The Startup CPG Podcast

Laura Romano
Something I feel like I've definitely learned at my time in Graza is a decision that was made six months ago does not mean it's like a decision forever. And it doesn't mean you have to keep on evaluating every decision you've made. But I think a lot of times we make a great decision in the moment, but it's, it doesn't mean we shouldn't re look at it again because your business is changing so much at all times. You know you picked up a new customer or you have changed the location of your co man. So now you should look at Free again. So definitely, always optimizing. I feel like every supply chain is that way.

00:46
Hannah Dittman
Hey everybody. I'm Hannah Dittman, Operations and finance correspondent at Startup CPG and the founder of Ready Basics. Today I'm thrilled to be joined by Laura Romano, Director of operations at Graza, the olive oil brand that turned a pantry staple into a cultural phenomenon. If you've ever wondered what really goes into keeping a high growth brand running smoothly, this episode is for you. We dig into what it means to have an operator's mindset, when and how to make changes to your product, and how to anticipate and correct logistics hiccups before they snowball. Laura also shares lessons learned from scaling at speed, including why strong systems and clear communication matter more than any single tool, and how the right OP strategy can set the foundation for long term growth.

01:26
Hannah Dittman
Stick around to hear her insights on everything from building scalable processes to navigating supplier relationships and avoiding the most common operations pitfalls. Enjoy. Hey everybody, welcome back to the Startup CPG podcast. I'm Hannah and today I am here with Laura Romano, Director of Operations at Graza. Laura, welcome to the show.

01:51
Laura Romano
Hi Hannah, thanks so much for having me.

01:53
Hannah Dittman
Of course. We're so pumped to have you here today. If you could share your title and a brief background of your experience prior to Graza and what led you there, I think that'd be a great way to get started.

02:02
Laura Romano
Awesome. So I'm the director of operations at Graza and I started in the CPG World over 14 years ago when I was still doing my undergrad. I started working with a company called Blue Marble Ice Cream that's based in Brooklyn, New York. It's New York City's only certified organic ice cream. They hired me on as their first wholesale employee. They had been ice cream stores and they wanted to like develop their wholesale side of the business. I did everything from bookkeeping to growing the wholesale business and I loved it. I liked out dove in. I was like, oh, wow. CBG is something I could really learn and like grow in. So after wearing so many hats and learning so much there, I grew all the way to the COO of the company.

02:44
Laura Romano
It was really exciting place to grow and learn because bluemarble did so many different things. We had retail stores, we had a CPG business, we did food service, we had a co man outside of the company, we had our own manufacturing inside the company. I just really feel like it was a great place for me to learn all the operations of a small food business. So I. I left Blue Marvel during the pandemic and went to another small food business called Setum Mill, the tahini and halva business that's also based in New York City. And it was a great place to learn about E commerce. So being an ice cream, I hadn't learned about the basics of shipping things nationwide and that was a great place to learn it.

03:21
Laura Romano
And when I was at an event for fair, which is a B2B dropship retailer, I met the co founders of Graza, Andrew and Alan, and we had a great chat. And a few months later they were looking for someone to join the operations side of the business. And I made the very difficult decision to leave Citamil and come to Graza. And it's been a very exciting rise to see the company grow so much in such a short period of time, that's so exciting.

03:50
Hannah Dittman
You know, I'd love to kind of pivot to a brief overview of Graza as well for context. For anyone listening that's living under a rock and hasn't been able to try or at least see your awesome products, but would love to know through an intro of the company what compelled you in that first meeting to be excited about the opportunity. What was kind of the overview that made you feel like it could really be an interesting opportunity for you to work there?

04:14
Laura Romano
Sure. So Graza is an olive oil company that makes olive oil to use every day in every way. So we have three main olive oils. Two are extra virgin. Our sizzle is like a cooking oil that you can just use for anything you're cooking. Our drizzle is more of a finishing oil, so it has more of a bold, punchy flavor. You want to use that on, like your solids or like after you're finished cooking your pasta, you add it. And now we have a new oil, it's Frizzle, which is a mix of pumice oil and extra virgin. So it can be used anywhere using kind of like an AVOCADO or vegetable oil, it has a higher smoke point. I use it in when I'm baking or like when I'm making popcorn at home. Things where I don't really need a strong flavor.

04:55
Laura Romano
We were known in the beginning for a squeeze bottle but Rosin is now in almost any format. Glass, spray cans, bulk and of course the squeeze bottle. I was really excited about the opportunity because I could just see the early growth. It was not just the like squeeze bottle getting attention, it was like quality of the oil. And as someone who did use extra virgin olive oil every day, tasting the oil immediately I could taste the difference. I also finishing oil was something that I used every day in salads and it was kind of more of an expensive product that you were using very sparingly. And it was kind of like I have to save this up.

