The Month End Podcast
The Month End Podcast
Episode 27: Manny L • Heaven's Pantry
In episode twenty seven, Accountfully's CEO and Partner, Brad Ebenhoeh, sits down with Manny L of Heaven's Pantry to talk about his line of wholesome Excalibars. Manny brings a ton of insight into ways he solves common business challenges by leveraging his background as an accountant and automations specialist. Manny's vast background in business and keen sense of ways to automate and streamline offer a unique perspective on managing and growing his CPG business, and he is not shy about sharing it. This episode is jam-packed with information, insight and knowledge that can be put to use in your daily business operations.
▶︎ Watch: https://youtu.be/8VwRXjTrFP0
▶︎ More episode details: www.accountfully.com/podcasts/manny-l-heavens-pantry
▶︎ Download Show Notes
▶︎ The Heaven's Pantry Website: https://www.heavenspantryllc.com
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Welcome to The Month End, a CPG community chat. The Month End will provide emerging CPG brands real life knowledge into the accounting, finance and operational world. Our guests will be key stakeholders from those same brands as well as other key contributors in the industry. Alright, welcome to Episode 27 of The Month End podcast today we have Manny L, co founder of Heavens pantry. How you doing Manny?
Manny L:Oh, I'm doing fantastic. appreciate y'all having me on the show.
Brad Ebenhoeh:Well, cool. Well, I'm super excited about this one, we have a former CPA, so as a CPA chatting to another CPA will be hopefully an interesting conversation for the listeners. Additionally, someone who's working a full time job while launching a CPG brand. So a lot to chat about. So I guess before we get started, Manny, tell us about yourself like what's your background? And you know, where do you come from, on the whole nine yards.
Manny L:Oh, like you, I was a former CPA, I worked as a consultant for Deloitte and Touche. And that experience has taught me the meaning of hard work, I have never never burned the midnight oil as hard as I did as as, as compared to when I was at Deloitte. But I think that was a very good experience. I made a lot of friends, I met a lot of people who really helped push and develop me as a professional. And I also really, I also think the opportunity to study and become a CPA really solidified my quantitative chops, and it's really carried over into the professional that I became today. I then moved on to business process transformation, I work for a large CPG called Mars Incorporated. I started off as started off as a robotic process automation analyst, put in my time, got promoted. I ended up leading a analytics Center of Excellence, and also being a expert advisor to senior executives at that firm. And I grew my analytic Corp, using data to help solve the business problems that a lot of managers had in that company. And today I work today I work for a large bank as a VP, I bought at a ivies senior executives and how to use digital transformation tools to streamline their operations and their business. Throughout my whole career, I've always thought to myself, How can I create win wins? How can I make sure that I'm winning, and I'm getting good experience that can propel me to the next opportunity? And, and also give me takeaways that I can use to build up my own business. And then, and then secondly, I also made a point to make sure that my employer was also getting their money's worth out of me as well. I'm a firm believer in mutuality. I think that's not I think that the best kind of deal is a deal where both parties win. And I really want the main reasons why I wanted to be on this podcast is because I feel that you know, you can win, I can win. And most importantly, your listeners can win as well and take something away from this.
Brad Ebenhoeh:That's awesome. First things first, in that, yes, anybody that works at a big four accounting firm knows that knows the hard work said at least. Secondly, just fascinating. Background, can you get a little bit more into examples of some automation that you've done and how it I guess supported Mars and different CPG brands at a corporate level?
