[00:00:10] Ray Latif: Hello, and thanks for tuning in to Taste Radio, the number one podcast for the food and beverage industry. I'm editor and producer Ray Latif, and you're listening to episode 209, which features an interview with Trey Zoeller, the founder of pioneering whiskey brand Jefferson's Bourbon. Just a reminder, if you like what you hear on Taste Radio, please share the podcast with friends and colleagues. And of course, we'd love it if you could review us on the Apple Podcasts app or your listening platform of choice. It's one of the world's most respected whiskey brands, but early into the development of Jefferson's bourbon, founder Trey Zoeller could barely give away his products. Consumers' appreciation and demand for high-quality premium bourbon were still years away when Trey launched Jefferson's in 1997. In the time since, however, he's emerged as one of the industry's most innovative and forward-thinking entrepreneurs, having introduced novel and highly experimental methods for maturing whiskey. A prime example is Jefferson's flagship expression, which is aged at sea, an approach that produces a complex flavor profile resulting from exposure to temperature fluctuations. In 2006, Jefferson's was acquired by sales and marketing firm Castle Brands, which in turn was acquired by Spirits conglomerate Pernod Ricard last year. Today, the brand sells over 100,000 cases annually of its small-batch bourbon and rye whiskey, and Trey maintains his stewardship of Jefferson's as its Chief Strategist. In the following interview, he spoke about navigating the evolution of the whiskey category, how he determined his highest value in the company, and why he doesn't consider himself a distiller. He also discussed initial criticism of Jefferson's approach to innovation, balancing consumer demand for diversity and predictability, and whether he has any regrets about selling the company prior to the bourbon boom of the past decade. Hey folks, it's Ray with Taste Radio. I'm going to call right now with Trey Zoeller, who's the founder of Jefferson's Bourbon. Trey, how are you? I'm doing great. It's a beautiful day here in Kentucky. Indeed, Kentucky, well known for its bourbon. How long have you been in Kentucky?
[00:02:20] Trey Zoeller: Well, I was born in Kentucky, so I've been here most of my life. I've been going for about a dozen years. Other than that, this is what I've called home.
[00:02:27] Ray Latif: What were you doing in those dozen years that you were out of the state?
[00:02:31] Trey Zoeller: Oh, I was all over the place. I went to school in New Orleans, moved to Washington, D.C. for a while, Charleston, South Carolina, Colorado, out on the West Coast, so various things. But most recently, before I moved back here to start Jefferson's, I was in the medical distribution business.
[00:02:53] Ray Latif: Gotcha. So what led you to craft distilling or what now is called craft distilling, but back in 97 when you, 1997, that is when you founded the brand, you know, what brought you to this industry?
[00:03:05] Trey Zoeller: You know, it was really leaving here that brought me to it. Growing up in Kentucky, you assume everybody drinks bourbon. Bourbon's just part of your culture. If you went to my grandmother's house, she didn't ask you what you want to drink, rather, how do you take your bourbon? Everything that she cooked with was smothered in bourbon. It was going to these different places that back in the early 90s, there wasn't bourbon available. You might find Jim Beam, Wild Turkey, Maker's Mark if you were lucky. I'd come home and drive past Warehouses that I knew were full of great old bourbon that was either evaporating off into nothing or being blended into a four-year-old and wasn't being showcased. At the same time, single malt scotches, specifically with age statements, were on fire. And I thought that bourbon was a superior product. So I started talking to people that were friends of mine in the industry and asking them if I could get ahold of some of these barrels. that I'd bottle it up and take it to market and people would be clamoring for it once they found out how good it was.
[00:04:17] Ray Latif: And it is very good. It is actually outstanding whiskey. You know, Jefferson's has won many awards, a lot of acclaim for the quality and the innovation that you've brought to the bourbon category. But when you were starting out, I mean, what was your initial vision for Jefferson's? Do you have a business plan?
