Making It to Market: Why Good Logistics Is Essential for Your Bottom Line with Andrew Lynch
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You can make an amazing product, start the best marketing campaign, and partner with national chains… But if your product doesn’t make it to the stores, or more importantly, your end user, none of that actually matters.
In today’s episode, I’m chatting with Andrew Lynch of Zipline Logistics on why young CPG brands shouldn’t overlook the logistical aspects of their business. Andrew shares how he got his start in logistics, what it really means to businesses, how it affects their bottom line, and why it might be worth getting support from a partner like Zipline.
Subscribe to the Food Means Business Podcast with Hudson Kitchen founder Djenaba Johnson-Jones to hear the personal stories and “secret ingredients” of abandoning your day job and starting a CPG food business.
In this episode, you’ll learn...
[01:31] Andrew shares the origin of Zipline
[07:18] Why logistics are so important, especially for young CPG companies
[11:25] Why it might be worth outsourcing logistics to companies like Zipline
[16:25] How to know when your CPG brand is ready to start outsourcing logistics
[18:46] How Andrew takes care of himself as a long-time entrepreneur
If you’re struggling with delivery, transportation, and getting product on your retailers shelves, this is one conversation you can’t miss!
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About Andrew Lynch
Andrew Lynch is President and Co-Founder of Zipline Logistics, an award-winning North American 3PL exclusively servicing the consumer-packaged goods sector. Lynch works alongside clients who have scaled from growing companies to multibillion-dollar brands by creating holistic logistics strategies. Lynch and his team leverage data intelligence and strong industry relationships to help clients uncover transportation savings, build scalable supply chain strategies, and ace retailer compliance programs. Starting his career in carrier procurement and management within a Fortune 100 logistics company, Lynch has held positions of responsibility in all areas of third-party logistics.
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[00:00:00] Djenaba: You are listening to the Food Means Business podcast, which features the personal stories and secret ingredients behind what it's like to abandon your day job to start a CPG food and beverage business. I'm Djenaba Johnson-Jones, former marketing executive turned entrepreneur and founder of food business incubator Hudson Kitchen.
[00:00:20] Join our community of fellow food business owners and subject matter experts. First to learn and laugh with us as we explore a startup world. That's a little more culinary and a lot less corporate these days. Hi, Andrew, welcome to the food means business podcast. I'm happy you're here.
[00:00:34] Andrew: Good morning. I'm super happy to be here.
[00:00:36] Thanks, sir. Thanks for bringing us in.
[00:00:38] Djenaba: Absolutely. So we were just kind of reminiscing a little bit. We met briefly at the fancy food show in 2023. And we actually spent a lot of time with Emily Ledbetter, your colleague, who was kind of instrumental with one of my colleagues, Liz Alvarez and getting us together.
[00:00:52] So
[00:00:53] Andrew: yeah, Emily is fantastic. And she did us the huge favor of sort of manning the booth [00:01:00] so that we could run around and, and meet new friends at that show. So yeah, a lot of times that's my role and I do enjoy being stationary, but you know how it is. And those, those kinds of 72 hour shows, it can be, So yeah, she's the best.
[00:01:15] Djenaba: She's great. So we are all about, we typically speak with CPG entrpreneurs who are going from kind of a cubicle to, you know, becoming the founder of a company, you yourself are an entrepreneur, but would love to hear a little bit about your career trajectory and your journey.
[00:01:31] Andrew: Wow. Thanks. I never actually really get to talk about that because it's true, you know, When we talk about Zipline, we talk about ourselves through the lens of a consumer goods business.
[00:01:40] And it's just that our role in the consumer goods business is moving consumer goods from A to B, right, getting them onto retail shelves. And I try to, I try to relate to folks or, uh, set common ground with folks by talking about it, like, Hey, I've built a brand, right. I've, I've started from zero. I, you know, I took out an SBA loan and used my savings and built a [00:02:00] brand and a better platform.
[00:02:01] Right. Um, and so I never really get to talk through it, but yeah, journey is probably, you know, pretty typical. You know, I, I started out kind of right out of college, uh, working for a fortune 100 third party logistics business. Yeah. I didn't know what I was getting into at all. When I got into logistics, I truly just kind of fell backwards into it.
