Ali Tercek

@seanjagermann @eatboldbar Very much aligned lean team is so important but you’ll start to see HUGE gains from having people bought in 100% as a FT employee (esp with equity) vs paying an agency similar $ to be one of many for them!

I’d love to build @eatboldbar into a $100M+ business with <5 employees. I think it’s totally possible. More today than ever. Lean. Scrappy…You just need to be creative as hell and get shit done.

@drewfallon12 COMPS plz

🚨M&A COMPS DATA GIVEAWAY🚨 I compiled a database of 200 M&A transaction in consumer goods from 2025 and created a comprehensive category-by-category PowerPoint breaking it down, along with expert perspectives on the M&A environment from leading investment banks and operators like: - Centerview Partners (leading consumer investment bank by total deal value) - Raymond James (leading consumer investment bank) - Amy Hass (Fmr. CFO Simple Mills, acq. for $795m) - Hudson Leogrande (Founder Comfrt, fastest growing apparel brand ever) - Darren Litt (Founder, Hiya, acq. for $260m) The ultimate guide to understanding the M&A landscape & valuing your business in today's consumer industry. ALL YOU HAVE TO DO TO GET IT is like and comment "COMPS" on this post, and I'll dm you the link to the presentation AND the underlying data sheet for the next 4 hours. Plus, If you want the comps data going all the way back to 2023 along with each brands investors, a valuation calculator for YOUR brand, and more - I'm sending out a way more comprehensive database in my newsletter this Friday. Sign up at the link pinned to my profile 😊

MAHA who

@ZachCPG took us too long to fully understand! would have saved lots of heartache / headache if we simply budgeted the 25% & whittled it down from there as we learned 😅

@Alitgator it can be eye opening. seen brands doing millions not totally aware of it.

real cost of promoting your brand at retail: If you run through the two big distributors, your "scan allowances", OIs (off-invoice) and MCBs (manufacturer charge backs) are only part of the shenanigans. there are processing fees layered on top. I’ll keep this general because every retailer/distributor has their own quirks and I don’t want this to get esoteric: distributors tack on processing fees based on a percentage of the promotion. think an 8% processing fee, sometimes capped, sometimes not. some fees are by warehouse: processing fees per warehouse the promoted product runs through. If you are in a national banner, that fee hits every warehouse your promoted product touches. when you model out account economics, all of these need to be built into a full year view. If you think you are running trade at 20%, you are probably running it closer to 25% with all these hidden fees in there. just assume a 5% buffer for unaccounted for bullshit. you, your sales team and your brokers need to know this. reminder: MCBs are based on book cost. That is the highest published price in the distributor’s book. It is not the price the retailer pays. So that 5% MCB is costing you more than you think. the industry is built to make this hard for young brands. you do not need to solve everything today. Add 5% to your trade spend forecast and you will be fine. my take: run "scans" wherever you can: retailer allowances tied to what moves through the register instead of what ships to the receiving dock.

@LizWolfeReason @dis_courses we did child-free reception bc we were super tight on dining space! we would have been totally fine with newborn. we wrote cards in our invites to any parents offering childcare coordination help & all of them told us they’d prefer not bringing their kids anyways!

@dis_courses I agree w this theory !

My husband is in the wedding party, so yeah, maybe they hate my guts but I think there's a level of closeness (and a logistical challenge presented, because he is the father!) that you might not be grasping. And children are invited to the ceremony, oddly, but not the reception.

@ZachCPG 99% agree but it can get tricky if you’re a frozen brand (esp in summer) bc you need to make sure someone will quickly accept the product! If you request a sample from a small & growing frozen brand it’s important to respect them & use the tracking they share!!!

one weird founder tell I have seen over the years: how they react to sample requests. I can pretty much gauge how far a brand will go by how the founder handles that one thing. If they question the why, the how many, or look for the slowest (cheapest) way to ship, it always foreshadowed a brand that did not understand the game. they confused saving every penny as the smart move because they could not quantify the real value of acting like a big brand before they actually were one. Didn't matter it was for brokers, retailers, influencers, investors. they would always try to do the least. it also signaled a question everything, trust nothing mentality. that same mindset always showed up later when actual decisions needed to get made: who to partner with. who to employ. what titles to give them. how to incentivize them. they usually bricked those too. the founders I worked with in the early days of their brands before they became massive brands behaved the opposite. they would overnight cases the second anyone showed interest. they added merch. if someone asked for a cardboard display, they sent a metal rack. sometimes even a wrapped cooler (depending on the category). I have never seen a brand go broke from sending too many samples or overdelivering on merch that built long term advocates. I have seen plenty go broke because no one gave a shit about the brand and the founders never did the simple stuff that builds believers.

