Big News: We're Launching Custom Financial Software Built Just for Food Founders
(Listen on Apple or Spotify. Full transcript below.)
The Good Food CFO is launching first-of-its-kind financial strategy software built exclusively for food founders!
After seven years of perfecting her approach with hundreds of clients, Sarah's taking everything she knows about building profitable food businesses and turning it into powerful software that doesn't exist anywhere else.
This isn't another generic financial tool trying to serve everyone.
In this episode Sarah is sharing the three core features launching in the initial version of the software, including a growth simulator that lets you test scenarios for growing your food business before making moves. Adding a new sales channel? Considering a new product? Run the numbers and see when you'll break even, when you’ll become profitable and how much capital you'll need to get there.
Sarah shares why she swore she'd never be a tech founder (and what finally changed her mind), how winning June's $10,000 Amber Grant is accelerating development, and her bigger vision to use the software to prove local food businesses deserve serious investment.
The software is launching soon!
The waitlist is now open - hop on to be the first to know when the Beta version is available.
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Episode Timeline
00:00 Summer Updates and Community Growth
02:48 Celebrating the June Amber Grant
05:31 Member Events and Collaborative Conversations
08:25 Launch of Financial Strategy Software
11:16 Transition from Spreadsheets to Software
17:06 Features of the New Software
22:59 Future Aspirations and Community Impact
Full Episode Transcript
You're listening to the Good Food CFO Podcast. I'm your host, Sarah Delevan, and with us as always is our producer, Chelsea Stier. Hey, Chelsea.
Hey, Sarah, I know that you know, but I want to let everyone else know how busy of a summer it has been around here.
Yeah, we went bi-weekly as we do in the summers because we take some vacations, want to spend some time with our families, but we have actually been really hard at work. And so I've never been more happy to have had sort of a light podcast season because it's given us the chance to do a lot of stuff that we want to share with folks today.
Yeah, we have a couple of fun announcements right here at the beginning, but then we have an even bigger announcement that you're going to be making public for the first time in our episode. So I can't wait to get to that, but I do want to start with some more of our community updates. And the first one was something that happened a couple of weeks ago. It was very exciting. I was so excited when I got the phone call from you, but I want you to tell us about.
What happened at the Good Food CFO in July?
Speaker 1
Yeah. So in July, we were awarded the June Amber Grant, which is a $10,000 grant, which is going to be put toward the announcement that we are making publicly for the first time today, which is so exciting. And it also provides us with the opportunity to be awarded an additional $25,000 in November. And so I'm going to share more about like how our
listeners and community can support us in potentially receiving that additional $25,000. But right now we are celebrating this $10,000 grant. Keisha, our VP of Operations, has really felt strongly about the work that we're doing and that we could be… The potential for getting the grant was high in her mind. so she was like, Sarah, fill out this form. And I shared in the Members Only podcast that
I sat down and I just spoke so truly, not just about the work that we are doing at the Good Food CFO, but why we're doing it, which is to support this community of good food founders who are working every day to change our food industry. This award is not for us as a business. I truly feel that it is for us as a community.
you know, board members who vote on this believe in what we are all doing. And it just was like both humbling and like fired me up, you know, at the same time. And I'm just so excited to keep on doing this work that we're doing, you know, together.
Yeah, it's very exciting. We also in July had our monthly member event with our members. And it was very interesting because we set it up as a Q &A, right? Like an ask me anything where people could come and bring you their questions. And I thought it was so fun because A, our community is growing, right?
Speaker 2
And so we had some new faces that we got to meet and like got to meet each other and really get to know each other. But nobody came with like a particular question. And so we very much were able to say, well, what are you working on in your business or like, what is it? You know, what are you struggling with or what are your obstacles right now? What are your wins? And that kicked off a conversation.
where it was like, me too, this too, I have that thought. And it became a very, the only way to say it is like a conversation, right? A collaborative conversation where I feel like everybody walked away with a little something, including me.
Yeah. I love our live member events. No two events are the same. I don't know if we've shared this here before, but we've had members join from the lobby of their hotel in Italy, which just blows me away. They didn't have a specific question that day either. It was like, just love being here. I love hearing from other people. I want to be supportive. In that instance, it was similar that that member didn't have a question that day, but in hearing something from another founder,
ended up saying, you know what, this is interesting. I'm dealing with something similar. And so then they did have a question. So I think that idea of collaboration is really wonderful, I think especially around finances. It's, for lack of a better word, taboo topic. I think that shifting that and making it more collaborative and discussing just business in general as it relates to finance and then finance as it relates to business can just be so beneficial for everyone.
doing it in a group in an informal way has proven to be really wonderful.
