Holy Guacamole
This podcast released an episode every week between 2020 and 2023. The idea was to share first-hand stories from restaurant owners, cafe owner, travel businesses and more.
PODCAST
93: 2ND PILLAR FINANCIAL STABILITY WITH SARI KIMBELL
Kicking off the third year of Holy Guacamole we go deep with the Six Pillars of Success as a method for business owners to roadmap change into their business. The Six Pillars are Brand Strategy, Financial Stability, Operations, Product Quality, Avenues & Distribution, and Hospitality.
In this episode guest Sari Kimbell shares her method of ensuring Financial Stability. Guest Sari Kimbell and host Martha Lucius have a lively conversation on how to ensure that a new or established business charts their future today, with profit and long-term holistic planning in mind. These theories work for owners of cafes, breweries, bars, food based businesses and of course restaurants.
Financial Stability is a means to an end: build your business to be profitable from the start. Sari Kimbell's entire business, Food Business Success, is based on baking in profitability from the start. Her specialty is helping CPG businesses, and her methods are explored in the this episode.
92: BRANDING AT PHILLY CHEESE SCHOOL WITH JULIA BIRNBAUM
Founder and Cheese Enthusiast, Julia Birnbaum, come on the pod to share her two year journey to opening Philly Cheese School. A place for learning about cheese, cheese tasting, and sharing these experiencing this with a friend, or getting to know other people. We dig deep into Julia’s new business, and the intentional journey to create a queer-friendly, inclusive environment with the branding and messaging that matches her fun personality!
In context, Julia Birnbaum’s business is a shining example of good branding, and why she was chosen to represent this part of the Six Pillar Story. She’s nailed a whole new direction for food businesses — experiencing food without being a restaurant, without being a bar. Julia’s visioning melded with a completely stellar new type of business, and a dynamic look is unsurpassed. It’s an environment to nurture food lovers, with education that marks an eleven on the scale of geeky food knowledge. Gone is the dark wood, dark green and heavy interior design of established food markets.
Bring in your creative thinking — how could “experiences” be central to your business, with low food and labor costs. This one is very creative.
This Six Pillars System is the backdrop for this and future episodes. It's a method I've leaned into with my client work, and allows for a common language and strong progress. The first pillar in the Six Pillar System is Strategy. Each topic will reflect one of the pillars with real live examples that help you put these ideas into action. As a former owner, and now host of Holy Guacamole, listener have tools to help them become stronger, more resilient and healthy business owners. Profits and a good internal culture is key to staying in business. For a business to come to life some basics need to be solved: mission and vision statement, logo design, branding.