CPG curriculum
Talks, essays, interviews and guides from food-business experts, North Carolina agencies and WNC makers, including NC State Extension, Startup CPG and NPR's How I Built This, in 13 modules. Each lesson comes with a short summary and one thing to do this week.
Create a free account to track your progress and get a path that fits where your company is.
Deciding to start
Helps you decide whether to start a product company now, and which kind: a brand built to grow fast on investors' money, or a profitable one you own and run.
Go deeper: 9 more lessons
Finding and testing an idea
Helps you choose a product worth making, test its taste, price and demand cheaply with strangers, and decide who to build it with.
Go deeper: 7 more lessons
Making it legally (pick yours)
Pick the lesson for what you make. Each one says who oversees it in North Carolina, whether you can start at home, and what has to happen before your first sale.
Any one of these finishes the module.
Go deeper: 9 more lessons
Forming your company and registering to sell
Helps you decide when to form your company and how to register to sell in North Carolina. You don't need an LLC to test an idea, but you do need to meet the rules for what you make, and to register for sales tax, before your first sale.
Kitchens, co-packers, labels and barcodes
Helps you choose where to make your product in WNC, decide when to hand production to a co-packer, and get your label and barcode right before a store will take it.
Go deeper: 8 more lessons
Pricing and margins
Helps you work out what your product really costs, what each business between you and the shopper takes, and whether your price leaves you a business.
Go deeper: 7 more lessons
Selling to shoppers and stores
Helps you sell by hand at markets, then win and keep store buyers, starting with the stores open to a WNC maker.
Go deeper: 11 more lessons
Product-market fit and velocity
Helps you tell whether shoppers come back for your product on their own, measured by reorders and sales per store each week rather than by how many stores carry it.
Go deeper: 8 more lessons
Bootstrapping or raising money
Helps you decide whether to grow on your own sales or raise outside money, and what investors in consumer brands look for now.
Go deeper: 9 more lessons
Capital beyond venture
Helps you find money that doesn't cost you equity, starting with the lenders and programs that serve WNC food and product businesses.
Go deeper: 12 more lessons
Growing the company
Helps you handle the cash squeeze that growth brings, decide when to bring in a broker, and make your first hires in North Carolina.
Go deeper: 10 more lessons
Founder stories (pick one)
Pick one long interview with a founder who built a food, drink, body-care, household or pet brand, including one who shut theirs down, and take a single habit from it into your own company.
Any one of these finishes the module.
Go deeper: 7 more lessons
Founders from here (pick one)
Pick one story from someone making food or drink in WNC, and take one idea from it into your own company.
Any one of these finishes the module.