Category: News

While it can be hard to find the time when you’re running a busy company, setting clear business objectives is essential if you’re looking to achieve success. Without them your company will lack direction, and may not be able to meet even its short-term goals. This can not only lead to frustration among employees, but also a decline in sales or profits. This is typically the exact opposite of what most businesses want to achieve!

In this blog post, we will discuss the three key benefits of having clear objectives: measuring success, improved leadership, and better decision-making. Read on to learn more!

Measuring Success

One of the biggest benefits of having clear business objectives is that it allows you to measure success. When you have a goal, you can track your progress and see if you are on track to achieve it. 

For example, if you’re looking to increase your food product sales by 20%, you may decide to create a marketing strategy that will help you achieve that goal. You can then track and measure your sales regularly to see if your chosen tactics are working, and whether you’re making enough progress to meet your objective. If not, you can make changes to your strategy that may ultimately improve your chances of success. This ability to measure success allows you to adapt quickly and improve your chances of reaching your goals.

Improved Leadership

Another key benefit of having clear objectives is that it can improve leadership within your company. When everyone in the company knows what the goals are, they can work towards them more effectively.

For example, a company that is looking to expand its operations into a new market may need to create a new sales team. By having clear objectives, the leaders in the company can develop a plan and give direction to the new sales team so they know what they are working towards. This type of clarity can also help improve communication within teams, as everyone will be on the same page. Uncertainty among your team can really get in the way of achieving your goals, so it’s worth taking the time to clearly lay out your business objectives.

Better Decision-Making

Finally, having clear objectives can also lead to better decision-making within your company. When you know what you’re after, it’s easier to make choices that will help you achieve your goals.

For example, if one of your objectives is to improve customer satisfaction, you may not even question a decision to invest in new customer service software. This type of decision is easier to make when you have a goal in mind, as opposed to making choices blindly.

Furthermore, good decision-making can help your company reach its objectives more quickly. You’ll be less likely to waste your energy on options that have little to do with your objectives. By making decisions that are aligned with your goals, you’ll be able to save time and resources.

Need some help setting or achieving your food business’ objectives? Contact the greater goods today to see how we can help!

Anyone who has found success in the food industry will tell you to keep a close eye on your food cost percentage. This important metric tells you how much you’ve been spending on the ingredients for your products, which is often a major part of a food business’ budget. And if you’re after maximizing profits while minimizing costs (and why wouldn’t you be?), meticulously monitoring anything your business spends money on should be one of your top priorities.

With so many financial decisions to keep track of, though, what is it about food cost percentage that makes it so important? In other words, what ways can these calculations benefit your business? Let’s explore these questions further below.

It Allows You to Compare Your Spending to Similar Businesses

If you’re new to the food industry and unsure of what your spending should look like, then you can definitely benefit from calculating your food cost percentage. By comparing it to the averages in your particular field, you can determine if you’re within the normal spending range or if you need to make some adjustments to stay competitive.

For example, among quick-service and full-service restaurants, the food cost percentage is usually around 28 – 32%. If you’re in that industry and your food cost percentage is anywhere around that range, then you’re probably on the right track. However, if you find it’s significantly off, you may want to reconsider some of your ingredients.

You’ll Have a Better Understanding of How Supply Chains Impact Costs and Profitability

Supply chain disruptions seem to be more of an issue lately than ever before, and it’s important to understand how this impacts both the costs and profitability of your food business. For example, there was a great vanilla shortage back in 2018, which made the price of this baking essential soar. Bakeries and other food manufacturers who rely on this ingredient were hit hard by this shortage and subsequent price increase. However, those who were able to catch it in time by calculating their food cost percentage and making appropriate adjustments likely had less issues managing their overall profitability than others.

It Lets You Make Better Spending Decisions

By taking the time to calculate the cost of each and every ingredient in your food products, you’ll have a better idea of how strict you need to be with your budget. For example, do you have enough room in there to upgrade to higher-quality ingredients? Or is it so tight that you should consider cutting back? Since margins can be so tight in the food industry you need to be careful, and your food cost percentages can certainly help you understand and make the most of your budget.

You Can Identify Items that Are No Longer Profitable

If your business offers a wide array of food products, then there’s a good chance that some are making you more money than others. By calculating your food cost percentages, you can identify the less profitable items and update, retire, or re-price them accordingly. Your loyal customers may not be thrilled with the changes at first, but your business will almost certainly be better off in the long run.

