The Startup CPG Podcast

This episode was sponsored by Hummingbirds. Go to hummingbirds.com/startupCPG
This episode was sponsored by Cin7. Go to cin7.com/startupcpg
This episode was sponsored by Grassroots Marketing. Schedule a call at https://calendly.com/grassrootsmarketing/grassroots-x-startupcpg-intro-call)

Join Grace Kennedy in this bonus episode of the Startup CPG podcast as she is joined by Jake Deleon, the founder and CEO of Fila Manila and Alex Sorenson, the Founder and CEO of Blank Slate Kitchen to delve into the complexities of UPC (Universal Product Code) code management. Discover the pivotal decisions behind altering UPC codes, influenced by factors such as pricing strategy, market competitiveness, and cost efficiency. 

Hear firsthand accounts of how Jake and Alex approached UPC modifications to meet distribution demands and navigate retailer approvals. From adjusting net weight to strategic inventory planning, learn the intricacies of UPC management and the importance of sales forecasting in ensuring smooth transitions. Gain invaluable advice from founders on starting small to gather consumer feedback, assessing velocity metrics for store performance, and engaging effectively with distributors and retailers.

Plus, explore how adapting product sizes can positively impact buyer behavior and discover proactive measures like promotions and discounts to manage UPC changes effectively. 

Don't miss out on the latest strategies for success in the CPG industry - Tune in now!

Listen in as Jake and Alex share about:
  • Cost Consideration of Changing UPC Codes
  • Challenges of Not Changing UPC Codes
  • Amazon Complications
  • Updating Product Records and GS1 Data Hub
  • Managing Changeovers and Mitigating Risks
  • Refills and Negotiations with Retailers
  • Advice for Founders
  • Product Promotion and Sales
  • Brand Promotion

Episode Links:
Blank Slate Kitchen Website
Alex Sorenson’s LinkedIn
Fila Manila Website
Jake Deleon LinkedIn

Don't forget to leave a five-star review on Apple Podcasts or Spotify if you enjoyed this episode. For potential sponsorship opportunities or to join the Startup CPG community, visit http://www.startupcpg.com.
Show Links:
  • Transcripts of each episode are available on the Transistor platform that hosts our podcast here (click on the episode and toggle to “Transcript” at the top)
  • Join the Startup CPG Slack community (15K+ members and growing!)
  • Follow @startupcpg
  • Visit host Daniel's Linkedin 
  • Questions or comments about the episode? Email Daniel at podcast@startupcpg.com
  • Episode music by Super Fantastics

Cin7 Links:
Hummingbirds Links:
Grassroots Links: 

Creators & Guests

Host
Grace Kennedy

What is The Startup CPG Podcast?

The top CPG podcast in the world, highlighting stories from founders, buyer spotlights, highly practical industry insights - all to give you a better chance at success.

Alex Sorensen
Generally, if you are changing your UPC code, the distributors and the retail accounts you have, particularly large ones, will often require you to free fill for any UPC change. That was probably the largest factor. That's depending on your distribution, how many doors you're in, how many distributors you have, which distributors those are, that could be a small or a huge cost.

00:33
Jake Deleon
I think for more distributed brands like Philip Manila, I think the challenge is that when you change the net weight, it's almost a requirement to change your UPC. A lot of that requirement is driven mainly by the retailers and also from distributor as well. Because whatever you change that would affect the consumer. Pricing is something you have to change.

00:52
Grace Kennedy
Hi everyone, this is Grace, the startup CPG editor, and today we have an episode of CPG 101. I interview Jake Deleon of Philomnella and Alex Sorensen of Blank Slate Kitchen and we get into a very nitty gritty CPG topic. Do you really need to change your UPC code if you change your product's net weight? We get into all the details, so I hope you enjoy and let us know what you think. Hello and welcome back to the startup CPG podcast. I am Grace, the startup CPG editor, and I'm super excited to be joined today by Jake of Filamenila and Alex of Blank State Kitchen. And we will be talking about the very exciting topic, UPC codes. You love them, you hate them, you need them. We're going to talk about it, and I have Jake.

01:45
Grace Kennedy
So if Jake, if you could please introduce yourself and let everyone know who you are, and then we'll come to you Alex.

