The Startup CPG Podcast

Todd Hoffman
I think from an operator perspective, what's really important is to be able to look around corners and have an idea of what might be to come. Right. As a CEO, you're not necessarily in the weeds. You're trying to figure out what's happening next, not what's happening now. And you're relying on your team to help make sure that what's happening now is happening and happening well. And in the role I sit in, it's really more about what's going to happen next, what's going to happen after the next. So making sure your team feels really empowered in their decision making sure that we're all on the same ship, sort of rowing in the same direction.

00:44
Todd Hoffman
If people on my team think that the only focus is D2C, but I'm sitting in my room by myself thinking, hey, we need to focus on grocery, we're not going in the same direction. We might be making very different decisions.

00:56
Hannah Dittman
Hey, everybody. I'm Hannah Dittman, Operations and finance correspondent at startup CPG and the current founder of Ready Basics. I'm thrilled to be chatting today with Todd Hoffman, COO of the fast growing olive oil empire Breitland. Running operations at a scaling brand means juggling a million moving parts from sourcing and manufacturing to pricing, forecasting and retail readiness. Whether you're launching your first SKU or dodging your fist supply chain fire drill, this episode breaks it all down. Todd brings a ton of experience and seriously actionable insights and into what ops actually look like behind the scenes of a modern CPG brand and how to do it smarter, faster and more collaboratively. Stick around to hear his takes on navigating MOQ challenges, managing inventory levels, knowing when to upgrade your tools or renegotiate pricing, reviewing coman contracts, and so much more. Enjoy.

01:48
Hannah Dittman
Hey everybody, welcome back to the Startup CPG podcast. I'm Hannah and today I am here with Todd Hoffman, COO at Brightland. Todd, welcome to the show.

01:57
Todd Hoffman
Thanks for having me, Hannah.

01:58
Hannah Dittman
Yeah, if you could go ahead and give the audience a brief background of your experience prior to joining Brightland and what led you there, that would be awesome.

02:06
Todd Hoffman
Sure. So, kind of a crazy path to get to where I am today. I started off at a school as an investment banker and did what felt like a hundred years working investment banking and it's brutal. You learn how to operate with no sleep, but did that for about a decade and I realized after doing it for a while that I love the idea of building businesses, but when you're doing it from the outside As a banker, you never got in the weeds of things. You sort of saw things, you helped, you advised, you gave context, but you never got to see the business plan that you helped. Right when you were trying to sell a business, you never got to see it actually go into a fruition.

02:40
Todd Hoffman
And so about a decade into my career, I was approached by my cousin to help start a frozen novelty company called Chloe's, which was a popsicle company. And I joined Don, and I was the CFO and COO there for 12 years. And we started off as little retail shops in New York City and grew it to a wholesale food service business. And then we got a phone call one day from a grocery store saying, hey, we'd love for you to sell your products into a grocery store. And so we became a grocery business overnight. And for the next couple of years, we figured out how to become a grocery store product. It was a wild adventure.

03:14
Hannah Dittman
Well, one huge testament what a leap of faith to do 10 years IB and make the jump over to a totally brand new startup with your cousin. That is a huge. I think we all have those fork in the road moments when you get into operations or if you're a founder, a lot of us do, where you're leaving behind kind of a cushy life and you're just like, totally going rogue. So I can totally empathize with that. And that's awesome.

03:37
Todd Hoffman
Yeah, a hundred percent. I mean, that's what it was. We sort of joked around. I was leaving suits and ties for jeans and T shirts. Who knew that Covid would come around. And you're leaving jean T shirts for T shirts and. Or shorts and flip flops at home.

03:48
Hannah Dittman
Yes.

03:48
Todd Hoffman
Yeah, but that was sort of the evolution, and it was sort of like luck of the draw through friends of friends. I met the founder of Brightland through a good friend of mine who's the founder of Bonzo, the chickpeak pasta company. And he told me that the founder, her name is Ash, was looking for someone to help her grow and scale the business here at Breitland, asked if I'd ever heard of it, and I was like, yeah, those iconic white bottles. Of course I know about it. What's she looking for? And I flew out to California, met with Ash, and off went.

04:16
Hannah Dittman
That's great. What a better way. It just kind of all happens organically. Yeah, networking is so huge in cpg, I think especially. It's just kind of like an old school, you get around and shake hands kind of business. Speaking of Breitland, could you also provide a brief overview of the company for context for anyone listening that hasn't had the absolute pleasure of trying your awesome product yet?

04:36
Todd Hoffman
Yeah, absolutely. So Breitland makes artfully designed, consciously crafted olive oils, vinegars, and honeys that infuse sort of like every day with a little bit of happiness. That's sort of the mentality that we go for. We really try to find the intersection between great taste, design, and culture. And that really goes from the design of the bottle to what's inside the packaging as well. Everything we make is made in California by small family farms with the highest degree of respect for integrity and quality. Those are really the most important things. You can have a beautiful package, but if someone tries your product and doesn't taste good, they'll never buy it again. So what's on the inside is really important. We're really known for what's on the outside, but we're really proud of what's on the inside.

05:20
Todd Hoffman
And we're a very fast growing omnichannel business, which I think is always the funniest word in CPG to be omnichannel. But we started off as a DTC company, and we are now making a big push in grocery stores with our two new everyday oil products, which were just accepted into over 250 Whole Foods nationwide.

05:38
Hannah Dittman
Congratulations. Exciting.

05:40
Todd Hoffman
Thank you. We're very excited about it.

05:42
Hannah Dittman
Yeah. I feel like you're speaking to my CPG heart product first mentality and focusing on the repeat purchase, not the first purchase. I think it's, you know, so important. Without a great product, what are you even doing? So that's awesome. Kind of pivoting a little bit into your role as COO a little bit more. Can you break down just what does operations mean in consumer for those of us who maybe aren't as well versed? You know, most people, I think, feel a little overwhelmed at the sheer amount of tasks that encompasses. So what do you personally oversee as coo? And in your mind, what should that capacity really own?

06:18
Todd Hoffman
Yeah, it's a good question. I mean, I think from an operator perspective, what's really important is to be able to look around corners and have an idea of what might be to come. Right. As a CEO, you're not necessarily in the weeds. You're trying to figure out what's happening next, not what's happening now. And you're relying on your team to help make sure that what's happening now is happening and happening well. And in the role I sit in, it's really more about what's going to happen next, what's going to happen after the next. So making sure your team feels really empowered in their decision making sure that we're all on the same ship, sort of rowing in the same direction.

