Ariana (00:00:07) - Welcome to Secret Ops, the podcast uncovering the world of business operations. One episode at a time. I'm your host Ariana Cofone, and today's guest is Chelsey Firor, Head of Operations at a New York based startup. Chelsey, I am so excited to talk to you today because you are part of my, my being as a human and especially within the operations world. Thank you for being here.

Chelsey (00:00:32) - Ariana. Yay. I'm so excited to be here talking with you.

Ariana (00:00:37) - So, some context before we jump into questions, which is Chelsey and I have worked together where we essentially shared the same brain for a year and a half and it was a very special time. She's one of my operations soulmates.

Chelsey (00:00:53) - Wow. I can't believe it was a year and a half. It felt like it was five years.

Ariana (00:00:58) - Yeah, I did feel like we were working together for a decade. So I wanna share your background with the listeners. So can you talk to me about where you've been within your career, how you sort of fell into operations? What was that journey?

Chelsey (00:01:16) - Yeah, so I kind of stumbled into it. I went to school and I became a globalization major, which I don't know what that is really.

Ariana (00:01:26) - What does that mean?

Chelsey (00:01:28) - Political science, economic, all of that stuff mixed together. Cuz I was like, oh, I like cultures and environmental stuff and oh, this does everything, so I'll do that. But then once I got out of school I was like, ooh, how do I get a job with this degree? There aren't very many globalization jobs, so I got into farmer's markets and working and volunteering with them and then that slowly snowballed into more food centric jobs and and I applied to NYU for the food studies program, a master's degree and moved to New York.

Ariana (00:02:13) - When it comes to food studies, what are some things that you're learning?

Chelsey (00:02:17) - Yeah, it was all different classes. You could take a farming class, you could take political science or, not political science, the politics of food. But yeah, it was a whole mix of all sorts of things. But quickly into that I realized I couldn't just study all the time and I was like, ooh, I don't, I don't wanna be back in school. This is hard. So I went part-time and applied for Pip Snacks where you hired me.

Ariana (00:02:43) - So, those listening might know Pip Snacks as Pip Corn, but it's the mini popcorn that the founders Jen and Jeff aired on Shark Tank. And that's I think where a lot of people learned about popcorn and Pip Snacks. But that's where, where you and I met. Yeah.

Chelsey (00:02:57) - It was very, very exciting. I remember going to that interview and I was like, wow, there's no windows. Oh wow! Popping popcorn!

Chelsey (00:03:07) - And I think my first day you taught me how to put tape on a box. I was like, cool!

Ariana (00:03:16) - Which is a vital skill.

Chelsey (00:03:19) - Ok, now you do it. I was like, oh wow, this is much harder than it looks.

Chelsey (00:03:24) - The wrist snap!

Ariana (00:03:28) - The wrist snap. Yeah. And those little tricks after you box, you know, hundreds and hundreds of boxes, you start to learn. So, so you were at Pip Snacks but you ended up being with them for 6, 7 years.

Chelsey (00:03:41) - Six years, yeah. Which is crazy.

Ariana (00:03:44) - Time flies. Now you've can stayed in operations and now you've you've shifted to a different type of flavor of doing the same thing, but not in the food industry. In more of the consumer product goods.

Chelsey (00:03:56) - Yeah. And even a smaller startup than Pip Snacks was. So that's a whole other journey, but it's, it's all fun. I'm learning.

Ariana (00:04:05) - What do you think draws you to operations?

Chelsey (00:04:09) - Yeah, that's a good question. One of the things that I like the most is all of the problem solving. There's tons of issues always and you're always just trying to figure it out and get things done. And also the fact that it's always changing, your job is never the same, week to week or month to month. I feel like I've been doing operations for eight or nine years, but it's like I have a different job every few months. It's in constant flux and you can kind of control it by, I'm always heavily involved in R&D and developing new products or items. So I definitely give myself more work sometimes by doing that. Especially, at Pip Snacks and developing crackers, I was like, we have a byproduct, we should make crackers and yeah, we've always wanted to make crackers, why did I do this to myself? Sourcing the ingredient per cracker. I'm like, what?

