Scaling Ops from $5M to $150M | Sean Campbell, Semifreddi's

On this episode, we’re joined by Sean Campbell, COO at Semifreddi’s - the Bay Area-based beloved artisan bakery known for its sourdough.Before Semifreddi’s helped scale one of the nation’s top cannabis edibles brands from ~$20M to ~$150M in revenue, and held ops roles at Double Rainbow Ice Cream and San Francisco Salt Company. He’s a rare operator who’s scaled ops in traditional food, frozen, ambient, and regulated cannabis, bringing a cross-category playbook for formulation, production lines, co-manufacturing, and NPD.Sean lays out the margin levers that actually move the P&L, how to build supply-chain redundancy, and the tradeoffs between in-house manufacturing vs. co-packing. We dig into the ops leader’s evolving role from $20M to $150M+, and the nitty-gritty of forecasting COGS and margins.—---------------Episode Highlights:🥖 Semifreddi’s origin story and what makes a 40-year bakery scalable today🍫 Scaling operations at Kiva from ~$20M to ~$150M📉 The 5 levers👤 The ops leader’s role from startup to scale🌿 Making the pivot from traditional CPG to cannabis (and back again)📊 Forecasting COGS & margins🛡️ Supplier redundancy, tariffs, and de-risking your BOM🏭 In-house manufacturing vs. co-manufacturing🗺️ Expanding geographically🧪 NPD best practices: stage-gates🧠 Hard-won lessons: what Sean would have done differently—---------------Table of Contents:00:49:09 - Semifreddi’s origin story02:52:03 - Scaling ops at cannabis edibles company: $20M - $150M11:32:08 - Key margin levers17:40:08 - COVID supply chain disruptions18:50:27 - An ops leader’s role as a company scales23:14:07 - Making the pivot from traditional CPG to cannabis27:38:16 - Forecasting COGS and margins, where things go wrong31:30:22 - Supply chain redundancy, tariffs34:11:25 - In-house manufacturing vs co-manufacturing40:02:00 - Ops and expanding geographically44:48:01 - NPD (new product development)49:07:11 - Learning lessons—---------------Links:Semifreddi’s - https://www.semifreddis.comFollow Sean on LinkedIn - https://www.linkedin.com/in/sean-campbell-87393021/ Follow Adam on LinkedIn - https://www.linkedin.com/in/adam-martin-steinberg/ For help with CPG production design - packaging and label design, product renders, POS assets, retail media assets, quick-turn sales and marketing assets and all the other work that bogs down creative teams - check out KitPrint.Shout out to my friends over at Glimpse, the go-to partner for automating retail-related back-office operations and unlocking margin trapped in invalid fees and manual processes.Are you in the market for a new flexible packaging partner? Check out HD Packaging. Third-generation, family-owned and built for the needs of category leaders like Newman’s Own and A Dozen Cousins. Faster launches, lower costs, and no artwork fees.