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Narelle Plapp opens with a blunt admission — she has nothing to hide, manufacturing is bloody tough, and she has lived that journey herself. She explains that Grain and Bake exists to bring brands' ideas to life, and that unlike her competitors, who she describes as very closed door, she stays completely transparent about costs. When a brand knocks on her door, she wants them to see exactly what the cost hurdles are, so that by the time they reach an RRP, they understand everything that sits underneath it. She reveals the hard economics of allergen-friendly manufacturing. Raw materials alone make up 70% of the cost, and the real expense is the cleaning. She breaks down that running a gluten-free and sesame-free clean takes eight people ten hours, every other week, followed by swab testing that has to pass before production resumes. The biggest cost of making an allergy-friendly bar, she says, is making sure they do not stuff it up and cause cross-contamination. She is honest that Grain and Bake is not a nut-free facility — they handle sesame and nuts but no dairy — and that a small run means a minimum of 100,000 bars, at roughly 40 cents a bar before packaging. She breaks down the brutal reality of dealing with retailers — margins and promo expectations rise every year, and successful promotions become a devil's advocate scenario where the better it performs, the bigger the cheque you have to write on a 50/50 or 70/30 funding split. She explains you get roughly 13 weeks to prove a product works before it is cut, and that even big established brands are now struggling to keep product on shelf. She closes with a story that captures her whole philosophy on doing your homework. An ex-AFL footballer came into her boardroom wanting to launch a protein bar with a roster of footballers behind it. She sat him down and whiteboarded every single cost from concept to launch — the promos, the marketing, all of it — and watched the reality land: it is a lot, and wanting a $4 protein bar is very different from building one. Discover: Why Narelle keeps her factory's costs completely transparent when her competitors stay closed door The real reason allergy-friendly bars cost so much — and the ten-hour clean behind every batch Why a successful supermarket promotion can mean writing a bigger cheque, not a smaller one The 13-week window that decides whether your product survives on shelf The ex-footballer who walked in with a protein bar idea — and what the whiteboard revealed ▶️ Watch the full episode here -    • I Was Selling Cereal From My Car Boot - No...   👉 Subscribe to our main channel -    / foundr