Executive-level finance and operations leadership — embedded inside your business, taking real ownership, and driving the results that matter. For founder-led companies in food, beverage, and CPG.
Most founders don't need more data. They need someone who can look at the numbers, understand what they mean for the business, and help make better decisions faster — then stick around to make sure those decisions actually land.
Split Oak Advisory Group was built for exactly that. We work exclusively with founder-led businesses in food, beverage, and CPG — industries we know from the inside — as true operating partners, not outside advisors.
Every engagement is structured around what your business needs — not a packaged methodology. We scale up or down as the situation demands.
Ongoing, CFO-level financial leadership — and the infrastructure underneath it. The rigor, the reporting systems, and the strategic clarity of a full finance function, built to scale and built to last, without the full-time cost.
Operational leadership embedded in your business — fixing what slows you down, building the systems that let you scale, and attacking the specific problems quietly eroding your margin.
Full-time, embedded leadership through the moments that decide everything — turnarounds, leadership gaps, ownership changes, and the transaction itself. We take ownership of the function and work the deal from the inside, alongside your investment banker.
Most founders approach capital reactively — when they need it, not when the business is positioned to get the best terms. Split Oak works alongside founders to identify the right capital structure, prepare the business, and navigate the process from first conversation through close.
Most founders don't start by knowing whether they need equity or debt — they start by knowing what they need the capital to do. We help founders think through the right structure, prepare the business, and navigate the raise from first conversation through close. Whether that's bringing on an investor, securing a credit facility, or structuring a term loan, we work the process alongside you.
In food, beverage, and manufacturing, growth often requires significant capital investment in equipment and facilities — and tying up working capital in those assets is one of the fastest ways to constrain a business. We help founders identify the right financing structure for their CapEx needs and manage the process alongside operations planning so production and finance move in sync.
"Most founders leave money on the table — not because the business isn't fundable, but because they approached the wrong capital source at the wrong time with the wrong story."
Split Oak helps founders get the timing, structure, and narrative right before they ever walk into a lender or investor meeting.
We work exclusively with founder-led and owner-operated businesses — the people who built it and still have skin in the game.
The business has grown beyond what one person can manage alone. The finances are complex, the team is stretched, and the systems haven't kept up. We build what you need to get to the next level.
A sale, acquisition, or fundraise is on the horizon. The financial complexity is real, the stakes are high, and you need someone who has done it before — and can lead the process from the inside.
Something shifted — fast growth, a leadership change, a market disruption. The business needs to get clean, get stable, and get focused. We come in, take ownership, and drive the work.
Futures require minimums you can't meet. Volume commitments create cash flow risk you don't want. Here's a third path — using publicly traded instruments to build a natural hedge against rising input costs, with real data on how well it actually works.
"The question isn't whether the correlation is perfect. It isn't. The question is whether an imperfect hedge that you can actually implement is better than no hedge at all — which is where most small brands are today."
LJ Govoni — Split Oak Advisory GroupCattle prices have run for three years — but the increases were never even across the chain. For the businesses that buy beef as a raw material, the wholesale price you pay has risen far faster than the retail price your customer expects.
"Retail beef is up around twenty percent over three years; the wholesale beef you actually buy is up closer to sixty. If your menu prices are anchored to the consumer number, you've already lost half the margin before you sit down at the table."
LJ Govoni — Split Oak Advisory GroupFour methods for allocating overhead and labor in food and beverage manufacturing — from single plantwide rates to regression-based models — and how to know which one your business actually needs.
"Instead of asking what the labor rate should be, the model asks: based on twelve months of actual production data, what has the labor rate demonstrably been for each product — and what does that imply for how we allocate cost going forward?"
LJ Govoni — Principal Consultant, Split Oak Advisory GroupNot all CFO roles are created equal. The financial complexity of running a food manufacturer, craft beverage portfolio, or CPG brand is categorically different from a SaaS company or a professional services firm. Here is the ranking, the evidence behind it, and what it means for your hiring decision.
"A CFO who has managed three-tier inventory across a multi-SKU food manufacturer, compressed a 45-day close to five, and navigated TTB compliance while closing an acquisition has solved problems that a SaaS CFO has simply never encountered. The skills transfer down the complexity ladder. They do not automatically transfer up."
LJ Govoni — Principal Consultant, Split Oak Advisory GroupFrom bootstrapping and friends-and-family rounds to SAFEs, convertible notes, accelerators, and institutional equity — a practical guide to every capital structure available to an emerging CPG or food brand, mapped to the stage where each one actually makes sense.
"The cheapest capital you will ever raise is the kind you don't have to give equity for. Exhaust that option first. Then dilutive capital. Then expensive debt. The sequence matters more than most founders realize."