Ariana (00:05:11) - That, that is one thing that I remember vividly sitting in a room and you were an alchemist almost. You had all these different flavors and you were mixing popcorn and you were trying different flavors out. I think it's quite creative, the R&D process, right? You're not only developing new flavors or new types of products, but then there's the, the whole other part of R&D which is how do we actually make this product at scale and can we make this product at scale?

Chelsey (00:05:36) - And sourcing ingredients and having it be affordable and also clean. We don't want certain colors or unnatural things. I remember working on vegan cheddar for forever.

Chelsey (00:05:53) - I was like, I can't eat this anymore.

Ariana (00:05:57) - There was one time we were, we were trying to get one of the new recipes right, a new type of sugar and I remember we used to pop a lot of popcorn and we'd sometimes put 'em in these garbage bags and you and I ate so much kettle, I just watched the sugar crash.

Chelsey (00:06:12) - I remember that having the huge trash bag in my lap while I was working and just eating it. I probably had five bags of popcorn this day. And then I think I would take a two year break. I couldn't eat it for a while.

Ariana (00:06:27) - When you make something good, it's hard to stop eating it. It's my fave but

Ariana (00:06:31) - It's probably a good detour for us to talk about, you know, our history at Pip Corn and learning how to make a food product and taking that from a smaller kind of food startup into this larger brand that it sort of happened overnight. So I think I was at Pip Snacks maybe a little shy of a year before I hired you because you were fabulous and amazing and when you joined we were in the process of trying to figure out how to scale our operations because we’d just aired on Shark Tank and, and all of a sudden everybody wanted Pip Corn and we had to supply and demand issue was how do we get this into people's hands faster? So, I would love to hear sort of when you joined, what was that like for you? Trying to solve all of those puzzles of scaling, working with the team, you know, eventually working with distributors and all these different pieces. What was that like?

Chelsey (00:07:30) - Yeah, it was I feel like it was insane.

Chelsey (00:07:37) - Yeah, I didn't know what I was getting myself into exactly. I was like how do we make so much popcorn with just four kettles? And I remember the first idea was having multiple shifts and like, okay, I'll pop during everybody's lunch break and we'll make more. This makes perfect sense. We can have three more pallets. Yeah, we hired more people and then I remember we would run outta space in the hallway and there would be 50 pallets of popcorn in the hallway and trying to get trucks in and it was just chaos.

Ariana (00:08:13) - It's probably good to contextualize. So, the space that we had to work in was not glamorous in any way, shape and form. It was not a glamorous place.

Chelsey (00:08:23) - Yeah.

Ariana (00:08:23) - Yes. The building that we worked in, there were no windows. There was part of the space that was for pallets and boxing and shipping and then there was part of the space that was a kitchen aspect, but it was meant for startups, which we were. But then all of a sudden we saw it go from a small company into a la large/medium size company.

Chelsey (00:08:43) - Well it went from one month we were in 10 Whole Foods that were in the city and we had the local guy that would pick it up. Alberto, right?

Ariana (00:08:54) - Alberto, yes!

Chelsey (00:08:57) - And then within a few months Whole Foods national. So scaling that was crazy. That's when we were working on weekends and nights and had to find the first warehouse, which we all didn't know really how to do.

Ariana (00:09:12) - Oh yeah. Finding a warehouse of where you wanna store these things. Also listener, remember we're dealing with food so there's an expiration date timeline that you have. So it's not just how do you make this product, but it's how do you make this product, turn it in time so that you know, we aren't wasting product and how do we do that with a warehouse and co-packer and distributors to distribute all these goods. That was a very intense year of learning how to do that.

Chelsey (00:09:39) - Yes. Yeah. And having very accurate packing slips and the POLs and triple counting everything. Yeah, there's a lot of recounting of pallets.

Ariana (00:09:51) - Constant

Chelsey (00:09:52) - SKUs.

Ariana (00:09:54) - Constant. There was one time they were showing Pip Corn on Good Morning America and, and we had to guarantee a certain amount of shipments to be sent out. And I remember that we got it down to the box. We had prepared, by some miracle this was not amazing planning. This was a miracle that we had somehow popped and prepared to the box enough packages to ship out in time. And it was probably the peak operations experience for me.

Chelsey (00:10:23) - I think when you developed the honey combing process was quite amazing.

