MobCraft beer is a brewery and taproom with a unique business model of crowdsourcing ideas for beer recipes from their customers. Knowing how much equity they needed vs. debt to finance their facility build out and equipment needs helped them pitch specific asks to both banks and investors, including for their $2 million tap room and production facility.

Madison Sourdough has grown using a vertically integrated business model by adding a restaurant that highlights their baked goods and bakery. They have also added an artisanal grain mill to their production processes, sourcing much of the flour themselves from local producers.

Jonny Hunter of the Underground Food Collective talks about his wish that values around local and sustainable food could be used to create systems that have scalable efficiencies that are affordable to consumers. He advocates for working together to build and sustain the infrastructure that would support processing and other means to scale up the local food system.

Because Quince and Apple has labor-intensive, artisanal products, the best strategy was not to compete on quantity or price. Instead, they chose to compete by dominating an emerging niche (pairing their products with specialty cheeses) while telling the defensibly unique story of their artisanal processes.

Within six months of launching their company they got their product out in front of consumers, trying out 127 product variations over an additional 18 months in just two stores. Once they honed in on their product, they rapidly expanded into distribution and raised multiple rounds of funding to support their growth.

The more you have the ability to analyze what went right or wrong, the more useful your financial model and plan are to making business decisions. Being able to have both an accurate history and a record of making realistic projections that were met can give entrepreneurs credibility with lenders, investors and the business' board of directors.

From the entrepreneur's perspective, the most important thing when using an accounting package is to ensure accurate setup and data entry so that they are able to produce accurate financial statements. While entrepreneurs need to understand their financial statements and financial drivers, they can often outsource some accounting work.

Dan Lemmer of the Wisconsin SBDC’s capital access team talks about building great financial systems and realistic projections for food, beverage and value-added agriculture businesses. From the entrepreneur’s perspective, the most important thing when using an accounting package is to ensure accurate setup and data entry so that they are able to produce accurate financial statements. Dan cautions entrepreneurs to only track the information they plan to use. One of the biggest decisions entrepreneurs make in setting up their financial systems is figuring out how much to outsource vs. do in-house. While entrepreneurs need to understand their financial statements and financial drivers, they can often have an outside person come in monthly or quarterly to help take on the more complicated accounting and tax issues, including adjusting journal entries. Then, once the business grows, they can hire someone in-house to help them manage that process as well as help with financial analysis and projection.

Originally branded as Ethnic Spicery, Flavor Temptations changed their brand to fully communicate the joyful, family-building experience of making memories through Indian cooking so that their brand resonated more deeply with their target consumer. They also changed their packaging to better share their values and to stand out on grocery store shelves.

Sara Parthasarathy and Partha Sabniviss are the married couple behind Flavor Temptations, an organic Indian recipe pack brand which includes a traditional Indian recipe with the exact amounts of fresh, organic spices needed to cook the recipe. Originally branded as Ethnic Spicery, they changed their brand name to Flavor Temptations to fully communicate the joyful, family-building experience of making memories through Indian cooking so that their brand resonated more deeply with their target consumer. They also changed their packaging to match their brand promise, better share their values and to stand out on grocery store shelves.