The One Question Every Food Founder Should Answer with Elena Minton of SFT Consulting
LISTEN ON: APPLE | SPOTIFY
Every food founder faces this question eventually: are you building a farmers market business, a lifestyle brand you want to own for the long term, or a company you plan to sell? Fractional CFO Elena Minton, co-founder of SFT Consulting, starts every new client relationship with that exact conversation. Because the financial decisions you make in year one have to be built around where you are going, not just where you are right now.
The path to attracting outside investment looks fundamentally different from the path to bootstrapping a sustainable business. The margins you need, the pace you set, the team you build, and the brand you invest in are all shaped by the kind of business you have decided to create. Elena walks through what each path requires and what founders often discover only after they have already made a few key moves.
One of the most important distinctions Elena draws is between brand and product. A great product can carry a lifestyle business for years, but a brand built to attract investors needs something more from the start. If you are planning to grow fast, your cost structure has to support distributor margins and promotional spend before you get there. And if outside capital is part of your plan, Elena is clear: choosing your investors is as serious a decision as any you will make.
Elena teaches financial strategy in the Food Business Bootcamp, and this conversation gives you a window into the clarity she brings to every founder she works with. Whether you are just starting out or have been in business for years, this episode is worth a listen.
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.
Tune in to hear…
The three types of food businesses, farmers market, lifestyle, and built to sell, each require a different financial strategy from day one.
Taking on equity investment is a commitment to an exit. Investors expect a return, and that alignment has to be there before the check clears.
Your cost of goods has to be built around where you plan to sell, not just where you are selling right now. Distributor margins require a very different cost structure than direct-to-consumer or farmers market pricing.
Brand and product are not the same thing. Founders who focus only on the product can find themselves in a difficult position if they later want to attract capital or pursue an exit.
Choosing an investor is like choosing a marriage partner. Shared goals and a mutual understanding of where the business is going matter as much as the capital they bring.
To get more Food Business Bites right in your inbox, sign up for our newsletter at thehudsonkitchen.com.
About Elena Minton
Elena Minton is the co-founder of SFT Consulting and a fractional CFO with over a decade of experience working with food and beverage brands. She provides financial strategy, accounting, and operations support to CPG founders at every stage, helping them build the right financial foundation for the business they want to create.
Connect with Elena Minton and SFT Consulting:
Visit the SFT Consulting website
Connect with Elena on LinkedIn
Stay Connected with Djenaba Johnson-Jones:
Visit Hudson Kitchen
Follow Hudson Kitchen on Instagram
Connect with Djenaba on LinkedIn
-
Djenaba Johnson-Jones (00:36)
Today I'm here with Elena Minton, who is the co-founder of SFT Consulting and also a fractional CFO. Welcome, Elena.
Elena Minton (00:45)
Hello, thank you very much. I'm to be here.
Djenaba Johnson-Jones (00:49)
So we had the pleasure of working with you on our food business bootcamp and for a couple of weeks our students got to go through and work with you on recipe costing as well as creating some initial financial projections. So one of the questions that came up that I thought was so important that I want to really focus on today is you asked them what type of business they wanted to create. And I thought that was really interesting. And so the three options that you gave were
Djenaba Johnson-Jones (01:13)
a farmer's market business, a lifestyle business and a business that they're building to sell. Can you kind of go through those three options?
Elena Minton (01:21)
Yes, of course.
Elena Minton (01:22)
First of all, was a really great experience teaching this class. So a lot of fun and always so inspiring to meet those new founders. So yeah, this question, whenever I start working with a new brand and a new founder, this is one of the first questions which I want to ask and really get the founders thinking about.
Elena Minton (01:49)
is the end goal of the business. What are we building here? And there is no right or wrong answer. And it really depends on your life aspiration on what do you, how do you see yourself, you know, 10 years from now, what do you want to achieve with this business? So the...