06:52
Todd Hoffman
If people on my team think that the only focus is D2C but I'm sitting in my room by myself thinking, hey, we need to focus on grocery, we're not going in the same direction. We might be making very different decisions. And that goes from the CEO all the way down to every other person in the organization. I think, like from a tactical perspective, I think one of the most important things as an operator is asking really dumb questions. We have something that one of our team members, our teams created, which was a no dumb questions sort of forum. I love that because it's really important. And you know, when you come from investment banking and then you sort of start a popsicle company and then you move to olive oil. I felt like I had permission to ask dumb questions.

07:32
Todd Hoffman
And that might be at a co packer, it might be with a supplier, but it allowed me. I wasn't an expert in olive oil. I wasn't an expert in buying fruit at Chloe's, so it allowed me to go in and ask really dumb questions. There was questions that people who were in the industry were afraid to ask or didn't try and push the envelope. And it allows you to get creative.

07:49
Hannah Dittman
Yeah. I feel like my supply chain has been fully taken advantage of any. I'm like any question I can ask, I'm asking it. I feel like, you know, our job as leaders and operators is to be critical thinkers and to make really strong decisions. But it's not to have all of the knowledge in the universe at our disposable in our own brains at any time is to ask and then do with what we will with that information.

08:15
Todd Hoffman
Yeah, I think operators are put in this position to always say yes. And we talk about this internally all the time. That we want to make sure that we put our team in the position to say yes and so don't let a constraint get in our way. But at the same time being very strategic on when and how to say no. I think how to say no is almost as important as when to say no. And that might be to a supplier, it might be to a retail partner, it might be to a grocery partner, it might be to the CEO, it might be to me. But knowing when to say no as an operator is really critical because if you put one too many straws on the operations, you might be able to tackle one more thing.

08:51
Todd Hoffman
But does everything else that you're building fall apart? When you're growing and you're growing fast, it's really easy to forget about that stuff.

08:57
Hannah Dittman
Yeah. And you know, kind of maybe bringing it in a little bit more of a tangible lens. You know, you talked about just getting accepted or expanding into whole Foods. So what's kind of top of mind for you right now that might be relevant for other people in a similar situation? Maybe entering grocery for the first time, entering retail for the first time, or trying to bring on another channel in general. What kind of keeping you up at night or getting you excited to get up in the morning and tackle.

09:22
Todd Hoffman
I think it's a couple of things. Right. When I think about going into a new channel, we're not the first company that went from D to C and making the leap to grocery. And so how do we surround ourselves with really smart people who understand that, who've done it before, who can tell you about some of the mistakes you've made or they've made in their prior career. So, for example, I helped build a grocery store business at Chloe's that was in over 10,000 grocery stores. I saw things that worked. I saw things that didn't work. Our founder, Ash, has never built a grocery business from the ground up. She's doing it right now. And so to have me alongside with her, I think has been a really big help to think through some of the challenges, some of those issues.

10:01
Todd Hoffman
Similarly, I've never built a DTC business and she has. And so she has perspective on some of those mistakes that you can make. And marketing spend or ad spend on meta or how creative might work or interact with the consumer is very different in a way than it might be when you're going through the distribution channel of a grocery store. And so we've really done a, I think a good job of surrounding ourselves with people who can help us think through those mistakes. Because it's not that going into the channel is different. Everyone goes to the channel virtually the same way. But how do we make it more effective? How do we avoid some of those mistakes?

10:33
Todd Hoffman
How do we get creative and do certain things from being a marketing perspective or a go to market perspective or branding perspective that'll resonate with our consumer in a way that others might not be thinking about or doing in the same way?

10:44
Hannah Dittman
Yeah. Without giving away like too much of your. Your big picture strategy, what are some mistakes or pitfalls that you that are top of mind for you that you definitely want to make sure you're kind of steering clear of.

10:54
Todd Hoffman
I think when you go into grocery, everyone's, the first thing everyone talks about is awareness, awareness. And how do you get awareness? And the easy answer is price, right, Go low, go quick and go low. So get people to try it because if they try it, they're going to keep coming back. And I agree with that strategy of if they're going to try it and they're going to keep coming back. Especially we talked about before, if the product's really great, they're going to keep coming back and the product is great. And I think consumers will come back. But we're going to avoid the pitfall of just go as low as humanly possible. We need to make sure that we can have something sustainable.

11:25
Todd Hoffman
And I think that's a pitfall that a lot of brands make is go so low they can't ever get out of that trap. It's very enticing to let's add one more bogo, let's do one more deal, let's throw one more coupon at it. And so we come from, at Breitling, we come from a background of how do we engage our consumer in a different way. We feel like we have a really engaged customer base and a really engaged customer. Our products are bought a lot of times for gifts and so people are giving this product away to their friends, their families or colleagues for our existing D2C business. So how do we get them to go and say, I felt so proud to give this to you. Now there's an opportunity for me to buy it at a grocer for myself.

12:05
Hannah Dittman
Very sweet sentiment. Yeah. Making sure you're not just short term chasing sales, chasing dollars or getting on that kind of wheel of especially with the buyer pressure and wanting to like come out of the gate strong and making sure you're kind of really thinking through the long term impact and continuation your brand can have in a channel is definitely important. Kind of dovetailing off of that a little bit. I wanted to talk a little bit more about operational best practices in general and especially on the early side. You know, what are kind of the key pillars that you think are critical to scaling early? I'm thinking like product development, pricing, sourcing, you know, what needs to be tight from day one and where a founder should focus their North Star.

12:47
Hannah Dittman
Like if you were starting day one all over again at the popsicle company or you know, doing something new, what are you focusing on first in operations?

12:55
Todd Hoffman
There's a phrase, a quote I heard a long time ago from Mike Tyson says everyone has a plan until they get punched in the face. And it very much resonates when it comes to, like, operation, product development, planning. You have to have a North Star, right? You have to have something you're shooting for. You have to have something that you're always reaching towards, you're always achieving for. So for us is that really artfully crafted products that are absolutely delicious and taste great at the same time, making a product that we can keep making on the long term profitably, so we can be a sustainable business. It'll be great if we do it for just two weeks. But how do we do it for a long period of time? How do we keep our supply partners happy?

