If you are a business owner with a small food or beverage company looking to take it to another level, this article should be of particular interest to you. Your natural inclination might be to get venture capital or private collateral to invest in your growth, but that might not be the best route for you to take. We’ve created a cross M&A model made to bring the appropriate capital resources for you entrepreneurs. It allows the entrepreneur to bring in smart money and also to maintain control.
We took the experiences of a beverage industry veteran, a food industry veteran and an investment banker and crafted a model that both large industry players and the tiny companies are embracing. I recently connected with two old college mates from the Wharton Business School. We are in what we prefer to call, the early autumn of our careers after pursuing at first quite different paths.
- A Management Agreement,
- Investing in the future
- Pragmatically, though, there are only three ways of estimating the collateral risk premiums
- Reporting by the third party institution should at a minimum be monthly
- Corporate debentures
- Provide recommendations on how the task can maximize local rental income
John Blackington is a partner in Growth Partners, a talking to firm that advises drink and food companies in all respects of product introduction and market development. You might say that it has been his life’s work with his initial introduction to the industry as a Coke Route driver during his college summer breaks. After graduation, Coke employed John as a management trainee in the marketing and sales self-discipline.
John grew his career at Coke and over another 25 years kept various positions in sales, marketing, and business development. John’s entrepreneurial heart prevailed and he left Coke to consult with early stage food and beverage companies on new product introductions and tactical partnerships. Steve Hasselbeck is currently a food industry consultant after spending 27 years with the various companies which were rolled up into ConAgra.
His experience is at controlling products and channels. Steve is familiar with every functional area within a huge food company almost. He has seen the introduction and the failed introduction of many food industry products. John’s experience at Coke and Steve’s experience at ConAgra led them to the final outcome that new product introductions were most efficiently and cost effectively the purview of the smaller, nimble, low overhead company rather than the food and beverage giants.
Dave Kauppi is currently the president of MidMarket Capital, a M&A company specializing in smaller technology based companies. Dave got the hi-tech bug early in his business life and pursued a career in high tech sales and marketing. Dave maintained or sold in computer services, hardware, software, datacom, computer leasing and of course, a Dot Com.
After several experiences of rapid accent followed by a far more rapid good as systems and markets transformed, Dave decided to go after an investment banking practice to help technology companies. Dave, John, and Steve stayed in touch through the years and would share business ideas. In a recent discussion, John was describing the dynamics he saw with new product introductions in the meals and beverage industry. He observed that most of the blockbuster products were the result of an entrepreneurial effort from an early on stage company bootstrapping its growth in an exceedingly cost conscious lean environment.
The big companies, with almost all their seeming advantages experienced a high failure rate in new product introductions and the deficits caused by this art of taking the fickle consumer were considerable. When we contacted Steve, he confirmed that this was also his experience. Don’t get us wrong. There have been hundreds of failures from the start-ups as well.
For every Hansen Natural or Red Bull, there are literally a huge selection of companies that either fire out or never reach a crucial mass beyond a loyal local market. As the dynamics were discussed by us of the market, we were drawn to a merger and acquisition model commonly found in the technology industry that people felt may be applied to the meals and beverage industry. Cisco Systems, the large networking company, is a serial acquirer of companies.
They execute a boat load of R&D and organic product development. They acknowledge, however, that they cannot possibly capture all the new developments in this quickly changing field through internal development alone. Cisco seeks out investments in promising, small, technology companies and this approach has been a key element in their market dominance. They bring what we make reference to as smart money to the high tech entrepreneur.