How David Garascia, General Manager of Bel Brands, Scaled His Company Beyond Retail

Nick: 00:00:01

There are a million ways to make money in the food service industry. You just have to find one on the Titans of Food Service podcast.

I interview real life movers and shakers in the food game who cut through all the noise to get to the top. My name is Nick Portillo and welcome to the Titans of Food Service podcast. Let's jump right into it. Hello.

Welcome back to the Titans Food Service podcast. Nick Portillo here, I'm your host.

Today I'm welcoming the general manager of Bell Brands on the Food Service or Away from Home segment, David Garasha. And David has a very cool story in the food business.

. He joined bell brands about: 2021

Now it's a massive brand in retail and they have a fantastic brand recognition and brand awareness. And so he's really been in charge of the food service side of building that up.

And so he's gonna give some really actionable nuggets here in this episode. Exactly how he's been able to do that.

Starting with getting broad line, getting into non commercial GPOs, if you will, really focusing on belly, belly selling and educating your sales team and now looking out into the future of what other innovative products can he sell to his customer base? You know, how can we sell into all different day parts which would be breakfast, lunch, dinner, snacking, all those types of things.

Really cool conversation.

If you're new to food service or you're in food service, trying to grow your brand, whatever it may be, this is a great episode to kind of get a behind the scenes look of how a very large company is building their food service out of their business and some really actionable steps and nuggets that I think will really resonate with you. Without further ado. I like the formality of that. Without further ad you. Let's go ahead and welcome.

All right, David, welcome to the Titans and Freezers podcast. I appreciate you coming on and joining me.

David: 00:01:03

Yeah, glad to be here, excited to talk about the industry and see what interesting stuff comes out of our chat.

Nick: 00:01:07

Yeah, absolutely, absolutely. How did you get into the food business?

David: 00:01:09

You know, at the very beginning, when I was actually in high school, late high school, early college, I actually worked for a retail broker part time.

They had a Gatorade, signed for daycare, got into that, had like a little C store route during the summer, trying to Sell like full doors of Gatorade. And you know, I think the stores, they kept it all summed up like 100 bucks. Which in today's world that would be meaningless, right?

And yeah, we spent a couple summers doing Kroger resets with beach on baby food and stacking all those little jars. And when I finished my college education, so I had this on my resume. This is when you still went in and I was gonna date myself.

You still went in and you mailed your resume and to manage on the paper started with Coca Cola Enterprises, which was the bodily arm in the United States and they were just launching Powerade in the convenience store channel.

And just I guess somebody saw it on my resume that I saw Gatorade was there just long enough to know that I really enjoyed going out and moving people's actions with my words. Like the high energy calling on, they call it cold water apps. Calling on restaurants and bars selling Coke, Premix and Coast Mix systems.

But got recruited to free LA food service. And really that was really my entry in the food service industry.

So where they had defined channels of trade that we have to take commercial, non commercial qsr, et cetera. And from there it's just a fucking rocket.

Nick: 00:01:57

Yeah, man. How interesting to start as a, in the broker business. I always find, you know, me, I started the food business on the broker side as well.

And growing up, my dad being a food broker, you know, my friends or anybody would ask, what's your dad do for living? I'm like, I don't really know, he sells food or something to restaurants. It was as a kid, I just couldn't comprehend what he was doing.

So it's very interesting that you kind of sort of passed me. That's kind of your first, you know, jump in the food business.

David: 00:02:12

Yeah. And you learn a lot in those types of agencies. You know, I think back like, you know, you did learn a lot.

You know, just the interaction between, you know, the principal, the line owner and the folks at the customer facing team, those are the ones, they're the ones that grind it out. The other ones have been done. Of course there's a lot changes. But fund retail brokerage and agency relationships as well as food service. Absolutely.

Nick: 00:02:25

So you started the retail side. Right. Eventually you get into food service, especially on freelay. Your career progresses. Now you're at Bell Brands.