Manny L:Sure, absolutely. So, our credit process was actually grossly inefficient or this is a critic process for approving customers for sales, there was a very convoluted process where you would have a where you would have a bunch of associates, many of them who had been with the company for 510 years, the same position. So people were very deep into the tribal knowledge and how the company works and how and how the flow of information works to the company. And one of the biggest drivers of inefficiency at a large organization is what I call non utilized talents. When you have someone with the capability to do more. And their skills, their their talents are not being properly utilized. What these people did was that every day in the morning after they got their morning cup of coffee, they would log into an ERP system, they will pull up they will pull up the the credit worthiness of the customer. And then they would and then they would they would basically, they would basically go on to another screen and then either approve or reject the order after cross referencing probably at least three different Excel files as well. So this is such a joyful process. And when I say joyful, I'm being very, very sarcastic. One thing that we were able to do is that we were able to use a technology called robotic process automation, which mimics what a human does on a computer. So for example, let's say you're going to, let's say you're going into the system, and you're pulling up the data, you can actually configure a virtual worker, and I use that term virtual worker, because that's what a bot is, it's ultimately, a virtual assistant mate meant to make your life easier. And this vert and this virtual worker that we spun up, it actually grabbed all the data from these multiple sources, and then plopped it onto a single list, we ended up choosing SharePoint as our list of choice. And then, instead of having to go through multiple different systems, we ended, we ended up, we ended up creating an interface that is one single source of truth, that has all the different lists of criteria and metrics necessary to the vet valued customer credit worthiness. And then we had a column that says, reject, hold, for a set, or, and then once the once an once it's once it's picked up by the robots, the robots that actually pocketing the data on that list. And it's also reading, it's also reading the data and the human input as well. So that it so that they can go into the ERP system and make the necessary changes. And once we, once we, once we, once we fully if once we fully have a decision made on the on the human end, what's so beautiful about the solution is that you're cutting down multiple systems into one system, so that the end user only has to read the data and use their analytical shops to decide whether this customer is we're extending credit to you. And then hitting hold. Or set.
Brad Ebenhoeh:That's, that's super cool. Yeah, I mean, it sounds like kind of what every kind of tech, SaaS based platform was trying to do today, right? Create efficiencies and time and energy and give us you know, basically organize data and push us information and make decisions. Super cool. So going from this corporate world, and this automation, robotics, kind of the way your mind works here, like give us a little background on Heaven's Pantry, like why Heaven's Pantry? Why are you also while you're working full time,
Manny L:They say that that necessity is the mother of all invention. That old adage cannot be any more true. When I was working. Nine o'clock to 11 o'clock, and that's pm not am at Delloit's. One of the perks of the job was that you would get free coffee. And when I walk, you know, I think the boys a great company. I think that they definitely, they definitely have a lot of perks for employees there. They, they understand that, "hey, you're working a lot of hours, let's make this as comfortable for you as possible." So every day I wake up, I drive to work. I will get a free cup of coffee from Super cool. background of that, and a lot of things that come Starbucks. I during the afternoons, my supervisors will oftentimes send me out on coffee runs that I never said no, because that is my breath of fresh air for the day. I will have another cup of coffee during the afternoon. And boom When evening hits. I can't go to sleep anymore. But I needed that jolt to wake myself up and get ready for another day's worth of hard work. And then I look back on. So obviously this lifestyle of over caffeination was not sustainable. I'm not knocking caffeine, I still drink coffee. I just think that, you know, I just I just think that it's really important to have a sustainable energy source as well, that doesn't lead you to having a crash. I look back to my childhood. And my parents, they used to cut up fruit and nuts before I did my homework for the day. And they explained to me, the fruit was meant to give your brain a short boost of energy than the nuts was actually meant to give you long, long lasting energy and also enhance your cognitive performance as well. And I actually ran a tutoring business when I was in high school as well. I fed my students the same exact no fruits and nuts that my parents spared me when I was younger, and their performance went up. I had a I had a student go up by 290 points on his SATs, and I, obviously he was a very