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Scaling Your Food Brand Through Co-Packing with Sage’s Ashley Sutterfield
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To scale or not to scale. To grow, but how far? What's the right choice for your brand?
Many brands choose co-packing as the next best step for increasing production to meet market demand. But choosing a co-packer can be a nerve-wracking process. Handing over your recipes to someone else feels like you are relinquishing control over your business. So it’s not surprising that many food brands delay the decision until it’s almost too late. Many times, the rush to increase your production in a hurry causes unsatisfactory results.
In this episode, Ashley Sutterfield joins me and talks about how co-packing helps businesses scale their production and how you can determine if it’s the right move for your business. Her team at Sage helps calm the chaos surrounding brand growth by crafting specific solutions for each food business as she guides them through a new, and often confusing, aspect of the food industry.
One takeaway you shouldn’t miss from this episode: not every brand follows the same path for growth, and that is okay!
Virginia Foodie Essentials:
- We need to change how food gets to us from the ground to our families. - Georgiana Dearing
- When companies first come to us, they think that co-packing is the solution. And that's simply because that's what the industry talks about. We want companies to know that they have other options. - Ashley Sutterfield
- I was seeing this very large frustration for entrepreneurs around co-packing. And I want to help ease the lives and make things simpler for food entrepreneurs. So that's really where I wanted to begin focusing. - Ashley Sutterfield
- Brands in their first few years are in a period of growth that is a very push-me/pull-you situation. It’s centered around their capacity for supply and demand. It can be nerve-wracking for a brand – you need more sales to grow your business, but you also need to have the production capacity to support those new sales. - Georgiana Dearing
Key Points From This Episode:
- Choosing a co-packer can be a nerve-wracking process
- Brands don't know what they don't know about working with co-packers
- Co-packing is not the only option
- Co-packing is great but may not be the right move for your food brand
- Many brands decide to increase their own manufacturing capacity and often end up co-packing for other small brands in their region.
- Working with a co-packing coach or consultant helps you understand the next steps to take
- Sage's services start with an 8-week Coaching for Clarity program that helps brands assess their real needs for expansion
- Coaching isn't a lifetime commitment — you may get what you need in a few weeks or a few months
More About the Guest:
Ashley Sutterfield is the CEO and Owner of Sage, an empathy-based food production coaching and consultancy firm that helps food brands understand their options so they can get the answers they need to feel empowered to act. Sage works with primarily female-owned companies across the food and beverage industry that are starting a new phase of growth in their business.
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