Finding the right resources is a critical factor for our business growth. As a small retailer or brand, having the right distributor can help us move forward. In today’s episode, Karl Watson, the Chief Revenue Officer of Pod Foods, sits with Elliot Begoun and talks about how Pod Foods Distribution Platform is dedicated to improving as they grow alongside their brands and retailers. As an emerging brand, we want your product to get on the shelf and sell it as fast as possible, and with Pod Foods, we can make it happen. Set your brand to success by tuning in to this conversation with Elliot and Karl!

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Listen to the podcast here

Pod Foods: Changing The Future Of Distribution With Karl Watson

I am excited because we’re going to talk a little bit about the future of distribution. Many of you know that I don’t steer away from the challenges that we face in the industry with the distribution. Much of it is the cause of our making. The model is broken, especially for early brands. We’re going to talk with Pod Foods and Karl about what they’re doing to change that but before I turn it over to Karl to introduce himself and introduce Pod, I’m doing two commercials of late. I hate the fact that they feel that way but they’re hugely important things to get out there.

The first is we’ve got to change the way we’re funding early-stage brands. Our industry gives our entrepreneurs one path for funding. That’s to jump on the venture bandwagon and hopefully be the next grand slam or home run. The reality is that the vast majority of brands don’t have that grand slam potential but they can grind out a lot of good singles and doubles.

Those singles and doubles if done correctly, and if a fund is built around monetizing, can show a great return to its investors while also supporting these brands and bridging them to the point where they have optionality. It’s the choice of either going the venture route or potentially raising capital in other forms, including even as boring as regular commercial banking.

TIG Venture Community is a new take on bringing capital to these brands. It’s a community approach. What we’re doing is earmarking dollars to the brands in our community to bridge them to that point of optionality, building a fund based on singles and doubles and building a fund that is bringing innovative facilities in terms of investment, subordinated debt, debt and equity blends, and all kinds of things specifically geared towards building brands and that moment of having a choice in their future.

If you’re interested in being an investor in our fund, we are trying to bring in investors from our industry or the people who know this and do it every day, reach out. We’re happy to have a conversation with you. The other thing that I’m very proud of, and I’m proud of our team and Jenny for her leadership here, is our TIG Collective. The reality in our business is this. As unfortunate as it is to admit it, our boardrooms look way too much like me, middle-aged White dudes.

The future of our industry is going to be purely dependent on the fact that we have diversity in our boardrooms, not just diversity of gender, color, and persuasion but also diversity of lived experience and thought. It’s also important that entrepreneurs learn early how to extract the most value from those who can come around to advise them and share wisdom.

It’s much easier to stand on other shoulders to reach new heights than to try to do all the climbing yourself. We created the TIG Collective, an opportunity where entrepreneurs can come in and sign advisory agreements with the collective. The collective has 40 advisors who are ready to help, jump in, and support. All of the advisor shares go into the collective. The advisors all share the aggregate upside. Everybody is learning together.

We’re learning out loud things like governance, fiduciary responsibility, M&A activities, fundraising, how to coach, how to be coached, and all of those things. If you’re interested, reach out to any of us here at TIG. We will be happy to share more about it. I’m done with my commercials, Karl. Thanks. I hope that was a good nap for you. Let’s dig in. Let’s talk about Pod Foods and your role. Why don’t you take a minute to introduce yourself and Pod to those reading?

Thanks, Elliot. I’m Karl Watson. I’m the Chief Revenue Officer of Pod Foods. What that means is I’m driving sales as much as possible. I oversee our growth sales and success teams. Within those teams, I have people that are working with vendors and then working with retailers all day, onboarding new vendors and new retailers, managing them, and helping those relationships grow.

Tell everyone a little bit about Pod. How is Pod Foods different from UNFI or KeHE? Let’s start with the easy question.