Elena Minton (02:13)
you know, like most of the brands, most of the products always often start with the
Elena Minton (02:20)
market, the farmers market. And it's a great beginning because you get to really understand what works, what doesn't work, how consumer reacts on it. And that's how you really see whether or not this product really should exist in this world, right? So, and then, you know, when you figure out that, yes, I have a track
Elena Minton (02:46)
people love it. They come and ask for those pretzels every Saturday on the market. Then you sort of like, okay, I guess I have something here and what I am going to do with this now. And that's where there is a crossroad. And the...
Elena Minton (03:11)
Basically, the main thing is whether or not you're planning to sell this business, grow it quite fast and sell it.
Elena Minton (03:22)
or that it's something you want to take time and really very sustainably grow with me, take a very long time for you, but you want to be in a full control of the business and in a full control of what product you're delivering to the market, and it basically becomes your lifelong project.
Elena Minton (03:52)
and why it is important to understand and be very honest with yourself as a founder because it all comes down to money as a lot of things do.
Djenaba Johnson-Jones (04:06)
Yes.
Elena Minton (04:07)
And yes, and from different perspectives, right? So first of all, if you think that you want to grow the brand and you want to attract the investors, so.
Elena Minton (04:24)
The minute you took someone else's money, not in the form of loan, but in the form of equity or, know, convertible instrument, something where people become a part of this company, you most likely are going to be selling this business. That's what you're building for, because that's why investors gave you money.
Elena Minton (04:53)
in form of equity because they don't want to wait 50 years for you to grow really big and start paying the dividends. want you, they believe that this is the brand which will exit in a foreseeable future and they will make a lot of profit on this investment. So,
Elena Minton (05:22)
This path comes with their pros and cons. So the important thing is you cannot change your mind. I mean, you can, and you have to then repay all the money.
Djenaba Johnson-Jones (05:39)
Right.
Elena Minton (05:40)
But the conversation of, you know, I...
Elena Minton (05:44)
really decide that I'm not going to sell and I just going to continue to grow it is not the one which grew it on my own. And I know they're not going attract any more investment. It's not the conversation you want to have here. Right. So. Because people trusted you, they trusted you as a founder that that's what you're building and they, they invest because you communicated that you see this brand growing and then
Elena Minton (06:14)
exiting. So this path comes with you know some pros and some cons. Let's start with cons. So when you have someone else in your business outside investors you losing a lot of control because these people are now
Elena Minton (06:36)
part of your business and they do have a vote whether it's a formal vote in terms of the board seats or
Elena Minton (06:47)
just as an investor, they have a say in where the business is going, what kind of product. And it can be challenging at times, but at the same time, it's also a positive thing because you have this collective knowledge of people who usually done it before and done it successfully. And so they bring definitely this a lot of positive input.
Elena Minton (07:14)
and then the network and everything. And then of course the...
Elena Minton (07:21)
Capital which you brought in allows you to accelerate the growth allows you to really invest in launching in retail and developing new skills, whatever you were thinking and With the bootstrapping would take you a very long time. This definitely helps you to accelerate that Now back to the cons
Elena Minton (07:49)
because investors, especially when you are at the point where you attracted the venture capital, are there to, as we established, to make profit from this investment.
Elena Minton (08:05)
So, they have like different funds have different philosophies, but they have a timeline of that. So it's not infinite. And so you do as a founder have some pressure on from those investors on growing, growing faster, which sometimes leads to rethinking.
Elena Minton (08:29)
if the product in this state will allow you to do that and maybe doing some changes to the product, which you would not otherwise do. So you have to optimize business for growth. So that's basically the main thing.
Djenaba Johnson-Jones (08:48)
So
Djenaba Johnson-Jones (08:48)
it seems like too, have to make a really good decision on the type of person that invests in your business as well. Because they could be trying to take you on a different road that you're not looking to go on. Yeah.