So tell me a little bit about your role and how you got to and how you got into Bell Brands.

David: 00:02:32

Yeah, so you know, PepsiCo, food service. You know, there are a lot of different careers that came after that, always in the food service, classic trade.

Ultimately, I was working in a private equity project, so I spent some time doing private equity on the food member side. It was helpful with the transaction and, you know, some folks, you know, connections.

I would say anybody that's listening today or listen in the future, your relationships matter in your life. So continue to just make sure you stay in touch with people that you trust and value, that you learn from.

And that's essentially how I ended up at Bell.

So I had a relationship with some senior executives in France interact with, and they said, hey, we really want to accelerate our food service convenience business here in the United States. And this was early 21, you know, just kind of the pandemic. And we had some discussions.

And ultimately, the first time I interviewed with Everybody in the U.S. they said, you know what? We like you, but we're pay us, but that's all right, that's fair.

And then they circle back and they said, you know, we do think you're the right person, the right role for the job. So that's how I ended up here. You know, I give Bell a lot of credit in the middle of the pandemic, as you know, you live through it, Nick.

A lot of my peers live through it. I lived through it. From the industry standpoint, it was just chaos. And a lot of markets around the United States.

And in the midst of all this, Bell made a decision. We saw over the horizon. We saw this was a temporary setback. We want to be where consumers are, outside grocery, in mass and club, right?

And you have the old, very simple statistics. You know, if you got a dollar in your pocket, you're only going to spend half of it in the grocery or the master class.

You're going to go to the C store, you're going to go to food service, you're going to go to the airport, all those things. And they knew they needed to be there, so they made the investment.

During pandemic, people count, headcount, product development, things of that nature. So started in, you know, we're basically the middle of 21 with the ambitions to go out and let's be.

Let's get our products, let's get our brands where people are, where people eat, drink at school, have fun.

Nick: 00:03:38

How interesting for a company to make an investment during that time period.

You know, if you can remember, back on the broker side, you know, people were being furloughed or laid off, um, you know, or temporarily out of work for, because it was hard sales and food service didn't go down to zero, but it was closer to 0% than 100%, I'll tell you that. Time periods. So good on Bell for making that investment, seeing that opportunity.

David: 00:03:53

They had the vision and they got, you know, the leaders that had been come out of the food service trade. So they recognized that, you know, let's build now. In fact, it was a benefit.

There were so many high quality people in the marketplace that were unfortunately displaced from their roles. Some organizations either didn't have the cash flow or the resources, which I understand right.

You know, nobody knew what's going to come tomorrow and the company has to do what's, you know, how we survive today. Well, there are so many good, high quality folks out of the marketplace. We read some of those in our organizations.

We built a team out and ultimately have the right people on your team.

At the end of the day, that matters more than probably anything else you're going to do is if you got team of folks that are all in, then good things are going to happen.

Nick: 00:04:15

Yeah, absolutely.

I remember at the end of: 2020

And so I was actually just talking to the person that we elected last week and I was like, that was the most intense, most robust interview process we've ever gone through. The candidates were insanely good and all of them. And it's a real true testament to this individual, you know, for making it through that process.

But yeah, definitely can resonate with what you're saying. So now at Bell Brand. So I know that in Bell Brand's big in retail. Right? In. So you're in food service now.

you taken the business since: 2021

David: 00:04:41

Yeah. So kudos to Bell. Making the investment in the out of Home channel, away from home channel.

And we look at that as traditional food service and convenience. Right. For those that are listening and it's really similar interaction in a lot of places.

You're outside the house, you're looking for snacking, you're looking for a meal. There's a lot of blending down between convenience and food service.

But what I would say to anybody, including the folks at Bell, my boss and the senior team at Bell, the most challenging thing that I've ever done, I've done a few times my career is building out and growing a food service business in a retail centric Organization, the products are about the only thing that's the format's not similar, the actual is not similar. The levers to grow are uniquely different in grocery and the retail concentrate in our food service.