[00:04:36] Trey Zoeller: I had a business plan. I had many business plans that, uh, came and went like the dodo bird. When we first started bottling up this great product, we were selling 15-year-old bourbon for $50, and people thought that was just way too much money. It was a totally different consumer at the time. People looked down their noses at Kentucky bourbons at the time. I went to the first Whiskey Fest with Julian Van Winkle, and we had a deal where you could buy five cases of his and get a case of mine no charge, or buy five cases of mine and get case of his no charge. And we didn't do a dozen deals between the two of us. So it was just a totally different climate. But my idea was to buy up enough of this product, sell it and, uh, you know, go ahead and raise enough money that I can build a distillery and start distilling my own stuff. But as I went around talking to the different distillers, they all told me the same thing, somewhere between 65 and 75% of what bourbon is. the heart and soul of bourbon comes from the maturation process. I thought, well, everybody's maturing it the same way. I think there's room to manipulate the maturation process to make the bourbon different. At the same time, I was saying, what am I going to do? I can't help Jimmy Russell, Jimmy Russell, these great distillers from the There was only eight distilleries in Kentucky, and that was making 99% of the country's bourbon. And they had generations of knowledge. I wasn't going to out-distill them, but what I could do is take their base and start manipulating it one way, shape, or form, by putting more time, money, and effort into it to hopefully enhance it.
[00:06:30] Ray Latif: And when you're talking about maturation, for our listeners at home who are not familiar with the maturation process, you're talking about barrel aging.
[00:06:36] Trey Zoeller: That's correct, yeah. And yeah, what's really unique about bourbon is everything comes from once it hits that barrel. It goes in clear, like water, and it really gets its character and its soul from the time it hits the wood and what happens within it, within the wood.
[00:06:54] Ray Latif: You mentioned to me that you don't describe yourself as a distiller and you just explained why. You know, there are very experienced, highly knowledgeable distillers out there who know the business inside and out. You mentioned Jimmy Russell. Did it take a little bit of swallowing of pride? Did it take you saying, okay, well, I've got to put my ego in my pocket to know that I'm not going to be great at this, but I can be great at something else?
[00:07:20] Trey Zoeller: Not really, because I didn't really have aspirations to be a distiller. To me, that wasn't as interesting as seeing as what, what else I can do, because I think you've got to have a great base and that's what these distillers do. And that's what our distiller does. And their main job is to keep everything very consistent. Once they figured out that recipe and your yeast and that. You want to just make the same thing over and over. And that's, I've got too much ADD that I couldn't do that. And so I knew that they were out there and that our distillers could do it as well. And you've got to have this great base and you've got to have great juice going into the wood, because if you don't, then it doesn't matter what you do to it. It's just not going to be good whiskey. But once you've got that, and once you mature it, then you can start manipulating it. We're not trying to cheat the process or accelerate it. It's just take this great base and then enhance it.
[00:08:28] Ray Latif: You're not a distiller. Do you still have to be an expert in all aspects of distilling to understand what that liquid, what that juice can look like after it's been matured?
[00:08:39] Trey Zoeller: Yes. You know, I don't know if I have necessarily say an expert, but I certainly understand the process. And now, you know, 22 years later, I have a very good idea of what, you know, what goes in, what's going to come out four, six, eight, 10, 12 years down the road.
[00:08:57] Ray Latif: So, as I mentioned, Jefferson's is known for pushing the envelope with innovative ways to blend and cask mature whiskey. What was the industry's initial reception to your strategy of innovation, or I wouldn't call it necessarily a strategy, but your approach to innovation?
[00:09:17] Trey Zoeller: Well, when I started, there was the old guard and I don't think they were very receptive to new people coming in. They wanted to protect what they had. And you would hear most people in the distilling community talk about, my dad did it this way and his dad did it. So it was built on heritage and tradition, which is a great thing. But for instance, when we came out with our Jefferson's Ocean, and the first time we did that, we put Newfield barrels on a ship for three and a half years and aged it. So different than how we do it now, which is taking 68-year-old bourbon and then putting it on the ship. There were a lot of skeptics that say, this isn't bourbon, this isn't aged traditionally, when in fact, it really is. That's how whiskey turned into bourbon in the first place. It was once we distilled it and people were all drinking whiskey straight off the still until there's a lot of history that goes behind it, including the whiskey tax and the whiskey rebellion. But when people started shipping whiskey from Kentucky down our river system and then put it on boats in New Orleans and sailing it around Florida and up the East coast, that's when whiskey turned to bourbon for the It was put in those barrels and allowed to age for the first time. So it really, our Jefferson's Ocean was much more like it was in the beginning than how bourbon is traditionally aged and matured now.
