Alli Ball, Founder & CEO, Food Biz Wiz
Discover the secrets to building successful food businesses with Alli Ball, the founder and CEO of Food Biz Wiz. Alli takes you on a journey through her own experiences as a former grocery buyer, revealing the challenges and triumphs that led her to create an industry-changing program, Retail Ready. Gain invaluable insights on how to navigate the complex world of food and beverage retail, demystify the process of getting your product on store shelves, and learn the key strategies that help brands achieve financial success.
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I have a very special guest. This is someone I've been following on social and absolutely stopping the scroll to listen to their posts, listen to their advice. 00:20 I listen to their podcasts. I am a big nerd for all the content coming from Alli Ball, the founder and CEO of Food Biz with Alli. 00:30 Thank you so much for being here. Thank you for having me. I'm really delighted to come on and talk about food businesses. 00:38 I'm really excited to talk about food businesses with you because I have some background. I was a partner of a restaurant. 00:45 We had two locations and I work with some food and beverage brands now and I really admire how you build businesses and how you really leverage your experience. 00:57 I've, again, like I said, I've listened to your podcast so much. I know about your background for anyone who's listening that's new. 01:06 Could you tell us a little bit of your backstory and how you started the business? Yeah, absolutely. Thanks for asking. 01:14 So I used to be Head of Grocery, a former grocery buyer, category manager at BIRATE Market here in San Francisco where I still live. 01:23 And this was Way back when we had one single location, the original location on 18th street and my role was to find products for ourselves and make sure that they sold off of ourselves once we put them there. 01:38 So I'm simple enough, right? And this was back when BIRATE was really known as a leader in our industry in a way we were incubating brands and really helping brands figure out what it took to succeed in wholesale. 01:53 It means we were often the first account for brands so they didn't know what they were doing, they were coming on ourselves and we were really leaning with them and allowed them to make all the mistakes and support them as they figured it all out. 02:06 And I did that for years and years and I just Kelly, I loved it. I loved discovering that new brand at the farmers market and putting them on ourselves. 02:14 I loved going to the trade shows, all of that. And then we decided to open a second market, BIRATE Divisitoro. 02:20 It's about three miles across town. And we decided we started on that. Gosh, probably 2010, 2011. It took us almost three years to open that market. 02:31 Permitting is really challenging and San Francisco. Wow. And in that transition, I changed roles at BIRATE. I became head of grocery and store manager of that second location. 02:42 And my role shifted from working with producers, helping almost acting like an in-house consultant for BIRATE, helping small brands. And instead, I became totally in charge of this multi-million dollar department. 02:57 And I was heads down in the PNL, Weekend and Weekout, and looking at the financials of what it took to run this store. 03:06 We did $35 million in sales in that first year loan out of 3,000 square feet. Yeah, so really, really high volume sales. 03:18 And Kelly, I learned so many lessons as my role shifted there. But what I really learned was that I missed working with producers. 03:28 And I missed helping brands understand what it took to actually succeed once they got to the shelf. And I realized that I could have a far greater impact outside of the walls of BIRATE than I could in that 3,000 square foot store. 03:46 So I left BIRATE, I left nine years ago and started my business. And when I first left, I split my time consulting with retail stores across the country, helping with grocery buying operations and building category managers and helping people understand how to build successful grocery departments. 04:04 And then half of my time working with producers, helping them again understand the world of wholesale. And slowly over time, Kelly, it's almost like always in hindsight, right? 04:14 I'm like, oh, I left BIRATE so I wasn't working. So I didn't have to do that heads down in grocery buying anymore. 04:21 Like what am I doing? Still doing all this consulting with retailers. And so slowly I transitioned more and more towards working only with producers on that sale strategy side of things. 04:32 So yeah, nine years ago left BIRATE. Nine years ago, I was just writing your posts. It was recently that at that time. 04:39 Yeah, congratulations. Thank you. Thank you. You're welcome. And then so when did you start food biz whiz? When was that? 04:46 Yeah, yeah, launched. That's a great question. So when I first left BIRATE, I called my business, Alison Ball Consulting. And I did that because people knew me in the industry. 