You know, obviously the data connectivity and the data centricity that exists today in retail is probably 15 to 20 years ahead of where we are in the traditional food service catastrophe for lots of different reasons.

So a lot of my time is spent educating the organization that the decision making tree that exists in a retail environment is different, doesn't exist at all in the food service. It's more obviously belly to belly selling.

Like what I said about relationships where a retail merchandiser, buyer, decision maker will really oftentimes look at data, whether it's consumption data, IRI data, you know, the list is endless.

I think when you're talking to a food service decision maker, whether it's a distributor, whether it's an operator that's an independent store with one location or a chain, it's really about the value that you're selling. Can you make my guest experience better so I can sell more product or sell the same amount of product at a higher price point?

So that's really where we take our time, Nick, and you know, go out of the marketplace and show our value, whether it's a distributor, whether it's a chain, whether it's working with broker partners or sales agency partners to explain to them we sell value. You know, I think that's the important piece. I would challenge anybody. If you're gonna go into food service classes, trade.

Whether you're a sales brand like Bell, it doesn't make it easy. When we walk in, we spend less time explaining who we are because we have some big brands, Baby Bell, Boba, Suisse, Bourson, among others.

So it's a little easier to like get in the door. Oh yeah, I know this brand. I do buy them as a consumer, as a shopper.

But you still, at the end of the day, you still have to show the value that you deliver for that operation. And I think a lot of food service manufacturers that are primarily focused on food service, they figure that out.

They've got that model that it's a value play, right. That doesn't deplete their value. They think it's cost driven. And I want to separate those two.

Value to me is cost and price are usually the, you know, on the lower quartile of things that we talked about and deal with, it's always about how can we make your operation better? Right. And that could be there's so many different things. We spend all day talking about that. But people hear value, they think costs.

We hear value in the food service. We think, you know, how do we make your operation better than this today so more consumers, more gas come in, that ultimately is.

This is how we're going to think.

A lot of organizations new to food service, I know this has been a theme, a lot of the commentary that you have in your engagement with the industry, I think that's a theme that I enjoy talking about it. You have to deliver value. You have to be willing to make investment in classic trade. You have to understand this organization.

You know, it's a different business model. It's not any more complex or difficult. It's just different.

Nick: 00:06:38

You know, we're approached by brands all the time. When I say all the time, maybe two or three a week that want representation. They started in retail.

They say, hey, I'm at Whole Foods, I'm a sprouts, I'm at xyz, you know, retail operation, and I want to get into food service. And, you know, my response is always, you know, you kind of have to get in and build a business a little bit.

Before you call me as a broker, what are some of the challenges or some of the roadblocks you have to overcome working with your company who has really established themselves big time in retail and now, you know, food service is kind of that next frontier for them.

David: 00:06:57

Yeah.

So I think that probably from a practical application standpoint is a consumer standing at a merchandising case in retail environment or club environment like Costco, they have a different and unique set of needs. It isn't just based on the taste of the product. The taste matters. Right. At the end of the day, it's food.

Whether you're a chef or whether you're a consumer buying something, I think the key for us has been unlocked. Explain to the organization that, you know, let's go in the back of the kitchen. Let's watch how products are being used.

Let's watch the workflow within a commercial kitchen or restaurant. Let's seek to understand, you know, the applications are different.

You know, packaging matters in a way that doesn't necessarily matter in a retail environment. Stuff like waste reduction on packaging, something that simple that, you know, if you're a consumer, you buy waste from.

If you buy some package of a honey product from a grocery store, Albertson's, Safeway Grocery, wherever you live, the retailer doesn't worry about that waste per circus. It's leaving their environment and it's going back to the consumer. The consumer owns the waste.

Whether they recycle it or put it on landfill, however, they ultimately dispose of it. A restaurant operator says, I own all this. I got this cord, I got the packaging, I have these containers.