Need some help managing your food cost percentage? Contact the greater goods today to see how we can help!

Your COGS, or cost of goods sold, is one of the most important performance metrics to monitor when you’re in the food business. Simply put, it’s how much money you’re spending to produce your food items. This can affect everything from your inventory to your profit margins to your revenue, so it really isn’t something to ignore if you’re looking to maintain or even grow your business.

Fortunately, it’s not too difficult to calculate and keep an eye on your food business’ COGS. All you need is some basic information about your inventory and the right formula to plug it into. Let’s take a closer look at what a food business’ COGS entail, and how you can go about crunching those numbers for yourself.

What is COGS, or Cost of Goods Sold?

For a food business, your COGS is the total cost of all the raw materials that go into producing your products over a given time period. This includes all the ingredients you use, plus any waste. The waste may not have made it into the products, but that really doesn’t matter here. You did pay for it, after all.

Now, in the food business, you may notice significant fluctuations in your COGS from one time period to another, even if you haven’t made any changes to your product. This is largely because the prices of ingredients can vary considerably over time, so it’s perfectly normal.

How Does Calculating COGS Help My Food Business?

It’s always good to keep an eye on your financial situation in any type of business, including the food industry. By calculating your COGS on a regular basis, you can identify patterns and trends in your costs that may allow you to save some money.

For example, let’s say that your COGS tell you that you’ve been spending a ton of money on a particular product, even with the fluctuations in price. You can choose to compensate for that by increasing the price of the product or maybe making some changes to your raw materials.

How Do You Calculate COGS for a Food Business?

To calculate your COGS, you need three different pieces of information for a given time period:

1. Beginning Inventory, or the value of the inventory you have on hand at the beginning of a time period
2. Purchased Inventory, or the value of the inventory you’ve purchased for the current time period
3. Ending Inventory, or the value of any leftover inventory at the end of the time period

Once you’ve collected this information, simply plug it into the formula below to calculate your food business’ COGS.

COGS Formula: (Beginning Inventory + Purchased Inventory) – Ending Inventory

If you don’t feel like whipping out your calculator yourself, you can always try a free online COGS calculating tool like the one here.

COGS is often expressed as a percentage. So, once you’ve done the above calculation, you use the following formula to find your percentage:

(COGS/Food Sales) x 100

This percentage essentially tells you how much of your sales were spent on food and supplies. The lower the number the better, as it means you’re spending less than you’re making.

Is your COGS number higher than you’d like it to be? Contact the greater goods today to see how we can help!

Perhaps you were the kid who came to school on invention day with the most inventive product in the class, or the college student whose lunches looked like five-star dining next to your roommate’s ramen noodles. Now, as an adult, you have an idea for a food or beverage product that you know people will buy – but you aren’t sure how to get it from point A (idea) to point B (in the cart) or how food startup consulting can help.

You’re not alone. The food industry is complicated, and while you might be able to navigate from idea to packaging with relatively few barriers, getting your product on the shelves of grocers and in the carts (and hearts) of consumers can be more challenging. In this article, we’ll walk you through the most crucial steps for launching a successful product.

Validation

The first step is determining whether there is a demand for your product, and it absolutely must come before any other step or you risk spending time and money on a product that isn’t likely to succeed. This involves several steps:

• Evaluate your target market
• Finding a position within that market for your brand that both speaks to that audience and isn’t already fulfilled or crowded
• Develop packaging mock-ups (with help from a third party in most cases) that speak to your target audience
• Get buy-in from actual retailers and provide them with an opportunity to pre-order

Refining

If your product is validated by retailers, it’s time to refine your product so you can package it. This usually requires consulting with food scientists to ensure ingredients are shelf-stable and meet requirements for any labels you’re hoping to use, like organic, vegan, or, gluten-free.

Regulations & Certifications

Although many of these steps need to happen concurrently and not in a specific one-after-another order, meeting regulatory requirements is also an important step in the process – even if you aren’t aiming to produce a certified product. You’ll need to understand which rules and regulations apply to your product as well as what steps are needed to gain approval.

Branding

You need to build your brand – one of the most exciting steps in the process! This includes logo development, social media account creation, establishing a ‘voice’ for your company or product, and designing a website. Packaging is refined and finalized in this step, too.

