How AI is Transforming Startups in Food & Beverage Retail

In this episode of the AI Profit Leaders Podcast, host Chris Wiser sits with entrepreneur David Mesa to break down the real impact of AI on modern startups, especially in the food and beverage retail space.

David shares insights from building a growing agency that helps brands break into grocery and brick-and-mortar retail while navigating the evolving role of AI in operations, sales, and team efficiency. From reducing reliance on outsourcing to exploring smarter internal systems, this conversation uncovers how founders are adapting (and sometimes struggling) to integrate AI into their workflows.

If you're a startup founder, agency owner, or entrepreneur looking to understand how AI can shape your business model, streamline processes, and unlock new growth opportunities, this episode delivers practical insights and honest perspectives.

In this episode, you’ll learn:

•  How AI is impacting real businesses beyond the hype 
•  The role of automation in scaling a service-based startup 
•  Why some founders are shifting away from outsourcing 
•  Practical ways to start integrating AI into your operations 

🎧 Tune in and discover how to position your business for the AI-driven future.

Transcript

SPEAKER_01 0:05

All right, guys, welcome to AI Profit Machine House. My name is Chris Weiser, host of your AI Profit Leaders podcast episode for today. I got a good buddy of mine here from Austin, Texas, David Mesa. David is an entrepreneur. Man, you gotta be doing your startup for a little while. Tell us about your startup.

SPEAKER_00 0:21

Yeah, we've been going, it's going on four years now. Yeah, that that long? I know, bro. Jesus. Time flies when you're having fun. Damn. Um, maybe it's like three and a half, you know, like it's we're we're going on four. But yeah, we're a food and beverage agency, sales agency, help brands, uh, food and beverage brands get into retail, grocery retail. That's specifically our thing. It's all grocery brick and mortar retail. We're not doing a whole bunch of online stuff. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 0:47

So I so I really want to, we got live music getting ready to go live right behind us right now. I think he's doing uh soundtrack and shit here, but actually, I think he's going live now, but that's all right. Yeah. So I want to ask you this. We have not had any intro today. We've been friends for years. How's AI impacting you? Do you see it impacting you? What's what's your thoughts? I want to get your thought process on it.

SPEAKER_00 1:06

Yeah, a whole bunch right now. Like, it's not what I'm great at. And I've reached out to you about some of those things, but my team is really now we're trying to put together some stuff that are we feel like are really gonna help our business. We don't want to outsource some of the work to like, you know, VAs or whatever. And we feel like it would just be so much easier to use some sort of AI as far as like so.

SPEAKER_01 1:30

When you see that, what is that? What is it? What is AI in your head? What does AI look like as a like, and it's such a great example for those of you watching this? And I didn't mean to cut you off there. Yeah, no worries. But there's so many business owners that are struggling with, I want to put AI, like, what does that look like to you? And what kind of like, where is your head on that as a as a leader in your business?

SPEAKER_00 1:49

Yeah, I I want to use it to like automate things, right? Like we're we're doing a lot of busy work, right? My my sales guys, they can't be working on data input for 70% of their day and selling 30% of their day. I need that that number and that ratio. That time back, really, right? Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 2:05

So from your standpoint, AI is an opportunity to supercharge your people, make them more efficient, automate that those headaches, that heavy lifting data piece, right? Are you seeing? Does that agree? Or is uh you want to add to that?

SPEAKER_00 2:18

100%. Like it's like you know, you get on a roll and you start like doing like some reach out, some some biz dev reach out, and then you got to fill out some new item paperwork, stuff like that. It just bogs everything down. It bogs everything down, finding the info to put in there. If we can automate that, it would change our, it would change our lives. Night in here.

unknown 2:38

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 2:39

So all you that are watching this right now, I want you to think, and we got so many people that watch our podcast that are non-entrepreneur. I'll say they're non non-agencies. They they they're not interested in starting their own AI agency, but there's there's someone just like you that is a business entrepreneur that's saying, how can I use AI to be more profitable? How can I grow my business with AI in that mindset? So automating those hard-level tasks, taking that data, making it easier to work with. What about in your standpoint, cold outreach or or lead gen? Where's your where's your head around that? I'm curious to sit to hear.

SPEAKER_00 3:15

You know, I'm old school, and I would love, you know, some more, some more knowledge on that. For me, like the reach. So when you say old school, what's that mean? I my read, I like to reach out to people.

SPEAKER_01 3:27

So you're physically physically making dials, making are you making like business visits? Or I mean, we're here in Austin. I know your clients are around the nation, around the world, also.

SPEAKER_00 3:38

I mean, Whole Foods is one of our big clients, H E B here, um across the nation, targets, stuff like that.