We started seeing our founders create the idea of Pod Foods years ago. It was created to be a different supply chain solution and have a different nationwide distribution option for small and emerging brands. What makes us different than our other national competitions is our model is extremely transparent. We operate differently. We’re not purchasing a product and marking it up. You can look at it more as a direct-to-retailer for the brand rather than having a middleman.

We’re still in business to make money but our service fee is how we charge. We have service fees and storage fees. That’s it. When a brand is trying to make a decision on what distribution company they want to use, we have the most transparent option where they know exactly what they’re going to end up making at the end of the day.

Tell those reading how it works. UNFI and KeHE are pretty straightforward. You sell them at a wholesale price. They pay you some ridiculous percentage below that wholesale price when all is said and done and so forth. If I’m a brand engaging in Pod Foods, let’s say I’m doing business. I’ve got retailers in Northern California. I’ve got Nugget, Mollie, and a few others ready to do business with me. I come knocking and I say, “Karl, I would like to explore putting this product through you. What does that look like?” Talk to me a bit about how that transactional flow goes.

First things first, we spend one-on-one time with our brands. The first step of the process is that they’re meeting with our vendor sales team. We’re making sure that they are retail-ready. That’s the first component. Some of these brands may get accepted into Erewhon, Central Market, Nugget, or Mollie but then the first thing is are they ready? Are they going to be successful? We look at a lot of different factors there, making sure that we’re setting them up for success.

From there, we’re helping them. We have a new pricing calculator on our website that brands can easily go through and look at how they’re going to be priced and what they’re going to net with us versus UNFI or KeHE. They’re going through and figuring out, “How am I going to price this product to sell to the retailer?” They get to decide that instead of the distributor. It gives them a lot more control over what their price is going to end up being on the shelf. They get to manage their promotions.

The process is pretty simple. A brand can onboard with us in a matter of days. That’s one of our biggest wins. Both brands and retailers come to us for Speed to Shelf. It would take a minimum of twelve weeks with some of our competition and sometimes over six months to get a brand into the warehouse set up and ready and get it into the retailer. We have done it as fast as ten days before. That’s a big reason that brands and retailers want to work with us. If you’re an emerging brand and you worked with a co-manufacturer and you have a bunch of products, you want to try to get it on the shelf, get it sold as fast as possible, and not wait around.

The service fee includes everything all the way to the door of the retailer.

The service fee includes everything. There are different components that we’re doing that we’re not looking at and saying, “We’re going to monetize this and charge you for each step along the way.” All of the coaching and consulting that goes into the brands as we’re onboarding are included. A lot of times, we’re acting as a broker because we’re scaling a company. When we see great brands that can do well in our retailers, then we’re going, pitching, and trying to get those brands in as well. We’re not charging an additional brokerage fee.

It’s everything outside of storage fees. It makes it easy and transparent for them to price their product to the retailer and to know how much they’re going to get. If you launched with Sprouts, for example, one of our newest retailers, there are a lot of launch costs and setup fees that go into that with our competition. With us, it’s much more straightforward. They know what they’re going to net.

How do the mechanics work? Do you own your warehouses? Do you contract? Share whatever you can share. How does the actual physical movement of goods take place?

You can look at us as a supply chain marketplace or a place for brands to be discovered and a place for retailers to be able to purchase the product and get it on the shelf. We have the supply chain or the logistics network built-in on the backend. What we do is we partner with national and regional logistics partners for warehousing and transportation but when it comes to the retailer, they’re working with our model that’s called Pod Express. The retailer is going to place a PO as they would normally, whether it’s through EDI, through our platform, through sending us an email, or how they get it done. They’re going to receive a consolidated delivery to their backdoor like any other distributor.

You offer the retailer terms. If you were to be talking to a retailer, what does Pod do for them that the big UNFI, KeHE, and the others can’t?

We touched on Speed to Shelf already. A lot of times, when we’re talking with retailers to keep it high-level and simple, they’re either looking at us to solve a problem because it’s not just the challenges that came with the pandemic that impacted the supply chain. We’re getting out with retailers that have 5,000-plus locations nationwide. They’re telling us, “The supply chain is not the same.”