01:49
Jake Deleon
Thanks for having me, Grace. It's always a pleasure to be on startup CPG. I love the community. I love the support that we get and how we support each other as founders and entrepreneurs. My name is Jake Deleon. I'm the founder of Filimanilla. Filimanilla is a maker of filipino position sauces, condiments, and spreads. We're distributed nationwide in stores like Target and Whole Foods. And were recently just on Shark Tank, which is a recent startup CPG interview.

02:15
Grace Kennedy
Yes, so exciting. And yeah, sorry I said it's philomanila. I said it wrong the first time, but I'll get it right now and then. Alex, can you introduce yourself and your brand?

02:24
Alex Sorensen
Thanks for having me on. It's great to be able to share my experience here. Startup CBG has been an awesome community that has helped me so much, so I'm always happy to give back and help with my experience. If it's helpful for others. I'm Alex Sorensen. I'm the founder of Blank Slate Kitchen. We craft international sauces, including a Sichuan chili oil and a zug, which is a mini furby hot sauce.

02:46
Grace Kennedy
I love it. And I actually did get to try Alex's products in the shelfies and they are delicious. So very exciting. So yeah, so this podcast idea was born out of a question that somebody asked in our slack channel. So I'm going to read their question out loud first. So they asked if we increase our net weight, but the entire product stays the same name, pack design, dimensions and formula, do we need new UPC's? So Jake and Alex, both recently, or maybe not so recently, went through this experience of deciding to change their pack size, but they went in different routes in terms of whether or not they wanted to change their UPC. So Alex decided not to change his UPC code and Jake decided to change his UPC code. And both had some interesting effects. We'll say.

03:35
Grace Kennedy
So, first and foremost, I'd love to just ask you, Alex, when you were deciding it was time to make this change, why did you decide or what were the main factors in your decision not to change the UPC code?

03:49
Alex Sorensen
I would say the largest one is the cost. Generally, if you are changing your UPC code, the distributors and the retail accounts you have, particularly large ones, will often require you to free fill for any UPC change. That was probably the largest factor. Depending on your distribution, how many doors you're in, how many distributors you have, which distributors those are, that could be a small or a huge cost. For us it was. We checked with our, the major retailer we are with was Whole Foods, and they said it was okay to keep our UPC code the same. We were in one region, so that might be different if it was national or multi region. We also don't work with Unfi or cahi. They probably would not be so flexible.

04:35
Alex Sorensen
But we work with a number of smaller, local, regional distributors and they were all fine with keeping the UBC code same as well as any of our major retailers. So for us it was mostly that cost consideration of having to free fill and then along with that, generally would go buying back whatever remaining inventory of the old size there was.

04:57
Grace Kennedy
Yeah, absolutely.

04:58
Alex Sorensen
So that was the major factor for us.

04:59
Grace Kennedy
Yeah, that makes a lot of sense. And Jake, I saw you nodding as Alex was speaking, so I was wondering for you, why did you decide to change your UPC code?

05:10
Jake Deleon
So thank you, Alex. I think Alex kind of like put a lot of helpful information in there, especially for growing brands who may not be fully distributed yet. I think more distributed brands like Phil and Manila. I think the challenge is that when you change the net weight, it's almost a requirement to change your UPC. A lot of that requirement is driven mainly by the retailers and also from distributor as well, because whatever you change, that would affect the consumer pricing or is something you have to change. I think Alex hit the nail right in the head, because as long as you get alignment from your retailer, if whole food says like, yeah, that's fine, and you don't have to deal with our frenemies of unify or ke, then by all means, do it now.

05:51
Jake Deleon
In our case, it was a little bit tricky because at the time were distributed nationally, we're working with both Unify and KP, along with multiple retailers. And so although I wish I could just kind of do a soft conversion with some of our skus and the pack size change, ultimately it was like we had no choice. There's something we could not sneak by because obviously everyone would be alerted right away.

06:10
Grace Kennedy
Yeah, absolutely. And I think that's the good lesson for everyone, is there's often many things that are just entirely out of your control. And just so that everyone who's listening knows that the guidance from GS one, at least in terms of changing your UPC code, is that if your gross weight changes are under 20%, you can technically retain the same UPC. You know, like Jake said, if your distributors won't allow that, then there's nothing you can do and you will have to change the UPC. So I'd love to hear a little bit about what that process was like when you did have to make this change to both change the net weight, but then also obviously change the UPC code. Jake, so what was the sort of implications of the decision to change the net weight and the UPC code?

