SustainableWork

The world of artisan foods entrepreneurship is in its infancy. Innovation in foods and everything connected to it will increase omni-directionally, as Bucky Fuller said, for as far as I can see. This move toward local foods and regional food systems will make better, healthier foods available to increasing numbers of people at increasingly affordable prices.

I want to help make the Wisconsin Innovation Kitchen a platform for food innovators and entrepreneurs to take advantage of this emerging artisan foods marketplace.

One way we will launch this effort is through a program we're calling our Preparation Partnerships. In this process the Innovation Kitchen will prepare, process, package, store and distribute your food innovation for commercial sale.

I'm going to put the draft of this Preparation Partners plan into this blog post and then later move some of it forward as we see what works.

Our Preparation Partners will be food innovators - chefs, existing small food businesses, new food innovators, farmers, anyone who loves food. We will offer a partnership with the Innovation Kitchen to launch and grow artisan food businesses in a state-inspected, commercial kitchen.

Let's map out how this would work on one simple case.

Let's say you want to start or expand an artisan food enterprise.

As an example, let's say you wanted to start an food business around a soup or stew that celebrated a specific local food. [Editor's note: this is a very good idea.]

As a Preparation Partner you could have your recipe prepared and tested at the Innovation Kitchen in an artisan-batch, commercially relevant scale. If this works for all involved, we can help register your recipe and your new business with the state. Then, as a Preparation Partner, you can have your recipe prepared, packaged, and distributed for commercial sale on a contract basis through the Innovation Kitchen.

Here's an overview… The Preparation Partners program will be a platform you can utilize to launch your artisan food business without having to invest in an entire food processing facility and support networks on your own.

This Preparation Partner option will be the initial focus of the Wisconsin Innovation Kitchen. We see 3 key processes making up this program.

Process 1. Will it work? As your Preparation Partner, we want your food innovation to succeed. We will work with you to prepare your recipe in artisan-scale, commercially-relevant batches. This insures your recipe will meet your goals for taste, quality, packaging, etc. when it is prepared in larger volumes in a commercial kitchen. Think of it as a 'shakedown cruise' for your recipe.

Process 1 example: You have an amazing morel mushroom soup recipe. It works great in your home kitchen, and everybody loves it. You want to launch a small food business around this recipe. However, you need to learn a number of things about what happens when you scale your recipe up to small commercial batches. Will it meet your goals for quality? How much of the recipe ingredients will you supply? What ingredients will be purchased at what specifications and price? In short, what are the true costs of production for a small-scale commercial production run? This first process at the Innovation Kitchen is designed to answer those critical questions with you tasting and approving the results. This step also supplies critical documentation of real numbers and actual times required, not extrapolated results.

The idea is to make a small, smart investment in your emerging food enterprise to make sure the idea is scalable. Also important, this first Preparation Partner test run will give everyone involved a basis for pricing larger, commercial production runs if that is an option.

So, how is My Magnificent Morel Soup Mix doing? We rented time on the commercial dehydrator at the Wisconsin Innovation Kitchen and got a batch of our morels just right for a dry mix. We purchased some ingredients from local farms. We bought a few ingredients and our packaging through the Innovation Kitchen's Purchasing partner program. The recipe scaled up to a small-scale commercial size. All costs were documented.

This matched the targets in our business plans, and we decided to move forward and prepare for commercial sale.

Process 2. Signing In. Most food products sold commercially must have their recipes and process approved prior to sale. (A good thing for all of us!) There are exceptions, but if you're going to run an artisan foods enterprise you need to think of yourself as a professional and run your enterprise accordingly. That includes going through legal registrations and all professionally relevant trainings and certifications.

The Innovation Kitchen has the support in place to help legally register food products and processes in Wisconsin. We will also have access to full information for selling your food products outside of Wisconsin. Additionally, the Innovation Kitchen 'Signing In' process makes available business help finding information about appropriately registering new business entities.

Process 2 example: With the help of the Innovation Kitchen, we submitted our Morel Mushroom soup recipe and processing steps. We included all three of the sizes we were intending to produce. We were approved within a few weeks. During that time we also incorporated a new enterprise around our business plans and registered with the appropriate state and federal agencies. We also did this with resources available through the Wisconsin Innovation Kitchen.

Process 3. Launch services. Preparation Partners will have access to Wisconsin Innovation Kitchen marketing and sales networks, as well as storage and distribution networks.

