Food and Beverage

Our Expertise

Finding balance between success today and growth tomorrow

From intense competition and shifts in customer trends to cost fluctuations and regulatory pressures, the food and beverage industry is rapidly evolving, and there’s no secret formula for success. Whether you’re balancing a mature portfolio of brands, focusing on fast growth, looking to add new investors, or contemplating a transaction, our food and beverage industry consultants have an in-depth understanding of the issues you face and your need for specialized strategies and solutions.

With decades of experience, our national practice serves middle-market privately held, family-owned, and private equity-owned companies across all facets of the food and beverage value chain, including production, processing, packaging, distribution, and logistics. We also specialize in serving customers in the retail, restaurant, and franchise areas. From startup entities to national brands, our diverse range of clients includes growers, confectioners, breweries, wineries, and processors of frozen food, snack food, protein, nutraceuticals, and dairy products, among others.

Read on to find out how our food and beverage consultants leverage deep knowledge of the entire value chain — from farm to consumer — and all points in between.

Made-to-order solutions

Our food and beverage accounting and consulting experts will help your business thrive today and into the future. Let us help you:

Audit and financial strategy

Our comprehensive audit and assurance services provide actionable insights that transform your standards and accounting policies to appropriately balance risk, value, and cost. Our team is well-versed in the technical reporting requirements specific to the food and beverage industry and will improve confidence in your audit accuracy and quality. If your company needs back-office support, our accounting solutions team can support your business with daily finance and accounting tasks, assume a CFO-level role, or help upgrade your accounting systems to keep pace with your growth.

Cost and margin intelligence

Our experts help you gain visibility into real-time, accurate product life cycle costs to monitor and manage margins more effectively. Drive improved profitability by more accurately modeling material, labor, and overhead costs by key drivers like yield, productivity, and capacity utilization.

Environmental, social, and corporate governance
Environmental, social, and governance (ESG) reporting is becoming an important initiative for many organizations. Do you have a plan in place for ESG reporting? If you’ve prioritized developing an ESG strategy but don’t know where to begin, we can help.
Mergers and acquisitions

Are you considering a merger, acquisition, or sale of your food and beverage business? Do you need to secure financing to realize capital investment projects? We’ll help you understand every aspect of your transaction to ensure maximum value. As your single source for transaction advisory, our team has expertise in succession planning, buy- and sell-side strategy, due diligence, valuation, pre- and post-acquisition integration, divestitures, and carve-outs. If you’re planning an exit, our wealth management team can also help you develop a personal financial strategy that brings maximum results for your business and family.

Operations improvement

Is there opportunity to increase your operational efficiency? Our operational assessments help evaluate performance, identify strengths and risks, quantify efficiency opportunities, and most importantly, provide you a prioritized, customized action plan. We’ll help you improve operational efficiency through Industry 4.0 technologies like automation, plant floor optimization, and efficient technologies that provide real-time, traceable data and relevant KPIs to support your goals.

Smart manufacturing and Industry 4.0
Industry 4.0 smart manufacturing leverages technology and automation on the plant floor to achieve greater operational efficiency and open doors to new and incremental revenue. From assessing where you stand to creating your best course of action, we’ll help you level up.
Strategy

Strategy is the driver for powerful business results. Whether you’re looking to activate strategic programs or capitalize on emerging market and product categories, we’ll help you define your vision, assess your core competencies, perform market and customer analytics, and develop your plan.

Supply chain strategy

Is your supply chain responsive and agile? We have the expertise to help you improve your supply chain performance, including planning and forecasting, sourcing and supplier management, distribution logistics, inventory management, and more. We’ll work alongside you to develop a supply chain strategy that reduces risk and disruption, improves visibility, and increases your ability to meet customer expectations.

Tax

Is your tax position optimized for today’s needs and tomorrow’s opportunities? Our tax team covers every area of food and beverage industry regulations and compliance including risk and liability assessments, R&D tax credits, state and local nexus assessments, transfer pricing and cost segregation, and international regulations. From proactive tax planning to preparation for liquidity events, our experts have you covered.

Technology, data analytics, and cybersecurity

Is your technology infrastructure generating efficiencies, gathering accurate data, and helping drive informed decisions? Whether you want more value from your current system or need to replace it with a new system, our experts will help guide you through ERP assessment, implementation, and selection. Once your infrastructure is effectively in place, our cost and margin intelligence team will help you understand where you make money – and where you don’t – while our data analytics team will help you transform this data into actionable insights to improve performance. As technology gets more advanced, so do cyber risks. Our cybersecurity experts will help you assess your security and protect your data and systems.


Topics

Smart manufacturing

Risk management strategies for growth and innovation


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Client Experience

The food industry partner you never knew you needed

Our clients receive the best of both worlds: the flexibility and personal touch you’d expect from smaller firm, and the resources we bring as a national firm. Each client relationship is unique and scalable. You can trust that we’ll be more than your service provider — we’ll be your partner and confidant.

Clients also love that they don’t need to train our staff. We already know the industry, and we put in the work to understand your unique business. We’ve been on the Fortune “100 Best Companies to Work For” list for the last couple decades, so our staff tends to stick around — you won’t find a revolving door of account managers here, but you will find the unexpected value of having a trusted partner to confide in. As our food and beverage industry leader, Paul Edwards, puts it, “It’s not what we do, it’s how we do it.”

Our clients say

"We felt like their values aligned totally with our values. There’s tremendous alignment and accessibility. We needed somebody that did more than just review our accounting and financial statements once a year. We needed support throughout the year — and Plante Moran provided that. They opened our eyes to new opportunities.”

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Sean Zecman
President, National Food Group