05:35
Laura Romano
And I felt like Grazo was bringing it to the table in a way that I had seen in Europe and in my travels in Italy where people just used it more frequently and it was like a better price point. So it was a really exciting place that I saw that. You know, I really like thought this was going to grow and I just wanted to see what it would be like to be at a company that was going to grow really fast.

05:55
Hannah Dittman
That's really exciting and I love your guys positioning and branding and Frizzle is such a cute name. I can like picture that the sound in my head of when you're using oil as you're mentioning you're in a high growth situation now but would love to know kind of what the early days were like for you. Coming in there was already an established product so what kind of got put on your plate? What did operations encompass for you back then and what has it grown to now?

06:21
Laura Romano
Great question. So I was working with both of the co founders to start. One thing I was taking off one of their plates was really the warehousing side of the business. So being that first point of contact to the warehouse for everything and trying to streamline our freight operations and grow how were using our software. So getting set up with edi were pretty actively onboarding new customers. I remember one of my first projects was getting Target set up and I had never set up Target. I'd never worked with a company that big yet. So taking it step by step, working with the resources around me, using our brokers really strongly and just working through all the steps to get that going.

07:03
Laura Romano
And the other big projects were getting integrated into the supply chain in Spain, Understanding what was happening so far there and like how were going to be growing with that relationship. So learning like what was going to happen and how to integrate that into our ERP system in a better way. So they had an ERP right from the beginning, which I think is pretty unique. A lot of young companies don't have that going right away, but I remember some of my first projects was just making sure were utilizing it in a way that I felt was going to be successful for. Also the growth, not just where were on that first two months.

07:38
Hannah Dittman
You know, I imagine there was a lot of kind of auditing and getting things streamlined, getting things running as smoothly as possible and then taking and building upon that in your mind. You know what, at the steady state of a business, what are all the things an OPS leader should own and what do you think the optimal relationship between either a CEO or founders and an OPS leader is like and what has really empowered you?

08:07
Laura Romano
Yeah, I feel like I've been super lucky in my career that the CEO and the founders have been true, like mentors to me. They've been really strong operators and have been able to teach me a lot. And I feel like from an OPS point of view, you have to both support and push back or make sure, be a sounding board, but also just make sure you're presenting if someone is bringing you an idea, which oftentimes the founders are coming up with the great ideas. And I feel like it's OP's job to say not no, I feel like OPS gets that reputation, but to say sometimes you have to be the bad cop. I try to say more, if we're going to do that, this is what it's going to mean.

08:51
Laura Romano
Either this is the timeline that's going to be on, this is the cost it's going to be. So with the founders early on, I think that's OPS role and you also have to be the one to. Someone once described OPS to me as like marketing and sales and all these people are like throwing a softball on you if you want to catch it. So you.

09:11
Hannah Dittman
It's a great analogy.

09:13
Laura Romano
So I always try to think about like you, like don't let people throw the football. You're no one's going to catch it. But like we're the ones who have to make things kind of go on and happen. So I feel like I've always been in great relationships with CEOs and founders who really understand OPS in a detailed way. But if they don't and you're not in that situation, I think even more you have to be like the voice of pushing back and making sure it's clear of what the mostly time and effort and costs are going to be.

09:41
Hannah Dittman
That's really helpful perspective. In the little time I've gotten to know you, I can tell you're an incredibly diligent and detail oriented person. So I'm sure you are like an ops superstar on all of that. Thank you.

09:54
Laura Romano
That's so sweet.

09:56
Hannah Dittman
What's your favorite part of your job? You know, what about operations really gets you going and has made you really excited to work in that sector?

10:04
Laura Romano
That's a great question. I mean, I think like the stereotypical thing is like the problem solving aspect. But to be more specific, I think it's having an idea and executing on it. So seeing something finally come to life. And I think mostly done ops and accounting. And I always used to say I like the accounting work because you would check box it off and it would be done. And that felt really good to check your list off and just like close the month and feel done with it. And I felt like ops, you're pushing projects forward that so many times don't end. There's continuous improvement, there's efficiencies to be done, there's like QA that you want to continue to improve on. But it is my favorite part of even moving it along.

10:46
Laura Romano
And you're not like finishing it, but you just are trying to see something like happen and put a product into the world or E Comm sale goes successfully done. And yeah, those are my favorite parts.

10:58
Hannah Dittman
I guess you sleep peacefully when the to do list is crossed off. I do definitely kind of pivoting onto some best practices and your kind of mentality around operations. What do you think are, you know, OPS pillars that in your mind are critical to scale early? If you had to prioritize things, you know what needs to be tight from day one. Where should you focus most of your time at the beginning to make sure that you're going to be stood up.

11:25
Laura Romano
For success down the road. So I always tell brands that are first starting out and what I really truly believe on is you really have to know what your costs are. You can't work off of just forecasts of what the costs are going to be. It's so important to go back and analyze what actually happened last month or last production run or whatever your time period is, knowing your full costs. I think the other thing to think about very early on if someone is really just getting started out is if you're going into like the natural food worlds for example, and you want to be in grocery in the national food world to think about what are general retailer requirements that you should be thinking out about from the beginning.