[00:10:52] Ray Latif: How did you convince the naysayers and critics?
[00:10:54] Trey Zoeller: Not really. We did eventually, but originally we just said, taste it, try it. And almost everybody that's written about it says the same thing. When I heard about it, I thought it was a gimmick and then I tried it. And then I see the beautiful flavors that come out of it. And then after that, we historically recreated that journey for the first time in like 150 years and sent two barrels down the rivers and we encountered three hurricanes. We had four different boats and it took a year to the date that we took off to land in New York. But when we did, we had bourbon that was only a little over a year old that was as dark as a 16-year-old bourbon, and unbelievably smooth. So it convinced me that that's what made bourbon proliferate in Kentucky, was the journey that it went on initially, and that's why people demanded the bourbon from Kentucky and paid much more for it. So we were able to back up kind of the hypothesis of it, but initially it was try it.
[00:12:03] Castle Brands: And when people tried it, they really enjoyed it. Guessing your margins? That's risky. Belay Financial gives CPG brands the clarity to scale smarter, faster, stronger. Get your free inventory ebook by texting TASTE to 55123 and start making data work for you.
[00:12:26] Pernod Ricard: Tune in at the end of this episode for an exclusive interview with Matt Lynn of Belay Solutions. He sits down with Melissa Traverse to break down the biggest inventory and accounting mistakes CPG founders often make. You'll learn how to bring clarity to your numbers so you can scale with confidence.
[00:12:44] Ray Latif: I think this brings up an interesting point about predictability and consumers desire for predictability. I mean, brands represent and legacy large brands represent safety, right? I mean, people know what they're going to get because they've gotten it the same way for years and years. You know, if innovation is an important part of your business, how do you do it while maintaining that predictability?
[00:13:08] Trey Zoeller: I think what they're going to find is that we're going to have consistently very high quality juice, and that it's going to be incredibly consistently inconsistent, as in, you know, our Jefferson's Reserve is a very traditional kind of quintessential bourbon taste. The rest of our expressions are not. And so it's going to be consistently inconsistent across our expressions. That's what they're going to find. And Those that know us, and we're still very much a discovery brand, know that we are going to be inconsistent from expression to expression, and that they're going to be hopefully pleasantly surprised on how it's going to come out.
[00:14:00] Ray Latif: And this notion of inconsistency is more specific to alcoholic beverage brands than it is otherwise. People expect wine vintages to taste different from year to year. Craft beer, in some cases, it's going to be a little different from batch to batch. And is that something that consumers are okay with from your perspective or are people looking for more consistency these days?
[00:14:23] Trey Zoeller: Well, I think within each expression, we've got to be very consistent. So if they pick up A bottle of our Jefferson, well, actually that's a bad example because the Jefferson's ocean changes quite a bit, but a bottle of Jefferson's Reserve that is going to taste very similar bottle after bottle. But within our portfolio range, you're going to get very different flavors, all bourbon. However, we're pushing or massaging the juice in each of these different expressions in a different manner, which are going to give different flavor outcomes. So that's where the inconsistency comes from. So we want to be very consistent within each expression, just the product range. We want it to be very diverse.
[00:15:09] Ray Latif: I can hear your passion for the process. I can hear your passion for bourbon just in our conversation. And I'm sure when you started out, a lot of your time was spent focusing on the production, focusing on making the best product possible, literally getting your hands in there and working the process. As the company evolved and started to grow, how did you determine your highest value? You know, how is your skillset best deployed?
[00:15:40] Trey Zoeller: So I think, you know, if you look at how we've evolved and now we've been acquired by Pernod Ricard, So we worked to see how I would continue on with them. And where I am today, and I think this is how I can best use my skills, is I am Chief Strategist, which is in charge of kind of the overall strategy of the brand, innovations and quality assurance. So You know, it's one, I've got to continue to make sure what's going into the bottle is of the utmost quality. Two, they really want to try to keep us as entrepreneurial and innovative as possible. They actually tasked me not to try not to become Pernod Ricard as much as possible so I can be nimble and still look at things from a different lens. And I've always said, I'll never create a, a brand or an expression out of a boardroom. It always comes out of experiences. And we've been lucky enough to collaborate with some great people who are experts in other fields to create great brands. So it's creating these experiences that evolve into brands or expressions that I think is how I can best use my skill set.
