But I supposed this was one more part of working motherhood. Making compromises, juggling all the things.
Despite the challenges, I was damn happy to be back.
Sugar Moon Syrup was one of the largest manufacturers and distributors of maple syrup in the US. And we didn’t create vats full of brown corn syrup. Ours was the good stuff. Organic, no fillers, straight from the trees of Vermont.
We sold our Sugar Moon syrup at a few local spots, but our bread and butter was Costmart. The biggest wholesale store in the US.
We supplied their in-house high-end maple syrup brand, packaged it, labeled it, and then shipped it all over the world.
I knew very little about how the syrup was actually made. We had an entire factory staff and machinists, scientists, and engineers for that. While the production was fascinating and the bottling machines alone were worth millions of dollars, that was not my domain.
I ran the marketing department. My rag tag team included three other employees. My job sat at the intersection of science, sales, and storytelling. We took the work of chemists, production managers, and farmers and translated it into a clean, wholesome brand that raked in millions of dollars every year. And we did it well. Our tasks included keeping Costmart happy, analyzing all the data, and allocating a budget to ensure we were positioning our brand and product well in the market. All while maintaining the company values. Farm to table transparency, organic production, and Vermont authenticity.
It was a far cry from the marketing and PR I’d done for a hedge fund in New York. The financial industry was soul-crushing, and although my excel spreadsheets could make even the strongest Wall Street bro weep, this job was far more fun.
But I couldn’t help but worry about the bottom line. One of our employees had just been murdered, and we’d been questioned about supply quality. Then, on top of that, I’d just taken an unexpected three-month maternity leave.
Gerry, who had been filling in for me, tipped his coffee mug at me. “How do you do this job? People are so demanding, and they expect us to have all the answers all the time.”
“Of course they do. We’re the smartest department,” Marci chirped.
The twenty-four-year-old social media director spun in her ergonomic chair. “Boss, you are glowing. Did you buy the new glazing milk from Rhode?”
I nodded. For someone who was not only blessed with youth, but with plenty of collagen, Marci was deeply committed to skin care. Not that I was complaining. I bought everything she recommended, and she’d never steered me wrong.
Being in the office energized me. I’d had a shit morning. Vincent hadn’t even cried when I’d dropped him off at daycare. If anything, he was happy to be there.
And that was like a dagger to the heart.
While I wanted my baby happy and healthy, I couldn’t help but wish he’d miss me. God, I was such a mess.
“Louisa was looking for you,” Gerry told me. “Wants to talk about brand audits at noon.”
I let out a sigh. There went my easy morning. Louisa Meyers, the CEO of Sugar Moon, had been awarded the company in her divorce from her much older ex-husband who worked in private equity. He’d kept the penthouse and the Hamptons place, and she’d gotten the Vermont estate and one of the companies from his portfolio to keep her busy.
But Louisa, a former Miss USA turned socialite, had surprised everyone when, rather than being a hands-off business owner, she dove into the company headfirst. She was savvy. An expert negotiator. And she was the kind of leader who wasn’t afraid to go out into the woods and get her hands dirty.
The company had flourished under her leadership, growing year over year and beating out more established manufacturers for big contracts. But all of that determination meant she was intense. She was very results-oriented and very focused on the bottom line.
So I needed to have my shit together by noon. If I knew Louisa, she already had dozens of questions prepared and wouldnot be impressed by my hurried attempts to catch up on the developments that had unfolded over the last few months.
With a fresh cup of coffee in hand, I headed into my office. Quarterly brand audits were the bane of my existence on a good day, but having been out of the loop meant I was playing catchup.
My laptop fan hummed as I scrolled through supplier verification reports for our Pure Maple Plus campaign. Ingredient specs weren’t my favorite, since my background wasnotin science, so I took notes as I pored over them, trying to make out what was going on. We planned to roll out a new sustainability line this fall, complete with glossy photos of smiling farmers and copy about “climate resilience” and “eco-friendly growth solutions.”
My focus caught on a new term buried halfway down the lab report. BGX-9. A sap growth accelerator? I frowned. We had strict contracts with our suppliers regarding agricultural products, and I didn’t remember seeing it before.
I opened up last quarter’s audit summaries and scanned them. They’d been in draft when I had Vincent, so I hadn’t finalized them.
The top of the document readinternal review. Huh. That was PR code for not cleared for general consumption. Weird.
As I perused our shared drive, I found a folder labeledyield enhancement initiative. I clicked on it, finding various subfolders inside. It was mostly R&D stuff. All things I didn’t work on here. There were also several labels and statements from Evergreen. They produced fertilizers, pesticides, and other products to farmers, though we only used them for equipment.
When I double-clicked on the compliance folder, finding it empty, I leaned back and rubbed my temples. It was probably nothing. These R&D eggheads always filed things improperly.They loved to rename chemical compounds and conveniently forget to tell marketing about it.
Sighing, I snagged a stack of Post-its and scribbledask QA to confirm BGX-9 status before finalizing labels. I couldn’t fall down a chemistry rabbit hole right now. Not when I had a meeting in less than an hour that I was nowhere near prepared for and I needed to pump. So I’d let the compliance and oversight teams deal with the chemistry bullshit.
Grabbing my bag, water bottle, and phone, I headed toward my sad pumping closet. The setup was the worst part. The cleaning and sanitizing of all the components, hooking everything up, wrangling my heavy, aching boobs into the weird pump bra thing. But once I got it all going, it wasn’t so bad.