Partnering

Next, explore potential partners for manufacturing and packaging. It’s important to build a business case comparing at least two potential partners (but preferably more) to ensure you find a partner who will carry your vision of quality through to the finished product and communicate well with you throughout the process.

Financing

If you need financing to get started, now is a good time to secure funding so you can support manufacturing efforts. In many cases, grants are available to help you get started. As a part of this work, it will be important to forecast sales so you can manufacture exactly what you need when you need it, ensuring adequate cash flow and reducing risk.

Sales

Finally – the light at the end of the tunnel! You’ll find the right retailers for your product and get it on their shelves and in the kitchens of your consumers. Even with step-by-step instructions, it can feel overwhelming and is more challenging without industry experience and relationships. At the greater goods, we provide start-to-finish food startup consulting. We walk you through this process and do the leg work, leveraging our expertise and connections in the industry, to make sure your product succeeds once it’s validated. Visit us to get started.

Did you know that nearly 93% of consumers take online reviews into consideration when making a purchase?

This, in a nutshell, is why product reviews are so important. A lot of people recognize the value of product reviews and trust them to help inform their purchases. So, if your brand’s products don’t have any, you may be missing out on potential clients.

Keep reading to learn more about why product reviews are important, and how to get them from clients.

Why are Product Reviews Important?

Product reviews are important to both consumers and brands for a number of reasons. Let’s take a look at some of the most significant benefits.

• More Trust. Almost 50% of consumers trust online reviews as much as recommendations from family and friends.
• Increased Visibility. Not only do reviews give your website more content, but consumers often use the same language as those searching for your product. This can provide a great SEO boost.
• More Details. Product reviews often provide more details and context about your product. This gives consumers a better idea if it will suit their needs.
• Improved Customer Experience. You can use this direct feedback from consumers to find out what you’re doing well and where you need improvements.
• Better Sales. Reviews may increase your conversion rate by over 50%.

As you can see, you almost can’t afford not to include product reviews on your site! However, you may now be wondering, how do you even go about collecting these reviews?

How Do You Get Product Reviews?

Ready to start building your product review collection? Fortunately, it’s not as difficult as some people may think. There are lots of simple and inexpensive ways to help attract more customer product reviews, such as the following.

Ask Them

Yes, it can be that easy! Sometimes you just need to remind customers that they can leave a product review. They may have simply forgotten about it, or perhaps they didn’t realize it was an option in the first place.

Try reaching out to customers and asking them for a review about a week after they’ve received their order. At this point, they’ve probably already used the product and have enough information to leave a detailed review.

Simplify the Review Process

If your review form is full of unnecessary fields and asks for irrelevant personal information, then your customers may not bite. Therefore, you should keep the review process as simple as you can to encourage customers to leave their thoughts.

Often, you don’t need more than a name, email, rating, and review. You could add some extra features as well, like a spot to upload images or video, but don’t make it a requirement. You don’t want the review process to seem like work.

Offer Incentives

Okay, this option may cost you a little money, but it really doesn’t have to be much. There are lots of different incentives you can offer that won’t necessarily break the bank, including:

• Points toward a rewards program
• Coupons
• Gift certificates
• Discounts
• Contest entries

Thinking about doing business with the greater goods? Check out our customer reviews here.

Understanding your target market is an essential part of any effective marketing strategy. After all, these are the people who are most likely going to purchase your food products. If you want to make those sales, you need to know the best way of getting through to your potential customers.

This is perhaps especially important in the highly competitive food business. There’s only so much space on those shelves, so you need to do whatever you can to make your brand really stand out from the competition. By specifically tailoring your marketing strategy to your target market, you may be able to give your brand the leverage it needs to be successful in this cutthroat industry.

However, before you can tailor that strategy, you need to have a solid understanding of who your target market is for your food business. Learn how to zero in on that market below.

Step 1: Identify the Benefits of Your Food Product

What problem does your product solve? What need are you fulfilling?

These are the types of questions you need to ask when identifying your target market. For example, say you’re planning on bringing a new type of coffee to market. Coffee is typically used by adults who need a little extra energy throughout the day, so perhaps your target market is the 18+ crowd who are actively working or in school. Figure out how people are supposed to benefit from your food product, and you should begin to have a basic understanding of your target market.