[00:17:02] Ray Latif: You mentioned that Jeffersons is now part of the Pernod Ricard family. Pernod Ricard, a large conglomerate that owns a lot of different spirit brands, wine brands. Prior to joining Pernod, Jeffersons was acquired in 2006 by Castle Brands. What was the interest in aligning with Castle Brands and why was it the right fit for Jeffersons?
[00:17:27] Trey Zoeller: Well, you have to remember back in 2006, bourbon had not gone through the Renaissance and become the popular category that it is today. And at the time I was really a one man show. So I was overseeing the production, the marketing, we really didn't have any marketing dollars and I was out there traveling around the country trying to sell this. So I needed an infrastructure, a platform, And Castle Brands had that small platform that was attractive because they also had no one that had my kind of expertise in the field. So they allowed me, you know, almost complete autonomy with the brand. Castle Brands was basically a sales and marketing platform for spirit brands. So, uh, they had Gosling Trump, Lenny Lemoncello, so a few small brands like that. So, It allowed me to, one, have national distribution. They had a small sales force that they could get our product distributed. And again, they allowed me to have the autonomy to grow the brand the way I thought best. And that freedom allowed us to come up with a lot of innovations. I think that if I was with a bigger company at that time, before there was really much innovation at all in the category, that it would have been stifled. When we decided to partner with Esquire magazine to make a barrel age cocktail before there were bottled cocktails or put barrels on a ship and see what would happen. I think that would have been shut down in committee and larger organizations. But luckily, you know, we were able to get some of these expressions out at that time, and they showed success. And I think that kind of opened the doors for, you know, our consumer, which was much different today than it was back then. Then it was really the old guard drinking bourbon, where today, you know, such a different consumer. And that consumer is now looking to see how we can push the boundaries of what bourbon is, as long as we don't bastardize it.
[00:19:56] Ray Latif: Do you have any regrets about selling the company back in 2006? I mean, you mentioned that the boom for bourbon, you know, the real interest in this category has exploded only within the last, say, three, four years. You know, do you feel like you, I guess, pressed the sale button a little bit too quickly?
[00:20:17] Trey Zoeller: Oh, well, you know, doesn't do any good to look in the rear view mirror and never know what would have happened. But, uh, certainly you look at, uh, uh, what we sold Jefferson's for. And I think that, uh, I would have held onto it a little bit longer. I would have personally done a little bit better with it, but, uh, and you know, I may have looked at doing it in a different manner and maybe raised capital rather than selling or kept more equity, one of the two. But like I said, it doesn't do any good to look in the rear view mirror. And when you look back at it, it's allowed us to grow to where we have, which I think we're the only brand doing over 80,000 cases at $50 and above, and we'll do over 100,000 cases this year. So we're on the path to what I hope we will accomplish which is becoming a global brand that has great respect for it and that is recognized worldwide as one of the great spirit brands.
[00:21:29] Pernod Ricard: Do you want more repeat buyers on Amazon? Well, this free resource in collaboration with Straight Up Growth will help your brand turn first-time buyers into long-term subscribers. Download Winning the Repeat Purchase Game on Amazon now at Taste Radio slash SUG. That's Taste Radio slash S-U-G to start building retention-driven growth for your brand on Amazon. Scaling a beverage brand into major retail comes down to operational readiness. From packaging lead times to co-manufacturing strategy, the details can make or break a launch. In a new e-book in collaboration with Octopi and Asahi Beer USA, industry leaders share what they've learned in helping brands scale. Download it now at Taste Radio slash octopi. Do you need to scale your team faster without compromising on talent? Join Oceans for a live webinar on April 20th and learn how leading companies are hiring top global professionals who are ready to grow with your business. Register for the webinar now at Taste Radio slash oceans. That's Taste Radio slash oceans.
[00:22:40] Ray Latif: How did people get to this point? I mentioned earlier that there's been so much more interest in whiskey and particularly bourbon in our country and all over the world and over the last three, four years. What are some of the reasons that we've seen this interest, this surging interest in brown spirits and bourbon?
