Page 13 - INC Magazine-November 2018

sat on the porch drinking iced tea, they came up with a plan. up a strategy it called the Whole Animal Project. As part of its
With General Mills’ financial backing, Epic would prepay for mission to make its supply chain more sustainable, the com-
1,200 animals and enhanced infrastructure for NorthStar, pany wanted to develop products that used as much of the
t
two years in advance, if NorthStar would agree to raise them wo years in advance, if NorthStar would agree to raise them animals it relied on as possible. So it came out with a line of
during that time according to Epic’s standards. pork rinds, bone broth, and cooking fats like bison tallow.
“General Mills, almost to our dismay, didn’t even bat an eye After the acquisition, a single General Mills staffer com-
to cutting a multimillion-dollar check for product that we plained about an off-taste in one of the cooking fats, and the
would not see for a couple of years,” Sansom says now. Besides food-safety team launched a review, which found no contami-
the money that General Mills was able to provide up front— nated products, but did find just enough variation in the prod-
more money than Epic had raised before its acquisition—it also ucts that it couldn’t rule out the possibility of contamination at
offered legal and deal-making expertise.
Suddenly, too, there were deep relationships
with giant retailers that Epic could tap to reach
new customers. “Epic’s biggest retailer at the
time was Whole Foods,” Foraker remembers,
while its mainstream grocery business was
“next to nothing. Very quickly we got it in front
of the key buyers in the main chains.” Because
of General Mills, it was also able to lower costs
for logistics such as trucking. “When you have a
$16 billion company behind you,” says Foraker,
“a lot of people will work for you for a lot less.”
From the outside, it appeared that a smart,
strategic partnership was blossoming. But inter-
nally, signs of friction began to surface.

rom General MillsÕ standpoint,
the Epic founders arrived with a
chip on their shoulders, a percep-
tion that wasn’t helped by their
showing up in Minneapolis at that
first meeting in flip-flops and
F shorts, seemingly believing that
because they had a unique product they were PARTY IN THE FRONT, BUSINESS IN THE BACK
Even after being sold to corporate giant General Mills, Epic Provisions still operates
somehow special, that the usual norms didn’t out of the back of this one-story barbershop in Austin, where dogs roam the
apply. “Our battle cry was: Come and take it,” office and flip-flops are standard attire.
Collins admits. “It’s a tribute to the start of the
Texas revolution. We were basically going to
defend our culture to the death.” some point. The company recalled the entire line—a cautious
Epic was “growing like a rocketship,” Foraker remembers, and probably wise big-company move that Forrest says Epic
b
but there were all kinds of ways it wasn’t as efficient as it ut there were all kinds of ways it wasn’t as efficient as it would never have done on its own: “It would have put us out of
could have been. “These small companies don’t have super- business.” It also effectively stalled the Whole Animal Project.
refined systems. Their cost models aren’t great, they have a lot The recall came about halfway through a yearlong process
of yield loss. A big company wants to fix that stuff and improve f yield loss. A big company wants to fix that stuff and improve f yield loss. A big company wants to fix that stuff and improve
o o that Forrest deems “the worst ever”—systems integration. A
margins. From a big-company perspective, that’s smart and global company like General Mills can take advantage of its scale
fair. From Katie and Taylor’s perspective, they were like, only if every part of the business talks to every other part—from
‘You’re holding back from focusing just on growth!’ ” communication systems to how financial results get reported to
The Epic founders got testy. “There were lots of difficult how UPC codes are handled and inventory is managed. These
conversations,” Foraker remembers. “Their style is extremely are slow systems designed to handle high volume, not quick
direct. For people who aren’t used to that, they can come off adaptation, and implementing them in a scrappy startup can feel
a
as caustic and obnoxious. They were just being themselves, s caustic and obnoxious. They were just being themselves, like installing the steering system of a school bus in a hatchback.
and things like speed and candidness and calling bullshit are “Instead of focusing on selling and growth and marketing,
entrepreneurial trademarks that big companies are not used all of the budget for those things got pulled back and we had to
to.” Foraker found himself interpreting each side: “I often had put our energy into this integration,” Forrest remembers, her
to come in and moderate peace, make sure both parties under- exasperation still just below the surface. The frustration grew
stood each other.” to the point that, if an unknown General Mills name popped up
One blowup centered on a line of cooking fats that Epic on her or Collins’s phone or in their email, they wouldn’t pick
w
was selling. At the time of the acquisition, Epic was ramping as selling. At the time of the acquisition, Epic was ramping up, or they’d hit delete without reading the message.

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