give Startup CPG five stars. Exactly. And then go to us and give us five stars.

53:44 Jessi - Yeah, two birds with one stone. One time in the app, five stars for both podcasts. Yeah, for sure. I love it. Yeah. And if you're following both Alex and Wade on LinkedIn, you can usually earlier in the week, you kind of tease who the guest is if you're going to have a guest on the show. So that's always fun. You can add it to your calendar right within LinkedIn so that you make sure you can join live. And yeah, definitely encourage everyone to check out the show. And I'm so glad that you both joined our show today. This was super fun. I love hearing your insights. Look forward to continuing to listen to your show. And yeah, thanks just to you both so much for being here.

54:20 Alex - Yeah, it's been great. Really appreciate it, Jessi. Yeah, thank you, Jessi. Thanks for having us. And thanks for your support also at Expo West, letting us use your startup CPG booth for our little, you know, our little CPG Vibes happy hour. We really appreciate you and your partnership.

54:36 Jessi - That was awesome. Yeah, thank you. Definitely. I'm so honored you joined me for this conversation. And I love hearing from you all with feedback, suggestions, or if you just want to say hi at podcast at startupcpg.com, or you can find me on LinkedIn. If you liked this episode, we'd love for you to share it with a friend or colleague, subscribe so you don't miss future episodes, and maybe even leave us a five star review on Apple podcasts. If you aren't yet in our Slack community of founders and experts, we'd love to see you there. You can get the free invite at startupcpg.com and find all our other awesome resources there like webinars, databases, the blog, the magazine, and virtual and in person events. And if you found yourself rocking out to our intro and outro music, which I do every single time, make sure to check out the Super Fantastics on Spotify. It's the band of our startup CPG founder, Daniel Scharff. I'm Jessi Freitag, your host and producer. And on behalf of the whole team at Startup CPG, thank you for being here and see you next week. Thank you for listening in today.