06:58
Jake Deleon
Yeah, and Grace, I just want to piggyback on top of what you said earlier, which I think is a really good point. You know, changes like this are quite significant, right. They could really impact the company, you know, how you use your resources, the timing and the complexity involved. And so I think Alex is doing the correct step, is that if you're going to make changes like this, do it when you're super early in your journey, do it when you're in one region of whole foods, do it when you're in just one DC distributor. You know, if you. The longer you wait, the more evolved you get, the more expensive it's going to get, the more complex it's going to get, and the more of a.

07:28
Alex Sorensen
Nightmare it's going to get.

07:30
Jake Deleon
Now, for us at Bill Manila, we didn't take it too lightly, because, of course, at that point, we're at a national distribution level now. What drove us to change upcs was not only just the net weight change, but also the form factor change. So, for background, we first started by putting all of our sauces in glass jars, and then we made the pivot about a year later to transition to two pouches. And so our net weight dropped from 12oz to 8oz. So, obviously, you can't sneak that by. It's significant change. But also, like, you know, wait a minute. This used to be a glass jar. That was a pouch. Like, you have to change it. It's kind of like, okay, yeah, I get it.

08:06
Alex Sorensen
You have to change.

08:07
Jake Deleon
So the result of that is, luckily, we work with great operations partners, but you have to think forward in terms of planning, because, as Alex said, you're stuck with that product that's out in the market right now. You may stop producing the old product already, but then you have to deal with all the existing product in the old format or the old upcycle in the market.

08:26
Alex Sorensen
Right.

08:26
Jake Deleon
And essentially, if it doesn't sell, I mean, you're on the hook for it. And so what we thought about is that, hey, we'll look at our forecast. How much have you been selling the last few months? And then we'll plan ahead. So we'll stop selling the old format and only introduce the new skus at a certain time. Hopefully by then, all the old skus would have sold away. So the bad news is that, yeah, you will be stuck with a bill for any product in the market that's a remnant of the old UPC's. But the good news is that if you plan carefully ahead enough, you could minimize that loss or that risk with some careful planning and forecasting.

09:00
Grace Kennedy
Got it. Yeah, that makes a lot of sense. So, Alex, coming to you then, what was the experience like for you then of not changing your UPC code? Because I know there were still some challenges that came with that, and some of those could just be the challenges that come with changing your net weight. But could you speak a little bit about what the implications were of not changing your UPC code?

09:23
Alex Sorensen
Sure. So, first, I guess I would like to also highlight that what we did was wrong. That we did do. It ended up being, I think, 25% change in net weight. So what we did was wrong according to GS one guidelines. Of course, those are GS one. And that's not like any type of binding authority. You're not going to get in trouble with the FDA or whatever. I view them more as guidelines. Some of the issues we ran into would probably be the same no matter what, whether you change your pc or not. One of them was that our distributor ran out the inventory before switching over. So even though they said it would be a seamless changeover, it wasn't as seamless as one would hope.

09:59
Alex Sorensen
So there's a few weeks of watching our sales numbers plummet as all the stores ran out of stock and the distributor ran out of stock. That's probably going to be the same either way, and that's going to be up to your distributors and how well they handle that transition. The biggest. I think there's two big things that came up for us. One, you cannot change the information you put in the GS one database. So it's always going to be locked into GS one's database. What our original size was. I've heard from someone else, I was actually talking to my co packer about this, and they have a product line and they said that they never.

10:33
Alex Sorensen
I haven't verified this, but they said that they never entered any information in the GS one database, that they just got their UBC codes and then went ahead and used them and they didn't put the information in. I'm not sure if that's correct. I haven't verified that myself. But if you're just starting out and haven't put the information into GS one, maybe that's an option to consider not doing that. I'm sure that information gets populated back somehow, eventually. So I don't know what the answer is there, but that was one of the things, is that we will never be able to change that information. So what GS one says for our UPC code will always be incorrect. So that was one of the biggest things I discovered down the line that I wasn't aware of.

