We take a break from the Six Pillars to share how food, community and kindness come together. And they come together at restaurants, bars, cafes, and food businesses, partly because each of those businesses is an epicenter in the community. 

Here are a couple of stories about how food, community and kindness coelesce. Please send and share your stories too. This is an incredibly important part of how owners can serve community. Go out there and gather people and share what's good in the world. 

Defining the Fifth Pillar of a Successful Business: the avenues and distribution to bring product to market. Avenues and distribution is where restaurant or CPG product find methods to sell their product. Many facets of the same jewel. 

The definition of the Fifth Pillar is more than the phrased "avenues" and your "distribution". Martha Lucius describes several examples of the many avenues possible in your business, and how each one can be a source of revenue and profit.

Marketing is one aspect of the Fifth Pillar. You cannot have one without the other. Marketing requires tidy messaging that melds with your brand and the vision of your business. 

We dig into the fifth pillar of a successful business: avenues and distribution to bring product to market. Going deep with the Six Pillars of Success as a method for business owners to roadmap change and stability into their business. The Six Pillars are Brand Strategy, Financial Stability, Operations, Product Quality, Avenues & Distribution, and Hospitality.

Kathleen Overman started her new business called Sweet Leenie as a field marketing representative and then evolved into a marketing and advertising consultancy. She understands how to build local business and advocates to keep clients community focused, while still growing. 

Avenues and distribution is where restaurant or CPG product find avenue to sell their product. What routes can a business find and build distribution paths.  Business owner strives to find the most number of avenues to sell, that are profitable. This conversation purposely stays focused on local, as a way to "go deep before going wide", to quote Kathleen.  Enjoy the conversation, and decide how her local advocacy mindset informs building a brand where you can gain the most impact for the consumers/guests who identify with the meals you serve, or the craft food you make. 

The fourth pillar of a successful business is product & quality. Those words translate into a consistent and elusive practice of quality control within a business.  Studying the Six Pillars of Success as a method for business owners to roadmap change and stability into their business. The Six Pillars are Brand Strategy, Financial Stability, Operations, Product Quality, Avenues & Distribution, and Hospitality.

Meaghan Carpenter, owner of HEX Ferments shares their methods and creative thinking when they make their kimchi, krauts and kombucha. The ancient techniques of preserving food is an art. Rarely do we find an Arc of Taste in our modern food chain. HEX Ferments is that niche business that never stops striving for the best. Science and taste have led their path to HEX Ferments' high caliber product.  In November HEX Ferments opened HEX Superette and HEX Tasting Room. This brings "How to HEX" (how to add ferments to your diet) to life. They have added two new big facets to their business. They extend the word "quality" to a new way of experiencing their product. 

Quality is where product, service and time blend togther. It is an elusive concept. One that each business owner strives to achieve.

We dig into the fourth pillar of a successful business: product & quality. Going deep with the Six Pillars of Success as a method for business owners to roadmap change and stability into their business. The Six Pillars are Brand Strategy, Financial Stability, Operations, Product Quality, Avenues & Distribution, and Hospitality.

Quality is where product, service and time blend togther. It is an elusive concept. One that each business owner strives to achieve. 

Considering testing and tasting your main product. Remind yourself  where your quality standard lies, and let it be a part of the foundation of your business. 

We dig into the third pillar of a successful business: operating efficiently. Going deep with the Six Pillars of Success as a method for business owners to roadmap change and stability into their business. The Six Pillars are Brand Strategy, Financial Stability, Operations, Product Quality, Avenues & Distribution, and Hospitality.

Operations in a restaurant are a set of tasks, SOPs, best practices and equipment that all need to blend together in the right combination to ensure every day goes smoothly... or ticks along like a Swiss Watch. Why not use the analogy of a Swiss Watch? ... and a full description of what a Swiss Watch is, to reveal the similarities of daily operations in a restaurant. 

The blog that was referenced and read for this episode can be found here. 

We dig into the third pillar of a successful business: operating efficiently. Going deep with the Six Pillars of Success as a method for business owners to roadmap change and stability into their business. The Six Pillars are Brand Strategy, Financial Stability, Operations, Product Quality, Avenues & Distribution, and Hospitality.

The jargon of operating efficiently is broken down into digestible morsels. 

Review your efficiency by ensuring that your equipment, ingredients and vendor relationships are in the best condition to be the foundation of your business. 

Going deep with the Six Pillars of Success as a method for business owners to roadmap change and stability into their business. The Six Pillars are Brand Strategy, Financial Stability, Operations, Product Quality, Avenues & Distribution, and Hospitality.

The jargon of financial stability is broken down into digestible morsels. 

How can you build healthy habits that will support and grow your businesses financial stability. You'll learn how to be mindful and aware of your food costs and labor costs, and how to define the benchmarks into your situation.

How can you plan? We talk about setting goals for the year and sticking with them by creating projections for a week ahead, a month ahead. 

How can you build in stability? We talk about checking your P&L, reveiwing your POS for regular stat checks, and even building your own google sheet to track what is useful and important to you and your team. 

Kicking off the third year of Holy Guacamole we go deep with the Six Pillars of Success as a method for business owners to roadmap change into their business. The Six Pillars are Brand Strategy, Financial Stability, Operations, Product Quality, Avenues & Distribution, Hospitality

In this episode guest Sari Kimbell shares her method of ensuring Financial Stability.  Guest Sari Kimbell and host Martha Lucius have a lively conversation on how to ensure that a new or established business charts their future today, with profit and long-term holistic planning in mind. These theories work for owners of cafes, breweries, bars, food based businesses and of course restaurants.

Financial Stability is a means to an end: build your business to be profitable from the start. Sari Kimbell's entire business, Food Business Success, is based on baking in profitability from the start.  Her specialty is helping CPG businesses, and her methods are explored in the this episode.

A new type of episode starts today with diehard industry professional Jenny Gaitner. This episodes' focus is on the living wage. She's been working in restaurants and bars as an employee since her teens. This episode is an honest and open conversation from the perspective of two people who have watched the industry since the 80s. What has changed, and what is more equitable in philosophy and respect for the employee? Servers were known to make ridiculous tips, back in the day. This is not a naive approach of a bygone era, rather we question how the staff, coming into the industry, can possibly make a living.