The Wharton School

University of California, Berkeley, Haas School of Business

Sugar Bowl Bakery is a leading commercial sweet goods bakery servicing the club, grocery, mass merchandiser, and other channels.

Sugar Bowl Bakery

Chief Financial Officer

Freeland Foods, Inc. is a private equity-backed leader in plant-based food products with its sprouted, nutrition-dense, and minimally-processed seed snacking platform that offers products across a variety of categories.  The brand Go Raw is in thousands of stores across the country with distribution in Costco, Whole Foods, Sprouts, Amazon, among many others.

Freeland Foods | Go Raw

Advisor

Miyoko's is a venture-backed rapidly growing mission-driven company with its line-up of award-winning plant-based cheeses and butters and a leader in the plant dairy revolution.  Miyoko's branded products are in thousands of stores across the country with distribution in Whole Foods, Sprouts, Trader Joe's, Kroger, Target, among many others.

Miyoko's

CFO, Mar 2018 - Nov 2018
Interim CFO, Mar 2017 - Nov 2017

Strategic and financial advisor to medium-size and small-size companies.  

Sample Clients:
•  Advised on the sale of a branded consumer products food company to a consumer-focused private equity firm.
•  Heavy involvement in closing on over $20 million in debt capital for a venture capital-backed lidar company.
•  Advised a SaaS provider on strategic planning and strategic alternatives.
•  CFO consulting includes managing the M&A negotiation and process, strategic planning, multi-year detailed forecasting, new business unit planning, managing the bank and equity relationships, among many others.

Consulting Clients

CFO and M&A Consulting

Boudin Bakeries is a private equity-backed premium restaurant brand that is globally recognized for The Original San Francisco Sourdough Bread™. The Company owns and operates 30 fast-casual restaurants throughout California, a 26,000 square foot flagship location at Fisherman's Wharf, licensing, direct marketing, and wholesale bakeries. 

Led strategic planning, financial planning & analysis, accounting, treasury, reporting, debt and equity relations, information technology, insurance, benefits, material contracts, legal, and corporate administration.  Managed 5 direct reports and 19 indirect reports.

•  Over 50% revenue growth in 4 years including overseeing the capital deployment for 12 new restaurant locations, restaurant remodels and expansions, equipment, vehicles, and information technology. Heavy involvement in the company reaching its highest revenue and profitability levels in its history.
•  Led the preparation of detailed operating and capital budgets and the overall management of financial and operational data including business analytics, key performance metrics, and reporting.  
•  Directed the information technology strategy including the evaluation and implementation of new Micros | Oracle systems for point-of-sale, CrunchTime! restaurant back office, ADP human resource information systems, and DTiQ video surveillance services.
•  Led the reorganization and rebuilding of the Accounting, Finance, and Information Technology teams. Evaluated and implemented the Adaptive Insights budgeting and reporting cloud-based application.
•  Directed the benefits, workers comp, and package insurance brokers and generated significant annual cost savings through optimizing plan designs and cost management.
•  Responsible for senior debt refinancing and commercial real estate refinancing resulting in significantly lower cost of capital and significant savings.
•  Led a reorganization of business units and the sale of a non-core business unit Go Roma Restaurants.

Boudin Bakery & Cafe

GESD Capital Partners is a San Francisco-based private equity firm with over $250 million of equity capital under management with an operations-centric investment focus on middle-market companies in the consumer products, retail and e-commerce, restaurant, food and beverage, and consumer services industries.

•  Extensive experience in leading portfolio companies as a Chief Financial Officer. Highly involved in the direction and hands-on development of strategic planning, detailed operating models and budgets, financial management, business intelligence, banking and investor relationship management, information system optimization, material contracts, and human resources.
•  Wide-ranging interim executive roles have included integrating acquisitions, acquiring new manufacturing facilities, optimizing customer and product profitability, repositioning of marketing strategy, and developing franchise systems.
•  Comprehensive corporate advisory experience at the board level and one-on-one in directing and advising senior executive management.
•  Quarterbacked all stages of deal execution including deal origination, screening, valuation and financial models, due diligence, investment memos, transaction documentation, deal structuring, debt financing, negotiations and investment realizations.  
•  Solely responsible for building and managing the investment staff and establishing the human resource policies. Led the recruiting, training and managing of the Senior Associates, Associates, Analysts, and Interns.
•  Managed and built relationships with entrepreneurs, management teams, investment bankers, attorneys, accountants and other third-party diligence providers.  Extensive network of relationships with capital sources.
• Sabbatical of international travel in 2008 and 2009.

GESD Capital Partners

Vice President

PJ Solomon is a New York-based investment banking advisory firm focused on a range of industries including consumer products, retail and e-commerce, technology, media, and distribution. Founded in 1989 by Peter J. Solomon, former Vice Chairman and Co-Chairman of the Investment Banking Division at Lehman Brothers.

• Directly involved in all stages of transactions including preparing and participating in client presentations, drafting offering memoranda, conducting due diligence, managing the auction process, deal structuring and negotiations.
• Created detailed financial models for forecasting and valuing companies such as merger models, leveraged buyout models, discounted cash flow, comparable company, precedent transaction and comparable equity market multiples analyses.
• Analyzed optimal capital structure and created financial models to analyze effects of debt issuances and share repurchase programs on earnings per share.

Shonn Tom