Nona Lim, Specialty Food Association board member and CEO and founder of San Francisco-based Nona Lim, maker of Asian inspired foods including bone broths and noodle bowls, spoke with Specialty Food News about navigating the current business environment amid the COVID-19 pandemic.
What has helped you manage this crisis thus far?
In the last year, we have been putting in place operational systems and processes such as rolling out our material and resources planning system, and putting in place a demand planning process. These have really come into play and have helped us manage our operations much better given the volatility of the situation.
Being proactive and having good sales and operations planning in place, strong supplier relationships, and over-communicating with our team and our suppliers to make sure that we can be agile and respond quickly and appropriately in this crisis, has been paramount.
Has anything unexpected happen?
Where some of the above processes have not been rolled out, we are noticing gaps and that is causing stress to our operations.
What SKUs are currently in demand?
As consumers shift to cooking at home now with COVID-19, we are starting to see a demand for meal solutions. Additionally, products that are nutrient dense like our bone broths are doing very well as they are known to help strengthen the immune system.
Are you experiencing any out of stock items?
We are definitely experiencing some out of stock items, but thankfully, they are not for long periods of time.
How do you expect the CARES Act or other government plans to help you?
We are grateful that we are still able to produce food at this time and help support our consumers and retailers especially since we know that many other companies and restaurants are in dire straits.
The CARES Act will help us immediately by providing a cushion with our working capital. With retailers delaying category reviews and resets, and distributors challenged with getting products to retailers, along with some supplier issues, there has definitely been a financial strain on our business—having the CARES Act provide some financial support on payroll will be huge.
The question is, how long this environment will continue and whether or not eight weeks of support is sufficient, especially for many other businesses that will be much more severely impacted.
Has your e-commerce business picked up?
E-commerce has definitely picked up. We outsourced our fulfillment about two years ago and we are grateful that there is more capacity for them to scale. However, no one expected the recent increase in volume so we are being a lot more vigilant in watching for any mistakes in shipping.
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