Happy Tuesday. This week, we’re sharing:

🐮 How a $13 beef tallow tortilla chip keeps selling out
🌶️ SKUs get spicy, Big Food’s lawyers are eating our lunch, private labels push for more shelf space
📅 Newtopia Now, GROW New York 2026, In the Room with 4 Retail Buyers

IN PARTNERSHIP WITH

You got into Core-Mark. You got into McLane. So why aren’t you in stores?

Getting into a national wholesaler is a big step. Getting mid-market c-store chains to carry you is another story. This is where a lot of emerging brands get stuck: they have distribution, but haven’t gotten buyers to say yes.

SwiftSku’s C-Store Chain Accelerator brings qualified brands directly in front of hundreds of chain buyers, backed with store-level scan data buyers trust.

Already in a national wholesaler and still trying to get more chains on board? Talk to SwiftSku.

Meet Seth Goldstein, co-founder of Ancient Crunch, the company making better versions of everyday snacks. Its first brand, MASA, is a $13 bag of tortilla chips made with grass-fed beef tallow.

The idea started with Seth, hungover on a couch, eating “not very high-quality” tortilla chips. His friend and now co-founder, Steven Rofrano, started making fun of him about the seed oils. Steven had grown up with several health issues and cut seed oils from his diet long before it was trendy.

Seth’s response? “I worked 90 hours a week. If it’s not on Instacart, it’s just not in my option set.”

But a good chip without seed oils was hard to find. And even harder to make. After calling 200 factories, they realized most manufacturers only work with liquid oil. Beef tallow is solid.

So they rented a fryer for $600 a month from someone named Garlic Steve and made their own.

It worked. MASA sold out its first online drop in a day, and sold out its Sprouts launch in eight days. It’s now the top-selling tortilla chip at Erewhon and Sprouts.

Today, Ancient Crunch is a multi-million-dollar business building beyond MASA, with tallow-fried potato chips, tallow-popped popcorn, and more snacks in the pipeline.

00:23 - The minds behind Ancient Crunch
04:46 - Holy crap, people really love these chips
08:18 - He designed the package over a weekend
12:54 - As a brand, nobody knows that you exist
16:14 - Who the hell is gonna pay this price?
19:34 - Whatever you think your margins are, they’re probably worse
23:35 - Make chips, sell chips, keep the business

200 factories: Told them “great idea, can’t do it” before they figured out how to make it themselves

$600/month: What they paid to rent the fryer that got their chips off the ground

8 days: How long it took Sprouts to sell out of its first order of MASA

Not all revenue is created equal. A first sale means someone was curious. A second sale means they liked the experience enough to pay for it again. Seth doesn’t stop at Shopify’s repeat-customer rate. He tracks cohorts to see how many come back for purchase two, three, four. That’s what convinced him MASA had real staying power, and that it was time to go all in.

Price for the business you need to build. MASA’s production costs were too high for the price retailers initially wanted. Instead of squeezing margins to fit someone else’s spreadsheet, they priced around what actually costs to build a good product and profitable business. “A true 50% margin is probably the lowest any business in CPG should really go,” Seth says.

Make every foot of shelf space count. A retailer has only so much shelf space, so the question isn’t only how many units you sell. It’s how much revenue those units generate from the space they occupy. A SKU doing 1,000 units on one foot of shelf can be more valuable than one doing 1,200 on two. Sales per foot tells the retailer whether you’re earning your space.

Build a brand people want to be seen with. MASA could have turned its bag into a nutritional billboard: organic corn, grass-fed tallow, seed-oil-free, all the better-for-you badges. But they decided to keep the package clean and something people actually want to show off. “If you’re delivering a commodity, you’re missing out on probably the biggest value-add you can provide to a customer, which is delivering an experience,” says Seth.

Not spending on marketing is not a badge of honor. For its first 18 months, Ancient Crunch barely spent on marketing. Steven already had an audience, the brand was growing organically, and they took that as a sign they were doing something right. Then an investor pushed back: “It’s cool to do well while handicapping yourself, but what if you didn’t handicap yourself?” They changed course and grew 5x the following year.

Market signal → The best brands give customers something to buy into, not just something to buy. The product is the starting point; the brand is where you create value beyond it.

The cohort reality check

Pull your last 6–12 months of first-purchase cohorts and track how many customers come back for a 2nd, 3rd, and 4th purchase.

• Where do customers drop off? Dig into product, price, frequency, or replenishment.

• Is retention improving or slipping? Find out what changed across newer cohorts.

• Who are your best repeat customers? Look for patterns by customer type, product, or order size.

• Which channels bring them in? Put more acquisition dollars behind the channels with the best repeat behavior.

• Are you getting more customers or better customers? Growth only gets more valuable if the people you’re acquiring actually stick around.

Don’t obsess over one repeat-rate number. Look for patterns where customers drop off, come back, and whether newer cohorts are getting better or worse.

IN PARTNERSHIP WITH

Are you a brand looking to scale your social media presence?

Introducing AdFairy! The easiest way to get your products seen by millions across TikTok, Instagram, YouTube, and Facebook.

AdFairy offers guaranteed CPM influencer campaigns, so brands know how many views they’ll receive, before even starting a campaign. Get access to thousands of pre-vetted creators so you can can lock in your CPM upfront and have peace of mind knowing you’ll never overpay for content.

Ready to scale with guaranteed reach? Book a demo. 

SKUs get spicy: From chocolate to salmon to fruit. When it comes to line extensions, it’s add heat, serve, and enjoy.

Pouches are the new hot packaging: Sleep, focus, energy, oral care… pouches are the new delivery system for functional products.

Big Food’s lawyers are eating our lunch: 9 companies account for 1/3 of global food-policy lawsuits.

Private labels want more shelf space: Retailers are investing harder in their own brands, putting up an increasingly expensive fight for shelf space.

When sardines meet salad: On the heels of a viral Whole Foods limited-edition collaborative tote bag, Fishwife teams up with every office’s favorite lunchtime salad.

Aug 13 (NY): How Brands are Rethinking Returns without Killing Customer Trust

Aug 13 (Chicago): Taste Radio Meetup

Aug 17-Dec 2 (Virtual): In the Room with 4 Retail Buyers

Aug 18 (Virtual): McKinsey’s The State of Grocery North America 2026

Aug 18-20 (Denver): Newtopia Now

Aug 19 (NY): GROW New York 2026

Aug 19 (Virtual): Selling at Walmart: Why, When, & How to Win

Aug 19 (Virtual): Workshop: AI for CPG Brands

Aug 21 (Application Deadline): Hudson Kitchen: The Food Business Bootcamp

Sept 8 (NY): The BFCM Pre-Game with Shopify

Sept 15 (San Diego): Taste Radio Meetup

Sept 16 (San Francisco): Taste Radio Meetup

Sept 16 (NY): The Drink with Benefits Summit

Sept 22-24 (Las Vegas): Shoptalk Innovation Week

Oct 1 (Malibu): Founderland

Oct 1 (Application Deadline): Founders & Founders by Startup CPG

Oct 5 (Nomination Deadline): 16th Outstanding Independent Grocer Award

Oct 7-8 (NY): Food HealthTech Live

Oct 20-21 (Call for Speakers): Consumer Goods Sales & Marketing Tech Summit

Oct 20-22 (Irving, TX): Rooted Expo

Oct 28-29 (Miami Beach): The Miami Beach Food & Beverage Expo

Oct 31 (Application Deadline): Startup CPG Pavilion at Winter FancyFaire*

Dec 3-4 (LA): Nosh Live

Happy Tuesday. This week, we’re sharing:

🍯 How thick honey in a tube turned a commodity into a conversation piece
📊 The least glamorous Amazon growth strategy (and also the most profitable)
🤖 Chobani’s sugar problem, CPG power players, from Goblin Mode to Pilot Mode

Meet Noah Phillips, founder of Honey Department, a rising brand selling 100% thick raw honey in a silver tube.

Noah spent over a decade in advertising and design, runs his own studio called Foreign National, and has a dad who’s a hobbyist beekeeper.

“I’ve been around bees and honey for years, and every time I go home there’s just excess honey,” he says. When his dad asked him to design a label for the honey he made, Noah saw a much bigger question: why does everyone have honey at home, but almost nobody uses it?

It gets sticky. It crystallizes. It gets pushed to the back of the pantry.

Honey isn’t broken. The experience is.

Noah gave honey a thicker format, swapped the bottle for a tube, and turned one of grocery’s sleepiest categories into something people are excited to use again.

00:20 - The mind behind Honey Department
02:27 - Out of the cupboard and onto the counter
07:07 - It interrupts the pattern and brings you in for a second look
10:51 - My market are not current honey eaters
14:06 - I’m not trying to be in the honey aisle right away
17:01 - How do we find influential, not influencers

18–24 months: From concept deck to first production run

1 ingredient: 100% raw honey

20 feet: Designed to catch your eye from across the aisle

Find the friction nobody bothered to fix. The sticky bottle. The crystallized honey. The spoon you have to wash after. None of these are dealbreakers, but together they’re enough to send honey to the back of the pantry. By changing the texture and putting it in a tube, Noah is bringing an old category back into the routine.

Honey wasn’t the competition. Forgetting about honey was. A friend told Noah early on: “Your market isn’t current honey eaters. It’s people who forgot about honey.” That shifted the whole strategy. Instead of competing with other brands, Honey Department is trying to make honey part of people’s routine again. Mature categories often have a much bigger pool of lapsed users than loyal switchers.

Packaging can change purchase and usage behavior. Most packaging is designed to get picked up. Honey Department is designed to be part of someone’s routine. A tube that lives on the counter instead of disappearing into the pantry. A thicker format that squeezes and spreads instead of drips and crystallizes. This honey isn’t just for tea anymore. It’s on toast, cheese boards, chips, and pizza.