04:59 They knew my name. They, you know, I had a reputation, especially with BIRATE. You know, I really want to give BIRATE so much credit here. 05:08 I am wearing them today because of that foundation that they gave to me. And so when I left, I left with the business name as myself, right? 05:17 I was like, you know, I probably should have hired someone to help me on BIRATE strategy there. But I called it Alison Ball Consulting and started it right away. 05:26 I'm literally the month that I left BIRATE. I had my first paying clients. And thank you. That was part of the plan. 05:32 You know, it was all, I'm definitely a planner. And so everybody knew I was leaving BIRATE. I was already like telling people, I had already had like the clients lined up and such. 05:43 And it took a couple years. Gosh, probably three years or so before I decided that I needed to stop going by my name. 05:52 And I needed to call it something else. And I had this realization Kelly when I think it came like hand in hand when I was growing beyond what I could manage as a solo entrepreneur. 06:05 I knew I had to build a team. I knew I had to bring people in. I knew if again, if we wanted to have this big impact that was the dream, I needed a team to support me on it. 06:17 And I realized what was happening is we had clients who, you know, maybe one of my like team members would give them advice on something. 06:25 Or my team member would reply with a workbook or template that they have. And people would say like, oh no, no, no, like I want to talk to and I found Kelly that like, of course, my team members were trained in all the same, you know, philosophies that I have in our industry. 06:40 Of course, my team members have the same exact resources that I do on my Google Drive, right? But I found that I had really built a business that was centered around me as the brand. 06:51 And I needed to start transitioning to being a company rather than just say a personal brand. So we changed the business name to food biz whiz. 07:03 And I have seen, I've seen the impact of that Kelly. I've seen people trust in my team more now. I see that my team gets invited to, you know, speak on panels and do things. 07:14 And it's no longer like the alley show all day every day. Yeah. That's really interesting. And I think it's a good case study for someone who does have a personal brand who's like, is this the right choice for me? 07:29 Yeah. Or someone who's, you know, on the cusp of trying to decide because I tell people too, like, I have a personal brand, but it fits for what my goals are and how I want to grow my business. 07:38 But based off of what you just said, you wanted to scale outside of yourself. You wanted to build a team. 07:45 You also wanted to have it clear of what you're known for even if an industry contacted and know you directly, they would understand the the scope of the business. 07:57 Exactly. Exactly. Exactly. Yes. And I'll say, you know, for the first three plus years, a personal brand really worked for me. 08:07 Right? That was great. And I have to tell you, it took a lot. It took a lot of self reflection, you know, honestly, some like coaching time to like realize on the show. 08:18 Okay, for me to move away from this identity as the, you know, the only person in the company who could give the advice, the only person who could show up on social media, things like that. 08:30 So we're not all the way there. I'll tell you like there are still things that say I'll involve consulting, you know, my face is definitely still the primary, primary face on our our non-companies website and social stuff. 08:43 But we're getting there. That's, well, I think that's really cool. And when you say, you've seen the impact from it as far as trust from customers or clients, listening and implementing what your team is also teaching them, I think that is, again, a great case study of the power of a name of a company 09:03 to grow and scale the way that you really want to, and, you know, envision the growth of it. Yeah, absolutely. 09:11 I love that. So what was what you're welcome? What were a few things that you said out to do differently or some things that you realize you now do differently within your industry? 09:23 Yeah, that's a great question. So the, the very first one was this idea that the wholesale buyer's perspective was missing in our industry. 09:32 It is relatively easy, Kelly, to get advice from other founders or to hire a marketing director or to speak with a branding agency or even to like have a financial advisor, right? 09:47 Like all of these things exist in our industry, but I found especially nine years ago, it was really, really hard to get that growth free buyers perspective. 09:57 So when I launched my business, I, that was my valued proposition, right? I like, I am different than I am sharing, that behind the scenes of what goes on in that grocery buyer's brand. 