Page 16 - Food&Drink magazine November-December 2022

LIVE 22 REVIEW
BELOW: Publisher Lindy Hughson welcomed attendees. RIGHT: The lively and insightful panel.
“We really do need to address that. It sounds doom and gloom, but that is the reality of where we are today and the operating environment within which we're working,” said Aley.
Areas to focus on are: truly knowing the customer; setting a strategy for a private label; committing to a social citizenship and ESG, refreshing portfolio strategies, reviewing channel mix, and investing in and enabling systems.
Aley said, “During this state of disruption, we need to think through setting up that plan for the future so that we can come out of this volatile and uncertain environment
“ The research ecosystem, in Australia is like an Aladdin’s cave of jewels – it is magnificent, and overflowing with opportunity.”
“ During this state of disruption, we need to think through setting up that plan for the future so that we can come out of this volatile and uncertain environment stronger, fitter, more efficient and ready to take advantage of the next wave.”
stronger, fitter, more efficient and ready to take advantage of the next wave, whether that be through ESG positioning, other broader market opportunities, the world’s your oyster.”
PANEL OF PASSION
From there, we moved to a panel discussion building on topics covered by the speakers.
Kate and Tal Weiss, founders of Table of Plenty, won over the room with their passion and authenticity. Their experience
KPMG’s Georgie Aley outlined what businesses need to be focusing on in times of disruption.
as a small business, then acquired by Openway Food Co, has been a thoughtful one, giving the pair more time to focus on the parts of the business they loved – innovation and product development.
Tal Weiss said, “When you run a small business, you’re constantly fighting bottlenecks, and we realised there were two major bottlenecks in our business. One of them was the lack of local manufacturing. We had been trying for five years before looking to Openway to establish a local factory.
“The second bottleneck was actually us, stuck in the process of finding the right company to partner with. After a few attempts to establish our factory, we met with Openway and identified with its ecosystem – the idea of it being to leverage the strengths of businesses coming together was very appealing,” he said.
Georgie Aley, also part of the panel, built on Tal’s comments.
“What we’re seeing now is a realisation that we do need this mix of partnerships across private, public, and other forms of capital.
“If we can utilise these, they can be game changers, while also thinking about how we can truly innovate these start-up businesses to get them to the scale they need,” she said.
Mark Ostryn from Strategic Transactions spoke about how much of his experience working
with smaller businesses looking to sell, is confidence building and reassuring founders the work they have done has value.
“Things are moving very fast, however a lot of that has been beneath the radar. If you look at the acquisitions that have taken place and particularly a lot of the private equity investments that occurred within this economy, we’ve seen large companies taking small stakes in innovative start-up companies,” Ostryn said.
He added that while there is a lot of “doom and gloom” at the moment, with small companies struggling to get onto shelves, there is also optimism from entrepreneurs.
Gabrielle Munzer, a principal with venture capital firm
Main Sequence, was so passionate and excited about the state of food tech start-ups and research in Australia it was a whole new round of energy for a room already brimming with new knowledge.
“Main Sequence basically exists at this intersection of science and venturing where everything that's in our portfolio has a competitive edge of novel science and engineering innovation.
“The research ecosystem, in Australia is like an Aladdin’s cave of jewels – it is magnificent, and overflowing with opportunity,” Munzer said.
It was a remarkable morning, so much talent, enthusiasm, and energy in the room. ✷
16 | Food&Drink business | November-December 2022 | www.foodanddrinkbusiness.com.au