Speaker 2
Yeah, I think you nailed it on the head there in the informal way, right? Because I know that we have tried Q &As in the past where they've been very structured and like this is the topic or this what we're talking about. And it like never really had the same energy that the way that we're doing things now where it is really like an open conversation.
Yeah, it's sort of like, do you need today? Where are you at? Which is so core to who we are, right? We will support you where you're at in your business. yeah, it feels very aligned. And I'm looking forward to the next one that's coming up in August. Do you have the info?
So one is coming up this Wednesday on the 14th and I believe it's at 9 a.m. but don't quote me on that. 9 a.m. Pacific time is what I think it is and if you are a member, you're going to get a link to that right in your email. No need to register anymore. We get to share that straight in the email for you now. If you are not a member and you're interested in joining us,
consider becoming a member. And even if it's just for the month, right? Like you can join for one month and come and get what you want out of it. And as the same, you would also just get the link in your email, no need to register there as well. Yeah, I'm very excited about that. Okay.
Yeah. We also, just one more update to share, we launched and released five member-only podcasts over the summer, which is something that we weren't necessarily planning on doing when we headed into summer. But as these transitions and transformations started happening behind the scenes, I had the urge to talk about it. I wanted to share
Speaker 1
A, what I had taken away from our most recent book club book, which was Beyond Entrepreneurship 2.0 and how that sort of… No, not sort of, how it did sent me off into thinking about our brand strategy, thinking about our brand identity, thinking about who we are as a company and how we're serving our community. It created a shift in my mind that has led to…
everything from an updated brand strategy to a new logo and new brand colors and the announcement that we are sharing here today. again, if you're a member and you haven't listened to those episodes and you're interested in what all is happening and what are you going to start seeing around here come fall, definitely check those episodes out. And if you're curious about, know, we talked to our brand strategist, you know, in one of those episodes, if you want to check those out, become a member, we would love to have you.
Yeah, and I would also reiterate, or I don't know if I've said this here before, but I've definitely said it in other places, is that if you are a member, you can get a secret link to load those bonus podcasts directly into wherever you listen, whether that's Apple, Spotify, so that they will show up for you there. You don't have to go anywhere else. And whenever we post them, they're
They are. Yeah, it's pretty amazing.
Yeah. I know that we were very excited when we figured it out. Maybe we'll share that real one of these days. Okay. Well, as you said, Sarah, and as I've already said, you have a big announcement today. I think that we jump to a break. We'll come back and we'll put it out there. What do you think?
Speaker 1
Sounds good, let's do it.
If you'd like to join us for this week's live member event, or you just want to learn more about the benefits that you'll get as a BABOYOT member, visit thegoodfoodcfo.com/baboyot. That's B-A-B-O-Y-O-T. And now back to the show.
All right, Sarah, it is time. We have, I think, teased this enough.
Please share with us share with the audience. What is this big announcement that we've been talking about?
Yeah, I will happily. I feel like we should have a drum roll. The Good Food CFO is launching a first of its kind financial strategy software for food businesses. So we launched with our spreadsheet-based tools, the very tools that I have used with our clients for years, and they have been amazing. They have been wonderful, but it's time to graduate to the next level. And so I have been working very hard.
on developing customized software since, I think, May of this year. And we are very, very close to launching. So it's officially time to let everybody know that the software is coming and that we indeed even have a wait list that folks can get on if they're interested in learning more than what we're sharing and getting early access to the software as well.
Speaker 2
Yeah. And we're going to share information about how to get on that wait list at the end of the episode. But Sarah, I want to start by asking, you know, as you said, you've been working on this since I believe May and let's just start with why, right? Why did you decide to do this, to change the, from the spreadsheet based tools into a software?
Well, I think the first important thing to say or maybe like the spot to start is that I created our spreadsheet based tools because there was nothing out there that met my needs as a food founder initially, and then as a consultant. then when I needed to build a forecast specific for a food business, I couldn't find something that did everything I needed it and wanted it to do. So I created it.
When I started working with clients more in depth and we were getting into pricing strategy and there was no calculator that helped us figure out our margins and how to develop our pricing strategy that was designed specifically for food businesses and the way they work with retailers and distributors and the very many ways that you can get your product to a customer in today's day and age. And so I created these tools out of a need, a very specific need. And then they became the tools that we started to offer
to founders through the Good Food CFO. I've been using the same tools for seven years now. So we think that there's like proven longevity and usefulness for these tools. And the software was something that I have thought about creating for years, but it's not an easy feat and it can be a very expensive endeavor. In fact, there were
at least three starts and stops around the software over the last seven years. We even at one point had gotten to a place where we had developed, I'm going to call them fairly crude versions of the software, but they did exist. But there was no path to executing on them and really turning them into software at the time.