Find influential people, not influencers. Noah didn’t run a huge influencer campaign or race to the grocery’s honey aisle. Instead, he focused on getting Honey Department into the hands of people whose recommendations actually carry weight, and onto the shelves of independent retailers where discovery is part of the experience. The goal wasn’t mass reach. It was resonance.

Sometimes confusion is a feature. People constantly mistake Honey Department’s silver tube for skincare. And Noah doesn’t mind. “That gets me excited because it just gets you curious,” he says. If the packaging disrupts a pattern, makes someone stop, and pick it up, it’s already done its job.

Market signal → The biggest opportunity in a mature category isn’t always stealing customers from competitors. It’s bringing back the people who wanted the product, but stopped using it.

The “forgotten category” opportunity

The best reinventions don’t convince people to buy something new. They remind people why they wanted it in the first place.

• Did people already want this? Is demand proven or are you trying to create a habit from scratch?

• Do they remember what they bought? Is there brand loyalty or just a product forgotten in the pantry?

• Where does usage break down? Is the problem the product itself or the friction around it?

• Can the experience change? Could a new format, package, or use case bring people back?

• Does your product grow the category? Are you creating more usage or just convincing someone to switch brands?

Every Amazon seller has the same instinct when sales stall: throw more money at ads. Saniya Aggarwal heads straight for the spreadsheet.

After spending years at top Amazon aggregators like Forum Brands and Thrasio, where “figure out why this brand isn’t profitable” was the whole job, she learned that more ad spend almost never fixed it.

It was pricing. It was margin structure. It was inventory decisions made months ago quietly bleeding the business now..

That's the lens Saniya’s brought to Prima Mode, where she's taken brands from $0 to $1M and advised established ones past the plateau. If your Amazon numbers aren't adding up and you've already tried fixing the ads, this is where to look next.

Watch Saniya's breakdown

Chobani’s sugar problem: “Zero sugar” or “sugar free” means less than 0.5 grams of sugar per serving. Chobani Zero Sugar yogurt contains four grams of allulose.

CPG power players: The future of food isn’t just founders. See the retailers, investors, operators, and more in Nosh Impact 50: The People Shaping Food’s Next Chapter.

This year’s macro food trend: From Goblin Mode to Pilot Mode.

Add a # to your brand name: Not only does a number positively influence taste perceptions, but even more when the number is written versus numerically presented.

Cherry picking: Strawberry is predictable. Mango leans into tropical territory. Cherry is sophisticated.

A map of rising cost of goods and services: Eggs, chicken, and cheese cost less than they did a year ago, while candy, beefsteak, and fresh vegetables cost more.

Aug 4 (NY): Creators and Brands Open Mic & Mixer

Aug 13 (NY): How Brands are Rethinking Returns without Killing Customer Trust

Aug 13 (Chicago): Taste Radio Meetup

Aug 18 (Virtual): McKinsey’s The State of Grocery North America 2026

Aug 18-20 (Denver): Newtopia Now

Aug 19 (NY): GROW New York 2026

Aug 19 (Virtual): Selling at Walmart: Why, When, & How to Win

Aug 19 (Virtual): Workshop: AI for CPG Brands

Aug 21 (Application Deadline): Hudson Kitchen: The Food Business Bootcamp

Sept 8 (NY): The BFCM Pre-Game with Shopify

Sept 15 (San Diego): Taste Radio Meetup

Sept 16 (San Francisco): Taste Radio Meetup

Sept 16 (NY): The Drink with Benefits Summit

Sept 22-24 (Las Vegas): Shoptalk Innovation Week

Oct 1 (Application Deadline): Founders & Founders by Startup CPG

Oct 7-8 (NY): Food HealthTech Live

Oct 20-21 (Call for Speakers): Consumer Goods Sales & Marketing Tech Summit

Oct 20-22 (Irving, TX): Rooted Expo

Oct 28-29 (Miami Beach): The Miami Beach Food & Beverage Expo

Oct 31 (Application Deadline): Startup CPG Pavilion at Winter FancyFaire*

Dec 3-4 (LA): Nosh Live

Happy Tuesday. This week, we’re sharing:

💯 The 100% fruit pop that went from launch to Costco, Shark Tank, and 1,000+ doors
🍨 Van Leeuwen vs. Rebel, the evolution of functional beverages, and cabbage-core
📅 Winners and Wipeouts, Creators and Brands, Founders and Funders

Meet Michelle and Aviv Schor, the husband-and-wife team behind HUNDY!, a frozen fruit pop made with one ingredient: organic fruit.

No juice concentrate. Just fruit.

On paper, it sounds simple. In reality, it requires building custom equipment and learning that when your only ingredient is organic fruit, every batch is different.

That dedication caught people’s attention. With only a pilot batch, HUNDY! landed Costco as its first major retailer, appeared on Shark Tank, and attracted a passionate group of investors, ranging from NBA star Trae Young to people who just loved the product and wanted to get involved.

One year after launching into retail, HUNDY! is in about 1,300 stores and has raised just under $1 million.

00:15 - The minds behind HUNDY!
4:04 - Our total Expo West setup was about $800
08:37 - He yelled HUNDY! at the top of his lungs
11:48 - You’re not done until it’s on shelf.
15:17 - Blur the line between premium and conventional
20:01 - Nothing’s like Shark Tank
25:14 - Investors just buying the product and reaching out
29:51 - Lift the rug and vacuum until everything’s picked up

$800: Total cost of Hundy’s first Expo West booth in 2023

2 weeks: Postpartum when Michelle pitched HUNDY! on Shark Tank

1,000–1,300: Retail doors after just one year of distribution

Simplicity is the hardest thing to build. A consumer looks at HUNDY! and sees a popsicle made from fruit. Michelle and Aviv see custom machinery, inconsistent fruit, and countless trips to their co-manufacturer. “We learned very quickly why this hasn’t been done before,” says Aviv. As demand increases for short ingredient lists, the competitive advantage shifts from marketing to manufacturing.

Your first version should optimize for learning, not scale. For their first Expo West, Michelle and Aviv’s strategy was: spend less money and ask more questions. They spent about $800, rented one of the smallest booths, and focused on one question: Would buyers care? The initial goal wasn’t to look established. It was to find out if there was something worth building.

The hardest part of getting feedback is knowing what to ignore. Founders either ignore feedback or overcorrect for it. HUNDY! found the middle ground. “You don’t have to take in everything. But if it’s consistent enough, you should listen,” Michelle says. Their packaging redesign wasn't caused by one comment. It was a decision based on repeated feedback and friction they saw across retailers and consumers.

Treat new packaging like a product launch. New packaging meant new UPCs, printer plates, distributor pack changes, retailer paperwork, updated planograms, and delaying retail launches until everything was ready. “It’s not an overnight task if you’re going to do it the right way,” Michelle says. Great packaging isn’t just designed well. It’s rolled out well.

You’re not done when production ends. First-time founders may think manufacturing is the finish line. It’s more like halfway point. Between production and purchase are dozens of unglamorous details: freight, distributors, planograms, packaging specs, and tons of paperwork. While a polished product can create demand, only a system can fulfill it.

Market signal → Behind every short ingredient list is a complicated, often expensive operation. The fewer ingredients you rely on, the more you'll rely on process.

The 2x2 package test

A package built to scale has to work for two people and two shelves. If you only optimize for one, you’ll eventually lose the other three.

People:

• The end user: Does the package make them want it?

• The buyer: Does the package give them a reason to buy it?

Shelves

• The premium shelf: Does the package look like it belongs?

• The mainstream shelf: Does the package feel approachable?

The evolution of functional beverages: First, it was about performance. Then wellness. Then optimization.

Jam session: Smash Foods raised $18M led by L Catterton, riding the wave of the massive success of their Jammy Protein Bites

Snack attack: 55% of shoppers now eat three or more snacks a day. We’ve shifted from traditional meals to moments (commute, gym, afternoon slump).

Sweets had a good run: Hershey is doubling down on salty snacks, as legacy players follow consumer preferences away from the candy aisle.

Food that fights back: 71% of U.S. adults crave highly textural treats, while 58% want bold, “extreme” flavors.

The tallow trade: As beef tallow replaces seed oils in more products, we’ll see healthier ingredient swaps become a go-to positioning strategy.

Cabbage-core: Pinterest Predicts says 2026 is the time to “Live, laugh, leaf!” Think kimchi cocktails, leafy wraps, and charred “steaks.”

And another leafy green gets back in our good graces: After the recent lettuce scare, Taco Bell brought back the Enchirito at a $1 price point.

Package déjà vu: The Van Leeuwen vs. Rebel packaging battle shows that while “pastel” or “minimalist” isn’t protectable, a specific combination of elements might be.

July 31 (NY): Winners and Wipeouts in Social Commerce

Aug 4 (NY): Creators and Brands Open Mic & Mixer

Aug 13 (NY): How Brands are Rethinking Returns without Killing Customer Trust

Aug 13 (Chicago): Taste Radio Meetup

Aug 18 (Virtual): McKinsey’s The State of Grocery North America 2026

Aug 19 (NY): GROW New York 2026

Sept 8 (NY): The BFCM Pre-Game with Shopify

Sept 15 (San Diego): Taste Radio Meetup

Sept 16 (San Francisco): Taste Radio Meetup

Sept 22-24 (Las Vegas): Shoptalk Innovation Week

Oct 1 (Application Deadline): Founders & Founders by Startup CPG

Oct 7-8 (NY): Food HealthTech Live

Oct 20-21 (Call for Speakers): Consumer Goods Sales & Marketing Tech Summit

Dec 3-4 (LA): Nosh Live

Most Amazon advice starts with ads. Saniya Aggarwal starts with the spreadsheet.