11:12
Alex Sorensen
The other kind of the biggest, probably problem for us is Amazon. We sell on Amazon and we had some third party sellers that had a lot of inventory. And so that was by far the biggest issue for us was managing that transition. One of our third party sellers had what I thought it was a short kind of month or two of inventory and ended up blasting them, probably six months. And so there was this period where we had two sizes and I held off on listing our size, the new size on Amazon for a long time. But ultimately I had to end up making two variations of the product, which isn't great. It could be confusing for customers on Amazon. And that was actually kind of a very difficult transition. Amazon locks in your UPC code to one variation.

12:02
Alex Sorensen
So I talked to dozens of Amazon support people and everyone said, no, it's impossible to change the CPC code from the old variation to the new variation. It took me six months until I finally got someone at Amazon who was able to do that. And they were screen sharing. And I saw it was, you know, it took them 10 seconds to actually make that change. It's a matter of getting to that person that's deep, deep in Amazon that can do that. I think most of the people don't have that, you know, that tool available to them. So it is possible, but it's difficult. That said, I've heard from some Amazon consultants that you can do all kinds of tricks with variations and move things around. So maybe there was an easy way. I didn't find an easy way, but that was a problem.

12:43
Alex Sorensen
We still have two variations listed on Amazon. I've tried deleting the old one, and one of the problems there is that sometimes retailers would try to list our products on Amazon, resell them, and they were, I think, all going against that UPC code. So they were listing under the wrong variation, under the wrong size. And it just took a lot of time and effort to stay on top of that and try to message with them and get them to pull those listings they're under no obligation to. So most of them just told me to take a hike and they were going to continue listing it even if it was wrong. So that wasn't great for us in terms of, like, customer review perspective, as people are buying what they think is a large size and getting a smaller size.

13:22
Alex Sorensen
Fortunately, I don't think we've had any bad reviews, but the Amazon piece was the biggest kind of problem for us. And that would not be a problem if you are only selling yourself and you don't have any third party sellers. Maybe some other situations, but just, you know, if you're considering this route of not changing the UPC code and you have other people sign on Amazon, that could be a problem.

13:43
Grace Kennedy
Yeah, no, I think that's a great thing to highlight. And definitely it's easy to forget all these little hidden, like, challenges you might run into in these scenarios. One thing I did want to note is that I did talk to somebody from GS one, and they said that they recently updated, I don't know how recently, but they updated the GS one data hub to allow changes to your product records without creating a new gtin. So that might have changed since the last time you were trying to do that. Alex, I'm not an expert, but that is what she told me. And she said though, you know. Yeah, yeah.

14:19
Grace Kennedy
But she also told me, you know, it's definitely a debate among brand owners of whether or not it's worth it to manage product data in the GS one data hub or just use your own offline spreadsheet. So I think everybody is different. Everybody has their own approach. But I wanted to ask you, Jake, you know, what was it like managing the changeover from your old version of your product to your new version? Cause, you know, I know, like Alex said, he had to kind of wait out, you know, his product being sold. What was it like for you to manage that changeover?

14:51
Jake Deleon
Yeah, you know, I also forgot to add is we did a UPC change for one of our product lines, which were the cooking sauces, because that was a significant new delay change and format change. But we actually kept the UPC for one of our other product lines, which are our condiments. So our banana ketchup, for example, came in twelve ounce glass jars. We just shifted it to a squeezy bottle, 12oz as well. And we kept the UPC. And so were kind of managing from both kind of approaches.

15:17
Alex Sorensen
Right.

15:17
Jake Deleon
What happens when you don't change UPC? What happens if you do change UPC? And we ran to some of the same issues that Alex ran into as well with the item that kept its UPC. So it's really interesting. But for us, if you think about what was the work involved in changing upcs, it's almost like what I hinted before, because the big fear in our mind was like, oh goodness, we have a lot of product in the market, in stores and in DC's that are the old UPC's. And then if we don't sell them by x amount of time, we're just going to get either a deduction, we're going to get a bill from our retailers or distribution partners. The key is how do you mitigate that risk? By hopefully trying to deplete as much of that inventory in stores and DC as possible.