12:09
Laura Romano
So when you're setting up your case packs for the first time, what size makes sense if you're going to be happening to do free fills, if that's something that's like normally happening in this industry? Or did you print barcodes on those case packs because that's something that is going to help with the warehousing. What are some like very common like bol and pack list requirements so that you're not getting fines from people down the line. So I think if you're new to this industry or just really starting out, the logistics side of like common grocery things would be something that I would definitely look into and start with.

12:44
Hannah Dittman
Yeah, you want to make sure before you commit whatever limited capital you have essentially that you're going to be able to make the most out of the sales for those products. It sounds like. And I think that is sage advice. You know, when you're choosing manufacturing partners or you're setting these parameters, what's some of the diligence or criteria that you're looking at to help get you to where you need to go on some of the things you just mentioned.

13:09
Laura Romano
When you're choosing a manufacturing partner and you're getting started out, I would really be looking at MOQs that they're going to require the flexibility they're going to have for startup brands and what kind of companies are they working with that if you're going to require kind of special ingredients, like are they going to be able to work with that? Are they going to help you if you need someone to help build a recipe, are they going to be able to help do that? The co van relationship is so important. You're, you really want a partner that's going to be transparent with you, provide the information you need. I think if the communication like isn't there right from the beginning, you're probably not going to get it down the line.

13:47
Laura Romano
And I think when you are going to be managing this relationship down the line, this transparency and flow of data is going to become so important. I mean I would say you should be asking what data they're going to share with you too. Who's going to be responsible for inventory counts and are they, when are they giving that information? Like there's so many key pieces you can go into. But I think just right from the beginning, just seeing if they're giving you information you're asking for. If they're transparent about it, are they giving you full price breakdowns? Those kind of things might be able to help you tell if, like that's going to be the right partner for you.

14:20
Hannah Dittman
Very helpful. What KPIs do you track religiously in your department? What signals health or risk for you, and what's kind of the daily or weekly things that you're really looking at?

14:32
Laura Romano
Yes, great question. The KPIs we're looking at every single week are often around inventory. So both on our supply chain side and on our fulfillment and logistics side, inventory is just something we feel like we have to know forwards and backwards. So my demand planner helps us create a weekly roll forward of what orders we have in our system, what inventory we have coming in, and then we're looking out multiple weeks to see where our inventory position will be. And if we can say yes to every order that's in our system, if we could say yes to the rest of the orders that are coming in. And we're doing this across all of our warehouses. And then we're doing almost the same thing on our supply chain side, but for raw materials.

15:18
Laura Romano
So do we have all the raw materials we need to do the production that's upcoming for the next few months? What cadence are we ordering the raw materials in? And what is position are we going to be in for as production comes in? So I would say inventory is just the most important because all the other KPIs we're going to be tracking, especially around fulfillment, that I'm thinking about, are we on time? Did the orders go out? They can't be done without the inventory in the first place. So when we're really thinking about our Monday morning checks, it's definitely inventory. Where are we? And it's just make or break for our ops team.

15:55
Hannah Dittman
Yeah, and that makes sense because you guys are so fast growing and you're servicing a lot of accounts right now. So I imagine the sellout risk is very high for you all and you want to make sure you're not leaving money on the table and really maximizing your sales. What about if you're in the opposite situation? Have you ever been in a situation in your career where you've had too much inventory? I know that's frequently something that a lot of founders or operators run into. And what advice would you have for people that are maybe a little over inventoried?

16:27
Laura Romano
Yeah, great question. It definitely both happens. I feel like for everyone, right, there's just swings and stages and you're trying to optimize buying, doing production runs of certain sizes and there's just so much unpredictability. Forecasting is such a hard thing to do. My other businesses I worked at for my ice cream company, what were able to do is when we had an over inventory position is kind of sell it to ourselves into our retail stores. This is a great way to run through inventory. Not everyone has retail stores where they're scooping ice cream of that they're also selling. But sometimes D2C can be an also another way where you can pull a lever of changing price or promoting in a more aggressive way.

17:05
Laura Romano
In the grocery world it's so much harder to do some kind of quick sale or you know, grocery stores plan these things a year in advance. But thinking about what other channels you might have where you can pull levers. So fare is another one. If we're were overstocked in something, we can put it on a fair blast a message. Anywhere where you're more directly selling to a customer, you might be able to move inventory more quickly.

17:30
Hannah Dittman
That's really helpful and kind of, you know, if you had to break down, I know you're working with a demand planner and I'm sure you guys are a little further along in the sophistication here, but if you had to break down, you know, for someone who doesn't have as many resources or is kind of working towards it, what the like key facts you need to know to be able to forecast your business the most accurately or any tips and tricks you can share on how to go about doing that. I think that'd be really helpful.

