Most Popular: Alli Ball, Founder & CEO, Food Biz Wiz/Retail Ready
🥇 Most Popular: Alli Ball, Founder & CEO, Food Biz Wiz/Retail Ready
A bit of truth-in-editorial here: We don’t actually know Alli Ball!
But when we reached out to all of our readers about Nosh Notables, Ball was suggested by SO MANY PEOPLE. So either Ball is great at getting people to nominate her for stuff, or she’s actually incredibly influential, although either way the former would suggest the latter. She’s a former Bi-Rite buyer and store manager, hosts the Food Biz Wiz Podcast (she paused after hitting 250 episodes), and with her team runs Retail Ready, a course that hundreds of brands have taken to learn about entry into the wholesale marketplace. She’s also highly supportive of founder diversity, hosts weekly calls with founder groups, and has had about 3,000 brands run through her course.
Ball continues to coach food and beverage brand founders: When we looked over the nominations we saw words like “passion,” “compassion,” “advocacy,” “simplicity” and “supportive.” Now if only the buyers on the other side of the desk could be convinced to do the same.
So we reached out to Ball, and she was late to the call. “Sorry,” she said. “I was talking with a founder, and the tears were flowing.” Sold.