#101 Celebrating 10 Years of Growth: Family, Foodservice, and Forging your Own Path with Soom's Amy Zitelman

The Startup CPG Podcast

Making it to the 10 year mark as a food business is no small feat, and our friends at Soom Foods just passed their 10 year anniversary. Today we are joined by Soom’s CEO and co-founder, Amy Zitelman. Amy had just graduated from college when she and her sisters started Soom, and since then, her and her sister Jackie were on the Forbes 30 under 30 list, Soom has been featured by Forbes, Bon Appetit, and The New York Times, and they have grown into the trusted brand for tahini and tahini products. I met Amy at a Mental Health for Founders event that I hosted last year and was so impressed with her calm, steady wisdom, so I was so excited to share her insights with all of you in today’s conversation! Make sure to grab Soom products at your local Whole Foods and Sprouts and I’ve linked a great blog post in the show notes where Amy reflects further on 10 years at Soom.

Listen in today as Amy shares about:

• Starting Soom with her three sisters
• Why Soom focused on the foodservice channel for the first eight years and what it was like to get started and grow the restaurant channel within foodservice
• Launching nationally in Sprouts and Whole Foods in the past two years and how they prepared as a business
• The process of rebranding to prep for retail
• How Amy navigated having 3 children while growing Soom and her tips for growing a family and a startup at the same time
• What it’s look liked to grow Soom from a financial standpoint from a story that almost bankrupted the business to what it was like to raise outside funds for the first time in 2021
• How Soom has used EOS, or the Entrepreneurial Operating System to scale their team and build an accountability chart
• Amy’s tips for staying grounded amidst everything
• And more!

This episode was sponsored by Graphite Financial. Go to graphitefinancial.com/cpg
This episode was sponsored by Kickfurther. Go to https://www.kickfurther.com/startupcpg

Episode Links:

• Soom website & IG @soomfoods
• Amy’s LinkedIn
• 10 Years of Soom blog post
• Entrepreneurial Operating System, Traction book
• Brands mentioned: Pulp & Wire, Zahav Restaurant

Graphite Financial Links

• Graphite Financial website
• Download a free financial model template, chart of accounts template, and more here
• Listen to our episode with Graphite founder, Paul Bianco, episode #96 here.

Kickfurther Links:

• Kickfurther website
• See how much inventory funding you qualify here

Show Links:

• Join the Startup CPG Slack community (14K+ members and growing!)
• Follow @startupcpg
• Visit host Jessi Freitag's Linkedin or website
• Questions or comments about the episode? Email Jessi at [e-mail]
• Episode music by Super Fantastics