17:59
Laura Romano
Yes, I definitely shout out Chagraza's demand planning team. They're amazing. So I'm not the expert on demand planning for sure but something we definitely follow is like an 8020 rule. So think about 80% of your customers and don't worry about like the 20% that are kind of smaller customers that you might not be able to track as closely. So if you are a smaller business, really thinking about your bigger anchor customers and helping like they might be easier to plug into a forecast and seeing if other retailers are going to follow that demand or not. I think that's like one place to start.

18:38
Hannah Dittman
Yeah, that's really helpful. Hot take. Is it better for you all to be under. I know obviously the right answer is to be exactly at forecast but is it preferred, do you think to be slightly over inventoried in a surplus of your forecast or slightly under inventoried under your Forecast.

18:58
Laura Romano
I feel like from an OPS perspective I always want to have a little bit more because I don't want to go into inventory allocation, which is a lot of work and it's difficult to then have to try to define exactly who gets what product. That being said, something that we do at Graza is we only want to sell the freshest oil. So we're always trying to really bring it down to zero at a specific time of year. So right before the new harvest is when we would say, you know, right now we would rather be under inventory because we don't want to over bottle last harvest. But at other times of year we might be overstocked and like that's okay because we'll sell through it. So I think there is nuance in that.

19:42
Laura Romano
So depending on someone's business in the cycle of maybe one year or a quarter, there might be times when it makes sense to have more or less going into Q4. More people probably want to have a little bit more for the upside opportunity. But other times of year it might be like absolutely not. Let's have less.

20:00
Hannah Dittman
That's really interesting and some interesting color specifically on your business. You know, it's very much like wine where you're got a specific harvest and you want to make the most of it. So fascinating. I love learning little details about other industries and other people's businesses. I feel like that's what makes consumer so fun a lot of the times kind of pivoting to scaling a little bit. I know you guys are in a hypergrowth situation. I'm sure coming into a pre existing business there was a lot of optimization to be done as well. In your perspective, is supply chain optimization kind of like a one and done initiative that you really work through or a forever pain point where you're kind of circling back to things on a more regular basis?

20:42
Laura Romano
Definitely. Always circling back. Something I feel like I've definitely learned at my time in Graza is a decision that was made six months ago does not mean it's like a decision forever. And it doesn't mean you have to keep on evaluating every decision you've made. But I think a lot of times we make a great decision in the moment, but it doesn't mean we shouldn't re look at it in again because your business is changing so much at all times. Even if it's not hyper growth, it's still there is, you know, you picked up a new customer or you have changed the location of your co man so now you should look at freight again. So Definitely, Always optimizing. I feel like every supply chain is that way.

21:22
Hannah Dittman
When you're in a fast growth situation, what do you think are some of the big watch outs that someone should be looking for or lessons learned where you're like, oh yeah, that kind of bit us a little bit. I wish we had been anticipating that a little bit more. Or any kind of hot areas that you feel like is really important to focus on.

21:39
Laura Romano
I think something we've learned is all of our forecasting. We have spent so much time like giving it to our production partners and thinking about like maybe that being our biggest partner and maybe a few of the raw material suppliers is so important getting them our forecasts. But something I've learned is how so many of our partners need to know about the growth and forecasting of up and coming and thinking really systematically about how often each partner needs to get updated in different ways. So for example, we have launched a bunch more SKUs. I talked about like the sprays in the glass coming out and we notified our warehouse partner, you know, new SKUs are coming and we're, this is the timeline. We're expecting more outgoing orders. That's also a metric we're giving them.

22:26
Laura Romano
But we really didn't take into account how much more storage we would need because we're storing so many more pallets and they're an awesome partner and amazing for our growth. But you just physically run out of space. Sometimes you don't have enough pallet space. So it was an oversight on my side and it taught me that throughout these stages of growth, like that is something that you're trying to share information and you're trying to make sure it's getting into the hands of the right people. But there's sometimes just always more. So what we're doing to correct that is just going through all of our partners in different ways and thinking like what information and on exactly what cadence.

23:06
Laura Romano
So getting that more systemized and not just oh, on my weekly calls, let mention this, but like, how are we going to have this external communication be like really systematic.

23:16
Hannah Dittman
That's a great call out.

23:17
Laura Romano
Yeah.

23:18
Hannah Dittman
I feel like in operations it's kind of like you're trying to think through the journey of the product at every step and what would be needed from every different angle. It's a million balls you're juggling. And especially as you make more SKUs, it just gets that much more complex. Talking about your new SKU launch. When you're developing and launching new products, what is the process like for you all at Graza, any best practices that you can share or words of wisdom that you have.