Speaker 2
And something that founders could actually utilize and yeah.
Yeah, yeah. And I had no clarity on, yeah, just how we would turn, how we would get there. You know, it was just really difficult for me to envision.
So then I guess my next question is like what about this time was different?
couple of things. So I had actually put the idea of creating software to bed, I thought. I was even telling myself I don't want to be the founder of a quote unquote tech company. I don't want to have a software company. It felt like a business I didn't want to
run. I didn't want to be the CEO of. And maybe that was fear talking in hindsight, but that's what I was telling myself. I attempted to do that three times on one level or another, and we're moving on from that. And we weren't moving on from continuing to create tools that are helpful for me, again, as a consultant, and for the founders that we work with through the Good Food CFO. And I was trying to build something that internally we were calling the Growth Planner.
Speaker 2
Yeah.
which is really designed to help more than a forecast, right? But really something that allows you to say, what if this and what if that and what would that outcome look like? And really, instead of just coming up with a number, which I think is really hard for founders to do, that's been proven to us, I think, over and over again. We're like, I don't know what number to project for next month. What I was trying to build was something where someone could say, I think that I could grow my farmers market.
revenue to this much next year. I think I can get my retail to this much. It's just sort of simplifying it and making it more like a conversation.
Yeah, it seems like way more approachable.
I built this out and it was so many tabs and it was so complex that even I was struggling to use it. It needed to be highly customized for every client that I used it with. We did beta test it with some of our office hours members last year and that just reinforced for me that this is too difficult for founders to just be given this tool with some how-to videos and
Speaker 1
wish them the best. I didn't feel good about it. And over the last six months of this year, or I guess would be five months, right, from January to May, I kept finding myself saying, I bet if this was software, it would be easier. And then I'd be like, okay. And then the second time, I think if this wasn't in a spreadsheet and if this was the software, it would be easier. I said that no less than once a month, I think.
And after reading Beyond Entrepreneurship and really realizing that we launched as a podcast. And so in our brains, Chelsea, you, me, Keisha, who's our VP of Ops, and you can introduce to her in the Members Only episodes as well, we understood ourselves to be a media company because that's how we started. But then we also offer these tools and resources to support founders with their finances. After reading the book,
It just became so obvious to me that we're a financial strategy company who happened to have a podcast as a free way for people to learn and get insights into their finances and to support people because it aligns with our mission. But we're a financial strategy company and first and foremost, we need to have tools and education that founders can use to be financially successful.
70 % of food businesses fail because they run out of money, we exist to change that statistic and to improve it. So if we were a financial strategy company, which we are, and one of our core values is to keep innovating and keep creating tools that founders can use and use easily. And I was running into this
really big roadblock with this growth planner that is an absolutely necessary tool and I can't create it in spreadsheets. And this was a year of trying. It became glaringly obvious to me that the next step was to turn it into software. Because I knew that I would not be happy to not offer the tool. I need it and founders need it. And so in addition to that, I happen to be
Speaker 1
introduced to a woman named Nomeke. And she's the founder of, it used to be the founder of PDS Labs, now she's the founder of Theanna. And I became part of that accelerator where they teach non-tech founders how to develop and launch software specifically for women. So I've been a part of that accelerator and community since May, and they've been amazingly supportive. And we have built out the user interface. We've done a round of testing at the time of recording this with our
know, some of our members and we're, as I mentioned earlier, getting very, very close to officially launching the beta testing version of this and then hopefully fully launching really soon. So long answer to your question, Chelsea, but it's a long kind of story. The why now is like not, it's not simple, you know, it's many things folded into one.
Yeah. And I think it would be great to talk about, you know, when we talk about like going into beta testing and then launching the, you know, we're calling it like the first iteration or the MVP. I want to talk about what features will exist in this first iteration and why those features and what maybe don't and why.
Yeah.
Speaker 1
Yeah. There was a lot of time spent on figuring this out and thinking about not just what do we want to give founders today, but what does this tool look like long-term and how do we build off of this first iteration to create what I like to call the first of its kind financial strategy software that is specifically designed for food businesses, right? So it's not trying to be everything to everyone. It's very honed in.
