In the early days at Goodfood, we lived week to week.
- Orders came in.
- We filled them.
- Repeat.
I was running a team of 200 employees across 2.5 shifts, and our only real objective was simple:
Get the boxes out the door.
Until one week changed everything.
Overnight, volume jumped 20%.
No warning. No buffer.
We had 48 hours to react.
I walked into Talent Acquisition and said:
"I need 40 new employees in two days."
They looked at me like I had lost my mind.
And honestly, I had.
- There was no automation to save us.
- Overtime wouldn't cover the gap.
- Shorting orders wasn't an option.
That weekend was brutal. We barely survived.
And that's when it hit us:
Running operations by reacting is a losing game.
From that moment on, planning became mission-critical.
- • We hired the right team.
- • Put in place a Sales and Operation Planning meeting.
- • Created a planning model updated every single week, not to predict the future perfectly, but to see it early enough to act.
Peaks and valleys didn't disappear.
That's business.
But we stopped being surprised by them.
And that's the difference between surviving growth and actually thriving through it.
Lesson:
You don't plan because things are stable.
You plan so growth doesn't break you when it isn't.