Before co-founding Prima Mode, Saniya cut her teeth at Forum Brands, Thrasio, and other Amazon aggregators, where she owned the P&L and everything that came with it: inventory forecasting, pricing, SEO, advertising, and profitability.

Today, Prima Mode has helped brands grow from $0 to $1M on Amazon while advising established brands on unit economics and channel strategy.

Her superpower isn’t ad hacks. It’s breaking Amazon down to its underlying mechanics, and the operating decisions that separate profitable brands from expensive ones.

Text answers below have been edited for length and clarity. Full answers are in video. (We highly recommend watching!)

Set yourself up for Amazon success

It’s best for brands to prove demand off Amazon first. Test the product, understand your customer, and make sure the economics work before putting serious resources behind the platform. Amazon is powerful, but it’s also expensive.

The biggest mistake brands make is treating Amazon like an ad platform. Ads are only one piece of the equation. Your listing quality, conversion rate, reviews, content, and inventory all determine whether those ads work.

Your first 60–90 days are what Amazon calls the “honeymoon period.” A window where what you do has an outsized impact because the platform is trying to help new brands gain traction. The brands that make the most of that window invest in the full Amazon experience: strong listings, compelling content, reviews, competitive positioning, and inventory planning.

The 3 phases to launch on Amazon

Launching on Amazon is less about “turning on sales” and more about building the infrastructure behind them. A typical Amazon launch takes 2–4 months when the foundation is already in place. Here are the three phases:

1. Technical setup: The first phase is the least exciting. Brands need to get the infrastructure right: Seller Central, Brand Registry, trademarks, compliance, UPCs, and catalog setup. These details can feel administrative, but fixing them after launch is much harder.

2. Content and listings: Next comes creating your catalog of products. A common misconception is thinking you need to upload all your SKUs at launch. Many brands are better off starting with a focused group of products they can actually support with inventory, content, and marketing resources. Think of your Amazon listing as your salesperson. Hero images, video, A+ content, reviews, and competitive positioning all influence whether a shopper converts.

3. Operations: The final piece is operations, including inventory planning and setting yourself up to be Prime eligible (either Fulfilled by Amazon or Fulfilled by Merchant).

Download the slides

The Amazon P&L Waterfall

Think of this Amazon P&L waterfall as your unit economics. Most brands only track revenue and top line, but on Amazon, there are multiple layers of costs between your selling price and your actual profit.

Selling price → refunds → COGS → Amazon fees → FBA costs → inventory costs → contribution margin → advertising → profit

There are the obvious costs, like production and landed COGS. Then there are the Amazon-specific costs that are easier to overlook: referral fees, fulfillment fees, storage fees, and aged inventory costs.

At the start, you have your selling price. Then you go into refunds/returns. Food and beverage brands on average have 1–5% in returns. Add your COGS (production cost plus landed fees) to get your gross margin. That’s your net selling price.

Then there are the Amazon-specific costs:

• Selling fees: 8–15% of your selling price (If your product is below $15, you’re charged 8%. If it’s more than $15, you’re charged 15%.)

• FBA fees: 15–35% of your selling price (based on the dimensions of your product plus the weight(

• Inventory fees: Increases if your product’s in storage for more than six months,

All of these fees are your contribution margin. Don’t decide on an ad budget and work backward. Understand your contribution margin first. A product can look successful from a revenue perspective while losing margin once the full Amazon P&L is calculated.

The top ways brands lose money on Amazon

What can brands do to save margin, or things that typically go wrong? I divide it into three pieces:

1. Ads without P&L visibility. Many brands look at ROAS because it’s the easiest metric to see, but ROAS only shows ad performance, not the health of the entire channel. Instead, look at TACOS (Total Advertising Cost of Sales) because it shows how advertising affects the entire Amazon business, including organic growth. Also under your contribution margin by SKU so you know what you can spend on ads.

2. Inventory chaos. Going out of stock is one of the fastest ways to lose momentum on Amazon. It can hurt rankings, create additional fees, and fulfillment issues. Especially for emerging brands, where demand can change quickly, having a strong forecasting process and enough inventory coverage is critical.

3. Amazon as a side channel. Even brands with strong potential slow their own growth because Amazon wasn’t fully integrated into the business. inventory wasn’t allocated, ad budgets weren’t planned, or the team wasn’t aligned with what was happening off Amazon.

Working with Prima Mode

Prima Mode typically partners with brands in four different ways, depending on where they are in their Amazon journey.

1. Amazon Launch Blueprint (Typically 2–4 months, $8K–$10K one-time): This is for brands getting ready to launch on Amazon. We work with you until your products are actually sellable, whether that takes two months, six months, or somewhere in between. That includes everything from the technical setup and Brand Registry to listings, content, and launch strategy.

2. Brand P&L Diagnosis: This is for brands that want a much clearer picture of their Amazon economics. We break down the channel P&L, identify where margin is being lost, and help teams understand what profitability really looks like at the SKU level.

3. End-to-end management (Typically $4K–$5K/month): This is our most common partnership. We manage the entire Amazon operating system using our P&L framework, from listings, SEO, and advertising to inventory and ongoing optimization. For some launch-stage brands, we’ve also explored a lower monthly retainer plus a performance-based model so we can grow alongside the business.

4. Brand advisor / foundational sprint (6–8 weeks, $3K one-time): For teams that already have Amazon in-house but want a second set of eyes, we embed with the team, identify the biggest opportunities, and help improve everything from unit economics and listings to advertising, packaging, and overall account health.

But outside of that, I love meeting new founders, learning about new brands, and talking through Amazon strategy. So I’m always happy to jump on a call.

Download the slides

Happy Tuesday. This week, we’re sharing:

🌽 A corn allergy, an ancient grain, a co-founder named Novak Djokovic
🎬 RIP “Sell by”, retail media goes Hollywood, and $9.99 is still the money number
🥤 2026 Functional Beverage Trends, Ingredients, & White Space

I’m joining Spate this Thursday to talk about one of the busiest corners in CPG: functional beverages.

We dig into real search and social data (Google, TikTok, Instagram, Reddit) to separate what’s becoming consumer behavior from what’s just conversation.

I also share what it means for brands. Because knowing what’s trending is nice. Knowing what to do about it is better.

Come nerd out. Come ask questions. Come lurk. If you make beverages or just drink way too much sparkling water, I think you’ll enjoy it.

📅 Thursday, July 23 | 🕛 12pm ET

Reserve your spot

Meet Jess Davidoff, co-founder and CEO of Cob. Her co-founder? 24-time Grand Slam champion Novak Djokovic.

Cob makes corn-free, gluten-free snacks from an ancient grain called sorghum. It started when Jess’s son developed severe health issues: hair falling out, nails peeling, and 32 doctors who couldn’t explain why. After months of tracking everything he ate, Jess found the culprit: a severe corn allergy.

Going corn-free meant rebuilding the family pantry, including their favorite snack: popcorn. Jess tested grain after grain before landing on sorghum, which pops like popcorn and comes with a better nutritional profile. She introduced it at a Hamptons farmers market, where it sold out every weekend. The product was popular. The ingredient was not.

Enter Novak. He was already talking about nutrition and eating ancient grains long before Cob existed. One introduction to his manager, two months of conversations with his nutrition team, and Novak joined Cob as co-founder, leading the company’s $5 million seed round.

Launched last December, Cob did nearly $400K in its first month and is already the #34 best-selling popcorn on Amazon. And it’s not even popcorn.

00:15 - The mind behind Cob
04:58 - My god, it tastes just like popcorn
09:34 - I met Novak over Zoom
14:32 - We raised a $5M dollar seed round
18:17 - America’s the #1 sorghum grower in the world
23:19 - Nothing that wouldn’t be in your kitchen pantry
28:06 - I live and breathe the product and the brand

$400K: First-month sales, against a $75K projection

2 months: Time from first introduction to Novak joining Cob as co-founder

$5M: Seed round led by Jess and Novak before launch

Curiosity gets the first bite. At the farmers market, Jess didn’t lead with antioxidants, prebiotic fiber, or resistant starch. Her pitch was simple: “Do you want to try corn-free popcorn?” Curiosity got people to try it, and taste got them to buy it. The nutrition only came after. Founders love explaining why their product is better. Customers usually need a reason to care first.

The sample doesn’t sell the snack. The person sampling it does. Most brands sample to get people to try the product. Cob samples to explain what the product is. Without any context, Cob’s popcorn looks like… small popcorn. But with someone there to explain that it’s corn-free, made from sorghum, and delivers better nutrition, it becomes something people remember. If your product needs explaining, the pitch isn’t marketing. It’s part of the product.

Don’t let the experts make decisions for your customer. When a formulator told Jess that kids wouldn’t eat parmesan, she wasn’t convinced. So she tested it out. She invited the Little League team she coaches over for a blind taste test: parmesan versus cheddar. Parmesan was the clear winner. Category expertise tells you what usually sells. But consumers show you what actually sells.

Retail is great for scaling demand. Not creating it. Most founders race for retail shelves. But a grocery store isn’t the best place to launch something no one’s heard of. Cob’s customer isn’t wandering the aisles hoping to learn about a new ancient grain. They’re buying what they came for and moving on. So Cob is focusing on DTC, Amazon, and specialty retailers. Places where they can tell their story and build demand before distribution.

Celebrity isn’t the strategy. It’s the proof. Novak Djokovic didn’t make Cob a great product. He confirmed that it already is. Even before Cob, he had spent years talking about nutrition, avoiding gluten and dairy, and eating ancient grains. Jess didn’t find a celebrity to tell the story. She found someone who was already part of it.

Market signal → Discovery doesn’t happen where people buy. It happens where they pay attention. Retail is built for convenience, not curiosity. New products need awareness before they need a place on a shelf.