Ariana (00:10:30) - That changed, that did change the game. Turning the box from upright to sideways and packing it that way, that changed, that changed it.

Chelsey (00:10:36) - Boxes filling one by one. Yep.

Ariana (00:10:40) - So, after that time working together, I ended up leaving you, you took over in the role that I had. What was that like afterwards seeing this crazy boom, this crazy level of scaling to getting to a point of stabilizing the continuing growth? How was that?

Chelsey (00:10:57) - Yeah, it, well, when you left it was heartbreaking.

Ariana (00:11:00) - Oh, I'm sure!

Chelsey (00:11:02) - Staring at you with sad eyes for two weeks before you left.

Ariana (00:11:07) - I did feel like I was, I was losing a part of myself cuz you, you do spend so much time with the people that you work with. We spent so much time together and we did so much together. It was a hard, it was a hard goodbye. For sure.

Chelsey (00:11:20) - Yeah. And you were, you were my guide through everything taught me how to do everything and then all of a sudden I had to figure it out on my own and I honestly didn't think I was ready. I was like, ooh, how am I gonna do this? But I'm gonna just pretend and hope it works out.

Ariana (00:11:36) - You were ready.

Ariana (00:11:38) - You were ready, you were more than ready to take over and to take it to the next level. Cuz you also had the passion to work within that industry and the love of food, which just truth be told, I love some food, but I'm, I wasn't at that level of where, where you had that.

Chelsey (00:11:53) - Yeah. I don't know why, but yes, I was very obsessed. I was like, all of these snacks must be perfect. They must get to the shelf. But yeah, there was definitely a learning curve and I remember there was three weeks of just being like, Ooh, I don't know what I'm doing. I don't know what I'm doing. And then all of a sudden clicked and I was like, okay, I got this. I can actually survive without Ariana

Ariana (00:12:25) - I think that in any role shift in operations, you don't know what you're doing. For the first month, three months, sometimes six months, you're kinda making it up as you go. And that's the secret that no one tells you.

Chelsey (00:12:37) - Yeah. You have to build your own tools. When we were a small scrappy team, we didn't have tons of money, or investments. So it was just like, a lot of Google Excel sheets that-

Ariana (00:12:50) - So many Excel sheets

Chelsey (00:12:51) - Yeah, too many. I just think that managing inventory, purchasing all of the raw materials and also managing a team of people that were popping the popcorn in Harlem and then figuring out where to go next and finding the first co-packer. How to make the popcorn because it's not your normal popcorn. It's very, it's mini popcorn, it's special. You have to pop it in a certain way.

Ariana (00:13:23) - The team that did the popping were, they were absolutely amazing and the gears behind a lot of what the business was doing at the time, but you were saying that taking it from that small team, managing that team in addition to then figuring out how to get a co-packer to recreate the style. That's, hard. So fast forward through the years of learning all those different levels and now you're working for a small startup. Again. When we talk about operations and what your days look like today, what does a day in the life of Chelsey Firor look like?

Chelsey (00:13:55) - Yeah, I feel like I'm always planning and working on timing of things. Cause in my, I guess operational role, I need to get product made and get it from one place to the other place and make sure inventory is very healthy and that I can foresee when there's going to be, larger orders coming in. So it's always like I'm playing a game of timing and with COVID disrupting the, global supply chain. I'm ordering glass, so I'm like, what's the glass lead time this week? Because it's constantly changing. Okay, I need to order that now and then make sure everything else comes in and find different co-packers and manufacturers have a lot of backups because it's a little chaotic with covid, and ordering raw materials that some come from overseas and then some just are an inconsistent supply.

Ariana (00:14:59) - So I think one thing if, if someone hasn't actually made physical products, what is very hard to understand between physical and digital products, a physical product typically has multiple factors that are going into making that physical product. And sometimes you're working with multiple vendors most of the time actually to get a single product out the door. So what's happened in the last two years? I mean, part of me was quite grateful that I was more in the digital space because of all the things that you've had to see. It's like back in the day when I was doing, you know, physical products, it's like, all right, you had your, your consistent manufacturers, your consistent distributors, all right, you found your, freight shippers, you found your, co-packers. But now it's like for every plan that you have, you have to have almost two backup plans.