16:02
Jake Deleon
You plan ahead, you forecast about what are the amount of products you sell on a monthly basis, and then just see. Hopefully you can hold off the introduction of the new skus until you're able to sell off most of the items in store. It's never going to be perfect. You're never going to have zero items. But for us, it's like, we had no choice because we didn't have the resources just to bail out on all these stores and stuff with all the excess inventory. So you have to be creative. So part of it's forecasting, if you have some certain stores that might require some significant promo or discounting, that's usually a lot cheaper to do that than it is to wait until it doesn't sell at all, then you're stuck with the full price bill.

16:43
Jake Deleon
So, I mean, by all means, it was definitely not a pleasant experience. But for your business, if it's a necessity in terms of your growth, you have to do it. Something you have to manage against.

16:53
Grace Kennedy
Yeah, absolutely. And did you have to do those refills when you were introducing the new sizes?

16:58
Jake Deleon
In our case? No, I don't think we had any. If for the retailers that did, were able to negotiate. No free fills. It always depends upon you and your category manager, but, yeah, yes, but that's really one thing to be mindful of is kind of the free fill implication.

17:12
Grace Kennedy
Yeah, absolutely. But a good reminder, too, that these are conversations and that you can negotiate and, you know, especially if you've already built a relationship with your retailer, your category manager, it's worth having a conversation.

17:25
Alex Sorensen
Yeah, that's an important point that, like, we asked our retailer, we asked our distribution partners, and I probably should have kind of pushed back a little bit more and asked about, you know, whether that they kind of gave us the default response, like, oh, a new UPC code change will necessitate a free fill. And I left it at that. I probably, I should have kind of pushed back on that a little bit more and said, hey, you know, is that negotiable? Can we get that waived? That's always, you know, a conversation that's worth having.

17:52
Grace Kennedy
Yeah, absolutely. And sort of thinking about even the decision to, as you were saying, Jake, if this is a change you need for your growth, I'm curious to hear from both of you. And maybe let's start with you, Alex, about, you know, making this change does come with a lot of challenges. Right. So why did you feel like it was necessary and how did you know, like, okay, we should do this now because it's essential for our growth as a brand.

18:18
Alex Sorensen
Sure. One more kind of note about some of the problems with the transition. One thing that either way, it's whether you change or don't change, the UPC code is getting that information to the end retailers, the store buyers, and making sure they're aware of it. Sometimes we did what messaging we could directly as well as through our distributors. But at the end of the day, I'm sure there's still scattered stores out there in the world that were never aware of it, that maybe never changed shelf tags. And you need to do as much as you can there, but at the end of the day, you might not be able to get the right person at every store to know about that.

18:53
Alex Sorensen
One thing that a broker suggested, if you're doing this, probably either way, if you're doing the UPC code change or not, is perhaps including an insert a letter in every case of that first production run or something, just so that when the person in the store is actually unpacking that case, they have a physical reminder that, hey, this is a different size, this is a UBC code change or not. But just to kind of give them that reminder at the very end that they need to change shelf tags and things like that. So that was just like another kind of key point of that transition in terms of the decision. When I first launched our products, I really had no experience in CPG.

19:32
Alex Sorensen
So I was kind of learning as I went and I was looking at things kind of through a very much through an end customer, like what's a shelf price that would work and what's the kind of maximum value I can provide for that? So in my case, we're talking about our Sichuan chili oil. We initially launched with an eight ounce size, no one else. We were one of the first, along with one of the major chili crisp brands that we are kind of lumped in as the same category. So were one of the first before it's kind of blown up. And, you know, there's dozens and dozens of chili crisps now that were kind of lumped in with.

20:05
Alex Sorensen
So I didnt have really any other competitors on the shelf that I could look at and benchmark and say, whats the kind of normal size for this and whats standard? So we launched with an eight ounce again to provide the maximum value to the customer for that shelf price. Theyd get 8oz for the price. That seemed to be a good shelf price. We were able to absorb all kinds of cost increases throughout the pandemic and all the supply chain issues. I kept the price stable for four years. And so what it were basically the shrinkflation thing. We finally realized that we had to up the price. And at that eight ounce jar, it was going to be really expensive on the shelf. And by that point, there was a ton of other people in this space, in the chili crisp and chili oil space.

