How Rise Baking turned an 85% disposal problem into a growth engine
Learn how Rise Baking transformed an 85% disposal rate into a scalable secondary sales program: eight selling cycles, four times the buyers, and $60K in storage savings.
About
Rise Baking Company is a North American bakery manufacturer formed in 2013 and headquartered in Minneapolis, Minnesota. The company operates 20 facilities across North America, producing breads, cookies, cakes, pies, and other baked goods for grocery, foodservice, and retail bakery customers under brands including Brill, South Coast Baking, Best Maid, and New French Bakery.
Industry
Baking / Consumer Packaged Goods
Headquarters
Minneapolis, Minnesota, USA
When Ashley Oien took on inventory management as part of her role as Senior Director of Demand Planning at Rise Baking Company, she inherited a problem that had been compounding for over a decade.
Rise Baking, like so many other CPGs, grows primarily through acquisition. For Rise Baking, ten acquisitions since 2013 added manufacturing capacity, warehouse space, and — critically — its own way of handling distressed inventory. ERP systems varied by division, as did the processes for flagging, identifying, and segregating excess inventory. At the corporate level, no single system or workflow connected these functions.
The result was a secondary sales operation that was reactive by default. Rise had about fifteen value channel buyers. Selling happened through emails and spreadsheets, with no standardized bidding process and no centralized reporting. About 15% of identified excess inventory actually found a buyer, and that other 85% went to disposal — pig farms, landfill, total loss.
The goals were clear before the solution was
Ashley knew what she wanted to fix before she knew how she would fix it: a centralized, corporate-level inventory management program that spanned all of Rise’s sites; reduced write-offs and throwaway; proactive identification of aging inventory; storage savings from moving product sooner; improved margin recovery; cleaner financial books; freed warehouse space; and reduced inventory reserve risk.
From discovery to live
Ashley first encountered Spoiler Alert in February 2025. By March, she had a demo. The business case started in April, paused for competing priorities over the spring, and closed in July. Contract signed in August. Everything was live in September.
With Spoiler Alert’s Managed Marketplace, Rise gained immediate access to over a hundred verified value channel buyers without the back-and-forth of onboarding a single new customer into their ERP system.
“We expanded our customers from fifteen and added an additional seventy new vetted, verified buyers. This really increased the volume that we’re able to sell in the secondary market.” – Ashley Oien, Senior Director, Demand Planning
What eight selling cycles have changed
In just six months after going live, Rise had completed eight full selling cycles on Spoiler Alert and increased the cadence from monthly to bimonthly, generating $60,000 in storage cost savings in the first four months, an 18% improvement in margin recovery, and 2x monthly secondary market sales volume.
Ten acquisitions since 2013 left Rise Baking with no centralized process for excess inventory — and 85% of it was going to disposal.
Rise Baking grows primarily through acquisition — ten since 2013 — and each one added its own way of handling distressed inventory. With ERP systems and processes varying by division and no centralized workflow, the company had about fifteen value channel buyers and no standardized bidding process. Only about 15% of identified excess inventory found a buyer; the rest went to disposal.
A centralized, data-driven program built on Spoiler Alert’s Managed Marketplace.
Spoiler Alert’s standardized bidding workflow, negotiation tools, and dashboards were ready out of the box, letting Ashley Oien, Senior Director of Demand Planning, move from demo to live in about seven months. With Managed Marketplace, Rise gained immediate access to more than a hundred verified value channel buyers without onboarding each one individually. “We expanded our customers from fifteen and added an additional seventy new vetted, verified buyers,” Ashley said.
5,000 cases of stranded pie
That shift showed up in a tangible way when Rise lost a customer on an unbaked pie SKU and found themselves suddenly holding over 5,000 cases of obsolete inventory with nowhere to go. They posted the inventory on Spoiler Alert, and within two selling cycles, found three buyers to purchase the entire lot.
Where Rise is heading
The program is already expanding, with Rise posting a wider variety of SKUs, like dry mixes, on the platform. “If food is fit for human consumption, food should never be tossed, period,” Ashley said. Her priority hierarchy is clear: sell first, donate second, find alternative uses third, and dispose only as a last resort.
“[Spoiler Alert] reduces waste, increases sales, and improves your overall inventory health.” – Ashley Oien, Senior Director, Demand Planning
Ashley Oien
Senior Director, Demand Planning, Rise Baking Company
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