What’s your one-liner?

The familiar thing gets attention. The unexpected twist piques curiosity.

The formula: [Familiar thing] + [unexpected twist] = curiosity

• Popcorn without corn

• Protein bars that taste like dessert

• Coffee that helps you sleep

• Soda with functional benefits

Private label is having its moment: Americans are shopping more like Europeans, where store brands make up nearly half of sales (and national brands are sweating).

RIP “Sell by”: The confusing label blamed for 1/5 of all food waste is being replaced with two standardized terms: “use by” and “best if used by.”

$9.99 is still the money number: Everyone knows it’s a pricing trick. Everyone still falls for it.

Retail media goes Hollywood: Albertsons dropped a 22-episode branded series with P&G called Rico’s Tacos.

Shoppers aren’t just buying cheaper. They’re buying less: June grocery unit sales fell 1.8% YoY, the sharpest drop since the slowdown began.

Chipotle is becoming a food tech investor: The chain’s venture fund just backed six agrifood tech companies, from soil health to biometric payments.

Veggies go clubbing: Plant-based food is leaving the grocery aisle and entering nightlife.

The new food pyramid has a carbon footprint: The 2026 dietary guidelines could raise diet-related emissions by up to 33% by shifting recommendations toward more meat.

Hopkind is a premium + non-alc + functional beer: It was bound to happen.

July 23 (Virtual): 2026 Functional Beverage Trends ✨✨ (I’ll be making an appearance on this one!)

July 23 (Virtual): Claude & CPG 101

July 27 (Virtual): Pitch Practice

July 31 (NY): Winners and Wipeouts in Social Commerce

Aug 4 (NY): Creators and Brands Open Mic & Mixer

Aug 13 (NY): How Brands are Rethinking Returns without Killing Customer Trust

Aug 13 (Chicago): Taste Radio Meetup

Aug 18 (Virtual): McKinsey’s The State of Grocery North America 2026

Sept 8 (NY): The BFCM Pre-Game with Shopify

Sept 15 (San Diego): Taste Radio Meetup

Sept 16 (San Francisco): Taste Radio Meetup

Sept 22-24 (Las Vegas): Shoptalk Innovation Week

Oct 1 (Application Deadline): Founders & Founders by Startup CPG

Oct 20-21 (Call for Speakers): Consumer Goods Sales & Marketing Tech Summit

Dec 3-4 (LA): Nosh Live

Happy Tuesday. This week, we’re sharing:

🥣 The founder putting creatine in cereal and feet pics in Times Square
⚖️ 10 questions with a CPG lawyer (inc. whether you can just use AI)
🍌 Walmart goes wealthy, grocery shop tourism, and we’ve hit peak banana

Meet Dejan Rankovic, co-founder of Man Cereal, the high-protein, low-sugar, creatine-infused cereal that’s bringing men back to their morning bowl.

He and his co-founder Emily Straus met at Dr. Squatch in 2020, where they learned growth marketing, disruptive marketing, and how to sell to men. They spent four years batting around startup ideas before landing on one Dejan used to eat everyday: cereal.

The last major cereal shake-up was Magic Spoon back in 2019. Since then, the category’s grown healthier and more family-friendly, but not more exciting. Nothing for the men who still love cereal, but just didn’t have a reason to eat it anymore.

The idea was simple. The execution was anything but. Man Cereal isn’t just a new cereal, it’s a new kind of cereal. High protein, low sugar, and the first to add creatine. A cereal built for men that isn’t trying to bring back an outdated view of masculinity. It’s poking fun at it and inviting everyone to be in on the joke.

00:11 - The minds behind Man Cereal
05:17 - We closed the round in two weeks
09:30 - A lot of men don’t eat cereal anymore
14:32 - My favorite one is the “Send Feet Pics”
19:23 - 40,000 to 50,000 boxes on just DTC
23:18 - If you work in food, have a food scientist
27:36 - Love what you’re doing or you’ll flame out

• 9 out of 10: Manufacturers who said no to making creatine cereal

• 40,000-50,000 boxes: Sold through DTC

• 2 weeks: Time it took to raise a 7-figure round

Don’t confuse your ingredient with your product. Early on, Man Cereal had to decide whether it was a creatine solution or a meal replacement. Two very different businesses: a creatine solution optimizes for the dose, while a meal replacement has to deliver on macros, quality, and taste. Decide what you’re building first because everything downstream follows.

The line between a brand and a bit is thinner than you think. Man Cereal knew the name alone would get people talking. The harder part was making sure people got the joke. Too serious and it risks feeling like outdated masculinity. Too ironic and it becomes novelty. The strongest challenger brands find the middle: a point of view people get behind, not just a punchline people share.

Founder mode ≠ manager mode. Dejan ran growth at Netflix and helped scale Dr. Squatch. Nothing prepared him to build a food company with two people in it. “Being a founder at stage zero is very different than being a middle manager,” he says. At big companies, you make decisions with data and process. At zero-to-one companies, you have to go with your gut.

The more you’re testing, the less you’re moving. Man Cereal’s first production run combined three unknowns: a creatine-infused cereal, a maple bacon flavor, and a manufacturing process never scaled before. Looking back, Dejan’s advice is blunt: “Why are you making it so hard for yourself? Just do chocolate right with creatine, call it a day.” One new variable is innovation. Three is a science experiment.

If you’re raising, find a venture scout. Most founders see fundraising as a numbers game: more emails, more meetings, more pitches. Man Cereal found a faster path through a venture scout. Venture scouts pre-vet founders, make meaningful introductions, and shorten the fundraising process. Once one was in the picture, Man Cereal closed their first round in two weeks.

Market signal → Differentiation alone doesn’t build brands. You also need a reason to exist, a moment when people need it, and a brand people want to be part of.

The 4-part product test

A lot of products are different. Fewer are different for a reason. Make sure yours is the latter:

• Differentiated: What makes the product meaningfully different?

• Definitive purpose: What job does it do better than anything else?

• Right timing: What’s happening for this product to make sense now?

• Distinct brand: Why is your brand the one to tell this story?

David Cykiert is a lawyer for food and beverage founders.

He specializes in venture capital and emerging growth (VCEG), doesn’t bill for calls, and has heard “I’ll just ask ChatGPT” more times than he’d like.

As a shareholder at Polsinelli, he’s helped founders with all the details that seem unimportant when you’re launching, and very important when you’re raising money. We talk about everything from IP ownership to cofounder conflicts, and why the best lawyer is someone you’d get a beer with.

Everyone says “get a lawyer early.” Why? A lot of founders end up choosing between a big law firm or their uncle who does labor and employment law. While employment is important, not every lawyer is equipped to help you structure a venture-backed company. The good news is that early-stage legal work is pretty standard. And venture lawyers are used to having open, no-strings-attached conversations up front.

So how much does a CPG lawyer cost? Getting a company off the ground (setting up the right structure, issuing shares, etc.) usually costs a few thousand dollars. I think about early-stage legal work less as a revenue opportunity and more as a trust-building opportunity. If the company is successful and grows, there will be a million opportunities for lawyers to make money.

How do I know if I have the right lawyer? The value of a lawyer isn’t just the documents they produce. Legal documents are increasingly assisted by AI. The real value is everything around them: the conversations, the judgment, the things they help with before they become problems. There are a million lawyers. Find someone you like. Find someone you wouldn’t mind having a beer with.

Read the rest of our Q&A

Enjoying berries this summer? Thank Driscoll’s, the 2nd-highest-earning brand in U.S. supermarkets (behind Coca-Cola), shipping 4B containers across 60 countries each year.

Walmart goes wealthy: As the economy goes even more K-shaped.

Where all the CPG pacesetters at? In the baby, bubbly beverage, happiness, and no sugar categories.

Why are grocery store prices so high? Jessica Cheung of The Daily investigates.

We’re going peak banana: The fruit with mass a-peel 🍌

CPG makes the biggest travel trends 2026: Grocery shop tourism, dry tourism, and sexy seaweed.

The 1st UTA Culture Canon: “Show up where passion runs highest: in stadiums and arenas, on screens and FYPs.”

July 12-15 (Chicago): IFT First

July 16 (Virtual): UNFI and KeHE Deductions

July 18 (NY): Eater World’s Fare

July 19-24 (New Orleans): Tales of the Cocktail 2026

July 23 (Virtual): Claude & CPG 101

July 23 (Virtual): 2026 Functional Beverage Trends ✨✨ (I’ll be making an appearance on this one!)

July 27 (Virtual): Pitch Practice

Sept 22-24 (Las Vegas): Shoptalk Innovation Week

Oct 20-21 (Chicago): Call for Speakers at the Consumer Goods Sales & Marketing Tech Summit

Happy Tuesday. This week, we’re sharing:

🍓 How a stevia company from Iceland made Amazon’s best-selling jam
🛒 Shopping is an elimination game, Americans optimize for longevity and indulgence, and lines are the new third spaces
🎟️ Tickets now available for IFT FIRST, Anne Saxelby Legacy Fund Benefit, Consumer Goods Sales & Marketing Tech Summit

Meet Gardar Stefansson, CEO and co-founder of GOOD GOOD, the no-added-sugar spread brand that began in Iceland and is now in over 10,000 U.S. stores.

The company started out selling stevia. But when sales never took off, Gardar and his co-founders found themselves with warehouses full of inventory and a choice: take the loss or pivot.

They pivoted to jam. Every fall, Gardar picked wild blueberries and made jelly at home. And every fall, he thought it used way too much sugar. So they started experimenting with stevia instead.

That batch was, in his words, “probably the worst thing I ever tried in my life.” They made it again. And again. Nearly a hundred iterations later, what started as a warehouse of unsold stevia became one of America’s fastest-growing spread brands.