[00:02:19] And it was kind of just a job, right. For out of college, it brought me to Chicago and boy, I, I just fell in love with it. You know, the, the, my role at the time was just carrier sales, which is, you know, at, at the company I worked for, you know, your, your role was really go out and bring as much capacity as possible into the network, negotiate pricing, uh, match that capacity up with shipments that need to move and then sort of execute, you And, you know, wow, for my, my sort of ADT brain, that, that really fast paced, you know, sort of multitasking, you know, uh, it, it, it showed me, I guess, that there was a way to be sort of scatterbrained in an advantageous.
[00:02:56] Right. And that was really new for me and exciting. And I think that's a big part of why I fell [00:03:00] so in love with, with this industry. And then as I grew in my career, like solving big problems and having, you know, you know, to apply really deep, critical thinking into how to, you know, solve issues, but, but fast.
[00:03:11] And so, um, that's what brought me into the space and loved my time at that, at that business, uh, a huge place, the wonderful learning environment, met a lot of great friends that I'm still really close with today. And, you know, in the end, you know, the catalyst for Zipline was really recognizing that, um, as, as sort of my, my aperture of the logistics world.
[00:03:32] Opened up when I saw were just a lot of the same company, you know, a lot of really big sort of mega brokers that, you know, serve a function and, and, but, but have very little specialization, very little, you know, differentiation from a demographics perspective. And boy, my experience at this giant trading floor was that, you know, yeah, I could move, you know, hundreds of shipments of scrap plastic and aluminum and, you know, roll stock [00:04:00] paper and things like that, you know, paper, board, cardboard.
[00:04:03] And it was, you know, kind of plug and play pretty easy to do. But if I booked a shipment, going to Walmart, you know, I'd get a phone call from that, that customer rep. That was like, Hey man, if this misses its delivery, it's a big deal. You know, it's going to take us three or four days to get a rescheduled.
[00:04:18] My customer is going to get a fine. You know, it's a huge problem. And the more that that happened, the more that I realized like, boy at scale, this is like impossible to manage. Right. I mean, how, how, how is it that we can have trillions of dollars in In products moving into these retailers every single year.
[00:04:34] And that what it takes to get them there is like this really intense one to one phone call. And it was like, well, you know, what if we just sort of refactor this whole, you know, sort of model through the lens of serving this group, right? These, this group of shippers specifically needs great high quality capacitor to be clean, you know, if you're going to do food and babble or even, you know, cleaning supplies, it's going to be clean.
[00:04:57] It's got to be nice equipment because it's in a [00:05:00] package, right? You can't have leaks and things it's got to be, you know, the communication has got to be nails, right? Because, you know, at the end of the day, I become sort of the face for your brand, delivering into your retail. So I've got to represent you well, professionally, the way that you want to show up.
[00:05:14] And then as we dove deeper into the understanding of the space, sort of before we really launched, we really got to understand that this was way back in you know, 2006. Before, you know, every single retailer had a different compliance program and OTIF, right? And even then it was like, I don't know how these brands are doing this, right?
[00:05:34] I mean, if you're a, if you're an upstart or an emerging CPG, that's moving into traditional retail and it's time become, you know, kind of was barely a thing. It's like, how are you supposed to know what Kroger expects of you from a delivery standpoint? I make cookies. I don't, you know, deal with shipping.
[00:05:51] So, you know, that was kind of the premise. And when we launched, you know, it took some time. We launched right at the beginning of the great recession. So June of June [00:06:00] of 2007. So fantastic timing as usual for me. And it, there's a little bit of a trial by fire. We had a lot of funny, you know, kind of classic entrepreneur stories.
[00:06:09] We had to borrow our, my, my co founder's mom was a retired English teacher. And. At one point we had, we were growing so fast that, that the float that we carry, right, we pay carriers and, you know, 21 days, especially then in order to gain credit, it was, we really had to pay fast and our customers might pay us in, you know, 45, 60 days.