13:31
Todd Hoffman
Not just happy, but thrilled that they get to work with us because we are thrilled that we get to work with them. And then we're even more happy that we get to share it with the world. So when I think about those critical pillars from an operational perspective from like day one, I think as an entrepreneur to remember what I'm building today is probably not what I'm going to have tomorrow. I fundamentally believe being an entrepreneur is figuring out when it's not working and pivoting and when it is working, lean in harder for it. So even today, as calls like a young teenager maybe, or like a older adolescent, I'm not sure we know who we are. We're still learning who we are. As of a year ago, were a D2C first company. As of tomorrow, we're leaning heavier into grocery.

14:12
Todd Hoffman
And so as we think of some of those critical pillars that we're putting in place, we're being methodical. We're not going super fast. We're waiting to see what these channels, you know, how do they split up? How do we need to operate before we go and invest time in dollars? It's that whole concept gets scrappy when you can until you've sort of figured out who you are. And we are. We're still trying to do that.

14:35
Hannah Dittman
What do you think has to like a million things will go wrong and you're not going to be able to boil the ocean from day one. I'm definitely hearing that. I've felt that myself. So what do you think? Absolutely needs to go right to be able to kind of like walk up to the next stair and then keep moving up that stairway.

14:52
Todd Hoffman
I think it goes back to what you said before. You've got to have a great product. If your product stinks you can have the best marketing in the world. It'll get you going for a little bit, and people will get excited to try it. And we can all think of brands out there that have had amazing marketing and celebrity backing and things that get a lot of excitement for a short period of time, but do they last? And we are trying to create something that's sustainable long term. And to do that, you've got to have a great product. It has to resonate, it has to be different. It has to speak to someone. And being different doesn't necessarily mean you have to change the world.

15:26
Todd Hoffman
It has to evoke an emotion in the consumer in a way that the existing products that they're using don't. And so that might be a new innovation in terms of, like, totally a new product, or it might be a spin on an existing product that just, again, makes the consumer feel better about what they're doing. So can we inspire someone to be a better home cook because they're using olive oil in a different way? That's what we're hoping for. At the end of the day, it's extra virgin olive oil. It's great. It's really some of the best extra virgin olive oil you'll get out there. And we think there's a lot of fundamental benefits of using extra virgin olive oil, but it's still extra virgin olive oil. Right. And so.

16:01
Todd Hoffman
But can we invoke an emotion when people use the product that'll make them want to come back and bite again?

16:07
Hannah Dittman
Yeah, that's a great point. Yeah, I feel the same in my category. I mean, I have shampoo and conditioner, and it's like, we all know what that is. So having your point of differentiation, but also making it a better experience, but something you're very familiar with is an important brief. What KPIs are you tracking, you know, religiously in your department that signals health or risk or, you know, when we're talking about making sure you have a solid product? What are some actual indicators for you guys when you're, you know, developing pizza oil or a new flavor or something like that? How do you know? Oh, yeah, before you are, like, in the sales zone, you know, what are the indicators to know? Oh, yeah, this is actually a good product. We should do this.

16:46
Todd Hoffman
So I look at it from both, like, the entrepreneurial side of things and the operator side of things. Right. My operator hat says, okay. I get down to the nuts and bolts of okay. Do we have the supply chain to support this? Can this scale. Can we make this can we make it? We can make it great in a small batch. Can I make it great in a big batch? Can I make it great and get it to you from our distribution point, maybe on the east coast to the West Coast? Will it work that way? And so that's where my operator hack goes. As the entrepreneur hack goes, I really look at it that you have to believe in yourself. You have to believe in. If you fundamentally say, this is going to be different, this will make it happen.

17:22
Todd Hoffman
And some people do that by going to farmers markets and selling it, and they sell out and they're like, oh, I'm seeing it. And others, it happens sort of in the kitchen or around a roundtable with your team. When someone just has this idea and everyone just sort of perks up and goes, that's different. Let's problem with that. And I'll say, for every great Idea, there are 30 more that are what we call in the cloud of ideas that we have, of products we're thinking about or we might have come out with or working on that just don't work. And it's easy to say, hey, this one worked really well. But we never forget how much work went into all the ones that don't work. And trying to capture that magic of what did work and say, okay, pizza oil was a great launch.

17:59
Todd Hoffman
How do we replicate that for now? Our cooking oil? Our salad oil?

18:02
Hannah Dittman
Yeah, no, that was a great point. When I worked at Benefit Cosmetics, and the entryway to the lobby, there was a giant wall called like the wall of shame or something with all the products that essentially had flop. It's just kind of a reminder that one, keep your eye on the ones that are working too. But it's, you know, it's meant to be a creative, fun, iterative process and not everything works out. And some things are meant to be a lesson instead of a dollar.

18:24
Todd Hoffman
Yeah, I think it's important. Very careful in our conversations, in our team. We crowdsource our team. We ask what people think they want. We go to stores, we go to restaurants, and we ask. I mean, we're lucky because we have a fun product that is involved in food and cooking and pantry and on your countertop. And so it's fun. It becomes almost like a crowdsourced mentality where we have to sift through that. But it also, we want to make it so there's no bad ideas. Right. If someone said pizza oil in a different setting, they might have got shot down real quick. But we create an environment, or we want to create an environment where everyone has the opportunity to throw out the craziest ideas.

18:57
Todd Hoffman
We might put it back into the cloud and not talk about it for a little bit, but at the right time, at the right moment, it might be lightning that we decide to strike on.

19:05
Hannah Dittman
I love that. Yeah, keeping things collaborative and creative, that's what CPG is all about. Otherwise, you know, we'd all be doing something, making a little bit more money.

19:12
Todd Hoffman
Yeah. I think the real thing is like, is it authentic to your brand? Right. And so at my prior at Chloe's here, the ideas come up and category adjacencies or collaborations, but is it authentic? And will the. Will it resonate with the consumer? Will it. Is it on. On brand? But it. Does it go with that back to your North Star of what you're trying to build, or is it just a shiny object you're going after? And so we really try and stay focused on that North Star. How does it relate to the overall grand, you know, grand plan of really getting these products out there and making the consumer sort of like the number one part of the journey? If it doesn't sort of meet those criteria, it might be a great idea, but it's not necessarily a great idea for our business.

19:53
Hannah Dittman
Yeah, that's a great. You've got to be able to be willing to look at everything, but then only pursue the things that really are going to make the big difference. And I think that's kind of the balance. That and discipline that leadership has to instill to make sure that you stay focused but keep it new and interesting at the same time. When someone's going out to manufacture something for the first time, or when you guys are thinking about your supply chain, how are you choosing manufacturing partners? Or maybe how have you, in the past, you know, what are your top criteria and what has or would make you switch from one manufacturer to another?