One example is they’re looking at how can we solve a problem, and because we’re a lot more flexible, we’re able to solve those problems. The other is that they want to innovate. They realize how crucial that is, whether they’re a more conventional retailer or not. Everybody is seeing the trend and the changes that are happening where they need to innovate, and they can’t have Frito-Lay and Pepsi on the shelf anymore and be able to reach as many consumers as possible. We’re either solving a problem or helping them innovate.

What do you see as the biggest challenge for Pod in terms of doing this? A lot of these distributors have primary agreements. They’re big. It’s difficult. Retailers aren’t notorious for being particularly innovative. I’m sure all of the supply chain disruptions have opened the door a bit more for you all but what are the challenges that you’re facing?

You hit it on the head. It’s the speed at which we can get the retailers to move. I can’t think of any sales calls that I’ve been on with a retailer where they don’t see the need. They see the need but then from there, it’s like, “How fast can we get a retailer that moves slowly and has this particular planogram and reset schedule in a set way in how they operate to make the change faster?”

That’s the biggest challenge but when we talk to brands, they see the need right away. A lot of times, it’s about the right timing on the retailer side. With all the initiatives that they have going on internally, our job is to help them see that they can’t afford to wait to innovate because if they keep waiting and pushing it off, eventually they’re going to be behind the times. It will be too late.

One of the biggest challenges in this space is that retailers want innovation because consumers want innovation but the industry both from the retailer perspective and from the more traditional distribution models wasn’t built for innovation. It was built for higher-velocity and pretty consistent demand-type items. Most innovation is being driven by younger companies. Younger companies are notoriously understaffed and undercapitalized. Oftentimes as they go to expand into new retailers or new opportunities, they’re already out over their skis.

We talk a lot about this with our retailer partners around cost. Our comment is very frequently that while cost is important, it’s cash that’s important. One of the biggest challenges to saying yes to Sprouts, Whole Foods, or even a conventional grocer, going back to staying in that natural and specialty channel, is the traditional model. By the time you’re on the shelf selling, it’s going to be months of paying to have the inventory run and stored, selling it to the distributor, and not getting paid for some foreseeable significant point of time.

Much of that will be coming back as deductions for free fills and all of that. It’s being somewhat hamstrung because all that cash is not at your disposal to leverage driving trial and discovery on the shelf. A lot of them will then fail. Those brands can’t afford to fail. Retailers have 30 other brands ready to go and plug in but they don’t want them to fail either. They want to make good choices. They want brands to succeed. What role does Pod Foods play in reducing some of that burden?

I could talk about this for a long time but the first thing is when we’re onboarding brands, it’s that coaching and consulting that’s happening. We’re getting an understanding. Sometimes if you’re a business owner and you’re in sales, you get an opportunity with Sprouts or Whole Foods. You want to say immediately without thinking, “Am I prepped and ready for that?” A part of what we’re doing is from a high level our model. The fact that we can get the product on the shelf faster and get it sold faster is going to help them to recoup that cash faster.

The second piece would be how we’re charging. They’re going to know how much cash they’re getting back versus the example that everybody hears about. We did a case study with a financial services firm. All they do is manage deductions on behalf of their brands for UNFI and KeHE. They’re looking at every single line item on every single invoice. We hired them and said, “Here’s our model. Take it. Let’s do a comparison. If a brand were to launch with us versus our competition, what are they going to net? What are the average deductions going to be? What does that all flush out to?”

From a launch standpoint, you’re talking about how we go and produce a lot of products. We need to go and get it sold so that we can get the cashflow running again. When you don’t know how long it’s going to take for you to get paid, and then you don’t know how much you’re going to net at the end of the day, as a business owner myself, that feels extremely risky.