00:08 - The mind behind GOOD GOOD
3:45 - It became the best-selling jam on Amazon
08:22 - The biggest surprise is it actually tastes good
12:46 - We’re producing a couple million units a year
18:02 - Have a strategy for every state
22:21 - I absolutely love reading Amazon reviews

• 100+ batches: What it took to go from “worst thing I ever tried” to shelf-ready

• $20M: Raised in 2022, five years after entering the U.S. market

• 3-4 units/store/week: GOOD GOOD’s current velocity (industry average is 1)

Sell the outcome, not the ingredient. GOOD GOOD’s early packaging focused on stevia because that’s what the founders were excited about. But shoppers didn’t care about stevia. They cared about sugar… or the lack of it. Sales improved when they stopped leading with the ingredient and started leading with “No added sugar.”

Each state is its own market. The U.S. looks like one country on a map. But it doesn’t operate like one. GOOD GOOD expanded into too many regions too quickly, spreading marketing dollars, distributor attention, and founder bandwidth thin. Looking back, Gardar would’ve built velocity in one region before opening the next. Density beats dots on a map.

Read reviews, especially the bad ones. “I’m a thorough reader of Amazon reviews, the good ones and specifically the bad ones,” says Gardar. Bad reviews sting. They also tend to be unusually specific. Amazon shoppers are paying more than grocery shoppers for the same jar. That makes their feedback expensive to earn and surprisingly useful.

Growth starts with margin. Ask Gardar what matters most and he won’t say branding or marketing. He’ll say margins. Between freight, promotions, tariffs, deductions, harvest failures, margins are what determine whether scale is sustainable or self-destructive. Growth only matters if you still make money when you get there.

Big brands are built on boring decisions. There wasn’t one breakthrough that made GOOD GOOD work. It was tweaking the recipe. Adding more fruit. Redesigning the package. Reading every review. None of those decisions are headlines on their own. Together, they built the business.

Market signal → Better-for-you brands don’t become big by winning a niche. They become big when the people who don’t need the product start buying it too.

The “Would my roommate eat it?” test

Every category has early adopters. But they don’t build billion-dollar brands. Ask yourself:

• Would someone with no interest in your product’s health claim still eat it?

• Would your roommate, with no dietary restrictions and no reason to care, enjoy it?

• Take the health claim off the label. Does anyone still want it?

• Would they buy it again, or was once enough?

If it only works for one niche, that’s your floor. Not your ceiling.

Shopping is now an elimination game: Consumers aren’t asking “What do I want?” They’re asking, “What’s still worth it?”

Both are true: Americans are optimizing for longevity and indulgence (creatine before noon, cocktails after work).

Are lines the new third spaces? For Gen Z, the queue is becoming as social (and as valuable) as what’s on the menu.

Big bets on tiny cans: Beer companies are betting smaller pours can bring drinkers back.

Sustainable protein has a scale problem: A new $2M lab is focused on getting sustainable proteins out of the lab and into products.

July 7 (Virtual): Outsmart Bigger CPG Brands with AI

July 7 (Virtual): The TikTok Shop Launch Playbook

July 8 (Virtual): McKinsey Live: The next era of consumer competition

July 9 (NYC): From Noise to Momentum: How Emerging CPG Brands Actually Win in 2026

July 10 (Grant Deadline): Summer 2026 Makers Mindset – $30K for women-led consumer brands)

July 12-15 (Chicago): IFT FIRST

July 16 (Virtual): UNFI and KeHE Deductions: Brand Playbook

July 19-24 (New Orleans): Tales of the Cocktail 2026

July 28 (Grant Deadline): Capital and Catalyst Grant – $40K for women-founded food and beverage businesses

July 28 (Virtual): FMI State of the Industry Q3

Sept 17 (NY): Anne Saxelby Legacy Fund Benefit

Oct 20-21 (Chicago): Call for Speakers at the Consumer Goods Sales & Marketing Tech Summit

David Cykiert is a lawyer for food and beverage founders.

He specializes in venture capital and emerging growth (VCEG), doesn’t bill for calls, and has heard “I’ll just ask ChatGPT” more times than he’d like.

As a shareholder at Polsinelli Law Firm, he’s helped founders with all the details that seem unimportant when you’re launching, and very important when you’re raising money.

We talk about everything from IP ownership to cofounder conflicts, and why the best one is someone you’d get a beer with.

Text answers below have been edited for length and clarity. Full answers are in video. (We highly recommend watching!)

Everyone says “get a lawyer early.” Why?

Because there’s a lot to gain at a relatively small cost.

A lot of founders end up choosing between a big law firm or their uncle who does labor and employment law. While that’s important, not every lawyer is equipped to help you think through the structure of a venture-backed company.

The good news is that early-stage legal work is pretty standard. These structures have been built thousands of times. And a good venture lawyer knows what investors will eventually ask for and can help you build those habits early.

For example, I had a client modify a pre-money SAFE into a post-money SAFE but didn’t realize the changes needed to flow through the rest of the documents. That’s the kind of mistake an experienced venture lawyer can catch early.

Venture lawyers are also used to having open, no-strings-attached conversations up front, in a way other specialties just aren’t.

So how much does a CPG lawyer cost?

Getting a company off the ground (setting up the right structure, issuing shares, putting the basic documents in place) usually costs a few thousand dollars. Some firms may get into five figures, but generally it’s in the four-figure range.

The goal of the early-stage organizational legal work is to build a solid foundation. One that you can build upon, invest upon, and scale upon.

I think about early-stage legal work less as a revenue opportunity and more as a trust-building opportunity. If the company is successful and grows, there will be a million opportunities for lawyers to make money. But the early stage is about proving that the value you provide is worth far more than what shows up on the invoice.

How do I know if I have the right lawyer?

There are a million lawyers, that’s the truth. The good news is you get to pick the one that fits you. Find someone you like. Find someone who, when you pay the invoice, doesn’t make your skin crawl. Find someone you wouldn’t mind having a beer with.

The value of a lawyer isn’t just the documents they produce. Legal documents are increasingly standardized and can be assisted by AI. The real value is everything around them: the conversations, the judgment, the questions they ask, and the things they help you think through before they become problems. Don’t be afraid to shop around, and don’t be afraid to leave if it’s not the right fit.

What legal documents do I need to get together?

There are a few documents every company needs from the beginning. You need to form the entity, set up the basic governance structure, and make sure ownership is clear. Those are the things that make the company real.

Then there’s the second layer: the things that make you investable. Making sure equity was issued properly, founders agreed that the company owns the IP they created, and anyone contributing to the business is protecting confidential information.

A lot of founders think these things are obvious. They’ll say, “Of course the company owns the recipe I helped create.” But legally, it’s not obvious. It needs to be documented.

I’ve seen situations where someone helped develop a product, never signed anything, and then years later the company is raising money and an investor asks, “Has everyone who contributed to this IP agreed that the company owns it?” Suddenly you’re trying to track someone down who moved overseas or convince someone to sign after they know the company has value.

How much legal is too much, too early?

A lot of lawyers think about companies from the end point. They’re used to seeing deals after everything has already happened. That mindset can sometimes lead early-stage founders to overbuild.

I’ve seen founders spend time and money building privacy policies, employment agreements, and complicated IP strategies before they even have a product.

The best early-stage legal advice is different. It should protect you from predictable questions investors will ask later, but still leave you flexible because you have no idea what the company will look like a year from now.

The right amount of legal work is simple: solve today’s problems, prepare for the next step, and don’t close doors you haven’t even found yet. A startup goes through a million little stages. What you want to be doing is planning for today, with the flexibility for tomorrow.

What questions should I ask my lawyer?

A lot of founders think about the business in the immediate moment: How do I get this done? How do I get this person involved? How do I move faster?

A better question is: “How does this decision impact the company six months or a year from now?” For example, we’ll often see founders bring on advisors early because someone seems like a great fit. But the value of an advisor changes as the company grows. Someone who is incredibly helpful at the beginning may not make sense as a long-term commitment. The value is having that conversation before you make the decision.

Which leads to asking your lawyer: “When should I actually be calling you?” A lot of founders hesitate to reach out because they assume every email, text, or phone call means another bill. But if your lawyer doesn’t know what’s happening inside the business, they can’t help you spot problems early.

And finally: “How does this impact me personally?” Lawyers represent the company, not necessarily the founder. Those interests often overlap, especially early on. Getting in the habit of asking how changes impact the business and the individual keep you from overlooking something important.

How involved should my lawyer be?

The best legal advice happens when your lawyer actually knows what’s going on.

Founders often filter what they think is “important enough” to bring up. But sometimes the small things (the contractor who helped with something, the agreement you haven’t signed yet, the open supplier conversation) is exactly the thing that matters six months later.

I’ve gotten into the habit of emailing clients I haven’t heard from in a few weeks and just asking: “What’s going on?” It sounds simple, maybe even a little informal, but those conversations are incredibly valuable. Regular updates, ideally in a relationship where you feel comfortable reaching out, are one of the best ways to stay ahead of legal issues.

What are some situations where a founder should definitely have a lawyer?

The big one is just having the proper formalities in place early. Making sure everyone contributing to the company agrees the company owns the IP. These protections are really just formalities because investors want to know the product they’re investing in is actually defensible.

The second thing: have the hard conversation about division of duties. Who does what, and how do you decide someone’s not performing? Founders often assume that if someone checks out, they’ll just fall off and disappear. But shares have already been issued to that person, so how does one founder subjectively decide the other isn’t pulling weight?

What we don’t want is a founder coming to us a year in, no lawyer in sight, saying “Frank’s not doing his job. How do I get his shares back?” The opposite problem is just as common: founders who want a buy-sell on day one, so if there’s a disagreement, one partner can just get rid of the other.