Chelsey (00:15:49) - Yes. Yeah. Always looking for different suppliers constantly.

Ariana (00:15:54) - From a supply chain standpoint, what kind of processes are you putting in place to make sure you've got all of those ducks in a row?

Chelsey (00:16:01) - Yeah, there's a lot. I guess I look at inventory every few days, and I have markers of all the different skews of when it gets to a certain amount and when to reorder cuz you have to also think about the demand cuz something much faster than others. So I can see when one thing is low I'm like, oh, I need to work on this ASAP. And then another thing's low, I'm like, oh, that's probably good for many more months.

Ariana (00:16:34) - So every SKU has a different way of operating around that particular product.

Chelsey (00:16:40) - Yep and I work with, I don't know, 70 SKUs, so...

Ariana (00:16:46) - Wow.

Chelsey (00:16:47) - Yeah, there's a lot of spreadsheets and timing. And then constantly adding new products as well. So there's two, I guess two brains where one is trying to keep everything in stock and then the other is working on new items all the time and doing a lot of R&D and figuring out which items to discontinue so that I can work on new products.

Ariana (00:17:17) - Well this hops into technology a bit, which is back in the day, we were getting orders sometimes through faxes, which I'm like, ahhh! I couldn't believe that we were getting fax orders back in the day. Are there platforms now that have helped in inventory planning or is it still a very custom process that you've got to make?

Chelsey (00:17:41) - Yeah there's ERP systems. NetSuite is probably the most famous one, but it's crazy expensive. Most small companies can't really afford it. Those are extremely helpful. And then there's other ERPs that are cheaper that you can use. Fiddle is one, I mean there's tons of them.

Ariana (00:18:03) - For those listening, if you don't know what ERP is, it stands for Enterprise Resource Planning. So this is essentially a platform that allows you to put in the different factors that you need to manage and then have a centralized way of being able to see all that information.

Chelsey (00:18:16) - Those are extremely helpful for operations people. You just have to constantly make sure that they're updated. But you can do all of your inventory management in there and you can create an item and in that item that's almost like a recipe. So if you, put an invoice or you put in like, I have this order, it'll tell you how many pieces of the raw material you need and then it'll take it outta inventory once you move it. So it's quite amazing when one person has to look at hundreds of products all the time.

Ariana (00:18:53) - Oh my god, that's, that is game changing straight up.

Chelsey (00:18:56) - Yeah, you would love it.

Ariana (00:18:57) - Oh my god, I'm geeking out. I don't even, I don't have a need for it, but I wanna have it. So we, we've talked about a bit of the process overseeing all these different things. The, the third piece is the people piece, which is the, I think one of the hardest pieces, right? Yeah. Because people means a lot of different things. Stakeholders, team that you're managing, you know, the relationships with your suppliers, etc. What are some things that you've learned over the years that have helped you manage the people side of operations?

Chelsey (00:19:28) - Yeah, so that was definitely something that took me a while to learn and realize that operations is very key and needs to always be talking to sales and marketing, connecting the pieces. Cause people don't really realize what operations is and you sort of just have to be like, okay, I can't just create this product for you tomorrow and if you ask for a sample to be shipped out at 6:00 PM it's not going out. It took a while to learn that and that communication was key. And being very articulate of when things are available and how long things will take because sales is always going to say yes to everything and be like, yeah, we can get that to you in a week. And I have to be like, no, no, no, that's gonna take five weeks or if we wanna like, you know, it'll cost more if you want we can make it three weeks. There's a lot of explaining that and you have to do it very simply, make it very black and white for the people that you're communicating with.

Ariana (00:20:36) - So a lot of our job is, is literally taking the complex systems that we have to manage and distilling it into something that not only our internal team can understand, but also external clients can understand. Cause ultimately it's like a game of telephone, right? You tell the internal team, the internal team talks to the clients or the customers. So if you are getting it wrong on your side or if you're not explaining things well on your side, it causes a ripple effect to chaos. That's what I've learned.

Chelsey (00:21:05) - Yes, that is very true.

Ariana (00:21:10) - So, this hops into, you know, what do you think people get wrong about operations? It's clear that unless you're in operations, it's hard to really comprehend all the moving pieces, but what do you think people looking from the outside in get wrong about what we do?

