Hero Bread • Building Financial Systems That Scale
How Embedded Finance Operations Transformed This High-growth CPG Brand
The Challenge: Growth Without Guardrails
When we met the Hero Bread team, they’d already solved the hardest problem in CPG: creating a product that people love. Their low-net-carb, high-fiber, protein packed baked goods were expanding into Whole Foods, Publix, Sprouts, and 2,300 other locations nationwide. But rapid retail expansion had exposed an eye-opening reality: the company’s financial infrastructure wasn’t keeping pace.
Hero engaged Propeller in January 2025, while it was still closing October’s books. A three month close lag meant leadership was making critical decisions about retail expansion, logistics, and capital allocation based on old numbers. A series of controllers had done their best to keep up with the growing scale of economies, but they lacked the resources to identify best practices for efficiency and accuracy. The company’s NetSuite instance wasn’t tracking inventory properly, making channel profitability impossible to assess and COGS recognition difficult.
The Solution: Complete Financial Infrastructure Rebuild
Propeller helped Hero fix its accounting, but we also wanted to set Hero up for success by re architecting its entire financial operating system.
Infrastructure Overhaul
A cross-departmental team implemented a new NetSuite instance that delivered proper inventory tracking and multi-channel reporting in a matter of months. During this transition phase, Propeller overhauled the balance sheet, redesigned the chart of accounts to enable department and channel profitability analysis, closed multiple periods rapidly to get current, and then implemented standardized procedures to achieve a 10-day close.
Strategic Visibility
Propeller worked with Hero’s team to identify and track the right KPIs for the business, build channel profitability models, and map every touchpoint from raw materials to end consumer, to reveal where costs accumulated and opportunities hid. Hero had been struggling with disparate financial models, so we helped the team standardize its financial reporting and clarify its financial narrative for improved board reporting.
Cross-Functional Partnership
Propeller embraced Hero’s culture of ego-free collaboration. We attended meetings with every department head, partnered with operations and engineering, and became trusted advisors the team could reach out to with concerns.
Strategic Enablement
Hero’s leadership shifted from a best-guess and hard work environment to a holistic, proactive approach to business health. With reliable data, they gained confidence to drive aggressive topline growth plans. Leaders now work from the same numbers—a shared foundation for strategic decision-making.
Hero engaged Propeller in January 2025, while it was still closing October’s books. A three month close lag meant leadership was making critical decisions about retail expansion, logistics, and capital allocation based on old numbers. A series of controllers had done their best to keep up with the growing scale of economies, but they lacked the resources to identify best practices for efficiency and accuracy. The company’s NetSuite instance wasn’t tracking inventory properly, making channel profitability impossible to assess and COGS recognition difficult.
The Outcome: From Reactive To Data-Driven
Operational Transformation
- Close time: from 3-month lag to 10-day close
- Complete balance sheet and P&L accuracy
- Timely unit economics visibility
- Clarity into channel profitability