LJ Govoni — Principal Consultant, Split Oak Advisory GroupMost founders build a financial model once — for investors — then never open it again. That's not a model problem. It's a philosophy problem. Here's what a model is actually for.
"A model built only to impress investors is optimized for the wrong audience. The most important reader of your financial model is you — six months from now, when the assumptions you made today are being tested by reality."
LJ Govoni — Split Oak Advisory GroupSlotting fees, trade spend, deductions, and the cash gap between sell-in and sell-through — the financial mechanics of scaling a CPG brand into retail are more complex than most founders expect.
"The question is never whether you can land the account. The question is whether you can afford to keep it — and whether the margin at the end of the promotional calendar is worth what it cost to get there."
LJ Govoni — Split Oak Advisory GroupSelling on price makes you a commodity, not a brand. If you're building something worth a premium multiple, your pricing strategy has to reflect that confidence — even when it costs you volume in the short run.
"Selling on price makes you a commodity. If you are building something worth a premium multiple, your pricing has to reflect that — even when it costs you volume in the short run."
LJ Govoni — Split Oak Advisory GroupMost founders treat finance as a support function. The ones who build durable businesses make it a leadership function — before they think they need one.
"You can recover from a bad sales hire. You cannot easily recover from two years of pricing built on the wrong cost structure — not without repricing, margin compression, or a capital raise you didn't plan for."
LJ Govoni — Split Oak Advisory GroupRestaurant365 eliminates the manual accounting workflows that slow down multi-location QSR operators — from daily sales journals to AP automation, labor allocation, and real-time food cost reporting.
"The close that used to take two weeks gets compressed to days. The unit-level P&L you could not produce gets built automatically. The question is not whether the technology works — it is whether you are using it."
LJ Govoni — Split Oak Advisory GroupWhen cash is constrained, accounts payable stops being an administrative function and becomes a strategic one. Most businesses are not prepared for that shift.
"The vendors who destroy you in a cash crunch are never the ones you called. They're always the ones you avoided. Silence is the most expensive decision a distressed business can make."
LJ Govoni — Principal Consultant, Split Oak Advisory GroupGross margin, contribution margin, net margin — most founders know the words but few understand which number actually governs whether a product can survive in the market. Getting this wrong is one of the most expensive mistakes a founder in food, beverage, or CPG can make.
"I have walked into businesses where the founder was proud of a 38 percent gross margin — and the company was slowly going broke. When we rebuilt the numbers the right way, true gross margin was 24 percent. The difference was buried in costs that weren't being allocated correctly. The pricing strategy had been built on a fiction."
LJ Govoni — Principal Consultant, Split Oak Advisory GroupProfit and cash are not the same thing. Most founders learn this the hard way — after a strong revenue quarter ends with an empty bank account and no clear explanation.
"The P&L tells you what you earned. The cash flow statement tells you what you actually have. In a manufacturing or distribution business, those two numbers can look completely different."
LJ Govoni — Principal Consultant, Split Oak Advisory GroupMost founders approach a bank with a pitch. Lenders don't want a pitch — they want clean numbers, a credible story, and evidence that management understands the business deeply enough to repay them.
"The number one thing that kills a capital raise isn't the financial performance — it's unclean financials and a management team that can't explain their own numbers. Preparation isn't optional. It's the whole game."
LJ Govoni — Split Oak Advisory GroupMost business sales that fall apart do so not because the buyer walks away from the business — but because the financials don't hold up under scrutiny. Here are the five issues that derail deals most often.
"By the time a buyer flags a problem in diligence, it's already too late to fix it cleanly. Sellers who prepare 12 to 24 months before a transaction almost always get better outcomes — in price, structure, and speed to close."
LJ Govoni — Split Oak Advisory GroupGrowing companies often hit an inflection point where the founder's spreadsheet and a part-time bookkeeper are no longer enough — but a full-time CFO feels out of reach. There's a better path.
"The goal isn't to hire a CFO. The goal is to have CFO-level visibility into your business. For most founder-led companies between $5M and $30M, a fractional model gets you there faster and at a fraction of the cost."
LJ Govoni — Split Oak Advisory GroupIn food and beverage manufacturing, gross margin erosion is rarely one big problem. It's twenty small ones — yield variances, packaging cost creep, labor inefficiency, and distribution concessions — that compound quietly over time.
"Most food manufacturers I work with can tell you their gross margin to the percentage point. Very few can tell me where it went. That's the problem. You can't fix what you haven't measured at the SKU and batch level."