My take is you shouldn’t have an easy out on day one either. If you started this together, you should actually have to fight it out. Because the biggest disagreements almost always happen in the first few months. And the founders who get forced through that early friction tend to be the ones built for the long haul.

Can’t I just use AI?

As AI creeps into the landscape, it's easy for founders to put a question in and get an answer that's academically solid but contextually meaningless.

A client called me the other day, I had prepared an operating agreement for him, and I could tell right away he was reading straight off a ChatGPT summary. He questioned why an indemnity provision was so broad. He wanted to make it narrower. But when we talked through it, he realized the provision was actually there to protect him as an officer of the company.

That’s the challenge with AI. It can explain what a document says, but it doesn’t always know what side of the issue you’re on or what outcome you actually want.

What’s changed in the legal landscape for CPG brands?

One thing we’re seeing more of is founders thinking seriously about patents. Historically, a lot of CPG protection has centered around trademarks: owning the brand name. But as the category gets more sophisticated, founders are asking a different question: Is there something about the product itself that can actually be protected? That could be a manufacturing process, a combination of ingredients, a nutrient delivery system, or something else that creates a real advantage.

We’re also seeing founders underestimate the legal side of social media. People launch sweepstakes without knowing the state-by-state rules. People let others post about them without realizing there are FTC concerns. Building a real strategy isn’t just about likes and views; it’s about not getting sued, and not having to list a dozen exceptions in your reps and warranties when investors come knocking.

We saw an M&A deal recently where a client had been using a TikTok account set up before the platform's commercial licenses existed. So they didn't have proper rights to some of the music they'd used. That became a real issue in the deal, because if any rights owner ever pushed back, the client was exposed, and it changed the terms of the agreement.

We're not trying to dump social media policy on you before you need it. But it's worth having in the back of your mind, so when you're ready to expand your presence, you know it's time to come back to us.

Happy Tuesday. This week, we’re sharing:

🚪 Why a successful CPG founder walked away from Whole Foods, Sprouts, and 3,500 retail doors
🌱 Non-UPF is the next big label in CPG… but not without retailers
🤖 90% of grocers are experimenting with AI, CPG deal value jumps 119%, cottage cheese and whey supplies run dry

Meet Lauren Chew, founder of Love + Chew, a vegan, gluten-free cookie brand that uses almond flour, chia, and dates.

Lauren was working at a solar startup when she got into vegan baking. It’s a familiar CPG origin story: great recipes shared with friends and family, and everyone telling her she should sell them.

So she did. Door to door, café by café, all around San Francisco. The real turning point came when a friend pitched her cookies into his company’s cafeteria. The purchase order that came back was big enough to turn a hobby into a business.

Over the next eight years, Love + Chew scaled to 3,500 grocery doors, including Whole Foods and Sprouts. Six months ago, Lauren walked away from all of them.

“It was a really tough decision,” she says, “because the velocities were solid, but it just financially didn’t make sense for us.” Lauren rebuilt around channels that were profitable. And the business is better now than it ever was on retail shelves.

00:18 - The mind behind Love + Chew
03:14 - Two flavors carry the whole line
06:07 - Pulling out of 3,500 retail doors
10:47 - Customers really like going into store
13:23 - We want to do business with people we like
17:56 - Right product, right packaging, right price

• 3,500: Retail and grocery doors Lauren walked away from

• $75,000: A single distributor chargeback, invalid and unresolved for months

• 70%: gross margin CPG founders should aim for before entering retail

Shelf space can hide bad economics. Love + Chew had what most founders want: 3,500 retail doors, strong velocities, and national distribution. But retail revenue tells you what sold, not what you made. The real number that matters is contribution margin after trade spend and deductions.

You can leave on your own terms. Most brands don’t pull out of retail; they run out of cash and have to shut down instead. Lauren decided to walk away before that happened. It wasn’t easy, but she kept the channels that were making money (club, Amazon, food service) and cut the rest. What’s left is a healthier business she enjoys running.

Early focus beats early variety. Love + Chew stayed at two flavors for its first two years. Not for lack of ideas, but because Lauren understood her market. “We have one or two flavors that are the clear winners. Everything else kind of does okay.” Founders love launching new SKUs, but profitable founders look at the data before expanding.

Know what each channel costs before you scale it. Retail doesn’t just take margin at the shelf. It takes it in chargebacks, promos, bridge buying, and slow-pay terms. Every part of the supply chain is optimized for its own economics, not yours. Know your expected deductions before signing the next purchase order, not after the chargeback shows up.

Budget for the costs you can’t see yet. Lauren tells founders to target a 70% gross margin into retail. About 20% of that, she says, is usually spent on marketing alone, which is on the conservative side. It’s better to build a cushion from day one rather than explain the lack of cash later.

Market signal → National grocery retail used to mean a brand made it. Now it’s just one channel among many… and not always the best one.

The channel profitability check

Before your next renewal or retail push, run the numbers on every channel:

1. Run a P&L by channel. Not just topline revenue; know exactly where you make money and where you don’t.

2. List all your costs. Chargebacks, slow pay, bridge buying… look at everything eating into your margin.

3. Evaluate the channel, not just the sale. Is it a good fit? Does it pay on time? Is it sustainable long-term?

4. Set a decision point. If the math doesn’t work, give yourself a deadline to act. Don’t wait for the channel to hit a dead end.

The natural CPG industry has spent years talking about ingredients. The next conversation is about processing.

When a new standard like Non-Ultraprocessed Foods (non-UPF) Verification shows up, the instinct is to chase the certification, reformulate, and wait for shoppers to notice.

But Ashlie Winson-Jones doesn’t think it plays out that way. As a founding member of Social Nature, the leading shopper activation platform for natural CPG brands, she has a front-row seat to which certifications make an impact.

Her take? Certifications don’t move shoppers on their own. Retailers do. Non-UPF won’t mean a thing to most consumers and brands until it has retailer backing.

The Non-GMO Project launched its new Non-UPF Verification this year. “What does this mean for shoppers? Do shoppers actually understand it? No. I don’t think the industry fully does either. The challenge with non-UPF is the processed foods, like sugar, emulsifiers, seed oils, often make food taste good.”

But certifications don’t matter until there’s a partnership with a major retailer. “In 2018, Expo West was flooded with non-GMO certifications. That was when Whole Foods put a stake in the sand: get organic or non-GMO certified, or don’t get shelf space. The entire industry flipped overnight. At the end of the day, that’s how consumers catch on because certifying bodies don’t have the resources to build mass awareness on their own.”

Retailers can get products on shelf, but now what? “I’ve been at Social Nature for 11 years, and the problem hasn’t changed: once you get on shelf, you have a few months to prove yourself. We take a brand’s exact store list, cross-reference it against where our members shop, and invite them to try the product at those specific locations. Members buy it, upload the receipt, and we reimburse them through a rebate tool. That helps force sales at the exact stores you need to hit velocity targets.”

Read the rest of our Q&A

90% of grocers are experimenting with AI: The robots are here, and they’re filing purchase orders.

Fewer deals, bigger checks: After four years of declining deal volume, CPG deal value jumped 119% YoY in Q1 2026 (although driven by a handful of deals, not a market comeback).

America is a fast food nation: And it starts at school, where most lunches are 20 minutes, leaving kids only 10 minutes to eat, after accounting for walking, lines, and bathroom breaks.

Where has all the cottage cheese gone? And the whey too.

Blurred lines: Part grocery, part restaurant. Cooking at home, eating out. Nobody’s picking a lane.

Mondelez 2026 State of Snacking: A review of frequency, occasions, and motivations (why we’re never not snacking)

Oatly stops explaining itself: Now that oat milk is a staple, the Swedish company shifts its focus from explanation to events and experience.

C-store shoppers want less interaction and more freebies: Honestly, same.

How does food get traded around the world? An interactive tool of global food trade, where it starts, and where it ends up.

June 28-30 (NYC): Summer Fancy Food Show

July 1 (Virtual): Opportunity Knocks - Fireside Chat with Kroger

July 2 (Virtual): Deadline to nominate 2026 Store Brands Editors’ Picks

July 7 (Virtual): The TikTok Shop Launch Playbook

July 9 (NYC): From Noise to Momentum: How Emerging CPG Brands Actually Win in 2026

July 12-15 (Chicago): IFT First

July 19-24 (New Orleans): Tales of the Cocktail 2026

Oct 20-21 (Chicago): Call for Speakers at the Consumer Goods Sales & Marketing Tech Summit

Happy Tuesday. This week, we’re sharing:

🦝 A first-time CPG founder who brought a concept to Costco in 3 months
📦 How a packaging designer looks at your product
🥓 Kevin Bacon is now Kevin Bean, retail’s new job description, the New Consumer Report (it’s about alcohol)

Meet Jonathan Cornish, co-founder and Head Bandit of Froot Thief, a 100% natural fruit whip made from the equivalent of a cup of fruit.

For the last 20 years, Jonathan and his brothers built private-label products for retailers like Target, Costco, Wegmans, and Woolworths. He’s put countless first-to-market ideas on shelves. Froot Thief is the first one with his name on it.

Together with his partner Hayley Gait Golding (who founded and sold Bear Yo-Yo), Jonathan saw a gap in the snack aisle: plenty of “fruit” snacks, not much actual fruit.

But they didn’t make another fruit roll-up. They made fruit spaghetti: 100-inch gummy strands of pure fruit that kids can twirl around their fingers, bunch into a ball, and have fun eating.

Jonathan took it straight to Costco. “The buyer said she’d take every strand if he could make their back-to-school campaign, which was two months away.” Now Froot Thief is nationwide in Costco, as well as Target, Sprouts, and 500+ retail doors, proving there’s still room to play with your food.

