What is your biggest industry gripe?
Q:
Nicki Praiswater, co-founder and
co-owner, Lone Star Bee Co.
At Lone Star Bee Co., we have always thought of
ourselves as "problem solvers" when it comes to
running our business smoothly. Like so many other
businesses, we really had to ratchet up our problem-
solving efforts over these past several months when
our normal business flow was interrupted with
impacts from COVID-19. For instance, our business
was challenged by bottle and lid shortages. As well,
customer purchasing trends changed. We were
also faced with making changes in our production
facility to accommodate for social distancing.
Regardless of our best laid plans, there will
always be situations that arise that are out of our
control and increases in costs seem to have the
biggest impact on our business. In particular, the
increased cost in shipping has to be our biggest
industry gripe. We watch the costs of shipping
change nearly daily and unfortunately, we have to
determine if (and when) the extra cost is enough
for us to absorb, or if we must increase the price
of our products to offset the impact, and that can
cause customers to think twice about purchasing
our products.
Ryan Johnson, director of sales
& marketing, PS Seasoning
The largest industry issue we're facing today is
adapting to packaging shortages and supply chain
disruptions caused by COVID and other economic
factors. With longer lead times from our vendors
and shortages on critical packaging, our team is
working overtime to find alternative solutions to
absorb as much of the burden from our customers
as possible. Although we hope to see improvement,
everything we're hearing right now is this trend
will continue through 2021 and into Q1 of 2022.
Some of these challenges could be mitigated by
taking shortcuts on our packaging solutions, but
our goal is to provide a premium product and
premium service to our end customers, so we will
continue to be aggressive in sourcing.
Dena Manning, president,
Butterfields Candy
My biggest industry gripe is when you seem to
have landed a lead and they are very much taken
with your product, but then nothing comes of
it. You never hear back from them, you have no
feedback; you want to know, was it the product?
Was it the price? This makes it so hard for a small
business as we are always trying to improve
and learn and it would be so nice to receive the
feedback so you don't keep making the same
mistakes and not know how to fix them.
SUMMER 2021 51
Arielle Feger is content associate for Specialty Food.