20:27
Todd Hoffman
Well, what would make me switch from one to another is not meeting my expectations. You know, I look at our business today. Am I making. Am I creating a formula? Right. A clothes were blending and actually I had a formula, or am I bottling or am I cooking something? And so I always want to know with my coman or my manufacturing facility or whatever it might be, those critical supply chain partners, what are they really good at? What is their key thing? Is it the inbound and buying of ingredients? Is it the way they do the formulations? I really want to understand what their key core competency is. And does that match with what I need? If it doesn't match exactly with what I need, they're not in my right place. And so that's number one. Number two, what is their focus? Right.

21:10
Todd Hoffman
Are they focused on the big guys and I'm just a small cog. Are they focused on smaller companies that they want to help grow and sort of invest in? And so we've been really lucky. We have found some great co manage and supply partners who believe in the vision of what we're trying to do and they want to work with us. And so I think we are pretty demanding. We want perfection. We want someone to get our product and have the absolute best experience. What do I mean by that? Our glass bottles are a lot of times for gifts. So if you're going to give someone a gift, that bottle better look perfect, the product inside better, tastes phenomenal.

21:47
Todd Hoffman
And if you're an at home cook and you're going to try and cook our cook something, then use our product and you have a bad experience because of a leaky bottle or a top didn't get on properly or you know, whatever it might be. It all comes down to where in the supply chain did a breakdown and I have to make sure that my customers have the absolute best experience. And so when I'm looking at my comans, for example, I want to know that they're going to wake up and think about me even though I'm probably their smallest customer. So how do I get the most love out of my partners where I'm probably their smallest part of their business?

22:19
Hannah Dittman
Yeah, I feel like having partners that really believe in the potential of your brand and want to scale it with you just makes such a big difference than just being another number or another volume addition that they can squeeze in. Especially. Yeah, if you have perfectionist standards. I've had people tell me before, I'm such a perfectionist, I'm like, great, awesome. That means I'm being a lot more rigorous than whoever else you're working with.

22:41
Todd Hoffman
Yeah. Our partners always say to me, you know, Matt, Chloe's even here. They couldn't believe how often me as the CFO or CEO or coo, we're coming out to watch a production run. The number of times I stood on the line and actually packed things out. We're going to be going this year as a team to our facility and we're going to sit online this year and do some of the packouts. We want them to know that we're invested in the business. We are not just a bunch of people sitting at computers and spreadsheets. We live and breathe this and so we want to be part of the team. So I also fundamentally believe we need to understand their problems. If it's just, here's my problem, go solve it versus collaborative, like, I need to understand what your problem is.

23:20
Todd Hoffman
One of the examples that I never, you know, back when I first started was there was a real challenge in the way that were bringing in materials. And I didn't quite understand it until I went out there and realized that their receiving dock and their delivery dock were on the opposite sides of the building. And it wasn't until I saw it, I understood their problem where I could then come in and troubleshoot because I was part of the problem. And so if I understand their problems, I can visualize their problems, I can see their problems, I can be part of their problems, and they can also be part of my problems. So if I explain to them what's going on, either a truck delivery issue or, hey, here's what's happening on my farm. And this is by ad. My oil can't get there tomorrow.

23:55
Todd Hoffman
If they understand that and I understand it, you have a much more collaborative approach to solving the problems because it's truly done as a partner. Versus I need you to produce. Produce tomorrow. I have UNFI orders coming in. I have to deliver it. Do they care about the UNFI order or do they care about getting their machines back up and running? And so if I'm part of their problem and I'm part of their solution, and they truly believe I feel for them, which we do, then we can have a collaborative approach to it.

24:20
Hannah Dittman
Yeah, I feel like that's a great piece of advice and wisdom, but just in general too. I think approaching external partners the same way that you would approach internal employees, I think is lost on a lot of people sometimes. But they're just as much as part of your business as anyone else. Maybe they don't have as full access to your information, but they're critical and they're important and you all want to be on the same team and the same dream.

24:44
Todd Hoffman
No, I totally agree. I mean, come the holidays, they're part of our family. Right. And we want to make sure they feel that same way. We share with them stories of, like, what our customers are saying because they're part of that journey and it's really important. I mean, I remember Chloe's. I remember one of our co mans called me up one day and he said, you know, everyone just calls me to beat me up and yell at me and tell me all the things I'm doing wrong. He Said, you call me and just want to talk. You don't have an ask, you just want to talk and see what's up. And he's like, I so much appreciate you, I'm very busy. But I really actually appreciate, I look forward to your calls.

25:15
Todd Hoffman
And I openly know at the end of the day if I need something I can call him as a friend. He understands it's a business, but it can also call him as a friend.

25:22
Hannah Dittman
And that just makes your job so much more rewarding too because Lord knows in everything goes wrong in operations, there will always be a headache, there will always be a fire, a 911, something you keeping up at night and having those foundational relationships being really strong. So when things do come up or when you do need the favor or when something got lost on your side and you actually, you know, you need them to go above and beyond to help you make it right or whatever, it's so much easier when you already have a great rapport with someone than when it's a tense or a kind of non existent relationship and now you're trying to like make the most happen.

25:57
Todd Hoffman
Yeah, any good CO man will go above and beyond. Right. And supply partner will go above and beyond. And so I don't think I have fundamental belief that even if you're just a true working relationship, a good supply partner will always go above and beyond. But it's what you said, it's that extra, extra. It's that last little bit. It's our 3 PL this year, who we've got a great relationship with. The day before our shipping cutoff, we missed some orders and they went above and beyond. They were getting stuff out but even after that they still missed some orders. And what they did was they took, they literally got product in their car, drove it to the FedEx facility and dropped it off to make sure even more. And they were so proud, they called us up.

26:37
Todd Hoffman
They're like, you never guess what we're able to do. We were able to get a few more orders out and here's what we did. And they're excited about it, we're excited about it. It really matters. It really matters.

26:47
Hannah Dittman
Yeah, that's such a sweet great example. Pivoting back to two questions a little bit. What's, you know, a realistic product development timeline as people are planning to work with their comands or thinking through things before they go crazy beating someone up, you know, how should operators plan their launch calendars? And of course that differs by what you're making and your category and all of that. But you know, some general guidance, I.