[00:06:30] And so that float becomes very difficult to fund. And, and then if you want to grow, right, you need, you need receivables financing. And we just, you know, credit markets were so locked up. It was very hard to get anybody to lend us anything. And so we borrowed a hundred thousand dollars from, uh, my co founders mom's pension at a 12 percent annual interest rate.
[00:06:51] Not great, uh, terms for those that don't know. And that actually helped us meet a lot of, uh, a lot of benchmarks that ended up getting us into [00:07:00] different credit markets, right. Where we could borrow at more favorable terms for banks. And so like, you know, some, some things like that, that just kind of happened along the way that makes you really thankful for the people in your life that are supportive of you.
[00:07:11] And, you know, gosh, just kind of. Make the whole thing feel a little bit less like a storybook.
[00:07:18] Djenaba: Right. I agree. Like that support system is, is super, super important. So talk about logistics. Like what, what do you do exactly on it? Like on a, in simple terms, on a day to day basis, because I'm trying to establish like, why does a CBG company, especially a young one care about logistics, why should they care?
[00:07:33] Andrew: Yeah, so that's great. That's actually a wonderful question. We start our training here. I, I lead sort of the opening session. And really the first thing that we say on the, on the first slide, it's, if you ask 10 people what they think you do, when you say you work for a logistics company, you will get 10 different answers.
[00:07:51] Warehousing, right? Oh, it's an, you know, UPS, right? Postal service, you know, railroads. In the end, what Zipline does is help [00:08:00] brands critical raw materials into their production supply chain, and then get finished products. Out to their retail store shelves or DCs or e commerce DCs on time and in full. You know, the reason that, that they should care so much is that, you know, first and foremost, retailers have to have your product on the shelf in order to help you recognize revenue.
[00:08:25] And retailers are, are, are highly competitive against one another. As, as we all know, foot traffic is sort of their currency. And so they want to bring in attractive products. They want to bring in exciting new products that'll drive more foot traffic their way. You can see it, you know, in sort of the post social media world where, you know, brands get a brand can show up to a retailer, you know, thinking about a brand like poppy, right.
[00:08:49] That has an enormous social media following. They can show up to a retailer and really dictate to them, Hey, this is how many followers I have with an X number of miles of each one of your [00:09:00] stores. This is how many feet I can activate to your store by launching a. A special SKU there, or my premium price and you know, how much value does that bring to the retailer?
[00:09:09] How much better are their negotiating terms you on the back of that? So when a brand or when a, a CPG participant has a product that, that they think can, you know, drive volume through stores. Where they should be focusing their efforts is on the things that make them great marketing, sales, product development, product quality, right?
[00:09:31] Typically the last thing that a brand is going to really build out expertise around is getting that product from A to B. And the result of that lack of investment tends to be a floundering brand, right? A brand that may, you know, attract excitement from buyers. But at the end of the day, if you can't get the product into the DC so that it's on the shelf.
[00:09:51] So that there's no, you know, empty shelf space, you know, it's not just bad for you. It's bad for the retailer and the retailer will just, you know, move on. And our, our history with, [00:10:00] with helping brands grow, you know, we've got, you know, sort of a, a, a trophy wall of brands that came to us as, you know, very small, young brands with promise that, that, that we're, we're winning doors.
[00:10:13] And that focused their efforts internally on the things that they do best that are going to really drive the value of their brand and let us trusted us to really carry the ball and represent them from a logistics side. And it allowed them to, you know, avoid having to invest in a ton of headcount, you know, around logistics.
[00:10:31] They had guaranteed sort of in a box expertise around what their retailers expect. If they add a new retailer, we know exactly the playbook that they need to run. And then, you know, execution that's held to the same standard that they are by their retailers, right? So, you know, we, we, we can bring an enormous amount of value as a provider.
[00:10:50] And the important thing to realize is that there's so much more to logistics than just A to B, right? There's data, there's [00:11:00] optimization, there's a connectivity to your retailer, right? Your, your, you know, your customer. And the end user, and there's, you know, setting a single thread of communication from your raw materials or critical, you know, production supplies all the way through to your retail and, and having a, you know, a very smooth.
[00:11:19] Execution all the way through that, that can create a lot of flexibility that can't be found elsewhere.
