Episode Details

#82 If you started your food business without a clear read on your margins, your ingredient list, or how many SKUs you actually need — you're not alone. Jacinta revisits a listener-submitted clip from Betsy, a gluten-free food founder, recorded as part of a series asking food founders what they wish they'd known before starting. Betsy's answer centers on margins, the challenge of ingredient-heavy gluten-free formulations, and how many SKUs a brand actually needs. Jacinta walks through why margins tend to shrink once you're already committed to a retailer, how multifunctional ingredients can help you simplify a gluten-free formulation without losing what customers love about the product, and how to think through SKU rationalization — including a real example from a private-label client who had to discontinue underperforming SKUs after launch.

• Why margins should be locked down before saying yes to a retailer, not after
• Why margins naturally shrink over time — and how to plan for it from day one
• The challenge of gluten-free formulation: replacing wheat's bulking and structural role often means stacking many ingredients
• How to evaluate whether an ingredient is doing double duty — and when it's worth paying more for a multifunctional one to protect your product's "gold standard" attributes (texture, mouthfeel, etc.)
• How to figure out how many SKUs you actually need, and how to spot when one SKU is cannibalizing another
• A real client example: a private-label brand that launched with four SKUs, cut it to three, and is now consolidating further to focus marketing on the top performer
• Why revisiting your SKU lineup and margins regularly — not just at launch — is critical as you scale from small batch to large batch

• Episode 69 — Margins and why they always trend downward
• Episode 71 — Multifunctional ingredients and maximizing your product's potential
• Episode 73 — How many SKUs you really need

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