In that case study, the most extreme example was when a brand launched and then received its check on that launch. Let’s use an example. They sold $50,000 worth of products. The first check deductions in this case study were as high as 86%. In that example, you’re expecting to get most of that $50,000 of sales back at least but let’s say you only get a $7,000 check. I don’t know too many businesses that can operate for very long when there’s that much that’s going to be missing from their cashflow.

The transparency gives them a clear picture. If they know what the retailers are committed to, and they have done their job in terms of projections, then they’re going to be able to know based on sales velocity how much they’re going to start making and when because of our model. The third piece is Pod Capital. In that example, are they ready for that nationwide or 300 or 400-location retailer? A lot of times, those retailers want to test the brands first.

If we look at the brand and say, “They don’t have the inventory and the cash to be able to keep up with this consistently,” then we won’t recommend the brand to the retailer but let’s say they do a test, and Sprouts, Whole Foods, or whoever wants to bring that brand into all stores, then we have the ability to provide the capital and the resources to help them be able to produce the product and be consistent. As everybody knows, getting on the shelf is hard enough. You’ve got to be able to stay there. A big part of that is that you have the inventory and that you’re not constantly out of stock.

As I understand too, one of the things with the way your structure is set up is that it gives more flexibility to the brand to manage that inventory, how much of it they put in, and when they put it in. They have a little more control over that.

We make inventory requests but at the end of the day, they need to be the ones that manage their inventory to the extent that they can keep it on the shelf. We have a team, data, and everything behind it that supports making those decisions. They get to control that inventory and decide where it’s sold.

Let’s go back to basics because I don’t think we did a good job about what markets are you in. What geography do you cover? What chains do you cover? Those brands can understand. Start with that question.

When I started years ago, we didn’t have many key accounts at the time. At the time, a key account for us was Erewhon, Central Market, and these regional natural specialty chains. 2021 was about getting into all of those types of regional chains in the major markets. In 2022, we’re national. It’s certainly volume-dependent but we can deliver anywhere in the country. For example, we launched with Sprouts in June 2022 in 130 stores. We’re going to be delivering to all 385.

It’s because of our network and how we’re structured from a logistics standpoint. When the volume is there, the retailer says yes, and we’ve got the brands, we can go and deliver anywhere within a matter of weeks. From a chain standpoint, 2021 was getting into all of the great key independence that brands want to be in all those regional natural specialty players. 2022 has been creating a national network. We’re now vendors with Sprouts, 7-Eleven, and Publix. That’s continuing to grow.

With Sprouts, are you doing their innovation set? Are you doing a complete store? Are you doing all three temperature zones? Let’s talk a little bit about that too.

From a temperature zone standpoint, in most of our markets that we have been in for a few years now, we can do all temperature zones. How we’re looking at it now is we’re growing into new markets and new regions. We got off a call with a retailer in the South Midwest. It’s a brand new market that we would enter. Most of the time, we can launch ambient or dry-only and then grow the refrigerated and frozen business as we go. In most markets, we’re doing all three temperature zones but as we’re growing, it’s looking at doing dry first and getting the volume built up. Volume allows for more frequent deliveries. We get to tack on those additional categories.

If I’m an entrepreneur, I have a brand, and I’m starting to break into retail or new geography, or I’m working with Sprouts, when do I know I’m ready for Pod? What’s that decision? Do I come to you when I already have commitments from retailers? How do I know if there are retailers that you serve? Is it better to have a conversation with you as I start the process and have you direct me and say, “Go to these retailers. That would be a good place to start.”

Simply, if you’re a brand and you’re in this space, reach out, go to Pod Foods, and book a call with our team because we have two models. There’s Pod Direct and Pod Express. I’ll give you the definition that we look at for Pod Express. A lot of retailers do want to use Pod Direct even if they would prefer to have consolidated deliveries at the backdoor. A lot of retailers still go direct but they prefer to use Pod Direct because then it’s a Pod Foods invoice and claim. Everything is streamlined.

They can go through and order 50 different SKUs from different vendors in one order.

Pod Direct is more of the drop ship model.