27:09
Todd Hoffman
Think bring your team into the fold. It's very easy to forget to bring everyone in the fold from a product, co manufacturing, packaging. I'm a fundamental believer bringing all supply partners into the fold very early on. So who drives product? Is it sales? Is it marketing? Is it product? We have a product team and who really drives what's that newness in the development of a product? It can come from anywhere. I don't really think we have a secret sauce. Right. It's product development sort of comes naturally in the evolution of a business. It might come from a sales meeting, it might come from standing in a grocery store and being inspired by something.

27:45
Todd Hoffman
But when we do kick a product, a project off for that, it's how do you get everyone on that same boat really quickly again from the supply partners all the way down to your distribution team on your internal team. We look at it because we are omnichannel. Where is it going to go first and how are we going to talk to our consumers? Is this meant for, what's the purpose of it? What's the job to be done for that product? And depending on the job to be done for that product, how are we going to get it to that consumer? The most effective way for the consumer? So is it a gift? Is it a consumption product like our grocery product? And depending on what that is, how do we work back to figure out, okay, if it's internal for a direct consumer?

28:25
Todd Hoffman
I can miss deadlines. It's okay. I can't change when the holidays are. So Q4 is around the corner. I can't move when that shipping cutoff deadline is, but I can sort of move things around. My launch date might be Monday, it might be Tuesday. If my website's not quite ready in grocery, it doesn't work that way. If I miss the reset date, I'm writing a check and I'll probably never get back in that grocery store for quite a long time. And so it really depends on where the products are going and what the purpose is and then who I need to bring into the fold. And I also think product development is all about what goes wrong. A lot goes wrong.

28:59
Todd Hoffman
It might not work on the production line, it might not work in the when you go pack it out for the first time in your master case. And so as challenges sort of erupt along the way and break along the way, making sure you're all of our partners are aware, hey, this is new. Here are the challenge that we're facing how do we all work together again? It goes back to my great supply partner relationships. If my co man's really into it with me and sees the vision of what this is going to do, they're going to work with me, they're going to understand, say, okay, we're going to pause the line. Let's figure this out together.

29:27
Hannah Dittman
Yeah, it's so scary. I think it's a great opportunity getting into retail, but so scary that you no longer have the full chessboard all yourself to move around as you see fit. You've got to start playing a real game against real factors. You know, if you were my advisor, my mentor, and I came to you and I said, hey, I want to launch a product. How long do you think I should give myself? It's going to be, you know, from scratch, brand new. What kind of timing advice would you tell me?

29:52
Todd Hoffman
Do you want to get a product where you can show proof of concept? Because I think there's a big difference between proof of concept to I'm ready to sell into the world. Proof of concept, I fundamentally believe, needs to be quick, real quick. When you have an idea, get it out there quickly, get it to your advisors, get it to your friends, show that it has true value. You can spend a lot of time developing a product. I fundamentally believe to really get it right, it's going to take six months to a year from when you ideate that to when you can really get something proverbially on a shelf or on D2C. You know, just think of everything from photography and creating the content and seeding your influencers. Getting it ready for a proper launch just takes time, even when the product is ready.

30:34
Todd Hoffman
And so our cooking wells have been ready for a bit of time, but we had to wait until the time was right. When were the Whole Foods reviews? We wanted that to be our first retail presence. And so we had to wait till when those reviews were. And so it sort of backtracks to that. So I think getting proof of concept, can I make this? Will it work? And can I have the partners? That should be done quickly because if you can't figure that out, you might be able to sell it in somewhere. But then what?

30:58
Hannah Dittman
Yeah, great advice. I feel like that's kind of like the R and D phase, proof of concept phase is like a whole chapter. And then fine tuning, getting it to fit the spec, the product development, that's a whole nother chapter. And then getting it to market, selling it, and all the battles that you're going to be fighting after the fact that's a whole nother thing too constantly evolving.

31:18
Todd Hoffman
I was surprised when I first got into the food world and consumer world that there are, you know, not that I was surprised that there are experts, but there are these so many experts that know how to take that aren't idea creators, but they're executors. Right. They can see your vision and they can really help you bring it to life. I'm not a vision person. I'm a bring it to life person. Ash, for example, is a vision person. She sees it. And so we make a great team when it comes to that. There's a lot of yin and yang when it comes to our, how her and I operate and how we bring people in, our team on the journey, be it like the high level.

31:51
Todd Hoffman
I have this idea, I have this vision, I have this dream, how do we make this a reality? And we really play together well with that. Because that's not my specialty. My specialty is not I have this great idea, this great crazy product. I wish I did, but I don't. And that's what makes, I think going back to earlier questions about like building team or creates a good team is when it comes to Ash and myself and our relationship, it is that yin and yang, it's what do we do differently and how does that sort of come together. And so if you have an idea, don't try and perfect it, try and get it to a place where you can at least show someone, here's my idea. Because other people, and don't be afraid to bring other people into the fold.

32:26
Todd Hoffman
Other people can really help do it quicker, faster and more effective, especially when it comes to scaling.

32:32
Hannah Dittman
Yeah. I feel like if one person has all the skills that we need, they're not human, they're AI, they're a robot.

32:39
Todd Hoffman
Yeah.

32:40
Hannah Dittman
Kind of pivoting to like scaling and strategy. You know, if you've built a product, you've kind of gone through, you feel confident, you know you're going to iterate it, but you feel really good about the product you made. Is supply chain optimization a one and done thing or kind of like a main focus at the beginning or is it a forever pain point? What's your approach to scaling cleanly and how do you know when you need to make a change? Are you like, for instance, are you constantly renegotiating pricing or do you wait for a fundamental change in the business and then kind of think about, okay, maybe we should optimize something in our supply chain?

33:13
Todd Hoffman
I Think it's really important to strike when the iron's hot. What do I mean by that? If I'm going constantly to my partners, asking for price, asking for a price, asking for price. It's death by a thousand cuts. So I am not a firm believer in that. I am a firm believer in make a product and work with a partner who can scale with you and grow with you and over time, share with them your margin profile, share with them what you're trying to do, explain how you're going to grow with them if they understand your math. I know I understand. Sharing the math can sometimes be really scary.

33:43
Todd Hoffman
I'm not saying that we always share the full level of the math with our partners, but if they can understand the concept of what we're trying to do and where we're trying to go, I think it provides insights to our partners of how best they can work with us. So, no, I don't think going all the time to ask for concessions constantly is the right approach in big moments. But I also don't think it's in those big moments that you can always just go and ask for a price. So we got Whole Foods. That's a huge win. I'm not going back to my partners being like, we got Whole Foods, lower my price. It's, we got Whole Foods.