Process 3 example: We test marketed our Magnificent Morel Mushroom Soup through the Innovation Kitchen marketing network and found the right mix of customers to start with. After processing our Magnificent Morel Mushroom Soup, the Innovation Kitchen stores our finished product. We send in orders for our soup, and the Innovation Kitchen ships them directly to our customers.

Wisconsin Innovation Kitchen Preparation Partners.

So, what's one of the easier and smarter ways to launch or grow an artisan food business? Outsource the testing, organization and food preparation to a state-inspected commercial kitchen that is set up to celebrate artisan foods.

All the difficult food regulation, management and execution steps will be done to code in a state-inspected commercial kitchen. You will have the opportunity to pre-test your recipe at a commercially relevant scale, document your costs, and market-test consumer demand.

Is this a guarantee of success? Of course not.

What the Wisconsin Innovation Kitchen represents is a valuable opportunity for food lovers and food entrepreneurs to experiment with new food innovations and product lines in an affordable, valuable setting. A goal of the Innovation Kitchen is to help develop new and existing artisan food enterprises that celebrate healthy foods and our grow our rural communities.

Our Preparation Partners program is one of the ways we can make that happen. Got a recipe you'd like to try?

Stay tuned. I will report back as this emerges.

Wisconsin Innovation Kitchen link

Photo is of Hyde's Mill in beautiful Iowa County, Wisconsin.

Labels: artisan food processing, bootstrapping, business plans, entrepreneurship, innovation, Outsourcing, platforms, slow startups, startups, Wisconsin Innovation Kitchen

I read a good blog by Pamela Slim called "Escape From Cubicle Nation".

Her subtitle is "How to go from corporate prisoner to thriving entrepreneur."

I find Ms. Slim's positions on entrepreneurship to be well reasoned and realistic. She accurately describes the step by step approach it takes to start new enterprises, which is a breath of fresh air amid the blowing winds of you-can-get-rich-quickly nonsense typical of most startup writing. She also has a really nice, personal writing style that makes her subjects easy to approach.

Ms. Slim posted a great piece this week (Aug. 28, '07) called, "It takes a village to raise a one-person business."

She opens with an idea that all of us working in entrepreneurship can identify with. "Some entrepreneurs have a hard time asking for help, preferring to do everything themselves, from computer software and hardware installation to billing to licking stamps."

Following that opening, Ms. Slim breaks out the key areas entrepreneurs need to think about when considering outsourcing solutions.

- When to use an outside resource
- Who to use
- What to use
- How to use

I especially liked the subset of info under 'Who to use', because it's an area that bugs me. Ms Slim herself has good credentials for advising startups. What I often see among clients and startup friends is the over-reliance of entrepreneurs on government support programs staffed by people with little or no relevant history or results as startup entrepreneurs

When looking for entrepreneurial advice, Ms. Slim recommends judging the provider by the following criteria:

-Expertise
-Experience
-Results
-Rapport

I recommend reading the full text of this specific post, and all of Pamela Slim's good writing over at "Escape From Cubicle Nation"

It takes a village to raise a one-person business, by Pamela Slim

Labels: entrepreneurship, Outsourcing, Pamela Slim, startups

The most recent issue of Barron’s (12/25/06) ran an interesting cover story called 'Sizzle Inc.'.

The Barron's writer, Johnathan R. Laing, interviewed the principals of the international research firm GaveKal. I’ve ordered the book. More in future posts.

The subtitle of the article is “For the US, developing the sizzle is now just as important as selling the steak. Shedding risk and stabilizing the economy by making products abroad.”

While this outsourcing article is directed at large businesses, their ideas about creating value are useful for start ups and emerging enterprises.

The GaveKal research shows that the spreading of the economic risks, as represented by outsourcing, is slowing the total amount of volatility we all feel. The suggestion is that macro and micro economic systems become better balanced, less volatile and more valuable as they become increasingly integrated

Those of us in economically better developed countries need to plan our enterprises carefully so as to be able to make the most appropriate contributions.

The Barron's/GaveKal piece talks about platform companies. These are organizations that are highly focused on their core competencies. Core competencies are not static placeholders used to fight off change. Unique core competencies are platforms for growing new solutions for your markets.

Here's what the article says about platform companies, "Platform companies require far less capital because they concentrate on product development and sales, leaving to parties abroad the heavy financial lifting entailed by manufacturing."

As a side note, I agree that manufacturing is the heaviest lifting at big global scales, but for small and emerging firms, the ability to uniquely and innovatively manufacture products is entirely viable. I’m watching many examples of this in my day job. The art and efficiency creative enterprises are able build into manufacturing can be a great core competency in the emerging world of smaller, more specialized production runs.