20:48
Alex Sorensen
And pretty much every other brand is a six ounce. So that was why I started looking. I was like, okay, I'm going to have to increase the shelf price, but then we're going to be much higher cost on the shelf than anyone else. Even though we're a larger size, might better value. It's a lot harder to get initial customer trial if you're $15 to $20 as opposed to ten to $15. So that was really what was driving this decision, was being able to fold in a little bit of a cost price increase without pricing ourselves on the shelf. So that's what were going for. And then just being consistent in size with our category at that point.

21:24
Grace Kennedy
Yeah, that makes a lot of sense. And what about for you, Jake? What sort of made you decide to take the plunge and deal with the challenges that come to with this change? Why did you feel like it was necessary for Phil and Manila?

21:35
Jake Deleon
Yeah, I totally agree with Alex. And to echo some of his inputs, it was exactly the same reasons why we decided to make the big change as well. So during the time about two years ago, we saw a lot of macroeconomic things happening in the US. Inflation, consumers are freaking out about rising prices, and spending is kind of pulling back. And so when we thought about our product line, were seeing a disadvantage for us on shelf because were a bit more premium price. So we wanted to see if there's a way to bring our retail pricing lower to remove that barrier for consumers to try our product. Right. So filipino cuisine, it's growing, it's fast, but it's not as huge as established cuisines like indian or chinese.

22:16
Jake Deleon
So if you're making your product more premium priced, it increases the barrier for someone to try it versus some of the other products. Number two, if you look at what's happening in our world of startups and emerging brands, there's a real scrutiny, not just from investors, but also in terms of keeping your business alive, being profitable. We wanted a way to increase our gross margins because glass is crazy expensive, I think. Alex, you packaging glass, right?

22:43
Alex Sorensen
Yep.

22:44
Jake Deleon
So glass is a pain in the. It rides a glass. I don't know. And so we're seeing the writing on the wall. It's like, hey, glass is expensive. Expensive. It's heavy. It's even more expensive to freight. And it makes it for a very difficult proposition to do e commerce, because shipping glass from the east coast to the west coast, it's like, why even bother with the transaction? And so we had so many factors that are driving us it's like, hey, we have to increase profitability and we have to make our prices lower for consumer. And for us, the best way to do that was, of course, offering a lower amount in the product, which allows us to reduce our cost to consumer and also changing the format so we don't have to be with glass anymore.

23:23
Jake Deleon
So we have a lot more flexibility when it comes to improving our gross margins and also, in addition, lowering the price for consumer as well.

23:30
Grace Kennedy
Yeah, that makes a lot of sense. And I think it's probably a point so many founders get to in their business, because I think almost every single CPG founder I've ever spoken to is like, I came to CPG with no experience. So people start out one way, and then over time they're like, okay, I gotta make some changes. So I think it's a very common experience. So sort of now that you've both come out the other side, though, right? What is some advice you would give to a founder who is maybe in your shoes, you know, a year or two years ago when you were making this decision to make the change? And then for you, Alex, I'll start with you. To making the decision not to change the UPC.

24:07
Grace Kennedy
What's some advice you would give to a founder who's trying to make these decisions?

24:12
Alex Sorensen
I think the biggest is just to have conversations with everyone and see if you can get again, for us, it was that cost of free fills. I kind of hate the idea of free fills. It's like, I don't get stuff for free that I can then sell at 100% profit. So I kind of love pushing back when stores ask for that. And there is, that's always negotiable. So that's kind of the most important thing is to talk to everyone and see what makes sense with your distributors and with your retailers. That's the, you know, the most important starting point is what they want and what they're willing to do. One of the other kind of factors for us was just that consistency of sales history that this was the same product.

24:48
Alex Sorensen
It's just like a slightly different size and so on, Amazon or elsewhere, like, we seemed beneficial to keep that track record of sales history for that EPC code. So those were kind of the most important things. Yeah, just talk to everyone, see, get input from your various partners. Ideally, we're small and bootstrapped, and so we don't have the operating capital that maybe venture back brands and others have that can absorb some of these bigger costs of free fills and transitions and stuff like that. You know, if I were to do it all over again, I would probably get more money to start out and be able to, you know, whether these changes perhaps the proper way, but also the proper way is, you know, it's more just advice.

