We’re thrilled to share our next installment of Member Monday featuring Kevin Mannering, Partner and Chief Operating Officer of Rodeo CPG. This week, Branchfood partnered with Rodeo CPG to host a webinar titled, “Where’s My Cash? How Instituting a Proper S&OP Process can Bring Clarity to your Cashflow”. If you missed it, head to our YouTube channel to watch the event recording and learn why optimizing Sales & Operations (S&OP) communication is the single most important process contributing to the success of a CPG brand. 

Rodeo’s leadership, and many of their team members, have extensive experience with early-stage CPG business growth, which brings a certain empathy to their work with founding teams. Their mission is to empower entrepreneurs with the people and tools they need to succeed, because they know from experience that entrepreneurs are the most passionate, and consequently effective, brand advocates.

Read on to learn from Kevin on how to navigate the food & beverage industry as a CPG startup and head to our Instagram to check out more from Kevin and Rodeo on our Member Monday highlight! 

At Rodeo CPG, you help CPG brands better navigate the challenges of growth. What is the number one tip you could give to an up-and-coming CPG entrepreneur looking to lay the foundation for success?

Set up some processes from the beginning that will help you understand the cashflow implications of everything you are doing. It may seem monotonous at first, but push through.

Growing CPG companies seek partners like Rodeo CPG to help manage their growth and development. Can you elaborate on the benefits of outsourcing various aspects of a CPG business’s functions? Also, what is typically kept “in house” for comparison?

This will vary from company to company depending on the particular skill set of the founder or founding team. In general, know thyself and build from there. There are companies that allow you to set up a functioning and attractive online storefront without knowing anything about coding or UI/UX design. There are options out there for outsourcing your product formulation, finding your co-packer(s), managing day-to-day operations, managing your finances, et cetera. They provide the infrastructure to support your needs, and they can be a no brainer. 

What you cannot outsource is the passion and authenticity of the original team, the founders and founding team members in the t-shirts at the trade show booth. Choose people, service providers and software products that will support that passionate authenticity with the infrastructure to make it more successful. 

COVID-19 has disrupted the food industry in major ways. What are the top three changes you’ve observed with Rodeo CPG clients?

First, let me say that at the end of the day we are making premium CPG products, so a quick privilege check is necessary before diving into our challenges and changes as a result of a global pandemic that has killed 600,000+ people worldwide.

Many if not most brands at this stage are contract manufactured, so the first issue that arose was the strain on manufacturing facilities, which led to the deprioritization of products that were pre-launch and heading to trial runs, or simply early stage and didn’t have much volume. In short, these brands had to find new manufacturing partners, sometimes after sinking $10k+ into trial runs, which was rough.

Second, the world of retail grocery sales is a new game now and some would say, astutely I think, that a lot of people are just realizing the game changed years ago. Things like in-store promotions and promotional display programs don’t impact grocery delivery employees picking out items from a pre-ordered list. We are talking quite a bit more about clients’ “digital merchandising” versus in-store merchandising strategies as we plan for 2021, which is definitely a change from a year ago.

Third, there is a refreshing new closeness emerging in our working relationships. As with any significant unforeseen challenge, relationships are going to be affected by how individuals deal with that challenge. This journey started with profound stress and panic, followed by intense work to get back onto some semblance of a path. Now we are creating a new path together and there is a level of trust, kindness, and gratitude that is emerging in a lot of engagements that was tough to achieve before all of this started.

How has being an active Branchfood member benefited your work?

Branchfood is really becoming a destination for people in the Greater Boston startup food & beverage scene. Just the number of conversations and interesting ideas exchanged with Branchfood members, whether it is at Food Edge or any of a number of the networking events I’ve had a pleasure of going to, have been enriching for me.

Branchfood partnered with Rodeo CPG to host, “Where’s My Cash? How Instituting a Proper S&OP Process can Bring Clarity to your Cashflow.”. What were the key takeaways from this webinar?

No matter where you are in your brand life cycle, you can benefit from following the guidelines on our S&OP Process Checklist on at least a monthly basis. 

(A note from Branchfood: Watch a recording of the event on our YouTube channel, and stay tuned for an upcoming blog post featuring the event recording and Q&A highlights!)

How can our audience support Rodeo CPG? 

Reach out and engage with us whether you are a fellow service provider, entrepreneur, retailer, distributor, someone interested in career opportunities, whatever. We are students of the game, and the game is changing at an exponential rate, so we believe the more conversations we can have, the better off we will be.

A big thank you to Kevin and Rodeo CPG for this week’s Member Monday highlight and webinar. 

Interested in how a Branchfood membership can help you succeed? Learn more about our membership benefits, and stay informed with our newsletter. Be sure to follow us on Instagram for our next Member Monday takeover!