You will parse it out but the retailer can go onto the Pod Direct platform and place their orders. They won’t get a consolidated shipment. They will start getting deliveries to their store from each independent manufacturer but in terms of ordering, invoicing, payables, terms, and all of that, it’s centralized.

For a brand that isn’t in retail yet or they don’t have any key accounts, that’s a great place to start because it’s going to get them visibility.

That puts you in competition with others. How many retailers do you have on Pod Direct roughly?

With Pod Direct, any retailer that’s on our platform could utilize Pod Direct. It’s mostly the independent and the smaller regional chains that utilize that. The Sprouts and the Publixs of the world are not going to go for Pod Direct but it’s still a great avenue for brands to get on board with us because it’s going to be a coaching call in a sense. If they aren’t ready, then they’re going to figure out what they need to do to be ready. From a Pod Express standpoint, that’s where we’re bringing their product into our warehouse and doing those consolidated deliveries.

The definition there is we need one account that we determine as a key account. That’s typically an account with ten-plus doors in one particular region. Once they are onboarded even if they’re on our platform as Pod Direct when we identify a great up-and-coming brand, then it’s not like, “Do the buyers go and discover the brand on the platform?” Our retail success team is going to be sharing those brands with their key accounts and retailers that try to sell them as well.

When a brand engages with the Express model and wants to put products in the warehouse, are they responsible for shipping to the warehouse?

Yes, but we also do have a program. It’s still in the early stages but we can manage the shipping for the brand as well. As we continue to grow, that will likely be a managed service that we provide but most of the time, the brand is responsible for getting the product to the warehouse.

I’m going to change directions slightly if I may. When you become the CRO of a business, you have to believe in it because you’re signing up with confidence that you can make it rain and bring the revenue. What is it about Pod Foods that gave you that belief? When you think about yourself, what makes you so confident and comfortable? You’re feeling like, “This was the right horse to hitch my wagon to.”

First, I was sold on our founders from day one, the culture, and the company that they had already built. What they had already built looks completely different but the same culture is still ingrained. That was number one for me. You have to like the people that you work with. We’re on the radar more with competitors, investors, brands, and people in the industry.

It’s apparent but prior to all of that visibility, it was very clear how needed it was in the industry. The more I talked with brands and retailers, it was almost something that I couldn’t walk away from because I saw how critical it is to the industry in general. There’s a feel-good story to being able to help small brands. It’s exciting to be a disruptor and to have something truly different and unique.

What do you feel like you have left to improve upon? We all have the aspects of our business that we know we need to get better at. If you’re giving yourself an honest evaluation, there are things that you aspire to or hope that as a business or a company you get better at doing. What would those be?

There’s so much coming in the future that we need to continue to build the foundation of this business first to make the biggest impact that we want to make. I’m being vague there but there’s a lot more that we will bring to the table. The improvement is we have to get to the place where brands don’t have to pick and choose or work with multiple distributors. They truly can go from launching seed stage to growing into a big successful nationwide brand and only need to use Pod Foods.

When I look at what my job is and what I need to solve, it’s that we need to get the retail footprint dialed in as fast as possible because that’s what’s going to make the biggest impact for the brands. We don’t work with Whole Foods on a national scale. If a brand loves our model and they’re reaping all the benefits from it, similar to how you’re talking in your TIG Venture commercial earlier, they’ve got to have the right resources. If they’re using Pod as a tool but then they have to go use one of our competitors because we’re not in that retailer yet, that’s going to impact their growth.

To a degree, there’s a symbiotic relationship between Pod Foods, KeHE, and UNFI because your model is better built for the earlier-stage, lower-velocity, and innovative items that are out there that consumers want and retailers need. Therefore, they need to be there but they can bog down the big broadliners who have thousands upon thousands of SKUs and need the preponderance of deterrence. There’s a symbiotic relationship there. There’s probably very little overlap between what you both carry.