Chelsey (00:21:27) - I guess they don't realize how many different moving parts there are and how one thing can affect the other thing, which will ruin everything else. Also that there's a lot of things in operations that are kind of out of your control. You know, a truck crashes and then you have to deal with that or there's quality issues and you have to start over.

Ariana (00:21:50) - I'm sh-shaking my head so intensely right now because I remember, really felt that when I learned about the world of trucking...freight trucking

Chelsey (00:22:02) - Yes!

Ariana (00:22:03) - And that was a whole different can of worms. A lot of the times. At the time I was calling to get an update of where a truck was or I'd call somebody who then would call the dispatcher to understand where these things were. And then oftentimes sometimes the response is, you know, we're not sure we've got an estimate of this time or there's storms that are happening in the Midwest. If it's gonna take longer. And that's where people get really mad at you. But literally there's nothing more that you can do. Even if you were driving the truck yourself, there's nothing more that you can do. So that, that I will say, be nice to your customer service people. Be nice to the people who are trying to figure it out. Most of the time they're really just trying to, to get things under control that are out of their control. So be nice to them, please!

Chelsey (00:22:50) - Yeah, one of the biggest things I learned about that was that the different vendors that we chose to work with for a while I was like, okay, well this is the trucking company we're gonna work with. And then you talk to some other ones and you're like, oh wait, these people are so much easier to work with and it's cheaper and they're on time. Finding the right relationships for the company makes such a big difference. I remember we had a very bad warehouse for a while. They were always mean to me. I'm like, what am I doing wrong? And then we moved warehouses and I was like, I wasn't doing anything wrong. They were just mean. And these people are so much nicer and do the things correctly and are just better at communicating. I'm like, wow, why did I torture myself for a year or two with a very mean difficult warehouse? I've used that in my new role of like, oh, these people aren't very nice, I'm gonna find better ones. Or it's not just niceness, it's just doing it and not making it difficult. Something that you know, doesn't need to be that hard and making it a little easier.

Ariana (00:24:00) - I think we've talked a lot about how difficult operations can be, but what makes you happy at the end of the day? If you wake up in the morning, what gets you jazzed about doing this kind of work? What, what's your happy place with operations?

Chelsey (00:24:12) - I love the R&D process and launching new items and putting that together and I guess the operations of it. Seeing it come to life. Just a vague idea and then creating it from your home. I work from home so I'm not in a factory making things. Not as much as I was with Pip Snacks where you could see it getting made. Now I just order some things and have a lot of calls and then all of a sudden it's created, which is extremely exciting.

Ariana (00:24:48) - It's a weird feeling to sometimes put months or even more than a year into making something and then seeing it is totally exciting. I don't know if there is anything more exciting or seeing something on a, on a shelf is really profound in some ways. Like walking into a store and seeing it or people buying it.

Chelsey (00:25:10) - Yeah. One of my favorite moments, I remember the first time snacks branched out of popcorn and we were trying to make cheese balls from the actual kernel so he had to go through a grinding process. It was very complicated. And getting the email of pictures of cheese balls, just naked cheese balls. I was like, oh my God, this is so amazing. And, and I always freaking out at my desk and I was like, everyone was like, Chelsey, are you okay? I was like, hold on, I'm gonna email you and just wait for it and open it. And just seeing everyone's face of just looking at these, a picture of some cheese balls.

Ariana (00:25:54) - I will tell you I recently bought those cheese balls and they were addicting. The last piece before we wrap up, is if someone is hearing us and they're not completely scared off by managing inventory and putting all these things together and the r and d process, how would, what would you recommend they do to get into operations?

Chelsey (00:26:14) - Working for a startup is, is a great way to do it. Even if you don't come in as an operations person, if you start doing the operational things, you can easily just move your way into that. Or just finding something you're really passionate about and getting a job in that industry. And I feel like you can easily fall into operations by saying yes to a bunch of things and being like, oh I'll work on that. And you can just sort of create your job in operations. I know that a lot of operation jobs...there's customer service involved, which I'm sure you remember. I hated that and I was like, okay, somebody else needs to do this. I know that operation people are supposed to do this, but I can't respond to another angry person.