34:11
Todd Hoffman
I have an infrastructure set up where I can actually scale this and make it profitably because of the vision that we bought into a long time ago. And they knew that was a goal we had in the future. And so were set up for that success, right? They're investing in us. And so just because I got there doesn't mean they should be penalized. And so we're now thinking, you know, future forward, at what point? How do price increases, how do price changes, how do scalability changes affect that? Right? If we're making numbers a thousand bottles a year, and now I'm making a million bottles a year, my co packer might not be the right co packer anymore. That's a huge scaling difference. So I might outgrow you.

34:49
Todd Hoffman
And so to be open and honest, because I don't want to become your biggest customer and then walk away the next day and leave you in the Lurchell. Right? So onto the Costco model. They don't want you to live and die by them saying yes, them saying no. And we have to have the same approach with our partners. We can't grow, grow, and then be like, sorry, you're not the right people for us anymore. It is a bidirectional relationship. Our success is their success is our success. And we have to both be very cognizant and clear with each other about where we can go and what we're trying to do with it in terms of scalability and like when we try and put things in place at the right time.

35:21
Todd Hoffman
I think for our business today we sort of said this before, like are we an adolescent, a mid teen? I don't know what we are. And so I really believe that there are times and places where we need to put in certain infrastructure where we can get the job done and other places that we need to just remain scrappy. Where a Google Doc is just fine, an Excel spreadsheet is just fine. And that holds true for very large businesses. We were part of the Chobani food incubator when I was at Chloe's years ago. And I remember Hamdi talking about this and talking about scale and when do you scale? And I remember him saying that even when they were a very large company, they still were on QuickBooks.

36:01
Todd Hoffman
Single user login on QuickBooks and it wasn't until they got into much later in their game that they went over to a big ERP and he said it was the best decision they made because they didn't overinvest because they weren't sure what they were yet. And we're in the same place.

36:15
Hannah Dittman
Yeah, no, a thousand percent when I worked in pe. I mean and you're talking like later stage investments at that point. Easily 100 million in revenue or more. Most of those companies are on QuickBooks or didn't even have a CFO. I was band Aid solution for a lot of things or you know, were the ones implementing an ERP with them. And that was part of what the capital was for is for really professionalizing big scale operational things, cleaning up some of the things that could have been optimized without having to cut costs or do this other stuff because you feel like you can, you know, start putting some backbone into the business in a way that just requires a little upfront capital. But yeah, I think it's a another question I had, you know, when do you think about that?

36:53
Hannah Dittman
When is it time to scale to a 3 PL, lease a warehouse, implement an ERP? You know, in startup land, everything lives in the gray area between need to have and nice to have. So how do you know when is now becoming a need?

37:06
Todd Hoffman
I think with 3 PL it's a little bit easier to see that. Right. I've expanded out of my Kitchen I can. My. My wife is going to kill me if I ship one more package out of our house mentality to I want to provide the best possible experience. Right. So for example, we scale up tremendously during the holidays. I have to have a 3 PL who can handle a huge uptick in holiday business. And I don't think Ash, when she started this, ever thought that she would even be handling out of her home in Southern California. It had to be something that could scale. And so as a holiday centered business, A3PL was sort of the only option that we had and that was decided upon well before I was here.

37:43
Todd Hoffman
I wish I could say I was smart enough to think about that when she thought about it. But today as I think about it and we look and say, okay, now we're getting into retail. And that's a very different supply chain and 3PL model than direct to consumer. How does my 3PL F fit in that? And I look at it and say I have a great relationship by 3 PL. How can I work with them so that they want to grow into becoming the best 3 PL for me? And is that too big of a lift? I think working with our current 3PL to optimize my need for supply chain purposes for grocery, I can work with them. I can get them to the place I need them to be.

38:21
Todd Hoffman
If you're a primarily a grocery 3 PL and I'm now going to launch my D2C business, I think it's a harder lift. There's a lot more integrations when it comes to DTC to try and figure out how am I going to do UPS packaging and rate cards and shopify integrations. I think it's a little more complex. And so we're lucky we're on the other side going from D2C into grocery. And so from the 3 PL side, I look at it that way. From the ERP side of things, it's almost the opposite. And this probably frustrates some people on my team, but I am a pump the brakes person when it comes to an erp. What are we trying to solve for? Again, going back to Ultra North Star, what are we trying to solve for? We're trying to solve for that customer experience.

38:57
Todd Hoffman
And so right now is the most critical thing to know the fifth decimal on my cost of goods as it moves through my supply chain and know that from an inventory perspective I'm losing 0.1 pennies every day, or is it more important that I can invest that into product and into my branding and into my marketing into my delivery the message to the consumer and give them the best experience they can. Can we get close enough? I've talked to enough companies where they'll show me their numbers and their main products. Lose money just off the bat. You don't need RP for that. I'm using a spreadsheet to say, hey, your cost of goods are upside down here. Go invest in product before you invest in systems.

39:38
Hannah Dittman
Yeah, that's great advice. I feel like, you know, if it's breaking, if you're outgrowing it, or if it's very much not the core problem that you're trying to solve and you only have so much bandwidth, then focus on the top of the totem pole first. I think that's pretty much in line with just common sense and great advice. Kind of going off of that. You know, when you're setting up operations and you're moving quick and you're trying to make things happen, things can get crazy real quick. You can blow up your supply chain, you can set it up wrong, you can have the wrong people doing the wrong things. You can do a lot of messy things. So how do you balance scrappy execution with long term infrastructure? What's your framework for prioritizing speed versus sustainability?

40:20
Hannah Dittman
And how are you kind of constantly walking that tight line?

40:24
Todd Hoffman
I think it really goes back to the team I have in place. We have entrepreneurs at work here, right. So people who are going to be, I'll do it, I'll figure it out. There's sort of like no problem too hard for us to solve. I think as you're growing, as you're scaling, there is a true balance between being scrappy and thinking long term. For example, right now we are putting into place a lot of processes and flows that are going to make our lives just a lot easier. It's going to help us make decisions faster. So what are you trying to accomplish? I look at our business, say I want to be able to make the best decisions I can the fastest I can. How do you do that? I believe data. Data help provide you good information.

41:00
Todd Hoffman
So I think this is a great product. Okay, well, versus the other one. One has a 60 margin, one has a 40 margin. Will this one sell x percent more to recover that? Why do you think that? Is it just I have a belief or can you support it with some numbers? And so if we can create some infrastructure that can provide us better processes, better flows, better able to make decisions, I'm a big supporter of that. If it things like we're going to Implement a million dollar ERP system that's going to make my life a little bit easier. We need all the new report to our board. But if I'm in the growing scrappy part of my business, I need to be able to do the things that are going to help me grow the company in an effective way.