Step 2: Narrow it Down

If you’re planning on tailoring your marketing strategy to fit your target market, then a basic, general understanding isn’t going to be enough. You want to really zero in on who your customer is if you want your marketing efforts to be effective.

There are four common ways to segment a market:

• Geographic segmentation involves location. What city do they live in? Is it a suburban, urban or rural setting?
• Demographic segmentation focuses on more personal details. How old are they? What’s their income? Gender? Education level?
• Behavioral segmentation is about their behaviors. What kind of activities do they do? What do they like to buy?
• Psychogenic segmentation looks at personality types and preferences. What are their interests? Values? Attitudes?

There are a few ways to gather this information. You can create a survey, host a focus group, or even just search around online. Once you’ve done that, you should be ready to create a buyer persona.

Step 3: Create a Buyer Persona

A buyer persona is like an archetype of your target market. When you’re creating a buyer persona, you’re essentially crafting a character based on the information you’ve gathered in the previous step. This should really solidify your understanding of your target market.

For example, let’s create a short buyer persona for our coffee business. John is a 35-year-old married man with kids and a full-time job. He loves spending time with his kids, reading, and playing sports. He currently drinks at least 3 cups of coffee in the morning so he has enough energy to accomplish his daily tasks.

Now that you have a good understanding of your target market, you can use it to inform your marketing strategy. Hopefully your product will have a prime spot on those shelves soon!

Need more help growing your food business? Book a free consultation with the greater goods today!

Over the last few years, a slow but steady shift has taken place when it comes to requests from our food startup consulting clients. While they are still interested in us helping them create a profitable food and beverage business, an increasing number of clients began asking for suggestions on more ways to build a more sustainable and environmentally friendly company. 

This client-led push for highlighting sustainability was a bit of a surprise at first, but when you look at the data, it makes perfect sense. Study after study shows that companies that adopt an earth-friendly approach to their business practices do not only contribute to a greener and healthier planet but find a receptive customer base that is more than willing to reward them financially.

Here are the facts:

• According to two First Insight surveys quoted on MEAT+POULTRY, over two-thirds of consumers are willing to pay more for food products that they identify as sustainable. From the same surveys, many customers actively choose brands that actively reduce their carbon emissions, reduce food waste, and support environmental issues. 
• Concern about sustainability came late to the food and beverage industry, but it is rapidly growing. Especially in light of recent events surrounding the pandemic, restaurants and wholesale food producers are starting to do more than ever to address critical issues within the industry. These changes include investing more heavily in green business practices and adapting how they run their businesses day-to-day. 

What Can a Food Startup Do Now to Increase and Profit From Sustainability?

Whether you are planning, building out, or have already opened your food startup, there are plenty of small, easy-to-implement ideas that can provide you with huge returns at little risk. See if you can find ways to incorporate these sustainability ideas into your business:

• Plant-based food is in, and customers are eating it up. While less than 1 in 5 people consider themselves vegetarians or vegans, a growing number of folks are choosing to adopt a ‘flexitarian’ diet. Flexitarians most often choose to eat meat-free; they occasionally indulge in animal products. By adding at least a few plant-based menu items, you can help capture a market experts predict will grow to $162 billion by 2030.
• Location. location, location. When it comes to food, consumers are becoming better educated about food production and its impact on the supply chain. Generic “farm-raised” products are no longer enough to sway the consumers. Customers now want high-quality, ethically raised local products, and they are willing to pay more for them. Shouldn’t you get your share by using and promoting local ingredients?
• Cut food waste. It isn’t all about what the customer can see. Some of the best reasons for focusing on sustainability in your startup are behind the scenes. According to one report, restaurants throw away a half-pound of food for every meal they serve to their guests. Save money, and go green by practicing proper inventory controls and ordering procedures. With food costs continuing to climb, reducing waste is more important than ever before. 

A Food Startup Consulting Firm Makes Everything Much Easier

There is no question that your food startup should focus on sustainability. The only issue is how you can do it effectively. Food startup consultants The Greater Goods can provide you with an actionable plan to help.

Love it or hate it, it’s hard to escape the influence of social media these days. It seems like people are always talking about the latest thing they saw on TikTok, Instagram, or one of the other most popular platforms. And it’s a lot of people talking, as there are expected to be almost 4 billion social media users globally in 2022.