00:18 - The minds behind Froot Thief
03:19 - Our very first customer was Costco
06:27 - If you can win over the child, you’ve got a customer for life
09:07 - Our biggest challenge was supply chain
13:35 - Buyers want as much margin as they can get
18:11 - You push in all your chips

• 100 inches: Length of fruit whips in every bag

• 3 months: Time from receiving their first Costco PO to shipment

• Tens of millions: Bags shipped to the US, with almost no customer complaints

Don’t bring them another can of baked beans. Buyers don’t want a cheaper or slightly different version of something they already have. They want a product different enough to jump off the shelf. Fruit spaghetti was a new format with no direct competition, which made it an easier “yes” than a better-but-familiar product.

Novelty gets the meeting. Infrastructure gets the PO. Landing Costco as their first retailer sounds like a lucky break. What made it possible was Jonathan’s 20 years of manufacturing, QA, compliance, and supply chain systems built through his private label business. So when Costco said yes, Jonathan knew he could deliver.

Sampling is still the highest-ROI marketing in food. Froot Thief puts a disproportionate amount of budget into demos instead of digital ads. “I’d rather apply the money to demos than to silly banners online,” Jonathan says. Nobody converts off a banner the way they convert off a bite.

Honesty closes more than overpromising does. A lot of sales people go in there and promise the world just to make the sale. “If you can’t meet their volumes or timelines, just say it. A lot of buyers are reasonable people.” After working with thousands of buyers, Jonathan encourages founders to tell buyers the truth instead of starting the relationship on the wrong foot.

Deliver direct whenever you can. U.S. distribution has many layers founders don’t expect: brokers, distributors, deductions, spoilage fees, off-invoice promo allowances. A $100K invoice can easily end up as $25K after all the deductions. One solution is to asks retailers if they’re open to delivering direct. It isn’t always an option, but when retailers allow it, Jonathan sees significant savings.

Market signal → In mature categories, quality is rarely the bottleneck. Attention is. Consumers stop noticing products that look like everything else.

The seen vs. noticed test

• If people have to read it, it’s probably an improvement. If they can see it, it’s probably an innovation.

• If your difference is an ingredient, expect to explain. If it’s a format, expect to be noticed.

• If you’re “better than,” you’re in comparison. If you’re “different from,” you’re in discovery.

• If buyers ask about margins first, you’ve made a product. If they ask what it is first, you’ve made something new.

Most founders think packaging is a design problem. It’s usually a business problem.

After 20 years helping CPG brands like Magic Spoon, Good & Gather (Target), and Velveeta, Anna Ison has seen the same mistake over and over: founders using design to solve other problems. Problems with positioning, differentiation, clarity.

We talk about why community comes before capital, the reality of building in New York, and why the pitch that wins is rarely the one you expect.

Packaging has two jobs. People don’t have the time or energy to decode what you are. Make it easy to buy and help them understand quickly. It’s one thing to catch attention. It’s another thing to close the deal. You have to do both.

Your brand is not your product. What founders get wrong: they want their packaging to list every benefit, every functional claim. But there’s no emotional storytelling. Branding isn’t the product. It’s the story, the emotional connection. That’s a different layer of strategy entirely. It’s not just about the look. It’s about knowing your consumer and speaking their language.

How many messages should be on a package? I’d say three at most. Fewer is better. You’re not writing a crossword puzzle. You’re trying to help someone make a decision in seconds. Too many messages and the eye scans everything and lands on nothing. Look at Oreo. One giant logo, maybe a flavor. That’s it. And over time those shapes and colors get embedded. They become visual shortcuts. You flash a Coca-Cola bottle and you just know. That’s what you’re building toward.

Read the rest of our Q&A

Where is consumption going? Multi-sensory, micro-community, customized, and apocalyptic prepping.

Private label is winning pocket-share: 92% of U.S. grocery shoppers currently have store brand products.

Retail’s new job description: Betting on experiential formats that digital channels can’t replicate.

The next snack looks like sports nutrition: Energy gel has +486.8% combined YoY growth?

Kevin Bacon is now Kevin Bean: PSA from Humane World for Animals’ “Beansday,” a weekly campaign encouraging people to swap meat for beans.

New Consumer Report is out! And it’s about alcohol.

Mars to Table Challenge: As NASA eyes Mars, what will astronauts eat?

June 28-30 (NYC): Summer Fancy Food Show

July 2 (Virtual): Deadline to nominate 2026 Store Brands Editors’ Picks

July 7 (Virtual): The TikTok Shop Launch Playbook

July 9 (NYC): From Noise to Momentum: How Emerging CPG Brands Actually Win in 2026

July 12-15 (Chicago): IFT First

July 19-24 (New Orleans): Tales of the Cocktail 2026

Oct 20-21 (Chicago): Call for Speakers at the Consumer Goods Sales & Marketing Tech Summit

The natural CPG industry has spent years talking about ingredients. The next conversation is about processing.

When a new standard like Non-Ultraprocessed Foods (non-UPF) Verification shows up, the instinct is to chase the certification, reformulate, and wait for shoppers to notice.

But Ashlie Winson-Jones doesn’t think it usually plays out that way. As a founding member of Social Nature, the leading shopper activation platform for natural CPG brands, she’s had a front-row seat to which certifications actually sticks.

Her take? Certifications don’t move shoppers on their own. Retailers do. Non-UPF won’t mean a thing to most consumers and brands until it has retailer backing.

The Non-GMO Project launched a new certification this year called Non-UPF Verification.

But what does this mean for shoppers? Do shoppers actually understand it? No. I don’t think the industry fully does either.

The categories under the most scrutiny are anything in center shelf: packaged goods and how processed they are inside the package. I think what will happen is shoppers will just see processed food is bad, this meets a standard, check, and move on because we’re all so busy.

That’s the real misconception. Social Nature represents the largest community of natural shoppers, and when they don’t want to buy something, price is usually six or seven out of ten. So they don’t mind spending more, but they have to understand why they’re spending more, and it still has to taste good.

The challenge with non-UPF is the processed foods, like sugar, emulsifiers, seed oils, often make food taste good. So it’s just gonna be a really interesting challenge, and I don’t think brands will care until their retailer cares. The requirements are wildly specific and different depending on the category. Brands can get a free audit through the site, which is probably the best start.

But certifications don't matter until there's a partnership with a major retailer.

In 2018, Expo West was flooded with non-GMO certifications. It was orange everywhere. That was the year Whole Foods put a stake in the sand: get organic or non-GMO certified, or don’t get shelf space. The entire industry flipped overnight. It was destabilizing, and arguably anti-startup. The big boys can afford to do this, but a startup can’t.

But at the end of the day, these certifications often don’t mean anything until they partner with a major retailer. That’s really how consumers catch on because certifying bodies like the Plant Based Foods Association and non-UPF don’t have the resources to build mass awareness on their own.

Retailers can get you on shelf, but now what?

When Social Nature started, there were almost no levers for shopper marketing. Just us or in-store demos. COVID forced a wave of contactless sampling options and the methods got very sophisticated. But after 11 years, the problem hasn’t changed: once you get on shelf, now what? You have a few months to prove yourself.

Brands come to us for targeted trial at specific stores, without having to run demos all day every day. We take a brand’s exact store list, cross-reference it against where our members shop, and invite them to try the product at those specific locations. Members buy it, upload the receipt, and we reimburse them through a rebate tool. That helps force sales at the exact stores you need to hit velocity targets.

Distribution points and a cool product is the secret formula.

So Molly Suds is a laundry product, and as soon as they came to our doorstep, I was like, this is gonna kill it. Molly Suds is $21 at retail, so it isn’t cheap. I figured the campaign would take six months, but we ran through all the redemptions in three weeks, it went so incredibly well.

It was a 50% off discount and 97% of those who purchased were new to the brand, but willing to put $11 of their own money in to try the product. The brand also had great distribution in Walmart, Target, Home Depot, which matters just as much as the offer itself. Without that distribution, we wouldn’t have had the funnel to support the demand.

Giving shoppers more choice will increase redemption rates.

Our offers run more aggressive than something like Ibotta, because most of our brands are challenger brands, not enterprise. Once a brand gets big enough, they’re not defending shelf space the same way.

The best offer type depends on the category. Buy-one-get-one (BOGO) works well for beverage and frozen because they’re products people stock up on. For something like an açaí bowl, I’d give one free and retarget with a BOGO later; nobody’s buying two smoothie bowls at once.

Usually, 30% off on a brand with no name recognition doesn’t move the needle. Shoppers have to put in too much of their own money for an unknown product, they won’t try it.

Brands often get too attached to tying offers to one SKU but widening the offer to apply to all your products gives shoppers more choice and almost always increases redemption.

The more product reviews that are syndicated, the better.

SEO used to be everything; now it’s AEO. Your product needs to be searchable across every channel, and reviews are the easiest way there. We partner with Bazaarvoice and syndicate reviews directly to Walmart.com and Target.com, which makes products more visible to tools like ChatGPT.

One of our clients, Daiya, is being picked up by ChatGPT when people ask about plant-based butter alternatives Partly because of syndicated reviews and partly because they’re already a known name. I think everyone’s trying to figure it out, but let’s just say the more product reviews you have that are syndicated, the better.

Buyers are exposed to hundreds of brands, just make it easy for them.

Beyond velocity and reviews, we let brands ask shoppers 10 custom post-trial questions. My favorite use of this is to help de-risk a retailer’s investment in the brand.

Going back to Molly Suds, their narrative is about how they compare to conventional, which will always be cheaper and has tons of brand awareness.

So post-trial, we ask shoppers: is this as good as Tide? Would you buy it over the leading brand? We can also show whether they’re Walmart or Target shoppers, and whether they plan to buy again. This data de-risks the brand and gives retailers a forecast beyond just initial velocity.

