Did you build a job for yourself or a business that scales?
18 years. One Exit. Every channel a food brand can touch. Now I help operators skip the mistakes I made.
Meet Lori
Lori Karmel knows what it actually takes to build a food business from the ground up. In 2002 she bought a struggling specialty cake company with $100,000 in sales, no baking experience, and no outside capital. Over the next 18 years she grew it into a national brand, bootstrapped every step of the way, and sold it in 2020.
Along the way she navigated every channel a food brand can touch. Oprah selected her Key Lime Cake as one of her Favorite Things in 2004, sending 10,000 orders in two weeks and crashing the website. Her products were featured in O Magazine three times, on Good Morning America, and on a CNBC prime-time special. She built drop-ship partnerships with Williams Sonoma, Goldbelly, Neiman Marcus, and 1-800-Flowers.
She knows what it takes to build an online channel that works and why most operators leave that growth on the table.
She walked away from a Trader Joe's deal that would have destroyed her margins. She learned the hard way what Whole Foods, QVC, and specialty retail actually require.
She made expensive mistakes. She also figured out what works.
Now she helps food founders skip the costly trial and error and build brands that can actually scale. Lori's expertise covers brand strategy, channel selection, margin analysis, packaging, retail readiness, and the kind of operational decisions that determine whether a food business survives growth or breaks under it.
WHAT I DO.
Lori works with food operators who are already selling and ready to grow. She helps them get clear on their brand positioning, fix their margins, choose the right channels, and build the operational foundation that makes scaling possible without breaking what is working.
WHAT I OFFER
Build a product that actually sells before you waste time or money.
Six essential questions every food founder should answer before spending another dollar. Takes 30 minutes. Could save you years of costly mistakes. Free. No credit card.
Most food businesses fail not because the product is bad, but because the founder never stopped to ask the right questions at the start.
This blueprint is six of those questions.
Work through it honestly and you will know whether you have a viable business worth investing in further, or whether you need to fix something first.
After downloading, go to File, Make a copy to save it to your own Google Drive and fill it in.
Free. No credit card. No strings.
Food brand strategy built on 18 years of operator experience.
Built for operators who are already selling but know their brand story, packaging, and positioning aren't doing enough work.
Eight sections. Real case studies. A 90-day plan that tells you exactly what to fix first.
Only $67. Delivered as a Google Doc. Yours forever.
ONE - ON - ONE CONSULTING
ONE - ON - ONE CONSULTING
Ready for direct guidance on your specific business? Lori works with food operators who are already selling and ready to grow. She helps them get clear on their brand positioning, fix their margins, choose the right channels, and build the operational foundation that makes scaling possible without breaking what is working. Start with a free 30-minute strategy call. No pitch, no pressure. A direct conversation about where your brand is and what it would take to grow it.