10:08 And Kelly, here's why grocery buyers are really busy. They have a full-time job being a grocery buyer and they don't have time, even if they have the desire, they have very little time to actually work side by side with a merging brands, right? 10:27 That's just not right built into the day to day of their job description. So it's really hard to find a grocery buyer who gives brands enough time to really help them understand, help them learn, help them grow. 10:42 Okay, so that immediately like was what was what I built this business off of. We need the perspective of the grocery buyer in this industry. 10:51 So that was number one. And then once I started building out food as well, and once we launched retail ready, which is our online program, I can talk more about that in a little bit. 11:02 I realized that one of the other big, big things that was missing in our industry was this perspective that founders have to build a brand that works for them. 11:17 So in our industry where it is, do your market research, find your market fit, find, figure out your production, find a co-packer who can make your product for you, find the right broker, find the right distributor, pay a whole bunch of money and go national, right? 11:40 And that, like, raised some investment along the way, and like that is the way to build a food business. And Kelly, that way sucks. 11:49 I mean, it sucks for a lot of it's really, really hard. Really, really challenging. It's really challenging. And yes, of course, like, it works for some brands. 11:58 It's works for a lot of brands that we've worked with. But what, what I want, what I want people to know is that that's not the only way to build a brand. 12:09 And ultimately, you got to live with whatever company you build, right? So if you want to be beholden to investors, if you want to be like on the trade show circuit, if you want to do influencer marketing, like if you want to do free fills and buybacks and like all that stuff, that's great. 12:30 But if you don't want to do it, there's also another way. So we really built to retail ready around this idea that there is no one path to success in the industry. 12:40 And the, the really important thing is that we've got to figure out what is your personal definition of success? And how do we build that road map to get you there? 12:49 So that was different. Thank you. Thank you. I mean, I'll say it's like the lesson that I learned in building my own business. 12:56 Absolutely. Am I doing like, gosh, you know, why am I doing consulting in this way? Why am I doing retainer packages in this way? 13:05 Why am I, you know, why am I chasing somebody's, somebody else's definition of success? And so once I learned that for myself, I was like, oh, dang. 13:14 Like, we are, we have to share the same message for our clients that ultimately at the end of the day, you've got to build a business that works for you. 13:23 I love that. And also to a big takeaway just from a brand perspective is that what it sounds like is you created a signature curriculum. 13:31 Yes. And course. And it's retail ready. It's really clear what it is, who it's for. So I think that was also just from like a brand perspective. 13:42 I'm sure a powerful move of just like making your methodology and all your lessons into a really cohesive experience that people can identify like, okay, I want to be retail ready. 13:55 So let me join this program. Yeah. Yeah. Absolutely. And Kelly, that really came out of I alluded to this, but I was doing so much one-on-one work with emerging brands. 14:05 And I found a couple things. One, 95% of my clients got stuck in the same exact point in their business. 14:15 Right. They had 95% of the same question. Right. And so I realized that and I also realized that a lot of the younger brands, the smaller brands that I was working with simply didn't have the money to pay tens of thousands of dollars for consultants. 14:32 And I realized again, it kept coming back to this mission that I had of like impacting, like truly impacting our industry. 14:41 And I was like, I need to figure out how to package up my process and serve it to a greater amount of food founders, food beverage, taxable grocery founders in a way that is really accessible for them. 14:57 So we launched retail ready in 2016. So well before the like boom of online courses, 2020. So yeah, we launched in 2016. 15:08 And we've had, I keep saying over 2000, but I need to go back and do the math. It's probably over 3000 brands at this point. 15:14 We've created hundreds of millions of dollars in revenue for our brands. I mean, it's really, really, I'm really, really proud of retail ready. 15:22 And now it's the only way that we work with brands. That is so cool, Ali. Thank you. Really, so cool. 15:28 It was, it was pivotal, telly. I, I, I remembered. Okay. So I, I like, it was 2015. And I, someone said something to me about an online course. 