One of the things that I would imagine that you’re trying to solve is the fact that a brand that starts with Pod and starts having real success often gets pulled into UNFI and KeHE. In a way, you’re punished for that success. You’ve been there. You’ve built with them. Suddenly, they hit that tipping point where they are in enough stores. The density per distribution center would be high enough that the velocity of the case movement through the warehouse makes sense.

Suddenly, Whole Foods wants to take them global and put them through UNFI. Even Sprouts says, “This makes sense to go through KeHE.” What does that mean for you? How do you see that role? Is that okay that some of your brands will have portions of their business pulled away and that you will continue to serve that independence? What’s the thinking there?

The short answer is it’s okay now. It’s a part of the growth and a part of where we’re at in this process. In the future, as we have that retailer footprint, then there will be less reason for the brands to need to go and work with our competition. It will be a natural progression. The more retailers that we can support, then we will be having more brands that push back and say, “I don’t want to do the transition.”

From a pricing standpoint, both for the retailer and the brand, we’re competitive all day long. We can compete with the cost plus eight or even lower than that at times with our typical service fees when you factor in all the deductions and all the other fees that our competition is charging. It’s okay for the stage that we’re at. As we grow, we will be looking to capitalize on keeping those brands more.

I’m switching gears again and taking the pressure off you to speak for Pod Foods. I’m going to put the pressure on you slightly differently. You in your particular role and in general Pod Foods have a front-row seat to a lot of what these early-stage entrepreneurs and brands are trying to do and are doing. If you could stand in front of them and say, “If you could understand and do these things better or differently, you would save us, you, and the retailer so much pain and suffering,” what are some of those things? What are some of those learnings you would love to have entrepreneurs better understand?

This is coming from a sales mindset but that’s number one. It’s critical for all of these founders and brands. We’ve got to do the work to get them retail-ready. They’ve got to put that work in but then it’s a massive execution. Often from a sales standpoint in terms of activity, I see the difference between the brands that hustle, that are persistent, that are not necessarily not taking no for an answer, and that aren’t taking a backseat to their sales and expecting that if they make the right hires or they hire a broker, then they’re going to take off.

The number one thing is looking at it. I would challenge any founder and say, “Are you willing to do what it takes to make the sales happen? If you’re committed to that, and you take massive action, then you’re likely going to figure out how to get in the doors and be successful but.” Often it’s easy when you’re an entrepreneur and you’re wearing multiple hats to get distracted and to think that other things that you shouldn’t be spending your time on are going to move the needle. At the end of the day, it’s going to get out there and sell. Sell your butt off and don’t stop until you hit your goals.

That’s great advice. Sometimes I see entrepreneurs and the responsibility of selling to brokers and others. Brokers play a role. It’s an important role but nobody is going to replace a founder’s passion for selling their brands. Retailers want to have a conversation with the person who’s standing behind the product. That’s the reality. It’s taking some leadership there. What about from an operation standpoint? What are some of those head-scratching or, “Come on, guys. Get it together,” types of things that you see brands do in terms of trying to make life more difficult for themselves?

From an operation standpoint, it’s not asking all of the right questions. What you learn over time in working with different retailers is that they all operate differently. They all have their internal standard operating procedures on how you pitch them, when you pitch them, how to price products, how to manage promotions, and all those things.

What’s great is our success teams are putting together a playbook, “If you want to get into Bristol Farms, this is how you do it. For Erewhon and Central Market, go down the list.” From an op standpoint, if you do all the work to get in, make sure you ask as many detailed questions as you can. That way, you’re set up for success because the last thing you want is to get on the shelf and then not stay there.

What’s next for Pod Foods? Where are you? You were being somewhat cryptic in all the things coming down. What’s the evolution? What’s coming?

What’s exciting is that we’re no longer limited from a regional standpoint. It used to be like, “We’re in this region. This region is coming soon.” We’re not delivering everywhere at this point but we have the ability to. That’s exciting. It has been a huge improvement for brands that worked with us a couple of years ago or even in 2021 at some point. It’s an upgrade in our logistics network. It means better service and more consistency.

