Body Nutrition

All the other companies are posting about what an epic year 2021 was. I guess we live on different planets cause 2021 kinda sucked and 2022 looks it's going to suck too.

Inflation has been out of control. nationally we haven't seen anything like this in 30+ years of stability and since starting the biz 12 years ago I never saw raw material prices rise as much as 300% in a year, even when we had bird flu and mad cow disease that decimated the poultry and bovine supply in 2015 or so.

Some smarmy sales folks at a couple multinational vendors who we've been dealing with for 10+ years said they were going to stop selling to us because they needed to save allocations for giants like PepsiCo, etc. I needed to sniff out everyone up the power chain with phone campaigns that alternated angry yelling and sympathetic begging to restore some of these channels.

Distribution channels have seen immense consolidation with giant CPG brands consolidating power and shelf-space, squeezing most non-VC/PE backed small biz out of the retail game. On the online front, organic reach on social media platforms has all but died and ad costs are crazy. And the stuff that climbs the Reels feeds is just so dumb.

Training, retaining, and managing labor is never easy and the labor shortages & wage inflation this year have made things especially tough. In managing, you might think certain interpersonal conflicts among team members seem really trivial to you but to them they're very important and finding the balance of resources to address these is no small feat.

All indicators point to the same challenging trends escalating into 2022 and it would probably be helpful to remind ourselves of what Epictetus wrote 2000 years ago: “Demand not that things happen as you wish, but wish them to happen as they do, and you will go on well."

Welcome to 2021 Holiday Party with the Wolfpack Pt1

If you look closely enough you'll see representatives from Shipping, Production, QA, Sales, and Mechanical seated across a gigantic table.

Everyone voted to go to Cheddars for the scratch kitchen food. Unfortunately, I couldn't garner enough support for Nobu Miami this time. Maybe next time we'll get to see if it lives up to the hype or if Cheddars is superior? 🤷‍♂️

Ever been to Cheddars or Nobu? Did you like it?

Use code PRES2020 for 20% off this President's Day!