41:37
Todd Hoffman
And when you're small and young, you got to figure out where to allocate those dollars fast and effectively. Like every dollar has to provide me like $10 back.

41:46
Hannah Dittman
Super helpful and definitely something to re anchor on as you get so distracted with all these other things that go on kind of thinking about your own career. You know what's a small ops decision that ended up having a huge impact for you? Were there any lessons learned from something that seemed minor at the time but changed everything that maybe other operators could learn from?

42:08
Todd Hoffman
I think in a small growing business, nothing is small. No problem is small. Every problem feels massive. My labels didn't show up, I can't produce. That's a huge problem. Even though it's something as small as a label. And so I think one of the things is like an operator look back is how do you roll with the punches. You are going to get whacked over and over again every single day. There is a proverbial fire to put out every single day and to remind yourselves two things. Number one, why am I doing this? What's the purpose? What is the customer getting out of it and how is it going to improve the customer's life? And number two, whatever problem I had today, it's probably going to be worse tomorrow or different tomorrow.

42:49
Todd Hoffman
And so figure out the best approach, solve it quickly, solve it effectively, get the right people involved. So I think having the right people around me and knowing when to hire the right people, it's a huge thing. So I don't want to say it's a small thing, but I think having the right people and knowing when to hire them is probably the most critical part of scaling a business. You cannot do it all yourself. It's just not possible. And to think you can. So understanding where you're not good and what you need to support you. I think in our business what I love is specifically with our founder Ash and with people who work with me directly. There's no issue to say no to someone. There's no issue to say no. I understand this really well.

43:29
Todd Hoffman
Let me explain to you why, and it's not invented here mentality. It's like, okay, let me learn from you. And so having that open mind to Learn about some other people. A lot of founders, a lot of CEOs, they have all the answers and you're just sort of there to work for them. So as long as you have an open mind and you can creatively think through solutions, these problems aren't that hard. Everyone sort of had them. Every business has the same problems. It's just in a different way. And I think in the last year we've all seen some problems, especially on a supply chain basis and operator basis. What I thought was really cool is how a lot of these smaller brands all banded together to help work together to solve some of it and really provide a network of support.

44:07
Todd Hoffman
And I think that was not just a small. Is a big thing that people did and band together to help with.

44:12
Hannah Dittman
Yeah. Harrowing times. On the upside, the last few years.

44:16
Todd Hoffman
Yeah.

44:17
Hannah Dittman
What are some of the biggest problems you've solved in your career? You know, from. Are there any recurring pain points or watch outs that happen from company to company in operations that others can learn from? Like if there's kind of like the playbook of. Yeah, oh yeah, you're definitely going to have to battle this or that.

44:32
Todd Hoffman
I think inventory and knowing when to produce. Right. So I'm going to go produce a million bottles and now you have. You've sold 10 and what am I going to do with these other 999,990 bottles? Or I produced a million and I have demand for 10 million. In ops and planning, especially as a young business, it's almost impossible to get that right. And so I think that's really the hardest part. Right. Is the visibility between sales and how quickly I can pivot my supply chain. Right. How quickly can I produce, how quickly can I get it back on shelf? So if I'm a DTC business, by the time I get it to. When I get it back on shelf is tomorrow.

45:12
Todd Hoffman
From a grocery perspective, if I'm out of stock at my distributor, it could be weeks because of when their pickup schedules are or when they're going to put it back on shelf or when it delivers to Whole Foods. So the visibility across the supply chain, and not just the supply chain, but the sales channel too. Right. So having that visibility of what things are working, when things aren't working and to pivot into them. I think the most common pain point in OPS is like, I don't have resources. I need more resources. OPS is all resource constraints. If I had more people, I could throw it at it. We're lucky here. We've got people who just are Finding ways to figure things out, create systems. It's amazing.

45:50
Todd Hoffman
Some of the tools that have been created internally, it blows my mind some of the tools that people are creating here to create that visibility. And it's visibility that we need at the most basic level but also at the most senior level to try and make decisions for what we're going to do a year from now.

46:05
Hannah Dittman
Yeah, the problem of forecasting accurately and making sure your sell and sell through matches up all the finance related aspects of inventory management are definitely huge pain points. What about kind of on the early stage production side? Have you ever been able to figure out, I think another common pain point on what you're talking about on quantities and inventory is the forever challenge of I only need to start with 500 or a thousand and they're making me do 10,000, what do I do about that? How would you kind of bridge that gap or how have you battled that kind of stuff in your career?

46:37
Todd Hoffman
It goes back to finding that right co packer, finding that right partner. You know, we've gotten creative. I remember early on when were running Chloe's and talking to our co man and they said it cost me more money to turn my machine on. Then I'm going to make doing what you're asking me to do. I can't make it work. And I say great, how much does it cost to turn your machine on? Because I don't need 10,000 but I can help write a check for this. How do I amortize that over the cost of the next two production runs? Can you lean into me on the next one Again if I know your problems. My co man had to report to a much bigger corporate entity and he was boarding up P and L management. Great.

47:13
Todd Hoffman
Can I make a deposit for a future production run? Because that'll help. That's solving your problem. But I also knew it takes three hours for the machine to turn on and for this to happen and for the product. It won't work if I don't do this. Oh, I understand that. And so understanding again, understanding their problems, understanding what makes them tick, understanding what makes them be really good at their job. If you're really good at making and bottling olive oil and I tell you have to change what you're doing, you might not be really good at doing it anymore and you're going to give me a subpar product. I need to understand what you're really good at and what demands you're telling it. Or is it just pure profit? Are you just doing it for pure profit.

47:51
Todd Hoffman
If you're doing it for pure profit, I might not ever get around that and I might have to find a different coat packer.

47:55
Hannah Dittman
Great example and I think some awesome food for thought. I love empowering operators and founders to feel capable of controlling their own destiny. I think you're at the whim. You feel at the whim or powerless. So often, you know, providers want money from you, everyone's trying to sell you things, retailers are saying, you know, rejection investors, you know, you're just comance everyone, you're needing something from everyone and you constantly feel like the one doing all the asking. But the mindset shift of being on a team with all these people and trying to make it work I think is so helpful. If operators got together and wrote like the tales of operations and the crazy stuff that they did to make things work, it would be the most awesome read.

