#49 Scaling Health-Ade Kombucha's Operations with Co-Founder Justin Trout

The Startup CPG Podcast

I'm so excited to share a conversation with you about kombucha and operations - two of my favorite topics! I recently was the moderator for a session that was held at UCLA Anderson by The Food & Agriculture Business Association for a group of MBA candidates where I had a fireside chat with Justin Trout, co-founder and former COO of Health-Ade Kombucha. In this conversation, Justin dives into the nitty gritty, behind-the-scenes stories about growing a kombucha business from a single farmers market to almost 50,000 retail doors during his tenure as COO and you get some snippets from me about growing LivBar. Listen in to learn the stages of Health-Ade's growth, the decision to self-manufacture, the process of transitioning from doing operations work to managing a team of operations personnel, first operations hires, overcoming a year with over 2,000 employees turning over, implementing an ERP system, discerning which experts to listen to, where Justin draws inspiration and why he loves operations, and more.

Episode Links:

• Health-Ade's website & IG @healthade
• UCLA Anderson website
• Audience questions at the end facilitated by MBA Candidate Julia Sweitzer

Show Links:

• Join the Startup CPG Slack community (7K+ members and growing!)
• Follow @startupcpg
• Visit host Jessi's Linkedin or website
• Questions or comments about the episode? Email Jessi at [e-mail]