Rocío Macarena Llana’s Post

Great article by our CEO!

I strongly suggest reading our CEO Eran Mizrahi article at Forbes. It explores the impact of disintermediation in the modern business landscape. This article delves into why companies are cutting out middlemen, using Amazon as a prime example. It scrutinizes how this shift affects the food industry, especially concerning compliance and technology accessibility for smaller businesses. Despite the push, it argues for the enduring value of intermediaries in fostering connections and offering unique benefits. Discover insights on how intermediaries can evolve to remain integral in a changing business environment. ingredient brothers #ingredientbrothers #Disintermediation #BusinessShift #ReadNow 📰

Can companies handle this themselves? 🤷♂️ I'm often asked this by people outside the food industry. Why start ingredient brothers as a middleman when the trend is to eliminate middlemen and go direct? Well, it's simple. We enable our customers to "Focus on the things that make your 🍺 taste better," as Jeff Bezos put it. And in the ingredient space, that sentiment couldn't be more true. Dealing with the complexity and risk of importing ingredients from around the world can quickly shift your focus away from improving the taste of your beer to managing complicated supply chains. As long as we prioritize maximizing value for our customers, our position in the value chain will only strengthen. I recently shared my thoughts on this topic in Forbes. Check it out here: https://lnkd.in/etQ-v_Nw

Shifting consumer sentiment can have major impacts on long-existing businesses. 'Endless Shrimp' will be soon a thing of the past! 🦐 🦐 🍤 🍤 But the question is how does a bankruptcy like this impact the supplier ecosystem? This is where businesses need the best insights possible! #foodandbeverage #supplychain #creditrisk https://lnkd.in/eKEuuQY3

Where’s the beef? Wendy’s - one the largest U.S. fast food chains - has made headlines for comments the CEO made about a potential introduction of dynamic pricing. Based on a scan of news articles, comments and social posts many people took issue with the CEO, his communication, and the general societal impact of raising prices in times of rising cost of living. What pricing changes Wendy will ultimately make remains to be seen, but this story raises a few observations and questions for founders: ❓ Is pricing on your active strategy roadmap? In the background, market leaders are looking to pricing for new growth opportunities. Companies such as Wendy’s have made enough progress to share with investors their plans to test new pricing models 2025. Founders should be looking at strategy roadmap to assess whether they are evaluating their pricing proactively to create opportunities. Pricing is not a switch that quickly turns on or off. ❓ How confident are you in your pricing? One the biggest challenges I see entrepreneurs face with pricing is confidence. When we talk about #valueleadership, this confidence dimension is central. Data analytics helps, but there is a large emotional component that entrepreneurs struggle with. Dealing with pricing even if they align with customer value and willingness-to-pay, there is still feedback and opinion to navigate. Pricing remains a sensitive topic and can create fear inside and outside of the company. ❓ What impact will your pricing have on society? It may be hard to imagine - especially for a young company - but your pricing decisions can have a lasting impact on society. Your pricing can create access to technologies, innovations or experiences people otherwise may not have. Your pricing can impact how products are consumed (or not). Your pricing can also shift the perceived value people have about your product category. In the case of Wendy’s some made pricing an issue about access to food and corporate greed. This is where your pricing strategy serves as a guiding light for your company's pricing decisions - it's your why. To limit the strategy to only financial outcome would be a myopic view. What do you think? Is there other parts to the Wendy’s story that I missed? Should Wendy’s go ahead with testing new pricing? #pricing #fastfood #wheresthebeef

"...the last decade brought in many changes. Many new players (small and big) joined the wave. Suddenly, the specialty market segment – still relatively small in terms of demand and market share – became overpopulated and saturated.” In my latest article for Coffee Intelligence, I spoke with Konstantinos Vallianos about how roasters and business owners are navigating the current coffee industry challenges, and learning the ropes of #finance and #investment to stay afloat and grow in a time of crisis.

It seems odd writing this post, because the concept below should be a given, and to us is the bare minimum. Unfortunately this is not always the case in the world of investment. "Yes, invest in wine through us. Transfer some funds, and we will buy the wines on your behalf. No you can never see the wines, they're in a warehouse somewhere. Promise we do own them though.. 🤞 " Trust is key to investing through a wine partner. When building the operational processes for wine management at WineFi 🍷 I focused on three tenets. 1️⃣ Accuracy 2️⃣ Verifiability 3️⃣ Scalability On point 2 - trust is built through experience. The JP Morgans of the world don't need to prove themselves to you, we do. This is why if a customer requests information on their wines, we are able to immediately provide data for every step of the journey. We can instantly show proof of ownership, transfer to our warehouse, we have even set up some investors with unique accounts to our warehousing platform so they can verify that their wines are stored where we say they are, in the condition we say they are.

This small food manufacturer went from producing 200 smoothies a day to 1000, with just a 9-person team. It’s about Frozen Garden, a small food company in Valparaiso, Indiana. They make healthy frozen foods, ready-to-eat meals, and even help other small brands by making products for them. The best part is, they increased production without hiring anyone new. How? The founder, Allyson Straka, realised that scaling her business didn’t have to mean adding more people or inflating costs. Instead, she focused on optimising systems to work smarter. Here’s how they did it: 📍They implemented MRPeasy, an affordable MRP software, to manage sales, purchasing, production planning, inventory, and finances all in one platform. 📍The system helped them track ingredient costs in real-time, allowing them to adjust prices, change suppliers, and modify recipes when costs rose, keeping everything profitable. 📍By closely monitoring production times and comparing them to historical data, they quickly spotted inefficiencies and streamlined processes. The result? A 400% increase in efficiency. They scaled up without scaling costs, proving that the right systems can transform any business. This story taught me one important lesson I’ve seen in my own journey in the food and steel industries: “Scaling isn’t about doing more, it’s about doing better. It’s about having the right systems in place to work smarter, not harder.” What's your go-to method for staying organised? #Scaling #Efficiency #Growth #Business

"The business of #specialtycoffee has changed. Once an industry of carefree, passionate actors, #businessowners are now dependent on #financialaid, and challenged by countless rivals vying for market share" In today's article, Jordan Montgomery speaks with Konstantinos Vallianos about how roasters and business owners are navigating the current coffee industry challenges and learning the ropes of #finance and #investment to stay afloat and grow in a time of #crisis. Learn more: https://lnkd.in/e9ztTSSG

The complex story behind a simple coffee The story behind an Italian 1,20 euro coffee begins long before it reaches your cup. It starts with farmers in coffee-producing regions like Brazil or Colombia toiling under the sun to cultivate and harvest coffee beans. The beans then undergo processing, where they are sorted, dried, and sometimes roasted, before being packaged and shipped across oceans to various destinations. Upon arrival, the beans are purchased by coffee wholesalers or roasters who carefully roast and blend them to create the perfect flavor profile. From there, the coffee is distributed to cafes and supermarkets where it awaits its final destination: your morning routine. When you purchase a 1,20 euro coffee, you're not just paying for the beverage itself. You're also covering the costs associated with transportation, labor, overhead, and a small margin of profit for everyone involved in the supply chain. Sometimes we just forget how much work there is behind the simplest things. In fact, in that simple cup of coffee, like in almost everything we use and consume, there's a story of hard work, dedication, and cooperation spanning continents and cultures. So, the next time you sip on a 1,20 euro coffee, remember the complex journey it took to reach your hands and savor every moment of its rich history. ------ Hi, I am Kevin, and I teach and create systems for Solopreneurs and Startups who want to improve how they plan and manage their finances. #finance #planning #analysis #startup #solopreneur #management #costs #margin #revenue #strategy