15:41 And I was like, what's that? Like, I don't really, you know, like, what's I felt like I had stumbled upon a huge industry that people weren't really talking about, especially in the food industry, right? 15:57 They were no online courses when I launched retail ready. I mean, I don't think none that were like really on in my orbit. 16:06 And I was like, this seems like the ticket for food founders. Like, why, why aren't we systematizing our consulting processes? 16:15 Why aren't we, again, like creating community with food founders? Why aren't we giving? Why aren't we creating this container that not only has the curriculum, but also has that community and has the live support from me and my team? 16:32 Like, it just felt like such a win. So I went all in on it. I slowly faced out all my one-on-one clients. 16:38 I was like, you know, I'm going to go all in on this strategy. I'm going to give it a year and see if it works and sure enough, it was, it did, it did. 16:49 Yeah, incredible. And you're able to now say, what was that $100 million? Oh, hundreds of millions, hundreds of millions of dollars in the millions of dollars. 16:58 Yeah, revenue for these. It's wild. It's wild. I was doing the math the other day, you know, because we hit our nine-year business anniversary. 17:05 We just hit our 200th podcast episodes. Yes, by one year, one year, my coaching certification. And so I was like really reflecting on these wins that we had had. 17:16 And I was like, let's talk about the financials. What is the monetary impact that we have had in this industry? 17:23 And we started doing the math and really looking at some of our like higher revenue, generating students, brands. And very quickly, we were like, oh, yeah, that's hundreds of thousands of dollars every single year. 17:39 It's wild. I never, I never imagined that I would that we, that my team and I would have this impact. 17:46 That is so damn cool. I love it. So anyone who's listening, who is a food and beverage founder, they're in the early stages. 17:57 They want to get retail ready. They want to demystify what the processes because I feel like they're such a gap of how does your product actually end up on a shelf? 18:09 It still feels like this other worldly thing. So right, it's like, people need it like that. I hear that all the time. 18:20 So totally. How does someone join retail ready? What is the process? Like, can you walk us through that? So someone can get a sense of what it's like? 18:31 Yeah, totally. It could not be easier. We want people to be able to join retail ready when they're ready for retail ready. 18:39 Right? Love it. Okay. So there are two ways to join. We have open enrollment all year round. You can join. 18:44 You could literally join in the next five minutes. Kelly, you just love it. To our website, it's foodbuswiz.com. And we have a master class that talks about how my philosophy on growing food businesses. 19:03 You'll hear me share some of the same stuff that I've shared today. This idea of building a brand that works for you. 19:09 So you can either watch that master class and find out more about retail ready that way. Or we have a retail ready right now option. 19:16 You enter your email address. You read through like literally it's like four pages of information. And at the bottom, you can do a little self-assessment on whether or not you're the right fit. 19:28 And if you are, you click on over to the enrollment page and you sign up. Amazing. I love it so much. 19:34 And also really admire how you build your business. Thank you. Your help. I'm Kelly. I do want to say something that's really important here. 19:44 It feels important to share. I've had a lot of ups and downs too. You're getting the highlight real on the market. 19:51 Right. But there were months, years, Gosh, where we had to fix problems in the business and navigate challenges that we had. 20:01 You know, I've had to hire and fire team members. We've had to really figure out the best delivery of retail ready and how we support students. 20:12 We've had to navigate cash flow challenges. We Gosh, I I lost like $30,000 in Facebook ads in 2022. Like that almost tanks my business savings. 20:26 Like it was so, you know, there are like big, big ups and downs. And like now we're at the point where things are feeling like really good. 20:34 But it took, you know, there's challenges along the way. Well, I really appreciate you sharing that because I think that so many people put a lot of pressure on themselves. 20:45 All raised both my hands. Yep. Of nailing it the first time around. And you know, wherever you are, I think as an entrepreneur, you wish you were five steps ahead. 20:56 It's really hard to just own where you are right now. So I appreciate you saying that because I know that that probably gave someone permission to be okay with where they are, but knowing that they could find a better path like what you just said of building a brand that really works for you, that it 21:15 does take some trial and error, does take some highs and lows and it does take time to find what really works. 