[00:23:03] Trey Zoeller: People say there was kind of a perfect storm of things that happened and it happened around 2008. It really brought, bourbon to where it is today. One, people were looking for value, and bourbon was a hell of a value back in 2008. They also talk about the Mad Men effect and how it was cool to drink bourbons and ryes again. And then classic cocktails certainly came back. And mixologists were going back to old recipe books that, you know, most every cocktail was made with bourbon and rye back then. But I think more so than anything, it's our smartphones, our phone that you can look up and dig in. There's so much information and history that you can find out about each bourbon, each bourbon brand, each bourbon distillery. And it allows people to really geek out and share knowledge. And people transferred from being a brand loyalist consumer. My great uncle is a great example. I would offer him all the Jefferson's Reserve he wanted. No trade. Thank you. I like my Jack Daniel. And that's what he drank. You don't see that consumer that much anymore. Today, it's very promiscuous. They've got a number of bourbons on their back bar, and they want to share that. And they want to share the knowledge behind those brands and why those brands taste the way they do and what the history is of them. it's kind of getting intimate with it. And where you had the old traditional brand loyalist consumer, you're not sharing something and it's not as intimate. I think that's really what you're seeing now. It's really, it's all about sharing, sharing the story, sharing the experience, sharing the taste of a great bottle.
[00:25:01] Ray Latif: Your role with Jefferson's has evolved since you started the brand in 1997, as you mentioned, currently with the Pernod Ricard family. You are perhaps the most important person in the room at a time because you are a steward. You're the steward of the Jefferson's name. I'm sure it means a lot to you and I'm sure it means a lot to Pernod Ricard. What's the most important aspect of the brand to this point? How do you protect it as that steward?
[00:25:33] Trey Zoeller: Well, one, I've got to share my passion for it. And as I told them when I came aboard, This is my baby. It's 23 years now in the making, and I do have a hell of a sense of pride that goes along with it. And luckily, from the top down at Pernod, what I've heard is, Trey, we want to keep this an entrepreneur brand, keep it innovative and keep the passion that you brought to the brand, that spirit alive. And it's fun to share that and see see people that have worked on different brands catch fire with the passion that we've got behind Jefferson's and help carry the flame for us. And it's fun to do that. There's a lot of brands that no longer have somebody living that's still tied to the foundation of the brand. And when you can have somebody that has lived it from day one, there's a passion that you just typically don't have in brands that don't have that. And I think it is contagious. And I think it helps, you know, helps other people get behind it and not only establish that passion, but they want to carry the torch and pass it along as well.
[00:26:58] Ray Latif: I asked you at the top of our conversation about your vision for the brand. What's your current vision for the brand? 23 years later, you know, you've seen how Jefferson's has grown and developed on the market. What do you want to see for the next 20 years and beyond?
[00:27:14] Trey Zoeller: I want us to continue to kind of push the boundaries of what bourbon is without bastardizing it. So we're continuing to tip our hat to that tradition. But I also want to make it more of a global brand. And I look at some of the great brands that are out there. McAllen comes to mind, and there's a sense of great pride that people have when ordering it. I would like to see that on a global basis. I was lucky enough to lead a symposium over in Vietnam last year, where Vietnam, the Vietnamese have a 93% Gallup poll rating approval of the United States. And they drink a lot of whiskey. They drink virtually no bourbon. So if they love things coming from America, and if they love whiskey, why aren't they drinking bourbon? And what can we do to make them realize what a great spirit and great category it is? And that was extremely interesting to me and I see so much potential over there that we can take these American brands and make it something that they are very prideful over. So I'm very interested in seeing what can happen globally with this category and this brand.
[00:28:46] Ray Latif: Do you have any plans to or would you ever think about launching another bourbon or spirit company?
[00:28:52] Trey Zoeller: Uh, I have some ideas in my back pocket. And, uh, as long as the relationship with Pernod, um, continues as, as it started and how we've talked and, you know, I really see the, what a great resource, but great opportunity it is to be part of a company that can take this vision into a global reach. But if it doesn't seem like I can add the value that I have in the past or think I can, then I would go ahead and start something else.
[00:29:37] Ray Latif: Gotcha. So it's going to stay in the back pocket for a bit.
[00:29:41] Trey Zoeller: Maybe still. That being said, we've got lots of experiments going right now, and I think we've got a couple of things that we will be launching in the next year or so that are really going to be very, very interesting.