diligent worker, but also making sure that he was well nourished, that was also a critical factor for success, in my opinion. So, as I, so as I reflected on my experiences, I realized, so why don't I partner up with my friends from college? Why don't I create an energy bar, that through and like really are nostalgic at the end of the day doesn't lead you to having a crash midway through the day, and come from some sort of childhood memory or which is the case here. So you decided we're going to launch Excalibur or and won't keep you up at night. And thus, the Excalibur bar was your brand, you know, within Heaven's pantry, like what was that process? I guess, step one co founder, you said your born. I think it's a, you know, it tastes a lot like a brownie buddies from college like, how did you pick your co founders? Like how do you get comfortable with them? Like what are your and a wrapper. And it also doesn't neglect nutrients as roles specifically within kind of your partnership here? So my friend, Rob was a very avid Cook, and he still is, he well. Because when you have food that isn't good for you, it was actually baking recipes at his house. And then he really tastes good, you're going to eat it, and you're going to feel wanted to find a way to not just monetize, because, ultimately, very lethargic. When you have a mood. That's, you know, that's all three of us we have, we have good corporate jobs, and we are good for you, but it doesn't taste good. You're not gonna not in this for the money. Ultimately, ultimately, the money is reinvested to create a better product that can better want to eat it. So let's have the best of both worlds. serve our consumers. But, but ultimately, my friend Rob, he wanted to figure out how can we take our cooking and culinary abilities and spread the love with the whole world. And we used to sell at farmer's markets. And those were a wild hit. And that was I gave him a lot of input for the recipe. He gave me a lot of inputs. We also had a friend Justin as well, we all went to we all went to school together at Lehigh University. We have universities, a school in Pennsylvania, very critical towards my personal and professional development. And after we started selling at the farmers market, Excalibur bar was born. They became wildly popular with the market and then we ended up scaling up we rent out a factory in California. And now we're now we're pumping out tons and tons of bars.
Brad Ebenhoeh:Cool. Where are you selling them? Outside of farmers markets already started like, online retail, what are you doing?
Manny L:So we have multiple, we were an omni-channel company, we sell an Amazon and our Amazon rankings have actually been doing very well. So we are constantly we are consistently in the top 100 for the fruit and nut bars on Amazon. And on certain days, we're actually beating out certain brands of lower bars. So congrats. So watch, watch out Lara bar, you got competition coming your way. We sell that we sell at a Acai bowl chain in North Carolina called Palm berries shout out the palm berries are very, if you're ever in that area, I really recommend you stop by great food and for the people. We sit. We have a few stores out in California that we sell to and we also have you in Pennsylvania as well. This is where having geographically distributed leadership is actually to our benefit.
Brad Ebenhoeh:There you go. Much easier distribution. In terms of inventory, you know, I guess I'm one you have, you know, one SKU or one bar you're doing here You said you had a factory out in California are you guys leveraging co packers like or is your partner kind of cooking? What's the what's the manufacturer creation?
Manny L:We're leveraging a co Packer? That's a great question. We're leveraging a co Packer. But ultimately I think there's a right and a wrong way to use a co Packer. I think the wrong way to use a co packer is to have them develop the recipe for you from scratch and just a set whatever word of advice that they give as gospel. I think it's always important to you know to listen to their expertise in the realm of manufacturing, but but ultimately you are responsible for the success or failure of your product. So our strategy was we come up with a recipe ourselves a recipe that we feel proud with. And then we instead of having them develop a recipe, we give them that recipe and we tell them, This is what we want the bar to taste like, how can you replicate this in a scalable, economic way, without compromising customer quality?
Brad Ebenhoeh:That makes a lot of sense. You know, you want to have that ownership, you know, in your product and your brand, and then clearly leveraging other people's knowledge or expertise as needed. So I guess from that, then are they sourcing raw materials as well? Or is it kind of a mixed model?
Manny L:So they are sourcing raw materials, but we are very, very, we're very active participant in this process. I think, I think that when you, when you fully wash your hands of the sourcing process, the recipe creation process, that's when your brand starts losing its identity. So we trust them, we tell them, hey, we want we want this, we want high quality nuts, we want high quality cocoa powder, come back to us with a list of options. And, and tell us the pros and cons of each that will that will partner together to make that final decision.