21:23 Totally. You know, and I even have, I have a lot of like service providers who reach out to me and ask my advice on building courses or working, you know, building consulting businesses and things like that. 21:34 And so often, I see that they're comparing my year nine to their year one, just with just totally not fair. 21:43 And I see food founders do this too, Kelly. You know, we have folks in retail ready who have been in business, gosh, 10 years, 20 years. 21:50 We have a brand in there who's literally 100 years old. And they said, yeah, acne fish company. And we also have who send newer team members through retail ready to get them up to speed. 22:08 Or they realize, like, hey, we're 100 years old and maybe what we use the techniques we used 20 years ago aren't so relevant in the industry anymore. 22:18 But Kelly, my point is we've got retail ready to come in in year in month one of their business year one of their business. 22:25 And they look at someone who's in year 10, multi-million dollar business, right? And it's really easy to compare, right, to compare and despair when you look at a brand or a business that is ahead of you. 22:41 And I think it's really important to remember that we don't know what is going on behind the scenes in someone else's business, especially with food founders, right? 22:51 Like we see you see that nut butter who's on the shelves at all of you know Whole Foods Global or you see that like CBD beverage that like came out of nowhere and is all over the place. 23:03 But we don't know if they're profitable, we don't know if the founder takes off nights and weekends, we don't know if they are like crying themselves to sleep every night like we have no idea what's going on in their business. 23:16 I think it's really really important to just remember that that we don't know what's going on in business. I think that's a great valid important part. 23:30 Would there be any other piece of advice for a new food and beverage founder because this is more so for emerging brands anything else that you would leave them with? 23:40 Yeah I've got one and this is really this is an aha moment that folks have when they join us if I could like shout this from the rooftop I would. 23:50 It is as you are trying to get your product on retail store shelves you need to realize the real reason why a grocery buyer says yes to your product line and it's not because you're delicious it's not because you're sustainable it's not because you are a minority owned founder it's not because you're 24:11 locally it is none of those things all those things are icing on the cake but the real reason why buyers bring in products for their shelves is to help them meet their category goals so Kelly those category goals are 99% of the time related to financials so it's to increase revenue or increase margin 24:32 and so so often I see brands starting their wholesale pitches with you know like hey I'm Kelly and I make the most delicious granola right no when I was a grocery buyer and I would hear a founder start their pitch you know I roll my eyes in the back of my head and I would think like yeah Kelly you and 24:55 everybody else who pitch this right yeah so I really want founders to flip that right and talk about what your product does for that buyer that helps them meet their category goals and then yes of course like the taste and the deliciousness and the values align like sustainability like all of that keeps 25:17 consumers coming back again and again but ultimately that buyer has to trust that your product is going to help them have high sales in your category. 25:27 What a way to end the podcast. I think that was such a great takeaway and really impactful to help someone reshift. 25:38 I think that's also could be implemented for whatever type of brand you're building just looking from not perspective is a huge game changer so thank you so much for sharing that that's my pleasure. 25:50 I just wrote it down it will be in the show notes everyone don't worry. Allie where can people go you said foodbizwiz.com? 25:59 Yeah. Foodbizwiz.com and with is wiz no hn there so foodbizwiz.com and then I hang out on Instagram I'm at it's alley ball that's where I'm most active if anybody's listening and we're not connected yet please send me a DM I would love to follow you back and get to know your brand over there. 26:16 I love it and I highly recommend everyone following Allie she shares awesome content all the time and listen to her podcast it's one of the podcasts that I really do binge and I'll play it while I'm working and I always hear really great nuggets and great conversations so thank you again for coming 26:34 on this was definitely a goal of mine to have you on and I really appreciate your time and insight. Thanks for having me Kelly. 26:42 You're so welcome and I'll see everyone on the next episode.