[00:30:01] Ray Latif: Trey, I've been sipping on Jefferson's bourbon for some time. It's not, not now, not this morning, but in my years of legal drinking age, I've come to appreciate Jefferson's bourbon. It's a fantastic brand. Congratulations on everything you've done to this point. And, you know, I'd love to come and see how you guys operate at some point. I think that'd be amazing.
[00:30:24] Trey Zoeller: We would love to have you down, Ray, and I appreciate you continue to to support us and consume our products. And hopefully we're going to continue to put out great innovative products that bring interest into the category.
[00:30:40] Ray Latif: I'm sure you will. Once again, Trey, thank you so much for a great interview.
[00:30:44] Trey Zoeller: You got it, Ray. Have a great day. I appreciate you having me on. You too.
[00:30:51] Ray Latif: That brings us to the end of Episode 209. Thank you so much for listening, and thanks to our guest, Trey Zoeller. You can catch both Taste Radio and Taste Radio Insider on Taste Radio, the Apple Podcasts app, Stitcher, Google Podcasts, or Spotify. As always, for questions, comments, ideas for future podcasts, please send us an email to ask at Taste Radio. On behalf of the entire Taste Radio team, thank you for listening, and we'll talk to you next time.
[00:31:28] Chief Strategist: Hello, I am Melissa Traverse here for the Taste Radio podcast, talking about some of the biggest tension points that CPG brands and founders face when they're scaling a brand, and those are financial accounting and inventory management. I am joined by Matt Lynn, inventory accounting guru from Belay Solutions, and he is going to shed some light on all of this that is going to help everybody out quite a bit. Matt, thank you so much for joining us today.
[00:31:59] Taste Radio: Thank you for having us, Melissa. It's great to be out here at Expo West and it's great to sit down and be able to chat this because it's kind of a passion project of ours, working mainly with CPG brands and hoping to help them scale.
[00:32:10] Chief Strategist: It's been such a pleasure chatting with you and the team and learning all about what you do over there at Belay Solutions. Can you tell us a little bit about yourself and what your role is and the kinds of solutions that Belay gives to CPG brands and founders?
[00:32:26] Taste Radio: Yeah, absolutely. My role with Belay, I'm actually our inventory accounting manager. I run our inventory department, so we work with CPG brands, taking them from spreadsheets, putting them on inventory management systems, and really helping connect their tech stack between their sales online marketplaces to that inventory management system, even down to their financial systems like QuickBooks. Belay overall is kind of an outsourced accounting firm. And with that, we're helping teams. We have different levels with bookkeeping, controller level work, even high level into CFO type items. So we really help those brands in any way that they need financially. And then I just have a subset of a department where we're really just laser focused on inventory.
[00:33:09] Chief Strategist: It's certainly a complex topic and there are plenty of places to go wrong. Let's start by going right and start super simple. Can you tell us what some of the biggest red flags are that would help a founder understand or, you know, the person running a brand understand that it really is time to get some help with some of these areas?
[00:33:29] Taste Radio: Yeah, absolutely. I think some of the early red flags is just everything is chaos. So when they're looking in their financial software, maybe they don't really have an accounting background, and they're kind of just piecing it together and doing their best. And what they'll see is that reconciliations take forever, if they even happen. They have a lot of transactions that don't get coded, or they just put them into placeholders to just get rid of it so it's not an eyesore. they'll notice they have revenue but no cash or they notice that they have a good amount of cash but their blind spot is really seeing the vendor invoices that are sitting there just needing to be paid and so they just lack that clarity that's going to really be around the corner.
[00:34:06] Chief Strategist: You know, you were talking about one of the red flags that comes up that I think makes so much sense. When somebody asks you what your numbers are and you can't come up with the right number, that's a big problem because that's something that you really should be able to share with decision makers who, you know, you're ideally looking to do business with. What should you be able to call up at a moment's notice?
[00:34:31] Taste Radio: Really at any time, you should be able to know an accurate margin. It's amazing how many founders we end up talking to that they can tell you their revenue numbers, they can tell you their selling price, and then the minute you start talking about cost or their cost of goods sold, they just get a deer in headlights look. So really it's very hard to tell, am I even making money? Or if you don't know your entire landed cost. Maybe you know what the freight cost is, the duties separately, but you're not really getting that as part of your unit cost. So it's really hard to tell. Am I even making money or am I losing money from the very beginning?
[00:35:04] Chief Strategist: And do you recommend that founders are able to call up a margin by channel?