Elena Minton (08:58)
100 percent. It's a
Elena Minton (09:00)
hundred percent. It's basically look especially
Elena Minton (09:04)
you know, slightly later on when, you know, in the beginning you would have friends and family, know, like maybe angel investors. And sometimes they are more of a silent investor. They, when you as a founder, they believe in the brand, but they don't necessarily participate in the business. then later on, it's basically like marriage. You brought something in and that has to work. It has to
Elena Minton (09:34)
work long term, you should have the same goals for the business or you should be able to really talk about the goals for the business and the trajectory and really have a mutual understanding where you know investor sees you going and where you think the brand should be going.
Djenaba Johnson-Jones (10:01)
Because I have to imagine it's super exciting when someone wants to invest in your business, but you really have to really take that time to evaluate them on that level. Yeah.
Elena Minton (10:09)
Absolutely, absolutely.
Elena Minton (10:11)
I heard from several founders when they are going through their capital raise and they would have like several funds interested. It's like dating, right? You really need to understand how it's going to work when you're all in this together.
Djenaba Johnson-Jones (10:30)
Right.
Elena Minton (10:30)
Yeah.
Djenaba Johnson-Jones (10:31)
So then the other, I guess, option is to create a lifestyle business. Can you talk a little bit about what kind of decisions they would need to make for that?
Elena Minton (10:39)
Yes, yes, the lifestyle business, basically you grow your bootstrap and you use and I mean, nobody says that you can also, you know, take the capital.
Elena Minton (10:54)
from friends and family, for example, but most of the time it would be in terms of loans. And then you bootstrap and you are very scrappy, you work yourself a lot on this business and then you grow it in much more slow pace and you use different financial instruments to grow it.
Elena Minton (11:21)
So you use the bank loans, use line of credit, you use pure financing to continuously grow the business. So it may take you a while to get where you would go, let's say, with the...
Elena Minton (11:43)
venture funding like in five years, it may take you 10 years to get there. Just because you keep reinvesting your profits from the business into growth of the business, you cannot necessarily.
Elena Minton (11:57)
afford to bring a knowledgeable team early on, which would accelerate the growth. But at the same time, this is 100 % your business.
Djenaba Johnson-Jones (12:11)
Right.
Elena Minton (12:11)
You decide where it's going, how it's going, who it sells to, and so on.
Elena Minton (12:21)
And some of the
Djenaba Johnson-Jones (12:22)
So.
Elena Minton (12:22)
businesses, you know, like again, it's not, it's not like right or wrong. There are a lot of businesses which grew very, very large with this type of,
Elena Minton (12:35)
with this type of bootstrapping and know like the financing. The only thing is the if at some point through that journey you decide that okay
Elena Minton (12:49)
I actually do want to sell it. Sometimes there
Djenaba Johnson-Jones (12:51)
Mm-hmm.
Elena Minton (12:52)
are great success stories, but sometimes it really depends on the category and you know, it changes every, every, every couple of years. But if the category is very competitive, the product, even though it's really, really good, it has a lot of competition, which already
Elena Minton (13:15)
grew so much faster and the brand is so much stronger that it becomes a little bit more difficult to exit. But again, there are great success stories on that as well.
Djenaba Johnson-Jones (13:32)
So someone's trying to make the decision whether they want to be a lifestyle business or kind of build it to sell eventually, what type of questions should they be asking themselves?
Elena Minton (13:44)
Well, I think a lot of founders know early on whether or not they are building this because they want to get acquired and they want to build this strong brand or
Elena Minton (14:02)
they building it to really have it as their own company and like maybe pass it along to the children and just grow it big and see then where it's going to go. So yeah, think from my experience, when people set themselves on this journey,
Elena Minton (14:31)
often there is like a very, very clear understanding where I'm going.
Djenaba Johnson-Jones (14:35)
Got it. Okay.
Elena Minton (14:36)
And for me, when I work with the brands as a CFO, it's very important to understand it from the beginning because the way we approach certain things are different. And one of those things would be, for example, cost, cost of goods,
Djenaba Johnson-Jones (14:58)
Okay.
Elena Minton (14:58)
So that would be like one of the examples. So if you build into sell, you expect accelerated growth, right? And so with accelerated growth, what it means for food and beverage brands, right? It means that...