23:45
Laura Romano
Launching new SKUs has been super fun and something as simple as putting just the same oil in a different bottle, we've learned is, you know, more complicated than you think. And I think so many people in startup CPG world like what you're doing is new, right? So you're making this product but there is a twist on it, like that's why we're bringing it to market. So you have to go through these processes where you learn that it's these little changes that are going to actually create bigger ripple effects down the line for your product development. Things we've learned is working super closely with the sales team to know dates for what they need so they know when the retailer resets are going to be, they know when the retailer meetings are going to be.

24:30
Laura Romano
So we're working super closely with them to make sure we're aligning with those dates and being probably over optimistic about that. We can make those dates, really trying to always make those dates and sometimes falling short. Product development timelines are very optimistic sometimes, but we're as long as we keep our sales team in communication at all times about any delays, we are very happy to get the new products on the shelf.

24:58
Hannah Dittman
Yeah, I feel like it's such a handholding dance. You know, you want to say yes to everything kind of earlier to your point where you somehow have to catch the football. You know, you want to say yes to everything. You don't want to let anyone down, but you also can only run as fast as you can. And I think especially with retailers it's like you want to capitalize on the opportunities and make sure you're making the most of it. So that a lot of sense and is a tight wire to walk. I'm sure earlier, you know, were talking about, you know, a core pillar being really having a good concept of your pricing and what your product costs and really understanding that kind of talking about that a little bit more.

25:36
Hannah Dittman
What are your thoughts on negotiating price with your co mains and setting what your cogs will be? How do you typically like to go about that? What do you think the important levers are and any best practices or words of advice you have on going through that process?

25:53
Laura Romano
When thinking about pricing overall, especially for services or like a COPAC fee or things like that, I think it's super important to know why a price is where it is. So before you're trying to negotiate down on a price and just Understanding everything that's going to be included in it. And that might give some insight into like why it might be higher than a competitor's or lower than a competitor's. The other piece that is huge, and that I've learned time and time again at Garaza, is you need to build redundancy into your supply chain. So if you're always knowing kind of what else is out there and not just from a competitor point of view, but once again, because people are offering different levels of either service or value in even packaging or just what every aspect.

26:43
Laura Romano
So having a kind of competitive market analysis is going to help you in your negotiations for your coban and then thinking about different points of growth as being significant. So maybe you're not asking for a price increase right now, but you're starting to talk about, hey, in 2026, I think that in the second half of the year my volume's going to double. How will that affect my pricing? Might be another way to go about it all.

27:10
Hannah Dittman
Great points. If I'm kind of fresh to the scene, I've never done something like this before and I want to start a chocolate bar company, how do I even know where to start or what price to ask for? Do I just go to a co man and whatever price they tell me, I try to understand and negotiate it down? How do I think about the math or doing the research on my end to feel empowered to have that conversation?

27:33
Laura Romano
I think you got a startup CPT and you.

27:39
Hannah Dittman
Great plug.

27:41
Laura Romano
You have to start somewhere, right? So you're gonna have to start getting a price somewhere. But I do think that is a great opportunity to use community use like coffee chats or industry knowledge. I don't know if ChatGPT knows that, but I'm learning that it knows more and more every day.

27:57
Hannah Dittman
I learned how to use a palette Jack from ChatGpt.

28:02
Laura Romano
That I didn't know.

28:03
Hannah Dittman
I knew that. That's great.

28:05
Laura Romano
But the more information you can get, the better and you are just, yeah, you're just gonna have to keep asking and feel empowered because everyone has to start somewhere. Like you should feel like you're gonna not know and that's okay too.

28:19
Hannah Dittman
Great advice. And you know, when you first came in, especially with Graza squeeze bottles, it was one of the big differentiators and kind of the obvious on shelf eye catches right away was the packaging and the concept. And I know you've extended into different packaging formats since then, but what are your thoughts on packaging manufacturing and the importance of packaging and how you Find a good packaging supplier that can work with your formulation coman and kind of your BFA process.

28:51
Laura Romano
Packaging is so important. I think you accurately described that. But I'll say it again, that I've learned at Garaza how important packaging is and I think my OPS point of view was always, oh, let's do what's easiest for the CO man and let's do what's most cost effective. But Graza has definitely taught me that you have to go the extra mile to get your packaging beautiful on shelf and that it's very much worth the time and energy to do that. It's definitely the place where we have to look for a lot of redundancy to just know everything that's out there, to like, know how the quality can be different from different suppliers. So we're doing just a lot of research. But also ask your CO man who they're working with, what other packaging vendors have they talked to.

29:43
Laura Romano
That's like, definitely a great place to start normally, but definitely do your own research as well. When doing product development, your packaging is going to be huge part of it. It also is somewhere where sometimes there's long lead times. So if you're creating your own molds or doing something very unique or even just like doing a special color in plastic, where you need to source that as well as plastic mold itself, really get your timelines down because the CO man might be saying like, oh, packaging, I just order that. It takes 30 days, no problem. But if you're going to be doing something very specialized, talking to that packaging vendor yourself to know exactly what the lead times are going to be if you're doing a mold or color.