This is exactly why an increasing number of businesses are realizing social media’s potential as a marketing tool. Why wouldn’t you take advantage of such a large, vocal audience? An active social media presence can do wonders for all types of businesses, including those in the food industry.

Don’t believe me? Here are the benefits of social media as a marketing tool for your food business.

You Can Reach a Wider Audience

A lot of traditional marketing methods, like print ads, radio, and flyers can only reach so many customers. If you really want your food business to break out of your local area, you need to find a way to reach the masses. And what has a more massive audience than the most popular social media platforms?

If you really want to cast a wide net, then you need to fill your page with shareable content. This is interesting, unique content that people may want to share with others. If some of your current customers find your account and share your posts with their followers, you may be able to reach all kinds of new potential customers.

It Allows You to Engage with Your Customers

It can be difficult to find opportunities to interact with your audience, especially in the food business. Unless you are selling to customers directly, you may not have the chance to really talk with them and get feedback about your products. However, this is exactly what you can do with social media.

Social media allows businesses and customers to communicate with each other like they never have before. Customers can leave posts on a business’ page or message them directly to ask questions, voice concerns, and provide feedback about their products. Brands can then directly respond to these messages and personally interact with each individual, which can help build a loyal customer base.

It’s Affordable

When you’re first starting out in the food business, it can be challenging to get your brand off the ground. You don’t usually have a huge marketing budget like some of the more established brands, so it can be difficult to really make a splash using traditional marketing methods. This is one of the nicest benefits of using social media as a marketing tool: its low cost.

In fact, you can easily get started with a free account on many of the most popular social media platforms. Simply navigate to your platform of choice, create a profile for your food business, and start posting! You may eventually want to opt for some premium features, but a free account is really all you need to start getting your brand out there.

Looking for another way to grow your business? Request a free consultation with the greater goods today to discuss your options.

People come up with new and exciting food products every single day. They think about consumer needs, identify a potential product to fill those needs, and then start putting in the work to try and get it into the hands of consumers. 

However, no matter how much confidence these people may have in their product, they may end up finding that it’s not exactly flying off the shelves. This may leave them wondering: “Did we miss something?”

Yes – a market opportunity assessment. If you really want to make sure your food product is going to be well-received by consumers, then you simply cannot skip this step. It’s especially important if you’re looking to attract investors and food brokers, as they often like to see that you have a solid marketing strategy to help ensure the success of your product.

Fortunately, it’s not too difficult to get started with an assessment. Here are some questions to ask yourself about your market opportunity.

Why Sell this Product?

This is probably one of the most important questions to ask yourself. What is the point of selling this product? What problem are you helping consumers solve? Are you doing it differently than the competition? You need to be able to show that there is a demand for this particular kind of product, especially if you require investors.

For example, let’s say you’ve come up with a new kind of fruit snack. There are lots of different kinds of fruit snacks on the market, so what makes yours different? What problem does it solve? Are they healthier than similar products? Identify what makes yours unique and how that helps the consumer.

Who is the Target Audience?

So, let’s say you’ve determined that you are fulfilling a need with your healthy fruit snacks. Now you have to think about the buyers. Who needs healthy fruit snacks? Should you market them toward parents or the kids themselves? Or are they for adults looking to satisfy their sweet tooth in a healthier way? Coming up with a detailed profile of your target audience can help you figure out your potential sales volume. If you find that this number is significantly less than what you were anticipating, you may want to rethink your product.

How Are You Going to Sell the Product?

A detailed profile of your buyers is likely going to be quite helpful when determining how to sell your product. It can help you come up with branding, pricing, and marketing strategies.

For example, let’s say you’ve decided that kids are your target audience. You may choose to go with brightly coloured packaging and/or a cartoon theme to catch their attention. You may also want to make it more affordable so parents are less likely to think twice about throwing it into their cart. Figure out the best way to attract your ideal buyer and get it into their hands.

The Professional Touch

If you’re not confident about your ability to perform an accurate and complete market opportunity assessment, then you should consider hiring a professional. Book a free consultation with the greater goods today to get going on your assessment and turn it into a fully realized food marketing strategy!

Do you love to cook and have a few delicious recipes under your belt, but don’t have the budget or desire to open up a full restaurant?