@melinachng @sdhilip @eat_impeccable the most frustrating thing is how much cushion you need to just simply survive retailers not paying and/or the crazy lumped/unforseen deductions. even if you're cash flow positive on paper the real experience of chasing true AR is what can kill you!

@sdhilip @eat_impeccable thanks! yeah, i figured out pretty quickly it wasn’t gonna happen even with $1m, so i raised more and stopped bootstrapping. the margins in frozen dtc are brutal. it feels like the only way through is to keep raising and go all in!

@jeff_zifrony gotta be worse right!? just like totally diff way of thinking for ~20 yr?

Wonder how I’d do on the SAT now

@drewfallon12 Dumb q - what happens to Blue Run in this case? Do they / did they close down?

COORS WIPES OUT 96% OF ITS BLUE RUN INVESTMENT AFTER SALES SLUMP Two years ago, Molson Coors made a bold bet on bourbon. It paid $78M for a 75% stake in Blue Run Spirits, a Kentucky whiskey label that looked like the next big thing in craft. The deal was meant to push Coors beyond beer, adding to a small but growing lineup with Five Trail and Barmen 1873 Bourbon. At the time, Blue Run was riding high. Its limited-edition bottles sold out in minutes, and it had unveiled plans for a futuristic $51M distillery in Georgetown, designed by the same firm behind Google’s HQ. Fast-forward to 2025, and the whiskey wave has crested fast. Coors just took a $75M impairment in 3Q, wiping out 96% of what it paid, after Blue Run’s sales fell short and the premium-spirits market cooled. The showpiece distillery never broke ground, its ambitious plans quietly shelved as the bourbon boom cooled and drinkers pulled back. Proof that not every bottle - or bet - ages well.

@KodyNordquist @F1 it’s really rough no matter what (2+hrs, at least back in 2021) bc there’s only 1 country road in/out. But I heard uber was a nightmare to even get one and at least in your own car you’re making progress vs fighting for uber!

this is one of the most important things a new brand needs to understand !

@iiiitsandrea owala freesip forever!! its honestly better than i could have imagined to have built in straw or sip feature

does anyone have a stainless steel water bottle they like?

@drewfallon12 This is such a great recap !!!!

DRAMA IN THE DAIRY AISLE🥛 Family feuds, poison pills, & a $50B French dairy giant on the hunt. Danone, a French dairy giant, just made its 3rd takeover bid in a year for kefir market leader Lifeway ($500m mkt cap) But this feud goes back decades.. The battle for lifeway👇

people dont wanna admit that frozen food is actually really good now

@jeff_zifrony best part of being at square one is the relatively quick/satisfying progress that comes from small chunks & consistency — 0-80% can be so fun, you got this!

In case it’s not obvious I am back to square one it feels like. 1% better each day

Fitness building works both ways. You can be an average athlete with world class consistency and compete with the best in endurance sports. Or you can lose elite fitness with below average consistency and not prioritizing it. It’s honest, which is why I love it, and why I hate it

a mozz stick company is all fun and games until you're 6 sticks deep into an r&d day 🫠

@drewfallon12 @Rippling umbrella of small brands / souped-up payroll processor/service that handles all the horrible backend tasks (state/local tax, workers comp, benefits, compliance filings etc). can look expensive (~$100-$200 emp/month) but in our case benefits savings > cost! and no state taxes !!!

@Alitgator @Rippling what is peo

born to do sales and marketing, forced to reconcile quarterly payroll tax by state

@drewfallon12 @Rippling yes only if it doesnt reveal a problem with my master solution of peo bc right now im staking my sanity on it

@Alitgator @Rippling can i ask u a dumb question