We were talking earlier and we said, “When are they ready for Pod Foods? When should they start the conversation with us?” The brands that are starting to work with us because of what’s in our retailer pipeline and what we’re going to be launching in Q4 and Q1 are going to start to get to this place where they can grow at the pace that Pod Foods is growing, which is exciting.

They will have the opportunity from what you’re talking about earlier. It’s the cashflow, the resources, and managing all of that. They will have the ability to have us help and support in getting them into all the retailers. They will be able to get into enough doors with us. Unless they go and get the significant capital to grow massive into Walmart and those types of accounts, then they’re going to be able to stay with us, which is exciting.

With an obvious margin for error, approximately how many doors or locations are you serving now?

It’s in the thousands now.

Everybody wants to get into Erewhon. Everyone runs to the same ones but are there areas or regions where you’re like, “If you want to start with us, maybe start with the retailers in this region. We’ve got bandwidth there. We’re trying to build it out.” If you could pick and direct people to start where it would be of mutual benefit and a little bit less of the running to the middle type of thing, are there any regions or areas in mind?

Everybody wants to run to Southern California and get with Erewhon and all the retailers that are there because that’s the trendiest spot to be but we’re having some exciting conversations with retailers that are not in the exciting areas on the coast or in the St Louis area with a retailer that has 100-plus locations. Where these brands can make a big impact that isn’t in the area of all of the trendy retailers that everybody knows about is trying to find the retailer that from the outside looks a little more conventional but that does have strong innovation initiatives internally.

It’s like Dierbergs, Schnucks, or something like that. They call your success team. They’re like, “We would like to work with you. We’re going to attack. Are there any retailers that you would recommend we try to sell to?” Will the success team give them those suggestions?

Because of how our teams are structured and how they will continue to be structured, we did have a little bit of a gap there. Call that out. We have our vendor success team. That’s who’s managing our vendors. Vendors want to grow. They’re going to their vendor success manager and saying, “How can I get into all of these accounts?”

Shortly here, we will be rolling out that playbook so that we can quickly and easily go through the list and say, “Based on all the information that we have from our retail success team, these are the accounts coming up based on what their review schedule is, how they make decisions, and the products that they already have on the shelf. These are the retailers that we’re going to recommend that we both attack and try to get you into.” We will have Version 3.0 coming out here soon.

What is fun about building a relationship from the perspective of working with you is that it’s entrepreneurial to entrepreneurial businesses. You’re simultaneously iterating and growing together. That’s fine. I look at where you were years ago to where you are now. It looks different. I’m not going to sit here and blow BS. You still have challenges. From an open and honest perspective, I still think the number one challenge is building more relationships with retailers and controlling more paths to the market but that will come with time. That’s not a deficiency. It’s in infancy still. The business is still young.

The reality is that if I’m a founder coming to work with Pod, I have to understand that Pod too is like me. What is working now and what they’re doing may be different tomorrow or the next day because we’re constantly trying to iterate to fit the open space and the need in the market. That’s both refreshing and important to stay viable. Here’s another question. When you look to categories and areas, are you seeing certain categories outperform in Pod than others? Do you see that there’s more interest in certain areas in your catalog or availability versus some?

Anybody can go to our catalog and see what’s there without even having an account. Beverage and snacks are the higher-performing categories but they’re not the only focus for us. A lot of times, that’s the easiest thing to get in the door at first. We get to focus on more of the center store and get into the aisles and get more of the other unique products that people are going to buy that may be slower movers.

To your point earlier, a lot of my job is different from years ago than it is now but a lot of my job has been talking with retailers and brands, hearing the problems that they have, and then figuring out how we bridge this gap. That’s something that we always encourage from a retailer or brand standpoint. If you have a problem or you’re trying to figure out how you can get a product from A to B or whatever it is, then have a conversation with us.

One thing we didn’t talk about was your background before this. What brought you to this?