30:25
Laura Romano
I think those are some of the longest lead times in a lot of the product development stage. So really knowing what that would be.

30:31
Hannah Dittman
Yeah, great advice. I feel like timelines can get away from you so much and all of a sudden 3 months get added and your. Your whole world is upside down. So I definitely think having a good pulse on that is very important. I wanted to kind of touch on, you know, having both sold D2C in retail. Your perspective on the differences and the impact they have on your team and your work. What challenges or process changes have you encountered depending on which channel you're either focused on or expanding into?

31:01
Laura Romano
Great question. From the fulfillment and logistics side, I think DTC and retail is very interesting and important to be thinking about, like your values for both Cedar Mill and Graza both have very like high touch dtc, so like they want the experience to Be very premium. We're always thinking about what kind of like marketing inserts are going to go in the box. The boxes are specialized, the tape is specialized. So this all comes back to like your warehouse partner thinking about can they do both A DTC high touch experience if that's what you're doing and meet all these vendor requirements around retail and have the capacity to like be sending out that those palettes and the larger scale work as well. The not everyone does one warehouse for all of this. Like you can also think about, you know, I really want to.

31:49
Laura Romano
If you want to have a very specialized dtc, it might make sense to split it out if you have the capacity also to manage that in both warehouses. So I think the first thing you have to think about is like is your warehouse going to be able to do both? Well, inventory perspective is the other thing where they're very different. E Comm if you run out, no problem, you take it offline. Any problem, you're losing sales but you take it offline. For retailers, if you go out of stock, depending on how long it is, you definitely risk getting that product taken off the shelf altogether and it just can be a bigger problem down the line. So I would say you making sure your inventory is in line for retailers would be even more important.

32:29
Laura Romano
But those are like the biggest areas where I think they have huge differences and both are important for like depending on what you're trying to do with your brand.

32:37
Hannah Dittman
Great perspective. And goes back to why you're so focused on inventory every week. How do you balance scrappy execution with long term infrastructure? I know you guys had a lot of systems in place. It sounds like when you first came in and obviously have had some funding and are in a high growth situation as well. But I'm sure you're still experiencing a little bit of what startup land is like. So curious, what's your framework for prioritizing speed versus sustainable long term implementation practices and just general thoughts.

33:11
Laura Romano
Yes, I definitely come from the scrappy side of CPG worlds. It's a huge change to me to be at like a bigger company. I'm learning so much my teammates who have come from larger companies and I think one of the biggest things I've learned is the difference like that systems are so important. That's a general statement but I think in Operation World, especially if you're in a small company, one person might kind of like own all the knowledge. The spreadsheets might be very like self owned and managed which like if you're not really Showing your work to anyone, they just kind of work for you. And the notes might kind of be just like your internal notes.

33:52
Laura Romano
And I think if you're kind of starting to think about your long term success, you have to think about these systems and external, not internal, but outside of your team, maybe sharing of information as one of the first things. So how we are looking at that is what documents, like these KPI sheets that we're looking at every week, who needs to see them? Like, what do the sales teams need, what do the finance teams need? What is my own team kind of asking every week? And then how can we build out like a more systematic way to show that and share that? We're still in the stage of updating these tools and updating our internal systems.

34:31
Laura Romano
But I think like that's one way that like even if you were scrappy, you could still be thinking about your long term success is just how are we sharing internal information? And that was like a huge thing for me to really think about. Not just like being prepared for like myself and maybe like one other person, but just starting to think about like a team overall.

34:51
Hannah Dittman
Yeah, it's a great call out. Now that you've had experience at quite a few different companies and had some ability to reflect back on maybe some patterns you're starting to recognize. Are there any recurring pain points or watch outs that arise in operations that you've got a little bit of a playbook in the back of your mind now, like, oh yeah, I always gotta double check on that other people should know.

35:13
Laura Romano
Definitely. I think in your relationships management, we've talked about that a lot today. Like I think that's something that keeps on coming up in ops because it is such a relationships heavy field. But I feel like the thing I tell people to watch out for is you have to make sure the relationship is kind of working outside of the personal relationship. So I think people are like, oh, I have a great relationship with someone at this coman. It's going so great, but I think you have to have your KPIs. Like, is production getting done on time? Is your quality up to spec? Is your raw materials being managed correctly? If they're managing your raw materials, is your pricing coming in exactly what you thought it was going to be?

35:53
Laura Romano
So taking something that I hear a lot of OPS people talk about in a very qualitative way into a very like quantitative measurable success. Definitely with coman and with warehouses. But in like thinking about every relationship in your OPS is just like what are the Quantitative pieces to it. Great advice.

36:15
Hannah Dittman
I'm sure. Things have gone wrong before, I imagine. Is there anything that you can think of that's gone wrong before and how you navigated fixing it that you can share?

