Participants Cite Benefits from SFA Mentorship Program

Although she had plenty of experience with CPG startups in her previous career as an angel investor, Sasha Millstein has learned that being on the other side of the table can be a lot more challenging.

The founder of Aunt Ethel’s Pot Pies participated in SFA’s Mentorship Program pilot, and she said the experience has helped her stake out a stronger position to grow her company.

“I’ve had a really positive experience with my mentor,” said Millstein, who was paired with Jack Acree, executive vice president at Saffron Road. “Given the fact that he works with a frozen-food company in the same category, he really helped me understand, on a macro level, how a company grows and what types of retailers I should strategically work with.”

SFA’s six-month Mentorship Program pilot, which launched last spring, has received praise from participants on both sides of the partnerships. The second cohort, which began in September and ran through February 2024, almost doubled in size to include 28 mentees and 20 mentors.

The pairs meet for at least one, one hour-session each month, but many choose to meet more often, and some mentors have agreed to keep their lines of communication open to help mentors work through challenges as they arise.

The program has helped Millstein and other mentees navigate the world of specialty food manufacturing and retailing, as the mentors share advice on key business activities such as sourcing ingredients, preparing for buyer meetings, setting retail prices, and securing financing.

Millstein said Acree, who she met with weekly, has helped her refine her communications with buyers in order to gain an audience with them, and approach those conversations armed with the right messaging, she said. He’s also helped direct her toward educational resources and offered guidance on financial issues.

Among the beneficial advice she’s received is taking a measured approach to growth and expansion in large retail accounts—focusing on executing at a single store, for example, to prove her products’ worth, rather than seeking to roll out into a chain’s multiple locations in a market or region all at once.

The mentors in the program also benefit from working with their mentees.

Norm Jelsma, national sales manager at Lesley Elizabeth Inc., mentored two makers in each of the first two cohorts of the program. 

“After every single call that I’ve had, I’ve walked away with either something that I can use in the business, or some takeaway, or an idea that I could use for sales,” he said.

Jelsma said one of the key areas that he worked on with his mentees was pricing as it relates to the various channels that they sell through.

“You want to be able to get out at retail with everybody having the same price when it hits,” he said. “If $9.99 is your goal [for the retail price], you have to back up from there and see what you have to be charging the distributor, and so on.”

Jelsma also worked with a mentee on refining his sales call technique by reviewing one that the company had with a Trader Joe’s buyer.

Often, Jelsma said, he finds himself listening to the ideas that his mentees have for their businesses, and then sharing his opinions about other options they could pursue, and essentially playing Devil’s Advocate to make sure they have thought through their plans and considered some potential pitfalls.

Alex Piasecki, co-founder and COO, Seal the Seasons, brings his experience as a co-founder of a startup to his role as a mentor. Piasecki helped launch Seal the Seasons in 2006, and has since helped expand the company’s products into more than 6,000 retail stores.

He said his company’s positioning around local sourcing—Seal the Seasons rescues excess fresh produce from farmers and freezes it for year-round, local distribution—has helped him relate to one of his mentees who is also focused on local sourcing.

“I’ve learned a lot from him, but he's also at an earlier stage of his business, so I’ve been able to talk with him about things like working with larger farmers, or working with farmers that are difficult,” he said. 

Piasecki said his mentees have sought his input on a wide range of issues, but he said he often feels his most valuable role is to provide a “sanity check” for founders who may feel frustrated or defeated.

“Sometimes people come to me and say, ‘Am I crazy that this isn’t working?’” he said. “I tell them that sometimes it doesn’t look like what you are doing is working, but you just have to keep pushing. Sometimes it’s just about being there for them when they are having negative thoughts, and telling them, ‘This is normal. This happens to everybody.’”

SFA is now accepting applications for mentors and mentees for the next cohort.