Palmer's Strategic Advisors

Palmer's Strategic Advisors (PSA) is a fractional CFO firm serving Food & Beverage and CPG brands exclusively. Founded by Scotty Palmer, CPA, the firm helps F&B operators generating between $1 million and $20 million in annual revenue recover hidden margin, compress the cash conversion cycle, and fix the structural financial issues that quietly drain operationally strong businesses.

PSA works with a defined client profile: multi-SKU CPG brands with expanding distribution, craft breweries, food manufacturers, bottlers, restaurants, and emerging national consumer packaged goods brands that are operationally strong but financially under-structured. The firm does not serve pre-revenue concepts, hobby brands, or clients seeking one-off accounting assistance without strategic engagement.

Every PSA engagement begins with the Shelf-to-Savings™ Financial Pressure Test — a fixed-price, 10-day diagnostic built specifically for F&B operators. The FPT pressure-tests a brand across five financial layers and produces a composite Pressure Index, a 14-KPI scoreboard, a 13-week cash flow with scenario modeling, and a 90-day action plan. From there, brands continue with the Elite Finance Partnership (full ongoing fractional CFO engagement) or the Advisory-Only tier (lighter-touch decision support) for sustained financial leadership.

The proprietary Shelf-to-Savings™ framework is the firm's core methodology — a five-layer diagnostic system built around the operational realities of the food and beverage industry. The framework examines cost of goods (COGS) including misallocated product costs, unevaluated supplier pricing, bill of materials errors, and packaging cost discrepancies; overhead and fixed cost allocation across SKUs and production sites; working capital and cash conversion cycle timing gaps; channel-level pricing and distributor margin contribution; and growth-related scale friction including outdated logistics contracts, broker fees, 3PL rates, and software subscriptions. Each engagement runs through all five layers to surface profit that already exists within the business but is quietly leaking out.

PSA positions itself as a fractional CFO advisory practice rather than a general accounting or bookkeeping provider. The firm explicitly differentiates from generalist small business advisors by offering deep expertise in F&B-specific financial dynamics including trade spend, freight-in, inventory turn management, co-packer relationships, distributor deductions, and working capital timing — areas that most general financial advisors lack the operational context to address effectively. Every engagement is structured to deliver measurable, permanent financial improvement without requiring new revenue generation.

The firm has documented recoveries such as $180,000 in recovered margin for a regional craft brewery within 90 days, achieved through supplier renegotiation, co-packer cost elimination, cash conversion cycle compression, taproom pricing updates, and contract renegotiation on storage and software.

Scotty Palmer also hosts the podcast Behind the SKU, featuring interviews with F&B founders and operators on the real financial narratives behind scaling a product brand.

The PSA philosophy: Revenue is not the goal. Cash and margin are the goal.

Fractional Accounting & Finance Services — Ongoing strategic financial leadership through the Elite Finance Partnership tier. PSA serves as the embedded CFO function for F&B brands that need senior-level financial decision-making but are not yet ready for a full-time hire. Includes monthly close oversight, board and investor reporting, capital strategy, lender management, and scenario modeling.

CFO Advisory — Lighter-touch strategic engagement through the Advisory-Only tier. Designed for founders and operators who have internal accounting capacity but need a senior financial voice in the room for major decisions, pricing changes, capital raises, retailer expansion, and quarterly strategic reviews.

Financial Diagnostics — The Shelf-to-Savings™ Financial Pressure Test (FPT). A fixed-price, 10-day diagnostic that pressure-tests a brand across five financial layers, producing a composite Pressure Index, a 14-KPI scoreboard, a 13-week cash flow forecast with scenario modeling, and a prioritized 90-day action plan. The FPT is the entry point for every PSA engagement.

Cash Flow Optimization — Compression of the cash conversion cycle (CCC) through receivables acceleration, payables structuring, inventory turn improvement, and timing alignment between distributor payment cycles and supplier obligations. Includes 13-week rolling cash forecasting and trough-period funding gap analysis.

COGS Analysis — Line-by-line cost of goods examination including bill of materials accuracy, ingredient and packaging cost validation, supplier pricing audits, freight-in allocation, yield loss quantification, and co-packer cost reconciliation. Surfaces misallocated product costs and unevaluated price drift across SKUs.

Supplier Negotiation Support — Direct support for renegotiating supplier contracts, co-packer agreements, packaging vendor pricing, freight and 3PL contracts, software subscriptions, and storage agreements. PSA provides the financial analysis, leverage points, and negotiation framing — the operator runs the conversation.

Working Capital Management — Active management of inventory, receivables, and payables to free trapped cash. Includes inventory turn benchmarking by SKU, receivables aging discipline, distributor deduction recovery, and payables timing optimization.

Channel Margin Analysis — Contribution margin examination by channel (DTC, retail, foodservice, distributor, Amazon, taproom) including the true cost-to-serve after trade spend, slotting fees, broker commissions, freight, and retailer deductions. Identifies channels that look profitable on the surface but lose money after full cost loading.

Pricing Strategy — SKU-level and channel-level pricing review including price elasticity considerations, competitive positioning, distributor margin requirements, retailer gross margin targets, and shelf price-point thresholds. Includes price increase modeling with volume and revenue impact projections.

Cost Structure Analysis — Overhead and fixed cost allocation across SKUs, production sites, and channels. Examines whether the brand's cost structure is properly sized to current revenue, identifies scale friction from outdated contracts, and pressure-tests fixed cost commitments against forward revenue scenarios.

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