Brad Ebenhoeh:Gotcha. Super cool. Um, so then in relation to, you know, selling like eating, let's say, I guess, like go to Amazon, where you're saying you're getting like really great ratings and rating. Well, how do you? How do you determine success? Or what metrics are you looking at, specifically, let's say on the Amazon sales channel.
Manny L:Number one, I think customer, I think the product ranking is really important. Breaking top 100 was a huge boost of confidence to our team. And that's when we realized that our business had wheels stands on, and it wasn't always in the top 100. We were actually hovering around the to the to hundreds of three hundreds when we first started out, and then over, over time, this product just became more and more and more popular, and ultimate. And then for customer reviews. I think that having a good product, there's really no way around it. As a entrepreneur, I'm not in the business. I don't like to think of myself as in the business of collecting and taking people's money. I'll think of myself as a guy who provides a valuable good or service to the world. And whatever money that people pay me. That's that's so I can continue to provide a valuable good or service to the world and also keep making a better good or service. So we we really take into hearts What Our Customers Are Saying we have a 4.9 star average on our Amazon product. And I think that a good baseline is aiming for at least a 90% customer satisfaction rates. Ultimately not everyone's going to like your product. Not everyone's going to be in love with it's like what do you like to eat Brad?
Brad Ebenhoeh:I like meat. Bacon.
Manny L:Cool so do I. Why I'm a huge I'm a huge baking fan, okay, but you know, you're you're you go to that local farmers market and you get a nice slab of steak or bacon, and you'll jump for joy be really excited. But one of the Viq would have a vegan comes across that slab of meats. He might not be so excited at the concept of eating that slice of bacon or or slab of steak. So So ultimately you have to remember you can't please everyone, but but you still want to have more people who liked your product and disliked it.
Brad Ebenhoeh:Yes, I 100% agree you cannot have wholesale agreement anything in life so there's the push and pull of what really is a kind of good review or a good kind of good feedback to take not not everything is good feedback. Because they come from a different perspective. From an Excel a bar standpoint or heavens pantry I you know, you have this one SKU Is there anything in the hopper moving forward of different skews or different flavors or kind of different sales channels,
Manny L:We actually have something in the pipeline for a new product that's going to be announced probably the end of this year or early next year. But we but in turn in terms of different channels. We we believe in building strong relationships with the local community. I think that a lot of small brands, they dream really big and they think hey, let's take over the world. But I think that's before you make a difference in the world. You have to be able to make a dent in your local community. So ours sales process for getting into stores, a lot of it is just going out, making friends, shaking hands. And then and then telling people, Hey, this is our product. Let me know if you think a win win can be created. If not, I'll see, you know, we can still be friends, I'll still like your stuff on Instagram, I'll still spread the good word about your store. But if you think that we maybe think that we can make if you think that we can boost both of our brands, why don't you try selling some of our products at your store? So it's really just low. A lot of it's really just local outreach. We are also on a few platforms that are that are specifically for wholesale buyers. We're, we're a big fan of maple. It's it's a marketplace for for people who have stores and are looking to stock their stores with unique wholesale goods, oftentimes from local businesses like mine.
Brad Ebenhoeh:Definitely maple pot foods fair, a ton of different platforms for the CPG. Folks.
Manny L:I love how you read it out the main brands? You definitely I can tell you been doing this for a long time. Yeah, yeah, if you have, please keep seeing the growth and all those across a lot of our clientele so so kind of to loop back around here and a couple of things. Number one, you're a former CPA and accountant like what do you do? Who does the accounting for? Excalibur? Do you do it? So we have a, we have a CPA that we partner with. We have a CPA that we partner with. And I think that my background in accounting, they have a saying that the more you know about something, the more you realize that you don't know, when a lot of people think CPA equals good at preparing taxes, when in reality, a CPAs career can take multiple different directions they can get they can get the tax compliance, they can add tax compliance itself has so many different branches that you can go down as well, you have the standard, you have the standard business tax preparation. And you also have niche specialists who focus on specific credits, and, and can build lucrative practices off of that alone, you have your auditors who make sure that the financial statements and the books look clean and in good order. And you are and you also and you also have operational accountants as well who, who provide the information to the senior leadership. So they can be equipped to make decisions as to how my relationship is with the accountant that I use. I outsource most of my compliance, I outsource my tax preparation and where and where my accounting background comes into play. It's really monitoring those KPIs and building systems that can alert me whatever, whatever there's a decision that I need to make, for example, when do I need to restock my inventory? When do it when do I need? When do I need to set aside reserves to pay off my tax liabilities? And those are the areas that the more high level strategic activities. That's where my accounting background comes into handy and actually enables me to be a better customer to my CPA.