[00:11:25] Djenaba: I have to imagine that some brands are like, I think I can handle this myself. So like, I know because of the business that I'm in, like we work with a lot of brands and CPG brands and I, we were actually out of, we're actually housed in a warehouse and so I get a lot of like inbound emails about like, you know, shipping and things like that.
[00:11:41] And I have to imagine like some brand is like, I got this, I can handle it. I'm going to, you know, make this work. Whereas like you're. Helping them to be more efficient, you know, with their time in like, you know, I'd Hudson kitchen to you. Like we, we kind of see ourselves as being as a, as a place along somebody's journey.
[00:11:56] So we have people that are starting small with us, but it's the way that started like making [00:12:00] two pans of brownies by the time they left, they were shipping out pallets of product, you know, to their distributors and retailers. So I'm wondering like, at what point is someone raise their hand and say, okay, I can't do this anymore.
[00:12:10] And now I need zip line logistics.
[00:12:13] Andrew: Yeah. So we. Typically talk to brands that are, that are certainly shipping on pallets. You know, I think that, that if you're shipping multiple pallets per day, that it's time, right. That, that, that we can be helpful. You know, the, the level of value that you're going to get, it certainly evolves as you scale.
[00:12:34] And look, you know, we, we do come across that a ton, right. And especially for businesses that are very small and are just like, look, I'm in cash is king mode. I need 25 is a big deal to me. Like I need every single penny. And look, we, we're really driven by value sets right at the, at the end of the day. And, you know, to us, it's just like, Hey, I get it.
[00:12:56] You know, you're not ready to, to, to bring on a partner or, or, you know, [00:13:00] maybe you're, you, you can't necessarily see a straight line within your business to ROI, you know, let's talk, you know, when, when do you start to be able to, but it's really, if you're a founder that is heavily involved in your own production, right, you're working in a, in a, you know, a commercial kitchen or a commercial facility.
[00:13:18] And, you know, maybe you're, you know, you're running that shrink wrap around the pallet yourself and getting it out the door for sure. You can go get great quotes from three or four different providers and take the cheapest one and. And that, that may work 80 percent of the time when problems happen in transportation, especially, and especially when they're problems outbound to your retailer.
[00:13:43] Those are massive time sinks for a founder, especially if you don't know intrinsically how to solve them, what the steps are to get those, you know, those, those solutions to bear is to our message is always just. You know, try to, try to look more holistically at your business and where [00:14:00] you're spending your time.
[00:14:01] And if, you know, if you're finding that, you know, five, six, 10 hours of your week is going towards managing, you know, bills of lading or managing problems with, you know, with LTL into retail, which is, you know, an art and a science at the same time. It's very, very complicated and difficult to get to work successfully.
[00:14:20] Or you're dealing with tons and tons of fines and fees and, you know, deductions. That come from these distributors, not because they're the devil, but because they have to run a business and that business requires product to arrive at a certain time in a certain way. And if you can't do that, then they're going to charge you for it.
[00:14:38] Right. It's, it's one of those things that, you know, we try not to spend too much time convincing people that they're chasing their tail to some extent. When you're launching a CPG brand, my guess for most people is that you didn't launch it so that you could. Chase down trucks and try to find lost pallets in, in, you know, LTL terminals, right?
[00:14:57] You started it because you're passionate [00:15:00] about a product and a recipe and a macro, right? That it delivers. And you know how to market it and brand it and how to push its value set out to the retail world. And that is where you should be spending your time. And truly, I mean, from day one, the brands that we grew with, Zipline is, we've never been a big sales machine.
[00:15:20] We've never had more than, I think 5 percent of our total staff in sales is the most we've ever had. We're a big retention machine. We bring people in and they save the life. And we've been lucky in that the brands that we served have grown, right. And, and we've grown with them. You know, if you, if you sort of turn that, that viewpoint on its head and say, all right, well, were we lucky that these brands, Or did these brands scale at the pace that they did because they chose to focus on the right things,
[00:15:53] Djenaba: right.
[00:15:53] Andrew: You know, and today, you know, most of our brands that are really at scale still almost none of them [00:16:00] are, you know, running a completely vertical. Business, right? So, you know, what, what really, you know, what really is this, this CPG grant? It's mostly marketing sales, right? Branding consumer, you know, market products that, you know, it's not about for them, the, you know, the, the lever they can pull is usually not.
