Right Lane

High-Stakes Sprints for the food and beverage industry.

we serve

Food & Beverage Manufacturers

Restaurant & Hospitality

Grocery & Specialty Retailers

Emerging & Independent Brands

BOOK A QUICK CONSULTATION

The world is flooded with fractional executives

…charging retainers to rack and stack fees. These are well-intended professionals, but the incentives are misaligned.

There’s a simpler stage-gate: a) you need a full-time professional to run a particular lane of your business (if so, make the investment and hire the person), or b) you need something built or fixed fast, because it’s existential to your business.

Right Lane is built for those pressing situations.

We come in. We work with you to understand, then develop the scope of the work. Then, we swiftly design and commit to a workflow, cadence, and deadline, and get the project going.

And we do a lot of teaching along the way. You get a completed project and knowledge, and we get a check or a lil' stack o' cash. If we served you well, you can bring us on for more projects, and/or refer us to others who might need us.

But it’s become our belief that every engagement with an outside service should be mapped to specific desired outcomes, otherwise, things drift, and ROI becomes hard to measure or justify.

We find inspiration in movement and flow. Let’s get things rolling.

We take an operator’s approach to this discipline, getting into the meat of all of your numbers, from manufacturing, to logistics, to trade spend, through capital structure and strategy.

At Right Lane, we jump into the numbers right by your side, putting ourselves in your shoes and designing improvements that you can take to the bank.
Margin reliability means everything to your cash flow, your valuation, and your peace of mind. Our proprietary TrueMargin process considers every last cent of cost, from Bills of Material to trade spend commitment, and provides you what’s likely the clearest insight report in the industry.
Having built and operated many plants in our careers, we have unique insights into quality control, regulatory realities, and process flows.
And we’ve designed systems from the most handcrafted boutique level all the way through mid-scale fully-automated plants.
This is where our team truly shines. Nicki’s advanced design moxie combined with Keith’s understanding of manufacturing realities and culinary mastery has helped brands improve their brand block appeal, win awards, and be recognized among the best in the industry.
With our manufacturing systems thinking, deep hospitality management experience and sharp design eye, we immediately reinvigorate restaurant environments needing love. If things are sideways, we straighten them out fast.

We’re also a fountain of ideas, able to bring fresh concepts to life from concept to reality on tight deadlines.

CASE STUDY: CREATIVE & CULINARY

Food Product Development

We were tasked with bringing a product to shelf in New York metro from Mexico in less than six months. Here's how we pulled it off.

Flew to Yucatan. Drove everywhere. Ate everywhere. Cooked stuff.
Knocked on doors of local tortilleria, asked them to make a pilot run for us. They did it the same day. People are nicer than you think.
Came back to US. Locked our designer in a room with paints and markers and watercolors and other art supplies. She perused the photos from her trip. Made fine art first. Then, she implemented it all into a brand and package design.
We found a co-manufacturer and helped them meet global manufacturing and food safety standards. Even helped them set up the machine that puffs the air into the snack bags.
Ran a pilot test, shipped it across the Gulf of Mexico and trucked it into the company's first distributor.
Landed a major national distributor and many awards shortly thereafter.
Had such a good time, we became partners.

MONEY & MANUFACTURING

Financial Planning & Analysis

We ran small plants, then a couple of medium-sized plants. Ones we owned.
And we did private label manufacturing for that gigantic retailer.
It almost killed us. But we sure did learn about how to trace every last penny.
So, we built tools as operators who learned financial modeling, not financial modelers who observe operators. Our way is better.
And thanks to AI, we built our own stupid-powerful software and agents to help food brands see where the money is going, and plan for where more money is going to come from.
And we can improve it every time we learn something new. And we do. So now we're machine-powered creatives. The coders can take a back seat now. We'll take it from here.

This is a family business

Nicki Schroeder

Partner
Nicki Schroeder leads our high-value design projects, and is masterful at invigorating creative teams and sprints.
She is a multidisciplinary artist and designer working across brand, packaging, product, and environmental design. Trained at SUNY Oswego and SCAD, she has designed for Coca-Cola, Haverty’s Furniture, and J. Walter Thompson, led various retail (food and housewares) programs from concept through overseas manufacturing to major US retail shelves, founded an early Atlanta multimedia studio, and co-built companies including High Road Craft Ice Cream and Anna, a cozywear brand. Nicki is a highly experienced entrepreneur and executive, financially and boardroom literate in addition to her core skill-set.
Keith Schroeder

Partner
Keith Schroeder leads Right Lane Brands, our operating practice, and is masterful at moving food and beverage businesses where they need to go when the stakes are high, whether fixing what’s broken or building what doesn’t yet exist.
He is a James Beard Award–winning author, chef, and producer working across operations, margin, manufacturing, and brand. Holding an MBA from Kennesaw State and a graduate of VC Lab’s investor accelerator, he has run 400-person operations in branded hospitality for Marriott, Westin, and Barona Resort, built and ran High Road Craft Ice Cream as founder and CEO to roughly $30M in revenue across six consecutive Inc. 5000 appearances, commissioned and operated SQF Level III manufacturing, and has both rescued businesses and started them from nothing. Keith is a highly experienced operator and builder, capital and boardroom literate in addition to his work in the kitchen and on the manufacturing floor.
Madison Schroeder

Project Manager

Madison Schroeder leads project teams at Right Lane Brands, and is a confident communicator who turns a client’s operating problem into elegant project flows.
She is an operator fluent across sales, systems, logistics, and finance. She finished an entrepreneurship degree at Georgia State in three years while leading global sales, business operations, and ERP implementation for the family business, trained as a chef under Keith Schroeder along the way, and now works with client operating teams on go-to-market strategy, logistics systems, trade spend planning, manufacturing cost control, and financial planning and analysis. A digital native who is an early power user of agentic AI, Madison brings rare range and a steady hand with people, and is pursuing a Master’s in Finance at Baruch in New York.