Heather built a pizza dough business from scratch. Now, she’s doing $16k months and still scaling.
“In the sales discovery process, I learned who my primary customer is, and then it became much easier to seal a deal. We are on track to achieve gross sales of $250,000 in year one, and we aim to double that in year two.
The founder
Heather Kerner is the founder of The Good Crust, where she manufactures a frozen pizza dough made with 100% Maine grains.
The challenge
Heather saw a need, but she didn’t know how to start and scale a business
Heather was living a farm-to-table lifestyle, raising her family’s poultry, growing vegetables, and using pizza as a way to showcase the season's freshest ingredients at home. She noticed that despite having a grist mill nearby, no one in her community was producing a pizza dough with solely local grains. She saw a need in the Maine farm-to-table community for a regional pizza dough. But she went to school for health and human services, so she didn’t know very much about how to start and scale a profitable, sustainable business. She also wanted to create meaningful manual work opportunities for people with unique needs, such as different cognitive and physical abilities.
“I went to school for health and human services,” Heather remembers. “Defining business concepts like, ‘what’s the problem to be solved?’ and, ‘what are the solutions?’ was all new terminology for me.”
She knew there was more to building and scaling a business than coming up with a brilliant idea. The creative part of entrepreneurship came naturally to her, but the food manufacturing, facilities planning, and business analytics for cash flow projections were all new.
“Everyone has a creative idea, but not everyone materializes that creative idea.”
“To be an entrepreneur is a creative process,” says Heather. “We’re using that creative, generative part of our brain to come up with an idea. But it's a totally different part of your brain to put a structure to it and be accountable to a timeline. Everyone has a creative idea, but not everyone materializes that creative idea.”
Heather needed help with the tangible aspects of her business. Things like:
Breaking down ways to share her product with people
Learning how to get feedback
Putting a structure around her business. Hello, Trello and sales processes.
“There was so much to learn,” Heather remembers. “All the bookkeeping, how to articulate my message clearly, and the mechanical parts of starting a dough company.”
Heather wanted to learn in a collaborative environment.
“I really valued peer collaboration,” Heather remembers. “I am someone who desires feedback. I didn’t want to feel like I was starting my business in an echo chamber.”
“There was so much to learn. All the bookkeeping, how to articulate my message clearly, and the mechanical parts of starting a dough company. I didn’t want to feel like I was starting my business in an echo chamber.”
The process
Learning about the primary customer and building systems-based solutions
Heather signed up for a class with The Coastal Enterprises, Inc (CEI) Women’s Business Center, which focused on helping women entrepreneurs develop their businesses. The class was taught by Nick Rimsa, owner and product designer at Tortoise Labs, and Anna Ackerman, Program Developer at the CEI Women’s Business Center.
In the class, she got to:
Make some guesses about her potential customers and who she wanted to serve
Prepare for and start customer conversations
Learn what customers were willing to pay for
Work with customers to make her first product prototype
“In the sales discovery process, I learned who my primary customer is, and then it became much easier to seal a deal,” says Heather. “At this phase of startup, there are so many different things to attend to as a founder. I can't really afford a whole day of potential customer reach outs that aren't going to materialize. I need to focus my efforts on the ones that may respond.”
Heather built a low-tech sales funnel process to reach her target customers: restaurants making pizza in wood-fired pizza ovens. By the end of the class, Heather was selling her dough in one or two stores, but she and Nick could see there was growth potential. They wanted to continue working together, so they spent the next three months building a go-to-market strategy. With Nick’s ongoing support, Heather:
Built out basic systems for email marketing, social media, and content creation
Focused on talking to her primary customer
Formed and utilized startup-level PR connections
“It was helpful to me to understand what would be a reasonable timeframe for follow-up after an initial customer contact,” says Heather “We talked about how many reach outs are reasonable in a single day. And if I were to hire something out, what's a reasonable productivity expectation? That was all new information to me.”
She and Nick continued to meet every Tuesday to build on the foundation she had learned in his class at CEI. Over the course of nine months, they worked together to refine her branding and packaging, find financing sources like grants, improve the manufacturing process, and create systems-based solutions for things like attracting new customers, working toward distribution, and continuously improving the quality of her dough based on customer feedback.
“Nick helped me build systems like a website that alerts me to people who subscribe,” says Heather. “That’s incredibly important because I don't have the bandwidth right now to monitor who subscribes. That would totally be falling by the wayside without an automated system.”
As Heather grew her business, Nick continued to provide accountability and support.
“I felt like it kept me on a forward-moving timeline,” says Heather. “It's been very helpful for me to be able to have someone who will give honest feedback.”
“In the sales discovery process, I learned who my primary customer is, and then it became much easier to seal a deal. At this phase of startup, there are so many different things to attend to as a founder. I can't really afford a whole day of potential customer reach outs that aren't going to materialize. I need to focus my efforts on the ones that may respond.”
The results
A $250k sales target in The Good Crust’s first year of business
Now, it’s easy for Heather to talk about her business with potential customers or anyone else who’s curious.
“I have a script in my mind that I share when I meet people about what I'm doing and why,” says Heather. “I have a quick version and a longer version. And that is really critical because I use it every day.”
She also has greater ease with her sales process.
“It gives me peace of mind to know that I'm not going to lose a detail,” says Heather. “I know that I have a sales funnel spreadsheet, which allows me to park an idea. If I want to follow up with a restaurant, but I don't have time right now, I know when I'll get back to it.”
Oh, and she’s on track to achieve $250k of gross sales in her first year of business, with even bigger plans for the future.
“We're not even a year old,” says Heather. “We are on track to achieve gross sales of $250,000 in year one, and we aim to double that in year two. We are currently soliciting our second distributor and our first institution. And we are in need of a distribution van soon. We just purchased a dough production facility with a loan of $345,000, which we got with help from CEI.”
Heather has a goal in the next year to pay her Lead Dough Manager for 30 hours a week. She currently employs eight part time staff, two of which have been hired through vocational rehab programs. And she has over 40 wholesale customers. The best part? This is only the beginning.
“We're not even a year old. We are on track to achieve gross sales of $250,000 in year one, and we aim to double that in year two. We are currently soliciting our second distributor, and our first institution. And we are in need of a distribution van soon. We just purchased a dough production facility with a loan of $345,000.”
The Propeller class at The CEI Women’s Business Institute came to life because of the efforts of Program Developer Anna Ackerman and Director Sarah Guerette. If you’re a woman entrepreneur in Maine looking for a supportive learning environment with other women as you grow or start your business, be sure to check out their community and consider signing up for a free workshop. They’re an incredible resource, and they’ve been incredible partners to both The Good Crust and Tortoise Labs.
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