#194 - AI for Ops with YANY Beauty and Phenomenal Foods Co
The Startup CPG Podcast
Startup CPG
4.9 • 642 Ratings
🗓️ 29 April 2025
⏱️ 42 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
In this episode of the Startup CPG podcast, Daniel Scharff and Caitlin Bricker dive deep into how emerging brands are using AI for operations and back office support. Joined by two powerhouse founders—Yaminah Childress of YANY Beauty and Veronica Blue of Phenomenal Foods Co—they explore how small teams are using AI to scale smarter, save time, and simplify complex workflows.
From AI-powered forecasting and document automation to personalized marketing and product costing, this episode breaks down the real-world tools that founders are actually using. Yaminah shares how she leverages tools like Perplexity AI and Contractor AI to manage agreements, expansion strategies, and even create AI assistants.
Meanwhile, Veronica reveals how ChatGPT has become her go-to tool for recipe costing, unit economics, and preparing investor-ready projections—all as a solopreneur.
Whether you're skeptical, curious, or already experimenting with AI, this episode will give you practical ideas and fresh inspiration to apply AI in your own business ops.
Tune in now to learn how these founders are turning AI into their ultimate business partner.
Listen in as they share about:
- Initial Skepticism Around AI
- AI as a Tool for Business Efficiency
- AI as a Tool for Lean Teams
- AI for Financial Modeling & Forecasting
- AI Building Internal Knowledge Bases
- Legal, Regulatory, and Forecasting Uses
- Custom Tools & Software
- AI as a Creative Partner
Episode Links:
Website: https://yanybeauty.co/
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/iamyaminah/
Website: https://phenomenalfoodsco.com/
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/vblue/
Don't forget to leave a five-star review on Apple Podcasts or Spotify if you enjoyed this episode. For potential sponsorship opportunities or to join the Startup CPG community, visit http://www.startupcpg.com.
Show Links:
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- Episode music by Super Fantastics
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Hey, do you know about Mini Social? |
| 0:03.7 | So it takes seven touch points on average to convert a potential consumer. |
| 0:07.3 | You can get started by meeting your consumers where they can see you every day on social. |
| 0:11.9 | Our friends at Mini Social work with brands on micro-influencer amplification and UGC creation. |
| 0:18.2 | You can get content that's fully licensed for use on your own marketing channels |
| 0:21.6 | and watch creators post about your products to their audience. |
| 0:25.6 | Mini Social has been around since 2018, partnering with over 1,000 CPG brands like |
| 0:30.3 | Bonza, Outstanding Foods, Fly By Jing, Hydrant, Love Wellness, and many more. |
| 0:34.6 | You can learn how it works by visiting CPG.binisocial.com and take a look |
| 0:39.5 | of their case studies. |
| 0:40.6 | Make sure to mention us at Startup CPG for a special |
| 0:43.1 | discount. |
| 1:07.8 | Thank you. I use Contractor AI, which is a new tool. I use for things like forecasting. I use it for agreements. Like a lot of us brands have content creators or influencers. |
| 1:13.0 | And it can write those agreements for us or just write small business agreements in general. |
| 1:18.3 | And it's already pre-prompted so you don't have to have an attorney to ask you the questions. |
| 1:22.9 | It asks you ahead of time. |
| 1:25.0 | And so that is something that I use, you know, several times a month when I need a new |
| 1:29.2 | agreement or I need new forecasting tools. And so all of the things. I'm always chatting with |
| 1:34.5 | chat TPT. Probably the most helpful thing that I've been able to do is work with my costing, |
| 1:40.2 | scaling recipes, things like that. And then I kind of fold all of that data that it gives me into my two to three year projections. |
| 1:49.3 | Welcome to all our loyal listeners and to our AI bot overlords. Today we are hoping to level up our AI game. |
| 1:56.1 | We're going to learn how a few entrepreneurs are using the latest technology for operations and other back office efficiency. |
... |
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