SPEAKER_01 3:45

Um, I mean, obviously, some level of in-person, but yeah, yeah, in your head, do you feel that you could have more leads with more automation and some of those different things that valuable to you as an owner?

SPEAKER_00 3:57

Yeah, 100%. I feel like for me, like once I can get this automation piece dialed in, it's gonna free up so much more time for BizDev for me and like lead generation, that will help, right? Like, if I can put in what what brands, what kind of stuff I'm looking for, and have the AI find me things, yeah, find me brands that are just in our wheelhouse.

SPEAKER_01 4:21

I I feel like that would be so so kind of what I'm hearing, and I and and the reason I'm asking these questions is for everybody listening because we've we've had zero prep, zero talk. David came here because he's a friend of mine today. Now, this is this is awesome because I love you, bro. From my I love you too, buddy. From my standpoint, it's it's so indictive, indicative of how this gener how do I even say this? Like everything we're seeing with the AI world reaches every single business owner. And you're sitting there saying, How do I utilize this? Like, how do I capture this and put it into my business? As an entrepreneur, they need people to help like you need someone to help you with that. It will change my business, it would change your business.

SPEAKER_00 5:07

I mean, data is so important, and we do data analysis, and doing that by hand, it's it takes so much time. Well, and when you're how many people you got in your employ your company?

SPEAKER_01 5:17

There's six of us. Six of you. And you know, so you got seven figure, eight-figure businesses with six employees. When you can take somebody, and this is what I'm gonna tell you guys the future of business is gonna be. And I'm gonna tell you this too. You're gonna have a business like yours, and as opposed to it being $200,000 a year per employee, or some, you know, let's just say it's half a million dollars a year per employee in your smaller business, you're all of a sudden gonna be able to say I'm $1 million a year per employee, or two million dollars a year per employee, or five or ten million dollars a year per employee, because I can take AI and accomplish so many things and I can supercharge those people. So you're gonna have CEO, a like decision maker, decision maker, decision maker, agents underneath them. And that's where I want you to try and think about going. And one of the big factors, and this is where the opportunity is for everyone, not only you, but all of you that are out there watching this, thinking, like, how do I use AI? You need somebody to help you to go from I have no idea how to use this, to how do I get to that agent piece where I got four decision makers or six people and supercharge all of them to have all these agents underneath? Do you agree? Is that 100%?

SPEAKER_00 6:32

Yeah, okay. Like I'm limited in scale right now. I'm you say skill or scale? Because I know skill. Yeah, I know you're limited in skill. I I'm at capacity on scale. Yeah, right. Like I have to like a brand has to fall off before I can bring another brand on. And that's that's not cool, right? Like I need to scale.

SPEAKER_01 6:48

So so you start to think about the problems that David has in his business. What's your business name, by the way? Can you shout that out for everybody? Because we didn't say that. Yeah, heck yeah. We're called We Grow CPG. Okay.

SPEAKER_00 6:57

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 6:58

But you drew grow what? We grow CPG. Okay, I like that.

SPEAKER_00 7:01

WW We Grow CPG.

SPEAKER_01 7:03

So David's David's scenario right now, we are maxed. You can't scale because I can't get to enough people. So that's one max. We also have a challenge of I only can hire people. And one of the battles that we as entrepreneurs face is uh it's massive undertaking to hire a human. Massive undertaking. Because it's like, what if they're great if they succeed, but you kind of have this like mindset of like they're gonna succeed, but what if they fail? Then it's like if I hire, if I make a hire and they suck, or I suck hiring them, it sets me back a year for a bad hire. So that's set you back a year, right? It's it's the worst thing. So I think the opportunity here with AI and all the things that we have, and so many people have this doomsday mindset around it. It's gonna cut people. You're not looking to cut people with AI, you're looking to supercharge my business and be more profitable, more scale, like all these things. Like it's sitting there, and you're like, oh my god, I can hit it.

SPEAKER_00 8:05

It will help me generate more revenue so I can bring more people in. Yeah. You know, it's taking the the busy pieces of work away. Yeah, it takes a lot of that bullshit. Bullshit. The stuff that people don't like to do.

SPEAKER_01 8:18

He's not used to people swearing on podcasts. That's what I do. That's what I do, man. So, all right. Well, David, great conversation. Thank you for coming to South by Southwest. We got AI Profit Machine House here. We got Noah Hunting this afternoon. We got Chingy tonight. Right there, right there. Right there. I love it, buddy. David with We Grow CPG. Go look him up. Instagram, LinkedIn, all the all the above. Also, he beats me at golf on occasion. On occasion. All the time. All right, David. Thanks for joining us today. We'll see you next time. Peace.