So just something as simple as reducing packaging waste for a high velocity item. You know, when the product design team or innovation team, you know, you have to think different.

You have to train the organization that there's a different needs that. So I think it really starts with us is how the products are used, where they're being prepared.

So if we sell, for example, so if you're not familiar with this, it's a very rich, flavorful product of Gornichi's and we make it in the US and we import from France. So we have a couple different options here, but the consumer buys it and they bring it home and hey, you know what they cook with it.

They might see a recipe on TikTok or one of our websites, or you might just have it on a Shakur board for some entertaining. The chef Luxetter or the cook or the line prep guy, they're looking at it completely differently. They're like, how do I open this box?

Why is there so much packaging on here? Oh, I need to slack it out maybe, right? Because it's a firm product. I can't work with it if I'm slacking out.

So I think educating, you know, our team, our decision makers, cross functional, supply chain, R and D folks that are developing the products, even our senior leadership team, let's get them out into a kitchen.

You know, whether it's with one of our salespeople, whether it's a broker, a salesperson, so they can see how our products are used, they can get the feedback directly from the operator. I think if you do that, that's the first step is to continue to educate them in the channel. Because you and I take it for granted.

We've been in the food service industry, we know where to go. It's instinctive to do those things.

If you spent your career, if you're a general manager and you run a business unit or country or company here in the United States and you spent your career leading Kroger and Albertsons and Walmart and retailers, it just isn't in your muscle memory that these are the challenges you have to address in order to be successful in the food service. So the good news is many organizations are open to that.

Many organizations, if you have smart people, they trust their sales team, they trust our team to educate and then we slowly grow the business.

But I think what you said, if you have clients coming to you, like, if you haven't spent time in the back of the restaurant, then you don't understand food service industry.

Nick: 00:08:46

Totally agree.

You know, when you take someone into the back of a restaurant, you know, you don't go to the front door, he goes to the back, and, you know, you're right there. Once you go back to the kitchen, he's right there. There's the chef.

People are, you know, going back and forth, preparing things, chopping things, you know, handling all the tickets that they've got. Like, it's a different ball game. And, you know, having an appointment with a chef is uniquely different than someone sitting in an office somewhere.

You know, because this person's on their feet, it's hard to be. Sometimes to track them down, you have to make a presentation within a few minutes. You know, here's the samples. Get it in their mouth.

It's pretty fascinating. And, you know, we do take it for granted. This is what we do every day.

I remember I saw an operator years ago, and she's like, you know, there's a difference because she deals. She's a food service unit within a grocery store. And she's like the retail brokers or the food service brokers.

I've been to the offices of these retail brokers, and they have very comfortable chairs. You can tell they're sitting there a lot. But on the feet, service side, they're not that great of chairs. You know, they kind of squeak a little bit.

They're tilted to one side because you guys are outselling. That's just what you. That's a pretty good comparison between the two, for sure.

ow, when you first came in in: 2021

Because I would imagine at the time, you know, it's a smaller portion of the overall pie for Bell Food Service. So what are some of the initial things that you did to say, this is what we need to do to grow?

David: 00:09:33

Yeah, so that's a really, really good question. You know, you come in, we had some distribution, like a lot of organizations.

You know, somebody called one day and said, hey, you know, can you sell products? And, hey, I buy from this company called Cisco.

And then somebody sets, you know, the Cisco Location up in the system and yeah, a little bit of business and you know, here we are. Let's, let's expand that. For us, the first challenge that we wanted to address, we needed to go out and let's get distribution points, right?

So I say distribution points.

I'm talking about operating sites, whether it's Cisco, you know, from large national broad lines all the way down to regional local independence right in the marketplace. And for us, that was, that was the key.

We really needed to show value, that going to the distributor, talk to them about their food services so we can add value. But at the same time, and I think this is the piece that's really super important.