Brad Ebenhoeh:Awesome. And then last kind of question before we get into our kind of two final questions on this podcast. Number one is how have you leveraged automation or your background in that world to support Heaven's Pantry?
Manny L:You know, Bill Gates once said, The best kind of person to hire is a lazy person, because the lazy person will find a the most efficient way to do something. Due to my due to my background, and due to the way that I was raised, I was always taught to work hard burned the midnight oil. And you know, I pretty much since I started working. I think I've been averaging probably 70, 80 hours a week. Even even as I exited the world of the big four, I never really scaled down my hours, but ultimate ultimate. But ultimately, I had to teach myself how to be a little bit lazy. I had to teach myself how to be a little bit lazy. Instead of just doing the work. How can I figure out a way to do less work? And that's where automation started coming into handy. I used to manually populate CRMs by hand by going out online, and then looking for, and then looking for stores that might be promising leads, and then entering them into our CRM, then I realized, my time is a little bit more valuable than doing data entry. And I think anyone's time is a little bit more valuable than doing mindless data entry. And that's where I realized the same tools that I was designing architecting. And building during my time at Mars Incorporated, I can actually build some of those tools for myself. And one of my biggest wins was actually creating a robots using a tool called UiPath, which is a robotic process automation software. And this software actually can go on to I can I configured it to go on multiple websites, and then populate Excel spreadsheet with a lot of leads complete with the name of the store, contact information, email, phone number, and then their general industry so I can prepare, I can I can prepare myself to add value to them. So for example, if it's a gym, I can tell them about how my bar keeps people energetic, and it can also be a great purchase for people who are, you know, attendees of a fitness class, leaving their spirits boosted up, if it's a health food store, I can tell them about how, hey, we're a small business, this bar is going to make guys look really cool. And the same kind of people who reclaim your store are probably going to fall in love with our bar. So using robotic process automation, I was able to automate a huge, huge, huge part of our lead generation process, that alone is stopping me from having to pull my hair out.
Brad Ebenhoeh:Amen on that it the time is money time, as you know, one of one of the limiting resources that exists in the world time, right time, money, talent. So as much as you can get a, you know, automate anything that is kind of very low ROI on the on the time spectrum, it makes a lot of sense. So super cool on that. So. All right. Well, this has been a very interesting conversation, I think, you know, Manny years had definitely the best voice on any of our guests on the podcast, one of the most interesting backgrounds, but you know, a fellow CPG founder. So he's got some do's and don'ts here for us to kind of chat on. So number one, what is one CPG industry do for the listeners?