Elena Minton (15:17)
maybe you start first in direct to consumer space and then you move to direct, but very fast you are going to sell through the distributors. You're
Djenaba Johnson-Jones (15:28)
Mm-hmm.
Elena Minton (15:29)
going to sell through the distributors. It means that you have to optimize your margins for that, right?
Elena Minton (15:37)
And it cannot be, you know, like, 10 years from now, when we reach that scale, we will be able to optimize the margin. It needs to be very clear that there is a path to optimize the margin to sell to the distributor, because that's how you are grow. That's how you will grow like exponentially. Right.
Djenaba Johnson-Jones (16:00)
Mm-hmm.
Elena Minton (16:00)
When you are bootstrapping.
Elena Minton (16:05)
and on a slower growth trajectory, you can take your time and really...
Elena Minton (16:12)
hold on on everything like, you on your cost because you are not, you don't have a pressure of like doubling your revenue year over year. So you can start with farmer's market and you go to the independent store and you can support your price to independent stores with significantly like high, with a higher cost of good rather than, you know, like going to the
Elena Minton (16:42)
distributor, it's a incrementally, you have to be incrementally lower to be to survive selling to a big distributor rather than selling to up and down the street stores. So that's like, you know, how how we approach that. And then the same is for marketing and building the brand, because when you are
Elena Minton (17:07)
When you are built to sell, one of the important components of the business besides the product, mean, product is number one. It has to be right because, you know, like if nobody wants to eat it, it's... But
Djenaba Johnson-Jones (17:24)
Right.
Elena Minton (17:27)
one of the most important components is building the breadth.
Elena Minton (17:33)
And this is the big difference between brand and product, right? The product can be wonderful, but sometimes no strong brand is around it. And so for building to sell, building the brand is what's important. And for that, you need resources, you need the team, you need the capital, right? So.
Elena Minton (17:54)
And usually the ROI is not right here, right, for this type of investment. Because you're investing in the future. When you are lifestyle brand, again, you can take it slow because you're really ironing out your product, then you're making it better. And yes, you still have a brand, but it's in the beginning, it's more about the product.
Elena Minton (18:19)
people there for the product, right? So that's what they're in the stores.
Djenaba Johnson-Jones (18:25)
Okay, what if, I guess the question is, if someone starts along one path and kind of realizes they want something different, like what do they do?
Elena Minton (18:35)
I mean, look, you know, in life in general and in business, you can always pivot.
Elena Minton (18:43)
But I think that if you were just playing around and you were like, okay, I'm to make this cookie and I'm going to sell it in the market and I have my job and I'm just doing it for fun of it and see what's going to happen. And then if you have amazing traction, maybe actually this is
Elena Minton (19:07)
I want to do because so many people were telling me that it's very unique, no one else is doing it and then you should really be very honest with yourself because building brand to sell is a very harsh process on the follower from
Djenaba Johnson-Jones (19:24)
Right? Right.
Elena Minton (19:26)
it's very stressful
Elena Minton (19:28)
and it takes a lot from you, right? It's hard to raise capital, it's hard to stay on shelf, you know, like it's really, really hard journey. It's very exciting. That's why I do what I do.
Djenaba Johnson-Jones (19:42)
Mm-hmm.
Elena Minton (19:44)
love working with the founders who have this grit and passion, but I also see that it's very, very hard business. The CPG is very hard business. So if you feel that that's what you want to do, then you should really have this internal commitment early and understand how you can make it work.
Elena Minton (20:08)
because a lot of, for example, lot of founders would keep their job and try to grow the brand.
Djenaba Johnson-Jones (20:18)
Right.
Elena Minton (20:19)
So this is very hard and it's very hard, know, like if you are building the brand to sell, right, and you want to attract the capital, any investor would want your 100 % undivided commitment.
Djenaba Johnson-Jones (20:38)
Great.
Elena Minton (20:38)
Like I worked with several brands who were trying to raise capital and they were not earlier than other brands, right? But they would have a consistent nose because
Djenaba Johnson-Jones (20:51)
Mm.