I think of great short run manufacturing capability as the ‘D’ in R&D, research and development. Great short run manufacturing is always adapting, always getting smarter, often out in front.

That said, the platform model in the article focuses on the three legs of a sustainable economic structure: R&D, design and sales/distribution. Then, they recommend, outsource the rest.

Outsourcing is a controversial term, but remember, for start ups and emerging enterprises, outsourcing doesn't need to be across oceans. Outsourcing for start ups can also be the folks just out your back door, or your next UPS/FedX visit.

The solutions you provide to real problems are your platform. You plug in the rest of the world as needed.

I put up a post about how well this worked for us (Fri., May 13, 2005 'Remote Partnering'). We outsourced out our back door, literally, and it worked very well for many years. We outsourced an expensive manufacturing step we didn’t feel we needed to invest in. We bought into excess vendor capacity. The vendor added to their base load, and everyone benefited, especially our customers.

I watched this platform model work successfully for more than 25 years in our first enterprise, Banner Graphics.

I define a platform company as an enterprise with a unique core competency for solving problems in their carefully identified target markets. A platform company executes repeatable solutions to real problems. A platform company has their business processes in place, not on paper.

A platform enterprise is designed to get smarter and more valuable over time, not necessarily bigger as measured by many of the typical metrics.

For entrepreneurs of any kind, I believe value emerges at the intersection of problem solving, sales, and execution.

You need to deploy these most productive assets skillfully. You have to know enough about your market to be able to approach it with authority and at the least possible cost initially. The platform concept offers this path.

Do what you do best and plug in the rest. If your solutions are valuable, other organizations will knit their platforms into yours.

The Barron's article was heavily macro economics oriented, focusing on China and mega supply chains. However, I've lived the start up side of this and the GaveKal ideas about platform enterprises are just as valuable for emerging enterprises, probably more so.

As you work on your new enterprise, don’t let yourself get caught in the common trap of trying to control all the variables.

It’s more helpful to think of your enterprise as a platform; a platform for solving problems, a platform for helping your markets, and most of all, a platform for continuously creating sustainable growth for your enterprise.

If you plan and execute well, your organization will be able to continuously create sustainable, valuable launches.

That friends, is why we call them platforms.

The Barron's article posted at Silicon Investor

The GaveKal site

Labels: Outsourcing, platforms

There is a great deal to like about Thomas Friedman's new book, The World Is Flat.

It's written as an historical perspective on the great forces moving societies and markets. It should also be looked at as a how-to primer on getting yourself ready to participate in the coming global economy. I highly recommend this book from the perspective of new and emerging enterprises.

Among the many quotes I've tagged for highlighting, one keeps popping to the front: "There may be a limit to the number of good factory jobs in the world, but there is no limit to the number of idea generated jobs in the world."

Friedman quotes Netscape cofounder Marc Andreesen on the subject: "If you believe human wants and needs are infinite, then there are infinite industries to be created, infinite businesses to be started, and infinite jobs to be done, and the only limiting factor is human imagination."

Andreesen continues later, "You should be afraid of free markets only if you believe that you will never need new medicines, new work flow software, new industries, new coffeehouses. Yes, it takes a leap of faith, based on economics, to say that there will be new things to do."

Thomas Friedman summarizes, "But there always have been new jobs to do, and there is no fundamental reason to believe the future will be different. Some 150 years ago, 90 percent of Americans worked in agriculture and related fields. Today it's only 3 or 4 percent. What if the government had decided to protect and subsidize all those agricultural jobs and not embrace industrialization and then computerization? Would America as a whole really be better off today? Hardly."

This post is NOT about unfettered trade with countries that are human rights thugs and environmental criminals. Our governments need to get better hold of that process, creating 21st century standards for social, environmental and production standards that meet the needs of all world citizens. Under this scenario, I firmly believe that millions of great new enterprises will arise worldwide, in both developed and developing countries.

This post is about you creating new enterprises. This post is about the valuable resource that is your imagination. You can do it. You’ll probably need to do it someday, if not for the economics of it, then for your own mental health.

There is no limit to the number of idea generated jobs that can be created. Don’t look at what’s been done. Look at what’s possible. Look at what needs fixing. Honor your own ideas and look to your future. Plan well and be ready to launch when your time comes.

I wish you good ideas.


Thomas Friedman’s web site. In 2005, The World Is Flat was given the first Financial Times and Goldman Sachs Business Book of the Year Award, and Friedman was named one of America's Best Leaders by U.S. News & World Report.

Labels: entrepreneurship, innovation, Outsourcing