I have the ability to do that after seven plus years of consulting and working in this space. So I decided to pull in the core tools that we have now because they serve a very specific purpose. I couldn't launch this software without the pricing and margin calculator. We call it the perfect pricing calculator right now. Because if you know one thing about the Good Food CFO and what I believe in, it's that the financial strategy starts at that product margin.
So that has to be a core piece of this software because it's the core part of our framework and our philosophy. From there, I really felt it was important to include the financial audit piece. So we have a tool and a course right now that's called the Profit Assessment. We pulled that Profit Assessment into the software as well because you need to understand where you are today, what's working.
what's not and what levers you can pull or like what direction things need to move for you to reach your financial goals. So we have to be rooted in sort of the present and also the recent past to move forward. And so that's what the financial audit piece does, really helps you understand where you are today.
And my understanding, and I just want to interrupt you really quick. My understanding is that portion, when you're working through that part of the software, like you'll be able to get recommendations directly in software.
Speaker 1
That's through the entire software. So overarching, this is meant to be like you're working with me. Yeah. So when you're pricing your products, it's not just going to be a calculator that shows you the information. It's going to come with insights for what does that percentage mean? What does that number mean? What are the implications of that on my business, positive, negative, or otherwise? With the courses currently, you have some information that
that helps you to sort of self-analyze these things, but we're taking that away, right? You don't have to learn like how to interpret because the interpretation is going to be there for you along with the guidance. So yes, same with the audit. When you're looking at it and if it says to you your gross profit margin is 45 % of your revenue, okay, what does that mean? It's going to tell you and it's going to help you set goals for
do you go from here to where you want to be financially? That was a great question to ask at that point because with those insights, you can then move to the third tool that's going to be included in the MVP, which is what I'm calling right now our growth simulator. Let's say in your financial audit, you had a low gross profit margin. A recommendation might be to increase sales in
you know, one or multiple of your higher margin sales channels. The word simplify it, right? So you take that information and go, okay, I'm going to run a simulation where I see what happens if I grow my online sales, you know, from say $10,000 a year to $20,000 a year. Maybe you just want to see. And so you can pop that into the simulator and then the simulator will ask you
What expenses do you foresee having that are related to growing your revenue like this? So maybe you're like, I'm going to run ads and I'm going to make an estimation that I have a thousand dollar ad budget a month, which is actually a lot for $10,000 in growth. So let's make it $500 a month. And so you can plug that in. Maybe you're like, you know what? I would also like to hire someone. So like, what if I grew that by $10,000, but then I also hired someone to do the shipping for me?
Speaker 1
so I can focus on the marketing and the growth, right? So you can kind of think through in a very conversational way what expenses you're gonna incur, right, or experience as you're trying to grow your revenue. And then when you click run the simulator, you'll get a 12 month projection that shows you here's what your growth would look like month over month, here's what your margins would change to. So then you can see
What does that growth look like? Not only how does the revenue grow, but also how do my gross profit margins change overall? If you're working toward breakeven, it'll tell you like you don't reach breakeven in this simulation or you reach breakeven in six months. It will show you when you become profitable or if you don't become profitable within 12 months with this scenario. It also shows you what your debt need is to execute on this scenario.
So we're really trying to give people not just insights into what's happening in your business right now, but what could the future look like? And if you're considering growth of a certain kind, onboarding a distributor, like all sorts of different things, you can run that simulation. It's meant to be like a no pressure. This is not a forecast, people. This is just a what if I
No, I love this because all I'm thinking about is every conversation that we've ever had about going into distribution, being at a food show, talking to a buyer, da-da-da-da-da, and the advice that you always give is run the numbers.
Which is hard to do. If you don't have the tool.
Speaker 2
Right?
Speaker 2
That's amazing.
Now, this is what is referred to as an MVP, which stands for Minimum Viable Product, not Most Valuable Product, but I hope that it becomes that for everybody over time. So there are things that we want this tool to do, but because of time and money, quite frankly, we are creating that minimum viable version.
which still gets results for people and also really introduces people to the tool and then we can build on it over time. For example, in the MVP, we're not going to have promotions and bill back and charge back calculations. That is something that we have in our Excel forecasting tool, but the Excel forecasting tool is not conversational. It's quite a different way of thinking about things. There's pros and cons to each, but
in the future, the very near future, those promo and chargeback tools will be there and they'll be incorporated into that simulator. We're also hoping to build out accountability tools and progress check-in tools. When you create a simulation, you may say to yourself, or we hope we say it, you say to yourself, this is the one I want to build toward. You might run three, four, however many simulations you want.