Elena Minton (20:52)
investor would learn that the founder is still working the full-time job. And they would say,
Djenaba Johnson-Jones (20:57)
Right.
Elena Minton (20:58)
look, when you are all in, in the business, come back.
Elena Minton (21:03)
So it's very important to really understand for yourself that, okay, I can do it, you know, and like figure out how you're going to do it, but be fully committed to the business.
Djenaba Johnson-Jones (21:17)
I had read that sometimes it makes sense to even if you don't plan on taking investment or plan on selling your business to kind of still build it to sell anyway. Do you have an opinion on that?
Elena Minton (21:29)
Um, I mean, yes, like if you, if you're not attracting the capital. Yeah. I mean, like, I think, I think at the end of the day, even, even when people say like, oh, I'm just going to grow it and the better your mind, look, I think it's just like a human nature. You know, you want to get the reward for all this hard work. Right. So, um, and I think for like.
Elena Minton (21:59)
in this scenario, I would say that if you bootstrapping it, which is amazing if you can do it, So think about the brand versus the product conversation because it's very interesting. I worked with...
Elena Minton (22:14)
few brands who did that, who bootstrapped. then they were, and then they wanted actually already further out in the brand life to, you know, bring in the outside capital. And so the comments on that is that the brand was not strong enough. The product is great, but you were in the market, like you were in business for 10 years.
Djenaba Johnson-Jones (22:40)
Mm-hmm.
Elena Minton (22:41)
Like you're not, you don't have a breadth equity. So I think like this is super important. And it's funny that I'm not the market person by any chance at all, but this is just, I keep like talking about it, but this is just, you know, like, because that's what I see with the brands I work with. And then on the finance side,
Elena Minton (23:05)
on the finance side, really understanding how much do you need for where you are right now to that jump.
Elena Minton (23:18)
to really accelerate your growth, right? So again, because most of the time when it, you you put strap and it takes a long time to grow, it's usually you and a very, very small team, maybe of fractional people, but usually it's like very bare bones. And again, in order for you to go into a lot of doors and...
Elena Minton (23:46)
the retailers, like understanding how much capital would it take, right?
Elena Minton (23:54)
Do you need to raise capital for that? Do you have your own resources to back it up? So that's like important. And of course, again, from the cost perspective, will your cost support this high growth? Because with high growth, means distributor, means promotions. So like, can you do it?
Elena Minton (24:22)
because that's what I usually see when people want to pivot and they had
Djenaba Johnson-Jones (24:28)
Mm-hmm.
Elena Minton (24:28)
this brand, they had that product, and then they want to go big. They want to really accelerate the growth because they believe that they really perfect it with what they have, and it's now ready to really...
Elena Minton (24:44)
for this like explosive growth. So these are the questions you want to have a very good model to, which will help you to understand with how much capital you need and how you're going to finance it.
Djenaba Johnson-Jones (25:00)
Right. Thank you. So I want to shift gears a little bit. And I just wanted to ask you, because we have a tradition at Hudson Kitchen where we ring a bell and we're celebrating something. We have a bell in our lobby and wondering, what are you celebrating?
Elena Minton (25:14)
Oh, what I'm celebrating. Well, I started my own practice about two years ago.
Elena Minton (25:26)
And I am very excited that we grew almost 200 % compared to last year. So I am extremely grateful to all the founders who trusted me. So yeah, that's like, it's very exciting. Thank you. Thank you.
Djenaba Johnson-Jones (25:45)
Amazing, congratulations. So
Djenaba Johnson-Jones (25:49)
thank you so much for joining us on the podcast. Let everyone know where they can find you.
Elena Minton (25:54)
Yes, so you can go on the website which is sftconsulting.co and also always please feel free to connect with me on LinkedIn or email me at elena at sftconsulting.co
Djenaba Johnson-Jones (26:08)
Thank you very much.
Elena Minton (26:10)
Thank you very much. Thank you.