25:28
Alex Sorensen
And you don't have to kind of go with whatever GS one says you have to do.

25:32
Grace Kennedy
Yeah, do what works for you and do what works for your partners, you know, and just have conversations and make sure you're on the same page. And what about you, Jake? What advice would you give to, you know, a brand that maybe was in your shoes when you are making this decision?

25:44
Jake Deleon
Yeah, I would say that when you start off as a brand, you tend to think that the product you're releasing in market, it's your child. So it's perfect. But one thing that we learn as founders, as we continue on our journey, is that it's never perfect in the eyes of consumer. So you're constantly chasing, right. You're constantly tweaking the recipe, thinking about the packaging, maybe going up to even changing the format and changing the amount of product you offer in your item. So the best advice I got to say is that if possible, start small.

26:13
Jake Deleon
Start small and learn start small as in maybe selling at a farmer's market and just kind of getting feedback from face to face from consumers before you enter your first whole foods test or your first Whole Foods region, because that'll give you the flexibility and you're able to make changes without spending too much money or time or resources as opposed to starting off huge right off the bat. So I know it's kind of like detrimental to a lot of what founders think because they think start out big, you know, go nationwide with this retailer, but if possible, just start out small because you're going to change your product eventually and, you know, learn from your mistakes early on and avoid some of the costly errors about if you start off kind of too big, too soon and you need to make changes, then.

26:54
Grace Kennedy
Yeah, I think that's great.

26:55
Alex Sorensen
I have one other thing I wanted to add that was part of our decision. I think like the thinking around this is also taking into when I started and had no idea, I didnt know how important velocity was in terms of sales metrics for stores. And so that was another kind of part of this consideration. Downsizing is that I know with our product, our Sichuan Chilio, we have some kind of power users that tear through a bottle, but the more average consumer, it takes them a little bit longer. And so downsizing gets them to purchase more frequently and increases our velocity, which is a very important metric for your stores. And so that was another consideration.

27:33
Alex Sorensen
Its important that you maybe dont think about when youre starting out and dont know this world, that if youre just focused on providing a great product and a great value, you dont know that the velocity of your sales is actually important. And downsizing a little bit or starting out with a smaller size might better for your overall performance at stores. That was another kind of factor.

27:52
Grace Kennedy
Yeah, absolutely. Thats a great point. And again, just goes to show though, of like, you know, you start out with this, like, you know, rose colored glasses where you're like, I'm just going to offer this amazing product to my consumers. And then you get into it and you're like, oh, there's so many other things I have to worry about and so many other people I have to please and all of the above. So, but I appreciate you both so much sharing your expertise and, you know, your experience. And, you know, I really think the only way we learn is from hearing from each other and asking each other questions. So I know that a lot of our listeners will find this valuable.

28:26
Grace Kennedy
And before I let you both go, I would love to just hear, you know, Jake, where can people learn more about philamonella and buy your product?

28:33
Jake Deleon
Yeah. Well, please visit us@philamonella.com dot. You can order through us on the website or you could use your store locator to see what's your nearest store closest to you.

28:42
Grace Kennedy
Awesome. What about you, Alex? Where can people buy? Blank slate kitchen.

28:45
Alex Sorensen
Blankslake kitchen.com. We have our storefinder there wearing whole foods throughout the northeast region as well as scattered retailers all over the country. You can purchase on our website as well as Amazon. Now that we finally have this size change has worked out.

29:01
Grace Kennedy
Perfect timing. Well, thank you both so much again. And I'm really excited to see where both of your brands go in the future. And yeah, thanks for listening.

29:13
Outro
All right, everybody, thank you so much for listening. If you enjoyed the podcast today, it would really help us out if you can leave a five star review on our Apple podcasts or Spotify. I am Daniel Scharff. I'm the host and founder of startup CPG. Please feel free to reach out or add me on LinkedIn. If you're a potential sponsor that would like to appear on the podcast, please email partnershipstartupcpg.com. And reminder to all of you out there, we would love to have you join the community. You can sign up at our website, startupcpg.com. To learn about our webinars, events and slack channels. If you enjoyed today's music, you can check out my band it's the super fantastics on Spotify music. On behalf of the entire startup CPG team, thank you so much for listening and your support. See you next time.