[00:16:19] How do I go save? 3 percent transactionally on my, on my frame.
[00:16:25] Djenaba: So if a company is now kind of decided they're ready to hand off logistics to a company like Zipline, what should they be looking
[00:16:34] Andrew: for? And you know what? I get the great benefit of not like being Tom as a salesperson. So I get to, I get to be really authentic, right.
[00:16:41] And in calls and I give the same advice to everybody and it's. Really seek out partnership and be a partner. So find someone that you can be a partner with, meaning that you trust them, that you, you know, whether, whether you trust them because they're willing to be transparent with you about, about the cost [00:17:00] basis of their, of their operation, or you trust them just because you trust them for the same reason that I trust you.
[00:17:06] Right. Implicitly for whatever reason, right. Which something that, and then, and then beyond that, you know, just understand their, their expertise, you know, do they have the capacity? To help you identify, you know, when you're, when you're really small to help you identify the right LTL providers for each and every distributor that you're serving or each and every, you know, retail DC that you're, you know, serving.
[00:17:26] Can they help you analyze a new opportunity, right? For a lot of CPG brands, especially in today's, you know, money's not free anymore world, you know, the, the smart strategy for growth isn't, you know, flood as many doors as humanly possible. It's grow into a region, turn that region into a super region, add the region next door, right?
[00:17:45] And be really, really methodical and disciplined about how you grow. And, you know, can your partner help you without being self serving? Understand, you know, what the cost basis is of serving a retailer that maybe is outside of your, you know, uh, [00:18:00] optimized delivery zone for production, or help you identify where you should produce the server.
[00:18:05] Can they give you the data that matches the KPIs that your retailers are measuring you on? I'm trying not to like differentiate how zip line approaches versus, um, how other folks would approach too much, but, but truly the important thing I think for, for folks to know is that logistics is not just a cost center, just like every other part of your business.
[00:18:25] Yes, it can be a cost center, but it can also be a competitive advantage and choosing the right partner that can really facilitate your growth and facilitate efficiency and facilitate on shelf performance. That's incredibly impactful to your business and, and can be an enormous differentiator.
[00:18:45] Djenaba: Thank you.
[00:18:46] So I'm going to turn the conversation back to you a little bit. And I'm wondering, you know, given the fact that you are an entrepreneur, you're running this now company that has grown over the past almost 20 years, what do you do to take care of yourself? What do you do for self care? [00:19:00]
[00:19:00] Andrew: What a fun question too.
[00:19:02] So I'm on like a huge health journey actually, uh, right now. So I, like many people, you know, let, let my self care slip both through the journey of entrepreneurship and having children and, and all the things that come along with going from, I was 26 when we started Zipline and now I'm 44. A couple of years ago, just had some, some life events.
[00:19:24] You know, we were coming out of COVID. The world was. Changing. I lost my father. It was pretty, you know, pretty young to die
[00:19:31] Djenaba: and it just
[00:19:32] Andrew: sort of set date and it just sort of set me back to this place that I had been in my twenties where I was really, really disciplined about, I've always been really disciplined about food, uh, like very, and I've always worked out, but other things were slipping, right?
[00:19:45] I was drinking too much or drinking too often, right? My body hates alcohol. I don't know if that's true for everybody, but mine really does. And you know, not sleeping great and just really not paying attention to the right things. And so, you know, I kind of took that [00:20:00] crisis and put it to use for myself and started really focusing.
[00:20:04] Reworking my diet and really focusing on changing my fitness routine with an eye towards longevity. I'm old. My kids are young. My kids are six and five. I'm 44. Right. So do the math on what things look like to my school or when they get married or when I did tell my grandfather, right? I'm old. I've got to, you know, put a lot of effort into that.
[00:20:23] So I go to bed extremely early. I'm in bed by 30, which is sad. I think for a lot of, a lot of folks that are here, but I love it. I'm out of bed early as well. I work out every single morning. I, I, I lift weights. Some of that's just what I enjoy and what makes me feel good. And I don't really drink and I'm, I'm super duper cognizant of my macros for my, my intake.