And then you might say, out of all of the ones that I've considered, this one financially makes a lot of sense to me. I feel comfortable with it. It gets me to where I want to be financially and I feel good about maybe the amount of debt that I'm going to take on, the work that's involved in it. So you can make that your active scenario. And then in a second iteration, we will have the ability for you to track your progress. So your real time…
Speaker 1
you know, stats for like a month, for example, versus where your quote unquote should be given the simulation that you ran for the scenario. And that is, you know, a lot of people we've talked about, like you create a forecast and you stick it in the drawer, right? This is a way to not stick it in the drawer. This is a way to say, okay, I know where I was when I started and I set these goals and this is my plan for how I wanted the next 12 months to go. And now I can check in monthly.
with it and see how am I doing. And also get that feedback, that piece of information that's like having me there in a Zoom call with you talking about what's going on. And then of course we want to include the cashflow piece because it's so, so important. And we've talked about it so many times that it's like the number one thing, right, to pay attention to in your business is how much cash do you have? What is your cash runway? But I sadly,
have learned how expensive it is to implement cash flow tools that are secure and done properly. We're talking about a five-figure investment there. So that November, Amber Grant, it come our way? Would it put toward that? And obviously, we're going to be trying to get some additional funding by way of other grants or…
know, things to just keep on building this out because we really believe in it. And having gotten that Amber grant, it lit a fire under me and really sort of proved to me that like other people see the value in what this community is doing and what an easy yes to contribute to something like this.
So that actually takes me to my next question, Sarah, perfectly, which is I would love for you to talk about...
Speaker 2
with this software, with this launch of the software in the business, what are the hopes that you have for the impact that it can have on our community of food founders?
Yeah. Well, number one is like helping founders, right? To change the statistic of 70 % of businesses failing because they run out of cash. That's the top dream is that this tool, as our spreadsheets have, continues to prove helpful to founders beyond what we're able to help them with now and really become a part of running their business every day. But big picture like zooming out.
I've got a really big goal of getting more funding to local and regional food businesses. There's so much money that goes to big food. There are accelerators and programs and different things where brands invest money. They either pay or they give up equity in order to grow big and grow fast and sell to Pepsi. We have Babi-Yat Energy around here, build a business on your own terms.
But I think I've made it very clear that I believe in a decentralized food system. believe in independently owned businesses. I believe in local and regional food businesses. And I have seen firsthand the impact that these businesses have on their communities in so many ways, financially and otherwise. And so my big hope and a big dream for what this software can do is allow us to leverage data.
anonymous data, but that is rooted in real business information and show investors the value of local and regional food businesses, how they can be profitable, how they can create a return on investment, and why they should be investing in these communities and in these businesses. That is what I really hope that this software has the power to do and to change.
Speaker 2
I love it. I absolutely love it. I let me be the first to say that I cannot be more excited about this launch. I cannot be more excited to see our community getting their hands on this software. So with that being said, let's talk about how if you're listening and you want to be one of the first people to have access to the software, where can you join our wait list?
Yeah. So first I want to remind all of our members and our non-members that our members are going to be the first to beta test this tool. So we have already had a couple of folks test what we call the user interface, and we're gearing up to have them do the full software testing. So as a member, you get access to that free beta testing, which is really cool. And I'm so looking forward to
Then we have our general wait list. So you can go to the goodfoodcfo.com slash wait list. We'll also put a link in the show notes and you can sign up for the wait list there. We're going to ask you a couple of questions. We want to know your business name. We want to know how long you've been in business and we're going to ask you if you're using QuickBooks or not. These are some qualifying questions because again, MVPs, we have to kind of test certain things in the beta and then we can grow from there. So that's why we're asking you a couple of questions. We're going to pick an assortment.
of founders to bring into the beta testing from the wait list. And then when the software officially launches, our wait list will be among the first to know as we roll this out. So lots of benefits to being on the wait list, lots of benefits to being a member and getting early access to this software and kind of getting to try it out and break it and all the things you need to do when you're testing software. Yeah. So yeah, and I'm so excited that…
Waitlist is live now on our website. So we're excited to see you guys go and sign up and then to officially share the software with you very soon.
Speaker 2
Yeah, very exciting stuff. And Sarah, I'm so glad that we got to dive into all of this today and really talk about the things that have been going on behind the scenes for a while now. I just want to say thank you from myself, from our community for making the damn software, as we've said around here a few times, right? And just not being afraid and just diving in and doing it. So I want to say thank you.
And thank you for sharing today. And yeah, go jump on the waitlist.
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