[00:35:09] Taste Radio: Absolutely. And depending on the number of products and channels, you kind of want to know what are your best sellers, which ones are making the most and which ones maybe you're not making as much. But especially if you're branching out and you're doing D to C with B to B, absolutely want to know that.
[00:35:25] Chief Strategist: Gotcha. You mentioned that when things feel really chaotic, that's probably a red flag. I would say that it probably almost always feels chaotic if you're running a CBD brand. And I know this may be hard to quantify, but is there a revenue number? Is there a number of doors number that would help a brand understand whether or not it makes sense to bring on a partner like Belay? Understanding that so many brands are bootstrapped or they might be tight for cash. What is that friction point?
[00:35:56] Taste Radio: 3 3 3 3 3 But as you're growing, as you're getting to those six-figure revenue numbers, and especially as you're approaching seven, you want to make sure you've got good financials. Because as you scale to that point, most likely you're going to be looking to raise capital. And investors, the first thing they're going to look at is your books. And are they clean? And do they show a clear picture of your business?
[00:36:28] Chief Strategist: You know, another area that folks might look to to organize some of the chaos are their systems. So many folks stick with Excel spreadsheets for a good amount of time. How do you know that you need to outsource some of your accounting to an organization like Belay Solutions versus maybe signing on to a Synth7 or NetSuite or something like that?
[00:36:51] Taste Radio: Well, that's actually something we really help with when it comes to that cost question. That's something that trips people up. And sometimes if you just have a turnkey business, you buy and sell a finished good, you can maintain with spreadsheets. And we've had clients with million dollar revenue that can do that. But we see so many brands nowadays are using contract manufacturers. and they're just sourcing certain parts of their product. So when you start talking costs, they have no idea exactly what their unit cost is. So that's where we come in and we kind of understand, we'll speak with the customers and the clients and get their needs. And then if we think they're ready for a system, then we'll help put them on that system so they can get some of that clarity. And it's not something we force on anybody. There are plenty of times where founders come to us and we'll tell them bluntly, you're not ready for it right now, but we'll let you know when we think you are.
[00:37:37] Chief Strategist: That sounds like excellent advice. What should a founder or somebody running a brand look for in an outsourced accounting partner? Are there certain checklist items that they should make sure that their partner be able to execute or be able to help them understand?
[00:37:54] Taste Radio: Absolutely. I think one of the keys, there's, there's a lot of outsourced accounting firms out there. Some focus on service-based SaaS companies, but if you're a CPG founder, you really want to make sure that your accounting firm has CPG experience. I would ask them, you know, what kind of brands have they worked with? And even beyond that industry specific, because there's so many subsets of CPG. And that's something that I think is great about what we do with Belay is that we kind of run the gamut. It's kind of like the insurance commercial. We know a thing or two because we've seen a thing or two across a broad spectrum.
[00:38:24] Chief Strategist: Probably getting references is always helpful, right? Absolutely. All right. So this all sounds great. I think we have a really good understanding of would it make sense to hire an outsourced partner? You know, what some of the things you should be looking for are. What does offloading this kind of work mean for the brand? What can this do for lightening the load of a founder or lightening the load of a brand operator? Like, how does that help them in their everyday business?
[00:38:53] Taste Radio: It just tries to really help quiet the chaos. So what we're looking to do is just take some of the weight off that founder's shoulder, let them focus on building the brand, building the business, getting that exposure. If you don't have sales, you really don't have anything. So we want them to be able to focus on that while we take care of your back end office work. And we can just present that to you on a monthly basis, you can help make decisions, you can take that to investors. And really, you can just focus on growing your business.
[00:39:19] Chief Strategist: I feel like I felt founders and the folks who are running brands collectively sigh a breath of relief just hearing that. How can people learn more about Belay Solutions?
[00:39:30] Taste Radio: So people can text TASTE to 55123 for their free inventory guide to get started.
[00:39:35] Chief Strategist: Matt Lynn, Inventory Accounting Guru at Belay Solutions. Thank you so much for joining me here at Expo West. It's been such a pleasure to chat with you and learn about what you all do over there to help founders and brands with their financial accounting and inventory management. For everybody else out there, thank you for listening to the Taste Radio podcast. I am Melissa Traverse and we'll see you next time.