36:25
Laura Romano
I mean back to exactly that piece I was just talking about and we're talking so much about packaging. So we had packaging that we are expecting to arrive from a vendor that we said, you know, they said it's going to arrive by this date. And I said great, thank you so much. And it didn't arrive by that date and it was for a product launch. So all these things that you are expecting, you caring so much about and you think you're on so on top of and having to shift back a timeline because of that. So what I have learned is when people say it's going to arrive by this date, you say great, what's the production date? How is it shipping? Where is it shipping from? And then did it ship? Is it on time?

37:07
Laura Romano
So getting so much more quantitative information, if something is going to be on, it need to be on a specific timeline.

37:15
Hannah Dittman
Battle wounds. I think there's so much trust that has to happen in operations because it's such a team sport. I mean there's not one. It's very different from every other department because you it's not internal to the company. It's so external. You're relying on so many people having a really firm grip of what's going on. Also no external factors going crazy. I mean I feel like you just have to be so rigid and type A about every little detail that's going on and still it will inevitably go wrong anyway.

37:51
Laura Romano
I think that so true and you're right, it is very external to the company. So you're out of control of so many things. But the only thing I will say is outside of the being so type A is the other thing I live my life by is you have to be like perfect is the enemy of the good. Like you have to be comfortable moving on when things are not perfect or I just feel like an ops, you won't get anything done.

38:15
Hannah Dittman
Yeah, I feel like as a founders doing ops, that's normally where it's really hard because you have a vision. You're such a perfectionist. I fall into this camp. I think having that 8020 mindset on product development can be a really hard pill to swallow for sure.

38:31
Laura Romano
Yeah, definitely. I think that's very good advice. The 8020 on product development because there's always going to be continuous improvement and you have to get things to market. Sometimes you know when stuff does go.

38:42
Hannah Dittman
Wrong, when something doesn't show up on time, as you're mentioning, when the price comes in different than what you thought or, you know, something like that. If you had to, you know, mentor someone or if I'm coming to you and I'm like, oh my God, everything's going wrong, what do I do? What would be some advice you would have for me to be able to start working through some of those things and getting it figured out.

39:04
Laura Romano
First thing is communication. So you have to communicate within your team what's happening at all times, however you're going to do that. The worst thing is for something that you kind of knew was gonna go wrong, but it didn't get communicated to the right people. So whoever needs to know, let them know immediately and then just really focus on next steps. So learn from it. Figure out any other things at risk that maybe you didn't think were at risk before and put into place Plan B. I feel like every ops person has their plan B and C. And at Garaza, what I've learned is like when things do break, they break bigger, right? So you're. Because there's just more inventory, there's more product moving, there's bigger retailers than when I was at my previous companies and that was definitely learning for me.

39:53
Laura Romano
So your plan B has to be like a little bit more fleshed out than it would have been if, when I was at smaller companies that maybe I didn't have like the resources or time to build out plan B so much, but it's just not an option anymore. So you have to communicate what's going on, pivot to that Plan B that hopefully is a little bit more fleshed out, learn from it for the next product launch or whatever the situation may be. And for me that means putting everything down on my checklist, figuring out my next steps are and like getting going on it.

40:27
Hannah Dittman
A masterclass in resilience. I feel like, yeah, you must be fearless because I'm sure the break bigger point I think is a great one. It's really easy when it's just kind of you on your website and of course you care, but the world doesn't care so much. But when it's like the more people relying on you, the more responsibilities, the more external factors you've got going on, I'm sure that pressure just starts mounting and mounting even more. What is the most exciting thing you're looking forward to? Operations wise with Graza next?

40:58
Laura Romano
I'm so excited about everything. Operations, really.

41:01
Hannah Dittman
Okay.

41:02
Laura Romano
I think what I'm most excited about right now is improving automation in our workflows. So integrating new tech tools and just helping my team not do any manual tasks, whether that's AI or softwares. So I'm really excited about just what that looks like in the future.

41:22
Hannah Dittman
Systems Queen as you know, startup CPG has the largest Slack community in the industry with over 30,000 members. Now I'd love to pull a question directly from our channel and have you answer it as a case study for any founders that may have a similar question. The recent question is how do you know when you should upgrade your packaging or formulation? If you know you have changes you want to make, when is it the right time to pull the trigger on them?

41:45
Laura Romano
I love this question because I think it's a great community question. So this is the question you should be asking at the coffee chats or when you're at startup CPG events or meeting other people in the industry because there's so many details and nuances to formulations or packaging or that you can learn little things for that might be different for beverage or powders or olive oil that you might not know. So I've been involved in a lot of different packaging changes and formulation changes. Blue marble, for example, went through a stage where vanilla extract pricing went through the roof. So were really worried. We're like, can we change our formulation? Can we change the amount of vanilla we're using? Can we change the type of vanilla we're using? And how we made that decision. It was two ways. We did a cost benefit analysis.