I have a unique path to getting to where I am but it all makes sense to me. I got my undergrad in sales. I had a pretty fast track in terms of getting into some serious corporate sales early on with some great companies that were top-selling organizations. I got that experience for about ten years. Like any sane person, I quit my job right before my first son was born to help my wife launch her business. That led to me creating a sales consulting and training company.

From growing that business, wearing all the hats, and being in entrepreneur circles, I started to have friends asking me questions. Some of those friends said, “Can I pay you to help me with that?” That led to working with so many different kinds of businesses selling products, services, SaaS, smart fridges, personal styling services, and food distribution. What I did for a couple of years is work with a client after client to flush out what their end-to-end sales process needs to look like so that they can speed up their sales process and hit their goals.

Probably the number one thing that makes me successful in this role is that we’re constantly adapting because we hit goals and scale. We’ve got this whole other piece to figure out in terms of how we sell to retailers or how we sell brands. Somewhere along the way, I fell in love with food. I did a detour for a little bit and almost went to medical school. I have the passion. These are the types of products that I purchased and have been purchasing for a decade prior to being in this role. That’s where it all meshes together and makes sense.

I don’t know anybody that has a preordained clear and concise path to this. It takes the right amount of craziness and experimentation to land here. It has been a great conversation. I’m going to leave it to you to bring it home. If folks are interested in learning more and want to start working with Pod Foods, what’s the best next step? Is there anything else you would like to share?

Whether they’re a retailer or a brand, they can go to our website and book a sales call with our team. That’s the best place to get started. We’re excited to continue to grow this and be able to support brands more on the retail side too because we’re solving some pretty big needs from a supply chain standpoint for some big retailers now. It’s exciting to be out of the stage of just being able to service the smaller retailers.

There are some questions that I didn’t get to partly because I missed them. I was having too much fun talking to you. If we’ve got a couple of minutes, we will hit them quickly. One is coming here from Tanya. She says, “We have experienced a huge slowdown in buyer retail responses in regards to getting our brand on a shelf with being ‘understaffed’ as the top reason from retailers. Is Pod experiencing the slowdown as well? How do you manage this challenge?”

That’s a pretty common objection, especially with emerging brand teams within retailers. Those budgets are being cut. They’re small teams. In terms of how you manage that challenge, it goes back to what I mentioned earlier in my advice for the entrepreneur, which is if they’re experiencing a challenge, it doesn’t mean that everybody is. Keep picking up the phone, sending emails, or knocking on the doors until you find the ones that are ready to move. Figure out how you make a consistent follow-up to the ones that said, “I have to wait until September, October, or Q1.” That mean means they’re not ready. Go find others that are.

Here’s another question coming in from Shanti, “Do you disclose or share your retailer list or anything like that with brands so they know who to target? Is that something that they have to find out on their own?”

Once a brand is onboarded with us, it’s a part of the playbook that I was talking about earlier but we do have the doors list on our platform so that once they log into their dashboard, they can see all the doors. Once they start making sales, they will see, “Here’s how much I’m selling at each individual location.” All of our data is free. There are a lot of resources that they can use once they’re onboarded. We share the door list. From a key account standpoint here pretty soon, we will be sharing the playbook of how you get into those key accounts.

That’s perfect timing. We got those few questions in. Thank you, Karl, for joining. I appreciate it. I’m glad we finally pulled this off. This has been one of those shows long in the making between everyone’s schedules, illnesses, and so forth. We got it done. It will be well-received. I appreciate your time and what Pod Foods is doing in the market to disrupt things and create a path for innovative young brands to get to the shelf in a way that works for everybody. Thanks, everyone, for joining. We will see you next time.

 Important Links

• Pod Foods

• TIG Venture Community

• UNFI

• KeHE

• Nugget

• Mollie

• Erewhon

• Central Market

• Sprouts

• Whole Foods

• Bristol Farms

• Dierbergs

• Schnucks

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