At the same time we were doing that, we were also talking to key operators in marketplace that could be anchored customers in a specific region. And we made a conscious decision not to. The desire from the organization was, holy smokes, let's go everywhere, right?

Cisco, they've got Sebi operating sites. If you call on Cisco, we want to be in sevy markets. We can't support seven markets.

We don't have the bandwidth, we don't have the headcount, we don't have people even at the time of our broker relationship. So let's go key market by key market. Let's go where population centers are, let's go where we have the people, resources.

And we were able to, while we were building our relationship with Cisco, at the same time we were working with a really large commercial anchor chain customer, Sodexo, and that really helped us. So we got a green replacement with Sodexo and now we can pull some of that volume out.

That was kind of step one for us is it took us a good 12 months to really solidify our distribution points. The next overlay to that, why.

So while we were doing all those things, we decided, okay, we're going to go out and we're going to go train our sales agency around culinary development. So we want to go own these independent operators in every city, every market.

And that's really, that's the bread and butter for a lot of distributors, whether you're Cisco, whether you're independent. They like that independent operator. And we knew we had a story.

We knew we could take some of our brands in and train the broker team, even train the distributor sales team, that these items can help enhance the menu applications for your customers, right? So now you're bringing value. You're not talking nothing on price, you're not selling a commodity. Those things are out there. People do sell on price.

And these sell commodities that just takes everybody to make the industry work. We're selling these high, these higher end products for about $10 a pound, net sales. That's pretty expensive, right?

But the key we leaned into was Nick, hey, if you're doing a menu application, we can make that menu application better. We can help you sell at a higher margin with our products and prices. So we really try to surround the industry.

So get the distribution point while you're also pulling through demand. But then chase that independent operator. That was the business at.

So that's how Cisco was most excited about, you know, the distributors, they like the case volume, they come with a large national account. They really appreciate you as a vendor if you go out and help them grow their local business.

And so we made that our calling card and it was train the broker salespeople, make sure that we were selling value, make sure we had a good selling story. And that was really the genesis, you know, the first 18 months.

And then we just, we just continue to apply the gas pedal, that sense of hey, have more people, resources. So if we can do that in three markets, what will happen if we do it in eight markets or 10 markets or 20 markets?

And so we scale up and then you go from having a handful of operating sites and distributor sites and now you've got hundreds and now sudden you've got a real business and you've got fuel to reinvest back into the organization. So the key takeaway is we didn't just do it in 18 months.

It took us four and a half years or four years to get from where we started to where we have a really viable, sustainable, long term growth that we can continue to rely on for many years in the future.

Nick: 00:11:44

What a really smart, the way you laid it out, it sounds very simple, but it's very complex.

Going to get a national broad line in Cisco on board and then pairing that with one of the largest operators in Sodexo, you know, help create that pull through and then you know, expanding it starting regionally within a local area, training the teams, hitting those local operators, which I'm sure then once you start getting that, once you start getting momentum, US Food starts calling and you have PFG and these other distributors say I need to bring these products in because you're getting buzz in the marketplace organically.

David: 00:12:02

From there you do, you get the buzz. So like the first 18 months, first 24 months, we made a conscious decision.

We didn't do a lot of external marketing, we didn't speak to the industry we were gonna go out and just be, like I said, belly, belly selling, right? Blocking, tackling gate distribution points with your distributor partners, operators selling, operator execution.

Get a little bit of national talent execution.

And then I was like, okay, now we've got this really good story, so let's go start talking to the trading meaning let's go to the key events, key industry events. You know, whether it's market vision events, whether it's the pizza shop in Las Vegas, we started to tactically invest there.

At the same time, we said, we need to have a dedicated marketing approach.

Not every organization has the bandwidth to do that from a resource standpoint, from a dollar standpoint, because we are obviously a branded company and we're so happy we focused on speaking to the consumer. It was a little easier for me to go and sell the organization, that we should have a dedicated food service marketing agency.