Manny L:Definitely. So if I had to have just one, do, it would, it would be really simple. Never forget why you're in business, you are not in business, you are not in business to extract as much value as possible from your customers. And I see within the CPG growth life cycles. A lot of times as companies get larger and larger and larger, they start to lose touch with their mission, they start to lose touch of wider business, and a business will not survive. Unless every day when you wake up with the leadership wakes up in the morning and ask themselves, What can I do to provide a better experience? Whether it's the product or the customer journey? How can I provide a better experience to my customers, and you have to obsess over the customers. So before we talk about anything else, I want to put that out there. But now that we put that out there. The second thing I wanted to talk about as systems, you want to have systems in place it in our society, we think that success is bread all of a sudden aha moments, and it is not. And I'll give you an example, let's say playing the guitar. You know, you walk you see someone walk up on stage and bust out a really six solo or you see him sing lawlessly in rhythm to a sock and it looks effortless, but it is not the part of the performer on that stage is able to achieve those results. Not because he had an aha moment on how to play but because every day when he got up, he had a system and he had a process in place you know, drilling down those scales, transitioning your your finger movements from you know from from the fretboard from a different strings to become more synergized become and become more flawless and in tune that. Those are all steps that you don't see him talk about. You don't see him doing. But a song that you see a guitarist play on stage was built by a, by a system. Now for something way more complex than just playing a few pieces of music, like running, like like running a business. That's like that's like a that's like conducting entire orchestra. If you're, if even a solo musician needs systems to, to get their business in order, then a orchestra needs to have even more systems and be even more systems minded. Thirdly, my third and final do is, even though you want you want to be lazy, and that you want to identify and be very ruthless with identifying non value added activities, you cannot be afraid of hard work. And it sounds like a sounds like a contradiction, but it's not a lot of people start businesses because they don't like working a corporate job. In fact, they actually think working a corporate job is one of the best ways to learn and build a human capital necessary to propel your business to the next to the next level, there is no shame in working a nine to five or a nine to eight. You know, you should not shy away from hard work, but at the same time, you want to work hard in a smart way. So those are my three, those are my three dudes, in terms of adults, right? Don't be pessimistic and focus on the short term. You always underestimate what you can you always underestimate what you can accomplish in the long term. But you people, as a rule of thumb, always overestimate what can be done today or this week. So you want to focus on quarters, and you want to focus on and you want to focus on yours, as well as what I'm doing in the short term pushing the needle in the long term. Because success is built over a series of long term improvements. Number two, you shouldn't you shouldn't compare yourself to other people. Ultimately, you should compare yourself to certain benchmarks, obviously, but you got to be very cognizant of who you compare yourself to. So let's say in the CPG industry, right? You shouldn't compare yourself to maybe a tech maybe a tech startup which might have bigger margins, more explosive growth. You should be very you should be very cognizant of who you compare yourself to. And then lastly my last don't is- don't have a ego leave your ego at the door. The second you have the second you have that ego the second that you the second that you build up from this sense of arrogance and conceit that hey up on the best nothing can go wrong. That's when react that's when the hard slap of reality will hit you across the face. You always want to you always want to listen to the perspectives of other people because that's how iron sharpens iron
Brad Ebenhoeh:I love it. Lots of wisdom there great news and great downside and I I can agree and relate to a lot with a lot of those so kudos for for sharing all those items, Manny. But hey, we're gonna sign off here this has been fantastic I really appreciate your time really appreciate you learn about you and your background and everything and clearly talking about heavens pantry and how your philosophy of running a business as well as a CPG brand. Before we leave where can people find heavens pantry? Where can they follow you, give us a little background on that and then we'll then we'll call it a day.
Manny L:Awesome. So first and foremost, I love talking to my customers, whether existing or new or potential customers as well. Shoot us a follow on Instagram. Our Instagram handle is heaven's pantry. Follow us give us a DM and I'll email and I'll literally DM you a special discount code that can be used on Amazon. If you if you go on Amazon and look up Excalibur bar. That's Excalibur except with a a instead of a use of Excalibur bar. And then you also type in Heavens pantry, you'll see our product pop up. It's a it's a beautiful design with a castle you can't you can't miss it. You can buy us you can buy from us on Amazon on our website. If you're looking for wholesale orders, go to heavens pantry llc.com and click the shop button and you can get in touch with us on how to buy wholesale. Once again. I really appreciate the privilege of being on your podcast and being able to connect with your customers and sure our paths will cross again.
Brad Ebenhoeh:Awesome. All right, man, man yell from Heavens pantry. Episode 27 from The Month End podcast. So hope you all enjoyed it. Thanks again Manny.
Manny L:Thank you