Then you may be a great candidate for the food truck industry! It’s certainly a good time to invest in this type of business, as the global food truck market is expected to grow at a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of about 6.8% until 2028.

So, the demand may be there, but is opening up a food truck a good idea in your case? Let’s take a look at some of the pros and cons so you can decide for yourself.

Pro: You’re the Boss

Many people can only dream about being their own boss, but you get to do just that running your own food truck. You get to decide on the menu, hours, location, ingredients…everything is under your control!

Con: You’re the Boss

While it may sound nice on paper, being your own boss isn’t for everyone. Since everything is under your control, you must be willing to put in long hours to ensure that you’re giving enough attention to every area of your business. 

You don’t have anyone guaranteeing you a certain amount of money for your time either. Therefore, if you have an especially slow day, you may not be able to take home much of a profit.

Pro: Less Startup Costs

It can be significantly less expensive to own and run a food truck than your standard brick-and-mortar restaurant. Rent and utilities alone can cost you an arm and a leg, and then there’s the kitchen equipment, tables and chairs, staff…the list goes on.

With a food truck, on the other hand, the main startup cost is the vehicle. Your operational costs are then mostly limited to gas, food, supplies, and perhaps wages for an employee or two. A smaller space requires a smaller investment, making a food truck a great option for an aspiring chef on a budget.

Con: You’re Stuck in a Small, Cramped Space

A food truck isn’t just small – it can also be quite cramped. Once you add in all the kitchen equipment, a POS system, and your ingredients, you may not have much room to move around inside. If you don’t do well in confined spaces, working in a food truck may not be an ideal fit.

Pro: There’s Lots of Opportunity

Working out of a food truck offers lots of flexibility in terms of operating hours and location, so it’s important to use this to your advantage. For example, you could set up shop outside of a stadium when there’s an event going on to take advantage of the crowd coming or going, or park outside of large companies during lunch time.

Con: There’s Lots of Competition

Since the startup costs are low and there’s a demand for quick and convenient meals these days, the food truck industry can be a rather competitive one. Therefore, if you don’t have a unique, in-demand menu for your business, you may have a tough time finding success.

If there’s a problem with the food item or items that your company makes or distributes, will you be able to quickly identify the issue so you can mitigate as much damage as possible? Food recalls cost companies tens of billions of dollars each year and can hurt a firm’s reputation and profit if there isn’t a fast and satisfying solution for consumers. And a company can spend even more money and invest even more time trying to repair this damage and rebuild trust with consumers.

A food industry consultant can help with food traceability efforts, and in this post, we’ll further discuss what you need to know about traceability and why it’s arguably more important now than ever. Here’s a look:

3 Reasons Why Food Traceability is Key

Wondering why food traceability is so important today? Here are three reasons:

1. Safety Reasons

Perhaps the No. 1 reason to implement high-quality food traceability solutions today is for the safety of the consumers who will be eating the items your company produces. According to the World Health Organization (WHO), it’s estimated that as many as 600 million people worldwide will get sick from eating contaminated food each year. The bottom line is that manufacturers should know where the ingredients they’re sourcing are coming from, especially when there are so many moving parts these days in the global food supply chain. Keeping close tabs on your ingredients and where they’re coming from can help quickly identify problems and mitigate illness as well as reputational damage.

2. Fast Identification

To piggyback off the above point, the global food supply chain is very complex – with ingredients often sourced from all over the world. With so many moving parts, it’s imperative to quickly identify when issues arise and where they arise in the supply chain to mitigate as much damage as possible. More traceability means more visibility into the supply chain, which can help with preparedness and initiate a faster response.

Fast identification is key to recovery as well. It can help mount a viable response from all stakeholders involved.

3. Stay Compliant With Industry Standards

Finally, there are various governing bodies that food companies must stay compliant with. If issues arise and it’s discovered that companies were not in compliance with various industry standards or regulations, the problem can become even more exacerbated.

Why You Need a Food Industry Consultant

Like we said in the intro, one of the ways your firm can improve traceability is by working with a credible food industry consultant. Not only can such a consultant help bring companies better profits and cost savings, but they can also work to significantly improve food traceability efforts. And if something still were to go wrong, they can help your company mount a response that will mitigate damage and help you regain trust with consumers. For more information on the importance of food traceability and to work with a food consultant that can help you improve profitability and accountability, contact us today.