42:39
Laura Romano
Like we just decided that the pricing was too much. And two, we did testing in our community. So we had the opportunity where we did have ice cream stores. So before we had to change our CPG product, which is, you know, a bigger change, we could test things with our stores. So there might be an opportunity, if you're just like considering a change that might be based on something that might affect something like flavor, where you can try it with a small subset of your customers, a VIP list or something like that could make you feel more comfortable to do a formulation change. So that was one experience with formulations for packaging. I wanted to talk about a little bit about case packs because that's something that comes up a lot at Seed and mill.

43:21
Laura Romano
We had 12 packs of tahini and salesperson came on our team and she was like, why are we doing 12 packs when you do free fills? This is going to be so expensive. And she was Right. So we changed to a six pack. And when went to a meeting with Sprouts, they said they're only taking us because we're a six pack and if were 12, they wouldn't have taken us. So that was a situation that was. We weren't widely distributed yet, so it wasn't a huge deal to change from a 12 to a 6. Graz is kind of in the opposite position now where we have wide distribution for some of our SKUs, like our two core SKUs that we started with the sizzle and the drizzle squeeze bottles.

43:59
Laura Romano
And we're now taking into account, like, should we change from a six pack to a 12 because we've done most of our free fills. That's one of the biggest costs in getting in the door. So what are the other things we should be taking into account? We're looking at all of the labeling fee we have to pay for at warehousing. Warehousing, like pick fees in general. Is there going to be a difference in the tolling cost if we could do bigger case packs? The corrugate is obviously another cost. And after we come into a cost analysis from it. Now we're also talking to the sales team to see, like, what they would say on their side, what the. Ask the brokers for their opinions. They'll ask some of the buyers that they're close with for their opinions.

44:44
Laura Romano
So that situation, it's not just going to be a cost one, but one that you're. We're taking into account the whole team's opinions. These are really tricky things for businesses because they're pretty big changes and going to be some costs involved either way. Normally with a change, those are like some situations of where I've been able to like weigh those costs.

45:03
Hannah Dittman
That's really helpful and I love the. The anecdotes you shared. I feel like they're both of them kind of indicated to me there was some sort of external cost saving benefit or opportunity benefit that really pushed you over the hump of needing to make a change versus kind of what we're going back to with that, like, perfectionist mindset of, well, I know this product. I've been wanting to make it better, so maybe now's the time to make it better. So what's your hot take on waiting for an like what you're mentioning an external opportunity cost to arise that it makes sense to make that change, or you've been in market long enough that you think maybe if we improve this, it'll be more of a revenue growth driver for us.

45:49
Laura Romano
I feel like I wear the OPS hat, so I would say you have to take into the external cost factors, but that's why I think I would be a good balance for a founder who might push me in the way of you have to be more market savvy and things like that.

46:08
Hannah Dittman
I think that's a really helpful perspective to just understand. I think great operators, I find the common thread between all of them are they're really good at thinking through in very tangible terms what's going on and what the implications for things will be and the rationale for doing things. The grounding feat of the industry that we all stand on. Before we wrap up, I want to take a second to make sure our audience can have an actionable next step to apply all this amazing knowledge to. For founders that may want to get in touch with you or continue to learn from you, where can they find you or follow along with you? And for operators that might be interested in a role working directly with Graza or in a career transition, what advice would you have for them?

46:51
Laura Romano
You can reach me at Lauraza co.com and people can also find me on LinkedIn or reach out. My inbox on email is a little crazy so LinkedIn might be a better way to reach me sometimes. And anyone who wants to get involved with OPS and or work at Graza, I'd say you should reach out to me because we're always looking for more people to join our team. It's we're definitely growing still. Keep an eye on LinkedIn. We post most of our jobs there and in the Startup CPG group, if you are a like problem solving, if you like numbers, if you are great at managing relationships and strong communication, those are all the qualities that make great operators. And yeah, that we would love to hear from you.

47:43
Hannah Dittman
Well thank you so much Laura. It was such a pleasure speaking with you. You have clearly amazing operator chops and such a humble, learning oriented mindset. So it's been a great conversation and I'm sure a lot of people will love to be learning from you as well. I really had a great conversation. Thanks again.

48:04
Laura Romano
Thank you so much for having me.

48:08
Hannah Dittman
Thanks so much for tuning in everyone. If you like this episode, show us some love with a five star review at ratethispodcast.com startupcpg I'm Hannah Ditman, podcast host and correspondent here at Startup cpg. I hope you'll join me again as we dig into more juicy topics like ops, finance and all the real talk founders actually need. Come say hi on LinkedIn or ping me on Slack. I'm always eager to hear your questions or brainstorm future episode ideas. If you're a potential sponsor and want to get in on the fun and appear on the podcast, shoot us an email@partnershipstartupcpg.com and last but not least, if you haven't already, don't miss out on our free Slack community for emerging brands and CPG lovers alike. Join us@startupcpg.com we'd love to have you. See you next time, Sam.