48:33
Hannah Dittman
I have a little book that I jot down on my own of like crazy situations where I've had to do things like that.

48:38
Todd Hoffman
Didn't have it on my bucket list or my bingo card for the day is very long.

48:44
Hannah Dittman
I know we're coming up on time really quick, so I just want to hop into our last couple of things if that's all right with you. So as you know, at startup CPG we have the largest slack community in the industry with over 25,000 members. I'd love to pull a question directly from our channel and have you answer it as a case study for any founder with a similar question. Here's a recent question that popped up. I just received a draft for a contract from a CO man I've been talking to. This is my first time working with one ever. What should I make sure is covered in the CO packing contract and what should I look out for?

49:15
Todd Hoffman
A lot. I have a belief that contracts are meant to be written in a way that you figure out how you argue and then you throw it away. You agree of how we're going to fight and then you shake hands, you put in a filing drawer and you never look at it again. But you need to lay out how you fight the fight and agree upon upfront with the partner that you're talking about. Of, hey, we're only doing this because if it goes bad, if things are going well, I promise you we're not going to look at our contract if things go bad. We're going to put on be like, hey, you said you were going to do this.

49:46
Todd Hoffman
And so during the contract phase there's a real I Think there's a real balance of making sure that you're working with the partner to understand what the rationale, what are you trying to accomplish here? I think some of those watch outs though are volume commitments. Like how do you think about that? Like what you said a minute ago, I only want 500, I need to do 5 million. But also what am I committing to long term? Am I committing to a one year volume commitment? Am I committing to X number of cases over six months? How do I from the brand side, how do I stretch that out as long as possible? They're going to want to contract that as long as possible. I think a big one, especially in food, is waste. How are we calculating waste? Who's in charge of waste?

50:27
Todd Hoffman
That can become a real big problem if you don't talk about that in advance. Like, hey, what should the waste be? Because when you get a waste report of 10% and you've bought all the ingredients and you write a bit and you say, hey, that cost me $100,000 in waste. And they say, oh, that's how waste works. And you haven't talked about that in advance. It can get very expensive very quickly. I think from a recipe perspective, making sure it's crystal clear about the formula, who owns it, making sure there's safeguards in place that they can't take your formula. I always want a general idea of who else they might be working with to understand is there a risk? There's always risk. You're entrusting someone else with your product and your formula. But how much do I trust you?

51:08
Todd Hoffman
And I think you can get a lot of that out of the negotiation. You can really determine who a person is and how they'll work with you when you're negotiating these hard parts of a contract. And so I use the hard parts of those negotiations to understand what it's probably going to be like to work with them. Because it's not always going to be easy, it's going to get contentious. And so this is your first foray into that when they're still in the courting phase.

51:27
Hannah Dittman
Great answers. And definitely I'm like, my mind is thinking of all the times that I'm like, yeah, the waste one. Especially if you're making a different format of product or something that can be a big one.

51:37
Todd Hoffman
Because I think it's also important is how do price increases work? Because I think when you're in the negotiating phase, you're dating and so a co man might really want to get you in and they're going to give you a good price to get you in. I think everyone knows how hard it is to change Cobans and the pain and suffering that you go through and a lot of expenses you go through. And so how do you get clear and share with your CO man what your growth plans are and if you hit your growth plans, how that will look from a cost increase perspective over time. And so we try and get really clear cost increase provisions put in contracts because you don't want them to say it's $10 per case.

52:14
Todd Hoffman
And then next year when you grow 50%, like, oh, it's $40 now and you're stuck.

52:19
Hannah Dittman
Yeah, especially back in Covid when all the raw mats were fluctuating so much. I mean, the price of things like glycerin was spiking so much. One day a quote for me went 4x overnight and I had to wait for the. I was like watching the futures, like constantly, like, when is this going down to place my po. Yeah, things can get crazy.

52:37
Todd Hoffman
It's real. And I think Covid was the beginnings of the craziness of capacity constraints and labor constraints. And where do I fit in your schedule and how does that work? And so contracts I've seen have gotten much more formulaic when it comes to that, to sort of account for, I don't want to say pandemics, but real big issues and where do I fit in? I also think it's really important. Does the CO man have their own branded product? Because if they do, you're fighting against their line. Time for their own branded products too.

53:08
Hannah Dittman
Yeah, great point. We all need Girl Scout and Boy Scout. Like I made it through Covid operations badges. 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? Follow along on your journey or your company's journey, or what's the best way for them to get in contact? And then for operators that might be interested in a role working directly with Brightland, what advice do you have for them?

53:37
Todd Hoffman
So the best way to get me is email. And LinkedIn is sort of where we share. I share most of what's going on in my world, so my LinkedIn is probably the best place to see what's going on from our business perspective. Email, which I don't know if you'll. You want to share that, if you'll.

53:51
Hannah Dittman
Be sharing that out, if you're comfortable sharing? Yeah, by all means, yeah.

53:55
Todd Hoffman
It's ToddRightland co. Not com co. So it's ToddRightland with two Ds to D D at Brightland Co. And I always love connecting with people. I always love hearing stories. I really believe that we can all work together. I have a mentality of rising tides. So the more we all work together, the higher the tide rises and it's better for everyone. And so I have a fundamental belief in that. And so, yeah, reach out. I always try and reach back out and email back and I might be the one reaching out to you one day asking for advice as well. So in terms of working at Brightland, I think it's an amazing place to work. It's not just a place to work.

54:29
Todd Hoffman
I think we're really trying to transform how people are either give gifts, receive gifts, spend time in their kitchen, spend time in their home and how it makes them feel when they're home and have this beautiful white bottle on their countertop, but then also cook this amazing meal for their friends or their family or for whatever it might be. So it's great when we get to be part of that. And so we remember that we always talk about that internally of what we're trying to do and why we're doing it. And you see it the most obviously during the holidays when the orders come in and all the really amazing notes that we see and the letters we get back of these amazing gift notes that we see come across our desks. And yeah, we're growing.

55:04
Todd Hoffman
So keep an eye out because we're growing and we've brought on some amazing people in the last year and we're going to continue to do so.

55:11
Hannah Dittman
Awesome. Well, thank you so much, Todd. It was such a pleasure to have you today.

55:14
Todd Hoffman
Thank you. It was nice to see everyone. Nice to talk to you.

55:19
Hannah Dittman
Thanks so much for tuning in, everyone. If you like this episode, show us some love with a five star review. Review@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 at partnershipsartupcp. 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.