Chad T. Vincent

Background

Sartori entered the all natural, gourmet specialty spreads and dips business in 2010 with the purchase of Ciolo Foods near Boulder Colorado.  Ciolo sold hand made gourmet flavored tapenades, spreads and dips primarily to Whole Foods.  Sartori then purchased Blue Moose of Boulder, a small artisanal hummus and salsa producer. The combined organization was a few $million in revenue, a few administrative folks taking orders, orchestrating the ingredient purchasing and scheduling and a dozen associates who made and packaged the product in a small manufacturing area. Profits were non existent.

Small Company, great products

With virtually no systems or processes in place, it was truly a mom and pop type operation.  Basil was flown in from Hawaii and one of the team members drove to the Denver airport to pick it up to produce the Basil Pesto.  Red peppers were sliced by hand and roasted in the oven in the corner for the roasted red pepper hummus.  The products were hand made, ground and mixed using small Hobart mixers, with recipes often done by rote memory.  Then hand-packaged with ice cream scoops, sealed and again labeled and packed by hand.

With over 40 skus, and hundreds of ingredients it was a logistical and production nightmare, and we struggled to maintain shelf life of at 30 days with no artificial ingredients of any type.  Margins were thin, but the product was fantastic.

Actions

I was asked to step in as the business leader in late 2011.  Commuting to Denver from Wisconsin a few times a month, we begun laying out the roadmap.  That this was a different type assignment was immediately evident.  We did a quick dive into the business and it was clear that marketing and sales could not turn this one around. Yet. The trick would be in holding distribution while we fixed the operational and quality issues. This would bean operations and quality focused turnaround for the near term.

First, we would need to find a well rounded plant manager, with drive, attention to detail and great interpersonal skills.  It took a while to find and attract such a person to a 12 person company.  We tapped the know how of the Sartori Quality Team, and forged ahead to make Blue Moose an SQF level 3 (top quality rating for food manufacturers) facility.  We also needed to reduce standard costs, simplify the operation by reducing skus, and put much-needed processes in place.  This takes time, especially when you have very few people.

The final step before engaging the sales and marketing / growth elements was to figure out a way to get to 90+ days of shelf life without preservatives or artificial ingredients.  For this, the credit goes to Bert Sartori.  Jim's son came into Blue Moose to be the GM and quickly drove down the HPP (high pressure pasteurization) path.  it required a LOT of work, product reformulations and endless testing and retesting.  In the end, Blue Moose was able to get a great product produced that consistently achieved the targeted shelf life.

Bert was then able to confidently turn on the sales side, and drove business with major accounts now outside of the Colorado market area.  The quality and subsequent growth put us in a position to sell a majority of the company to an investor interested in placing substantial capital into the business to expand it beyond a regional player.

Learning

Growth is not always the first goal.  There needs to be a strong base in place operationally to be able to sustain the growth, and this can take time and patience.  Maintaining sales (v. being in growth mode) is often more difficult than aggressively selling - it is not motivating for the organization nor sales team to be treading water.  It is also imperative that sales never stop selling... keeping the relationships going, planting seeds for the future and so on so that when you are ready to drive the growth, the pieces are in place.

Prioritization and focus is vital.  When Bert came in, our main communication surrounded prioritization.  The to-do list was pages long.  With only a few folks to do the work, tough choices had to be made.  Every day.  There were projects on the list that were clear cost savers, money laying on the floor to be picked up.  But by diverting time to those meant less time available for the critical few that would make or break us.  I often go back to Patrick Lencioni's book The Advantage.  Getting a grip on 'What is Most Important Right Now'.  Getting that element identified, and placed out front and center... and a laser focus on fixing it can create a much needed sense of clarity, and helps us avoid our desire to chase a myriad of other projects.  At Blue Moose, IT was quality/shelf life.  Once that was fixed, the fun began.

Team and culture