LJ Govoni — Split Oak Advisory GroupWhen a business is in distress, the instinct is often to cut everything at once. That instinct is usually wrong. A disciplined turnaround starts not with cuts — but with clarity on where cash is going and why.
"The first thing I do in any distressed engagement is build a 13-week cash flow. Not a budget — a cash map. Where is every dollar going, and when. Everything else flows from that. Strategy without liquidity visibility is just wishful thinking."
LJ Govoni — Split Oak Advisory GroupQuickBooks is a remarkable tool for small businesses. But there's a point — usually around $5–10M in revenue with multiple SKUs or locations — where it starts to create more problems than it solves.
"The warning signs are always the same: the month-end close takes three weeks, nobody trusts the inventory numbers, and the management team is making decisions from three different Excel files that don't agree with each other. That's not a people problem — it's a systems problem."
LJ Govoni — Split Oak Advisory GroupFor growing CPG brands, the supply chain decision is one of the most capital-intensive and strategically consequential choices a founder will make. The wrong answer at the wrong time can constrain growth for years.
"Co-manufacturing gets a bad reputation it doesn't always deserve. The question isn't whether to own your production — it's whether you have the capital, the volume, and the operational infrastructure to do it well. Most early-stage brands don't, and that's okay."
LJ Govoni — Split Oak Advisory GroupBringing on a private equity partner is transformative — and not always in the ways founders expect. Understanding what PE firms actually want, how they measure performance, and what "partnership" looks like in practice is essential before you sign.
"PE sponsors aren't buying your business because they think they can run it better than you. They're buying it because they believe in the growth thesis and they want a management team capable of executing it. The ones who succeed are the ones who understand that distinction from day one."
LJ Govoni — Split Oak Advisory GroupThe systems and habits that got a business to $5M in revenue are rarely the ones that take it to $25M. The gap is almost always financial infrastructure — not product, not market, not team.
"Every founder I've worked with who successfully scaled past $20M had one thing in common: they built financial discipline before they needed it. Not after a crisis. Before. The ones who waited usually faced a harder path — and a lower outcome."
LJ Govoni — Split Oak Advisory GroupEvery founder has a number in their head. It's usually based on incomplete information. Here's how sophisticated buyers actually think about valuation — and how to close the gap before you go to market.
"Valuation is not a calculation — it's a negotiation grounded in a calculation. The multiple a buyer will pay depends on the quality of earnings, the sustainability of cash flow, the strength of the management team, and how much risk the buyer perceives. All four of those are things you can influence long before you go to market."
LJ Govoni — Split Oak Advisory GroupEvery engagement at Split Oak is led by a principal who has served in the role they're advising on — not studied it, not modeled it, but actually run it, with real consequences attached to every decision.
That's what we mean when we say we're operators, not observers. The judgment, the instincts, and the credibility we bring to a client engagement come from having been in the room when the decisions that actually matter get made.
Additional principals are engaged on a selective basis for specific engagements requiring specialized expertise. All client work is led directly by a Split Oak principal.
LJ brings more than a decade of operating experience as a CFO, COO, and President across private equity-backed and founder-led businesses in food manufacturing, craft beverage, and CPG. He has led financial turnarounds, closed multiple capital raises, guided acquisitions through due diligence and close, and built finance organizations from the ground up inside real businesses operating under real constraints.
There's no shortage of consultants who will study your business, build a presentation, and tell you what needs to change. Split Oak is something different. Every advisor we put in front of a client has held the seat — CFO, COO, President — inside real businesses, with real stakes, where the decisions they made determined whether the company made payroll, closed the deal, or survived the year.
We don't advise from the outside. We get in the building, take ownership of the function, and drive results the same way we would if it were our own business on the line. Because at some point in our careers, it was.
That distinction matters more than it might seem. An operator who has managed cash through a crisis thinks differently about liquidity than one who has only modeled it. An operator who has closed a capital raise under pressure thinks differently about transaction readiness than one who has only advised on it. The judgment that comes from having lived it — that's what Split Oak brings to every engagement.
When Split Oak takes on a function, we run it. We don't produce recommendations and hand them back. We build the systems, manage the process, and stand behind the results the same way a full-time executive would.
Closing a capital raise at midnight. Rebuilding a finance organization under a board deadline. Managing cash through a supply chain disruption. We've been there. That changes what we prioritize and how fast we move.
Founders don't need someone to manage them. They need a trusted operator beside them — someone who respects what they've built, challenges what needs to change, and is fully invested in the outcome.
The goal of every Split Oak engagement is to build something that lasts — systems, teams, and financial infrastructure the business owns and operates long after we're gone.
No sales process. No pitch deck. Just a direct conversation about where your business is, where you want it to go, and whether Split Oak is the right fit to help you get there.