Help us speak to the key decision makers, help, you know, let's be in C store drive. Let's be in QSR magazine, let's be in Food Service Structure magazine. With digital assets, it's really just to drive awareness of our products.

I think if you talk to brand owners, they're trying to get into the food service space. But we hear all the time. We go do a Cisco trade show, for example, food show. And then we can debate the value of those events. That's the fight.

Multiple podcasts, everyone have a different point of view on that. But I would go work in the marketplace with Team Nick and I'm here. You'd have chefs and restaurants come and say, oh, hey, I know your brand.

I'm a consumer. I didn't know what was available in food service. I could do a lot of things with that foodservice.

So that's kind of like, you know, we're 18 months into this and we're like, all right, I think we have some awareness issue.

Like, no matter how many doors we knock on, until we really push some kind of electronic social selling, being on the digital media platforms in a managed way, they have an expert, you know, bring food service marketers in the outlets, feed to the industry. And that's really been a force multiplier for a reasonable investment versus my revenue to be able to activate the channel.

So they got chefs all over the United States. They see us, they see us in the right place. They see us where they are going to look for information.

And then that, again, it just acts as a force multiplier. So again, for listeners, I would tell you, like, we didn't do it all at once. Like, we didn't have the right to do it all once again.

We did it all at once. We would spend a lot of money. Probably not been successful as slowly leaning into the channel.

Nick: 00:13:22

But look at you now. You know how far it's come.

Yeah, I see a lot of times, brands, they put a lot of market, you know, on the topic of marketing, they put a lot of their marketing muscle and dollars into the retail side, maybe, you know, the E commerce side, Amazon, things like that. But good for you for doing it in a food service as well and hitting where the chefs are. Because it is.

And it is an area that a lot of brands neglect or say that, hey, we don't. We don't need to be in three service marketing. We have teams out there selling and doing just the face to face. But it's not enough.

You have to get more eyeballs on your brand. That's how you build a brand, and that's how people become. You build authority and trust and things like that.

And the chefs and decision makers say, okay, let's give it. At the very least, let's give it a shot. Let's try a sample and take it from there.

David: 00:13:45

Yeah, let people know you're available.

So a key unlock for us, something we're really proud of, is we've told the organization, you know, say we're a marketing organization to have to sell cheese. That'd be a good way to say it. That's my Livecom user in that space.

So we had, you know, classically trained marketers and we said, look, trends, begin the food service and restaurants, dining trends, flavor trends, we get. That's another podcast on here for you. But we've got. How do we link. How do we link what's going on with a restaurant chef?

And not necessarily it could be an influencer chef, but it could just be a chef that runs a restaurant. How do we link that with what we're trying to do on the retail side of business? Speaking to consumers?

Because, you know, if you got the restaurant, you know, your friends or family, and you have a really cool meal, a lot of times like, wow, that was a really good flavor combination. How do I do that? How do I replicate that at home, you know, with my friends and family, you know, if you're foodie, whatever.

And so we're now just beginning to kick off some really cool marketing interaction with where we're going to have chefs and folks in the restaurant space speaking to our restaurant customers.

Nick: 00:14:22

Right.

David: 00:14:22

But also speaking directly to our consumer customers that hey, you know what? We'd love to come to a restaurant tonight, but maybe you don't live here.

Maybe you're watching this and you're halfway across the United States or maybe it's not convenient, you have young kids or the timing doesn't work. You can go and you can build these types of recipes using these ingredients and we're going to show you how to do it.

So just that further integration. Now we're branded company. So not it doesn't necessarily work for everybody if you're back at the house or maybe unbranded, et cetera.

But really speaking to if you got a brand new salad in grocery or retail and you're coming to food service afterwards and you want to work with neighbor somebody else, I think that would be the advice.

Link all the fun stuff that's going on in the food service space with chefs and culinarians and the stuff that goes on at the pizza academy and restaurant show. Link that with the consumer to show the excitement and suddenly now you've got your marking dollars just going to be that much more powerful.

