Food
Everybody loves food. At Ground Floor Partners, we love food businesses – especially those providing locally grown and healthy products, organic or natural foods, and sustainable production.
We’re committed to improving the food system, one small business at a time. Over time we have guided restaurants, cafes, catering businesses, independent grocery stores, food distributors, food manufacturers and processors, and value-added producers.
Just fifty years ago the United States was the undisputed leader in food production and quality. Sadly, this is no longer true. We still produce huge volumes of food, yet quality, safety, and environmental sustainability have taken a hit. We are degrading our soils; depleting our water tables; polluting our waterways with pesticides, antibiotics and petrochemical fertilizers. Consumers are increasingly dependent on foreign producers for critical foods such as fish, fruits, and vegetables. And most of our meat and poultry is now raised in confined animal feeding operations (CAFOs).
Climate change, population growth, and wasteful farming practices (mono-crop production, overuse of chemicals, poor water management, etc.) are all major risk factors within the United States, and elsewhere. While we can still get most anything we want at the supermarket, we experience more spot shortages: from slaughtering millions of chickens (bird flu) or thousands of cattle (drought and heat), to massive recalls of lettuce and other produce (E. coli). The solution seems clear: we must improve our food system, from farm to table.
The good news is that the opportunities for new products, better services and more efficient systems are endless. Ground Floor Partners can help food producers find myriad ways to make their products better, healthier, safer and more sustainable.
Manufacturing and Distribution
The United States is the second largest manufacturer in the world, second only to China. While the US manufacturing industry employs over 12 million people, it is dwarfed by other sectors like finance, insurance, real estate, rental and leasing. And despite policies meant to rebuild manufacturing, the industry is still in decline. That needs to change.
We help manufacturing and distribution businesses achieve long-term, sustainable growth by redesigning critical processes, enhancing communications, attracting and retaining high-quality employees, leveraging digital marketing, increasing brand awareness, and improving their competitive positioning. Hospitality and Service
We work with a wide variety of service and hospitality firms, such as resorts, convention centers and banquet halls, adventure and theme parks, visitor and tourism bureaus, family entertainment centers, spas and salons, trades (construction, remodeling, plumbing, electrical, etc.), and consulting firms.
Hospitality and service businesses share a few common characteristics:
They live or die by customer service. Whether you focus on events, food, lodging, or other, your business must provide excellent customer service or it will ultimately fail.
They are cyclical. When consumers and companies are spending, service and hospitality firms do very well. When the economy tightens, they tend to suffer.
People are the heart of the business. Service and hospitality is labor intensive. With the right people, your business will thrive; with the wrong people, it may not survive.
Technology is critical. If the business is saddled with outdated or clunky technology, efficiency and profits will suffer, and the best people will walk out the door.
Ground Floor Partners has seen it all, in good times and bad, and we’ve helped hospitality clients find innovative, and often unexpected, ways to serve and delight their customers.
Retail
We work with small, independent, brick-and-mortar stores and online retailers across multiple industry verticals. Whether you already have a physical location, an online store, or some combination, or you are still in the design and planning phase, we can help you position your business for long term, sustainable growth. Consumer Packaged Goods
We work with CPG businesses across multiple industry verticals.
Common challenges include strengthening brand awareness, building greater customer loyalty, driving more sales, developing new products, managing inventory, and aligning the different departments and teams (production, fulfillment, distribution, marketing, sales and customer service).
Whether you already have a great product(s) or are still in the development phase, we can help. We can assist with everything from market research, business planning and go-to-market strategy, to< product design and product development, to marketing and sales.
Unlike some of our competitors, we don’t make false promises about doubling revenue within a few months, or turning things around in weeks. We practice what we preach — steady, sustainable growth achieved by hard work, great ideas, smart planning, ethical marketing, and superior execution.
If you need a business consulting firm with integrity, passion, and a talent for delivering results, you’re in the right place.