Food industry
Crispy Green manufactures and distributes fruit-based snacks to retailers and consumers in the U.S. and abroad.
“One of the ways that I have been able to build and grow my firm is by leveraging the experience of experts in their fields. The CEO’s Right Hand has built a fantastic team of professionals that I can tap into on an as-needed basis. Our CFO, Rich, has proven to be a top-notch financial expert and his 20+ years of experience in working in the food industry is invaluable to me as I take the company to the next level.”
Angela Liu, CEO of Crispy Green
The Client
Founded by Angela Liu in 2004 with its HQs in Fairfield, NJ, Crispy Green is a leading branded purveyor of better-for-you fruit-based snacks to retailers and consumers both in the U.S. and abroad. The company manufactures most of its products in Asia and Latin America and imports them to the U.S. for distribution. The company carries two product lines – its flagship Crispy Fruit (freeze-dried fruit) which consists of 7 different fruit selections, plus its new spice-infused dried pineapple Piña Picante with 3 distinct flavors.
The Original Situation
Crispy Green is a self-funded business. In 2017, Angela recognized that she needed help to grow and scale the firm, especially if she wanted to create a company that had significant value to a potential acquirer someday. At the time, the Company had a good operational management team in place, but Angela needed people who had more strategic vision and experience to help her to grow the business in the direction that she wanted. Thus, Angela decided to create a formal Board of Advisors and tapped William at The CEO’s Right Hand to serve on the BOA. Ever since, William has been a strategic advisor for Crispy Green, working with Angela and the other Board members to help guide the company through its continued stages of growth.
Over the years, William and the other members of the team at TCRH have provided Angela valuable support in a variety of situations/issues:
- Fractional CFO service
- Leadership/organization structuring
- Compensation benchmarking and C-level comp plan development
- Recruiting support for C-level executives, including negotiating compensation packages
- Strategy for long-term employee incentive plan
- Financial review/insights for ongoing operations
- M&A exploration with various interested parties, including investment bankers
Today
As the business continued to expand, Angela decided a CFO was needed to help guide the company finances strategically. While Angela did not select a TCRH candidate originally, she subsequently switched to one of our team members who had ample experience with a strong track record as a CFO in the food industry to be Crispy Green’s Fractional CFO in mid-2021 during the supply chain crisis.
The TCRH CFO has fully integrated with Crispy Green’s business activities, taken on responsibilities of supervising the internal Finance team and being accountable for the team’s deliverables. Just as importantly, the TCRH CFO has implemented ongoing budgeting, forecasting, and planning processes with a regular reporting schedule to help different departments monitor their financial performance, which enabled Angela and her team to make timely, and effective decisions in the business every day.
With the addition of strategic HR consulting services, TCRH now provides high-level human capital strategy to Crispy Green via our HR team. As the Company continues to grow, we are helping with the build-out of the organizational structure, compensation, roles/responsibilities, and assisting with the recruiting process.
Since the company first engaged with TCRH, its annual revenues have increased a total of 93%. We have helped the company navigate a myriad of issues, from import tariffs, to the Pandemic and supply chain disruptions with skyrocketing shipping costs, and weather many storms. We are proud to say that TCRH played an important role in Crispy Green’s success over the year, and we are pleased and privileged to have been a trusted partner to Angela and the team!