Nick: 00:14:52

Yeah, absolutely. Very well said.

Looking into the future, you know, you built a great business here with Bell, with, you know, Cisco Sodexo getting into the marketing side. Belly Belly selling the, you know, getting the independent operators and whatnot and, and have done just a fantastic job building your brand.

What's, what's next down looking down line that you think that would be an impact, that would bring an impact to your business?

David: 00:15:05

Yeah. So there are two areas that we're really focused on in terms of, you know, what's over the horizon. None of this is trade secret stuff.

Portfolio expansion on some of our key brands, like Porcelain, for example. So, you know, how do we, how do we meet the chef with the applications they need?

Put it in the right format, put it in different formats that they can use. So now there's different menu applications that doesn't require the labor or the working of the products back at the house.

And that's a big selling point. Labor matters right now. Right. Labor's probably the toughest challenge. Most restaurants added food costs combined. So we're portfolio expansion. Right.

Bringing those things, but then also day part expansion. So how do we have one item that fits multiple day parts? So the supply chain becomes a little simpler.

You have to stock as many items, potentially smack. The value that I talked about earlier isn't just price. It's if you got one item and keep bringing in your restaurant.

If you're doing multiple day parts, suddenly you're a vendor that's suing more attention. Ultimately, they might go with another product, but they're going to listen to you.

If you can simplify their supply chain, one less you have to worry about run out of or boredom from the distributors. That's really where we're going outside the back of the house on this kind of snacking space. We've got some cool snacking brands.

Baby Bell, Go Squeeze. It's really about helping with flavor expansion. So, you know, giving them hot flavors, they're on trend, maybe in a trend meter.

But also something as simple as do we have the right packaging format?

If you're a micromart at a college bookstore or hospital, you want to visit a friend, hospital, maybe somebody have a age or something, you stop in that little cafe. Having the right format on shelf matters. So ability to display the cases. Do we have packaging that speaks to the consumer?

How do we gamify, you know, the packaging?

So there's maybe a QR code and you can interact with different things because your way, you know, it's a different eating environment versus buying a pantry fill and eating at the house or even putting a lunch bag that you might bring to the worker's school.

So that's really where we're focusing our time and energy is taking our brands and getting them in the right formats, which is not unusual here in the food service classes. Trade that, you know, how do I make that package relevant to the operator?

Sometimes that can be the difference between earning the sale and having a new user and having someone say, I'd really like to use your product, but it doesn't work in my. It doesn't work in my system. You know, come back after you've given me a product that works in my system.

Nick: 00:16:23

Yeah, I mean, very well said. You've given so much. You've squeezed so much juice out this lemon. You know, you've really given a lot of nuggets here today. So thank you.

Anybody listening along? You essentially in 30 minutes, just laid out a pretty clear blueprint, a framework on how to build a business and food service.

And you did it very eloquently. So I appreciate that and thank you.

I just want to say thank you for coming onto the podcast and sharing, you know, your story and what you're building at Bell. I'm excited to see, you know, what's next as you get into, you know, gamifying here, some of the packaging and the products and new innovative items.

You know, getting across multiple day cars with breakfast, lunch and dinner. I think it's really, really smart. So, Dave, I just want to say again, thank you. Really appreciate you coming on.

David: 00:16:47

Sharon. No, it's great to be here, Nick. Always great to be part of this. I think what you're doing in the marketplace, it's a great industry. I love it.

That's where my passion is. I think there's so many of us out here that we have to be discovered that just they do this every day.

Whether you're in the back cooking or whether you're the person going in trying to sell some products. It's a really cool industry. We've been through a lot, and there's lots, lots of good Runway in front of us for anybody in this industry.

So I'm excited to be part of it. And I appreciate you having me on there.

Nick: 00:17:02

Of course. You're very welcome. Thank you.

David: 00:17:03

I appreciate you. Thanks, Nate.