[00:20:47] And, you know, I, I, I probably could use some meditation in my life. ADD makes that really hard. I've got, I just have work to do there. So, you know, that's kind of the way that. That I've evolved over the last [00:21:00] few years. It's been a wonderful journey. It's it's I think it's become sort of who I am and. I don't know.
[00:21:05] It makes me, it makes me feel great to be able to find discipline in my life.
[00:21:09] Djenaba: That's cool. I was, I was going to say with meditation, I found that the guided meditations are better because you can focus on the person, what the person is saying versus you trying to do it yourself. And then like, you're just kind of, you know, thinking about whatever else comes into your head.
[00:21:23] So,
[00:21:23] Andrew: yeah, I think I actually have had good experience with those. I I'm someone who. People who know me laugh at this all the time. I'm, I'm extremely structured. And so like trying to work something new into my day is I make it such a bigger problem than it really is. Right. Like you're talking about five minutes.
[00:21:39] I definitely have five minutes, but like for me, it becomes like, well, where do I put this in my day? And how do I meet? I overcomplicate everything. So, you know, I'm going to, I'm actually, I feel like I'm going to commit today. Like I'm going to start, I have a guided meditation app. I'm going to start using it for five minutes, not going to worry about what time of day it happens.
[00:21:59] And when we see each [00:22:00] other at fancy food, I'm going to be able to report to you that I've been meditating daily.
[00:22:05] Djenaba: I love it. I'm definitely going to follow up on that.
[00:22:12] So at Hudson kitchen, we have, we call it a money bell that we ring when someone's celebrating something. So I'm wondering, what are you celebrating? It could be personal or professional. Oh my God. I'm celebrating
[00:22:23] Andrew: right now that, uh, our, my business, which isn't a really challenged time, uh, logistics, you know, anyone who's, who's in tough with that marketplace knows it's been a really deep and long.
[00:22:35] Recession, the deepest and longest of, of any of our careers. And that while it has not been without its challenges, our business, our partners, our people are really, really coming together at a time when things are at their most difficult for us and showing up for one another and supporting one another.
[00:22:55] And it's just, uh, it makes you feel great [00:23:00] about the culture that we have and how committed our people are to, to one another, right? If, if not to the, to the business. How about you? What are you celebrating? How about
[00:23:07] Djenaba: me? Oh, what am I celebrating? Yeah. Oh my goodness. How did you think about that? Actually, so I've been in business for nine years and lately I've been thinking about I'm more relaxed.
[00:23:19] In my business. So everything's not a fire drill or an emergency. Something comes up and I'm like, okay, we've, we've seen this before. So now I'm able to kind of, you know, take it in and work through it calmly.
[00:23:31] Andrew: Congratulations. I hope to get there one day.
[00:23:35] Djenaba: Yeah, that's me. That's what I've been thinking about that a lot lately.
[00:23:38] So I'm celebrating that. Thank
[00:23:39] Andrew: you. Very cool. Yeah. Congrats.
[00:23:42] Djenaba: Please let anyone else, everyone know where they can find out all about.
[00:23:46] Andrew: Sure. Yeah. I mean, zipline logistics. com is a, is a great place to start. This is. Ton of, you know, not just marketing collateral on there. Just, just, uh, there's a whole knowledge center for consumer goods, brands on white papers and case studies that they can read up on.[00:24:00]
[00:24:00] You know, again, at my advice is pick a partner and roll with them. And if that partner is a blind, we'd be super happy to serve you. If it's not, we still wish you the best of luck. And we still think you should pick a partner. Cool. Thank you so
[00:24:12] Djenaba: much.
[00:24:13] Andrew: Thank you.
[00:24:15] Djenaba: The food means business podcast was produced by Hudson kitchen.
[00:24:19] It is recorded at the studio at Kearney point and mixed and edited by wild home podcasting. Our theme song is by Damien DeSandis and I'm your host Djenaba Johnson-Jones, follow Hudson kitchen on Instagram. At the Hudson kitchen, and to get food business bites right in your inbox, sign up for our newsletter at the Hudson kitchen.
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