Ariana (00:27:07) - It is a necessary evil is customer service. Because sometimes you have the most amazing customers that really make your day. I definitely have gotten emotional with some kind emails. Yes. But there's a lot of mean ones too.

Chelsey (00:27:24) - Seriously, I would have to write my response and then rewrite it. Cause it was like, well that's too mean. I need to, okay. Deep breaths here.

Ariana (00:27:37) - You know what though? Getting into operations is about trying all those things and then you can kind of see where your niche is and whatever niche you like, there is a role for that in operations. You just have to find it.

Chelsey (00:27:50) - Yep, yeah, exactly.

Ariana (00:27:52) - All right. We're gonna do some rapid fire questions just about you as a human, Chelsey. So let's jump in. Okay. You wake up in the morning, what do you have to start your day with?

Chelsey (00:28:04) - First coffee is a must and then I always like to wash my face put on some serums, you know, for anti-aging, which I'm not sure they're doing anything but it feels nice and they normally smell good. And then the first thing I have to do before I open my computer and look at my emails, I have to put together a list of my to-dos for that day or the things that I wanna accomplish. Just things that are floating in my head. I write them all down and then I can start my day.

Ariana (00:28:38) - What are some things that you gotta do at the end of the day to wind down?

Chelsey (00:28:43) - I love to cook. Cooking is very calming for me. Chopping vegetables up, a walk is always great. Or some exercise to you know, move myself out of my apartment, which I feel like I'm in too much. My desk is in my bedroom so I need to get out of the apartment. Yeah, those are the main things.

Ariana (00:29:08) - Now when it comes to reading, are there any books that you're currently reading or would recommend?

Chelsey (00:29:15) - Yes. I don't know if this is common for operations people, but I normally read three books at once. And it's sort of how I'm feeling that day. But I'm reading a thousand page book on Winston Churchill because I watched that movie The Darkest Hour and I was like, oh my god, this guy's amazing. I must learn more. And then I'm also reading, this is a weird one, the Red Tent, which is a story about a group of women in their life and it's sort of biblical. It's like a person from a bible. I'm not religious, I don't know how I ended up with this book, but it's very, it's very good. And just women supporting each other so far. I'm not that far into it. And then also a Leonardo Da Vinci book.

Ariana (00:30:07) - Oh my god.

Chelsey (00:30:08) - Yeah. I would like to, you know, be more like him, although I don't know if I do, but yeah.

Ariana (00:30:14) - You’re learning by reading this book.

Chelsey (00:30:16) - Yeah, I'm trying to, I'm trying to learn and then also have a guilty pleasure book.

Ariana (00:30:22) - What is your favorite quote or a quote that stuck with you?

Chelsey (00:30:27) - I feel like Oprah has the best quotes. I feel like she said something like, “if you do the best in the moment, that makes the next moment even better.” Something like that. That's not a direct Oprah quote, but maybe some days you're like, ugh, I don't feel like doing this, but by doing it you're making those future days better. So I try to tell myself that sometimes when there's annoying things or you know, with operations there's always problems.

Ariana (00:31:04) - Yeah. Yeah.

Ariana (00:31:06) - Last one for you. What do you wanna be when you grow up?

Chelsey (00:31:10) - Oh, I would love to be a famous artist.

Ariana (00:31:16) - What kinda artist?

Chelsey (00:31:17) - I would like to build stuff. I did a metalworks art class in college and I loved it. I built l a life size dog out of metal and you get to use plasma guns that melts the metal and then you heat it and you bang it into stuff. It was, it's very fun.

Ariana (00:31:41) - That sounds very satisfying.

Chelsey (00:31:43) - Yeah, have a huge barn or where I can just do art.

Ariana (00:31:49) - That sounds amazing. Before we wrap up, where can people find you?

Chelsey (00:31:54) - I think LinkedIn's the best. Chelsey Firor, message me.

Ariana (00:31:59) - Chelsey, thank you so much. Not only for talking to me today, but also just for being a part of my operations life. I'm so grateful to you and having you as a part of it has been very special to me. Thank you so, so much for listening and supporting Secret Ops. Please follow us wherever you find your podcast and check us out at secret-ops.com. We'll see you next time.