There’s tons of swaps you can make for scale that you might as well do early.

Brands consistently underestimate how much margin they need before they can really go to market. Then pressures like non-UPF only add to that.

I always tell founders: get real advice early about the swaps you’ll eventually need to make. A lot of founders are too idealistic about their product, which erodes margin until it’s impossible to scale or fundraise.

Aim for 50%+ margins, get good operational advice, and make the trade-off between perfection and scale early. I’ve seen brands wait until year five or six, then have to pull products off shelves entirely to reformulate, repackage, and basically start over. If founders got that tough-love advice from the get-go, they’d save themselves years and a lot of money.

One of the biggest mistakes a brand makes is thinking they know what their shopper cares about.

Working with a lot of owner-operators and founders, I find that one of the biggest mistakes a brand makes is thinking they know what their shopper cares about.

I knew a founder who was completely fixated on the fact that his product used Italian wheat. He was proud of it, convinced shoppers would care because European standards are stricter than North America’s, and that Italian wheat was easier for the body to process. When we actually sampled shoppers, all they cared about was the 23 grams of protein… and this was even before the whole protein craze. He spent years marketing in a direction that didn’t resonate with his actual audience.

I see this constantly. A supplement brand says “gum-free” and shoppers think, what’s gum, and why would it be in here? When you’re close to your mission, you don’t realize how much of an expert you’ve become, or how little the average shopper is tracking what you mean.

Most founders think packaging is a design problem. It's usually a business problem.

When sales stall, the immediate reaction is to redesign the label, refresh the colors, or hire a new agency. But according to packaging strategist Anna Ison, that’s often the wrong move.

After 20 years helping CPG brands like Magic Spoon, Good & Gather (Target), and Velveeta, Anna has seen the same mistake over and over: founders using design to solve other problems. Problems with positioning, differentiation, clarity.

In this conversation, Anna explains the importance of looking at data, packaging’s two jobs (grab attention and close the sale), and the simple research method every founder can do for free.

Text answers below have been edited for length and clarity. Full answers are in video. (We highly recommend watching!)

Before you redesign, start with data.

You have under three seconds to grab someone’s attention, explain the offering, communicate what makes it unique, and give them a reason to buy. Before you touch anything, you need data. Velocity from the retailer, shelf performance, whether people even understand what your product is at a glance.

Is it moving compared to competitors? Does it look credible? Does it fit the right price point? Is it communicating anything different? Get a sense of how it’s performing first.

Packaging has two jobs.

If someone is attracted by the visual but doesn’t understand what it is, there’s confusion. Mental friction. And you’re already competing against everything else on that shelf. People don’t have the time or energy to decode what you are. Make it easy to buy and help them understand quickly.

It’s one thing to catch attention. It’s another thing to close the deal. You have to do both.

Your brand is not your product.

What founders get wrong: they want their packaging to list every benefit, every functional claim. But there’s no emotional storytelling.

Branding isn’t the product. It’s the story, the emotional connection. That’s a different layer of strategy entirely. It’s not just about the look. It’s about knowing your consumer and speaking their language.

When packaging isn’t the problem.

Sometimes the issue isn’t packaging at all. It’s positioning. Is there enough visual context (texture, size, flavor) for someone to understand what they’re looking at? And more importantly: is your product actually different from everything around it? If it’s a granola sitting next to five other granolas, what’s the differentiator?

That’s a strategic question before it’s a design question. Packaging is more than look and feel. It ties back to where the brand is coming from and what it’s trying to say. It becomes less about the designer’s style and more about making the brand feel like itself.

How many messages should be on a package?

I’d say three at most. Fewer is better. You’re not writing a crossword puzzle. You’re trying to help someone make a decision in seconds. Too many messages and the eye scans everything and lands on nothing. Mental friction sets in and people move on.

Look at Oreo. One giant logo, maybe a flavor. That’s it. And over time those shapes and colors get embedded. They become visual shortcuts. You flash a Coca-Cola bottle and you just know. That’s what you’re building toward.

Why great brands don’t constantly redesign.

Every time you redesign, you lose equity. Equity is what compounds over time: the shapes, the colors, the visual language that live in people’s memory. Redesign ten times and customers don’t recognize you anymore. Do it once, twice, properly.

Think of it as a facelift, not a face transplant. Identify the core visual equities, the things that are distinctly yours, and bring them forward in a new way. You’re not changing the person. You’re just refreshing them.

The best packaging research is free.

Go to the store and watch someone shop. Do they touch your packaging? Pick it up and put it right back down? Are they scanning? Where does their eye go?

Just observe it. You might get some good clues out of it. Be like a little investigator.

Happy Tuesday. This week, we’re sharing:

🍋 How one founder is bringing her grandmother’s nimbu pani recipe nationwide
🏆 The Knicks won the series; Graza won the post, ALDI launches its limited-time Blind Box, Yelp’s Fastest Growing Brands of 2026
📅 Whole Foods 2026 LEAP Applications now open, Summer Fancy Food Show, IFT First

Meet Maxine and Alan Henderson, the husband-and-wife team behind Bollygood, the first Indian-inspired sparkling lemonade and limeade in the U.S.

Growing up, Maxine spent summers in India drinking nimbu pani, a traditional beverage her grandmother made from scratch. “She’d add the sugar, squeeze the lime juice, and grab some spices from the kitchen,” says Maxine. “It was the most refreshing drink.”

It was also 40 grams of sugar per serving.

When Maxine and Alan started their own family, they kept the tradition alive, making a healthier version at home. Around the same time, they noticed Indian food had become a grocery store staple. But Indian beverages? Nowhere to be seen.

So they decided to bring one of South Asia’s most beloved drinks to a wider audience. Six years, 20+ formulation rounds, and a major redesign later, Bollygood is in almost 500 stores, a family recipe turned national beverage brand.

00:15 - The minds behind Bollygood
03:19 - No Indian representation in beverage
06:17 - The Hollywood Bollywood feel
08:58 - We like to say it’s organized chaos
12:35 - Taking your taste buds on a trip
15:59 - Being out of stock for nine months
18:35 - Landing a distributor, getting our first retailer
21:58 - Velocity, placements, store count
24:19 - Fundraising is an ongoing thing
26:39 - Raise as much money as you need, then a little more

• 20+ iterations: To turn a family recipe into a shelf-ready product

• $100,000: Bootstrapped into their first production run

• ~500 stores: Nationwide distribution and growing

Community can open the first door. A strong brand opens the next hundred. Bollygood’s first customers were the South Asian community: people who already knew and loved nimbu pani. After reformulating the product, earning Non-GMO Project Verification, and introducing new flavors, Bollygood started attracting a broader audience of health-conscious and culture-curious consumers. “Not being pigeonholed in the ethnic aisle was a big thing,” says Maxine. “We’re right beside all the sodas and sparkling beverages.”

Raise more than you think you need, before you need it. Bollygood has been mostly bootstrapped, and Alan is clear about what he’d do differently: “Raise as much money as you think you need, and a little bit more.” Once you’re managing inventory runs, demo budgets, and retailer timelines, there’s rarely a convenient time to fundraise. Well-funded brands don’t have fewer problems. But they do have more options when problems pop up.

Less on the can, more in the cart. Bollygood launched with a strong product and founder story. But things really started rolling after a packaging redesign. During Target’s Forward Founders accelerator, the main feedback was too much was happening on the can. It stung at first, but they listened. Bollygood 2.0 was cleaner and easier to read at a glance. It caught UNFI’s attention at Expo East and opened the door to their first major retail account.

Demo like you mean it. A three-hour demo costs about $200. With 65 Whole Foods locations in the Northeast alone, Bollygood can’t be everywhere. So they treat demos like an investment, not an activity. To justify spending, a demo has to either boost a top-performing store or revive a slower location. Sampling without strategy is just giving stuff away.

You don’t need a ton of data. You need to understand what you have. Most early-stage brands can’t afford Nielsen or SPINS. Bollygood runs their operations using the Whole Foods supplier portal and a pivot table their college freshman son built. “That really changed the game for me to be on top of my data,” says Maxine. “It literally takes five minutes… I told him he might have a business.”

Market signal → The beverage aisle is years behind the food aisle when it comes to global flavor. For every dish that’s made it to the dinner table, there’s a drink that hasn’t made it to the shelf yet.

The demo cheat sheet

Before you spend $200 on a demo, ask: what's my velocity and promo strategy?

• If velocity is down + promo is running → Do a demo. It’s the best way to convert customers.

• If velocity is flat + no promo → Wait. Consider a promo first, then demo.

• If velocity is up + no promo → Skip. Sales are good. Save your budget.

• If velocity has been flat for 2+ months → Don’t demo. Fix placement first.

You’re already paying your invoices. But you could be earning on them.

Every time you pay a vendor via ACH or check, you’re leaving money on the table. Not because the invoice is wrong. Because you’re paying it the wrong way.

Most CPG brands have vendors who accept cards. They just never checked.

Our partner Dash.fi identifies which vendors accept cards automatically. Switch the payment method, start earning 3% back on those invoices. Done.

No manual reconciliation. No ops overhead.

Chances are you have more card-eligible vendor spend than you think. From invoices you’re already paying.

5 minutes to see how much you’re leaving on the table. See what Dash.fi recovers for you.

Get a free 5-minute demo

The Knicks won the series. Graza won the post.

Drop it like it’s hot: ALDI introduces its Blind Box with four limited-time themed grocery bundles (Snack, Fiber, Protein, and Mystery), dropping on June 22, 12pm ET.

A $395 pineapple: “Only a few thousand of the pineapples are produced each year and they always sell out.”

Yelp’s Fastest Growing Brands of 2026: Caffeinated drive-thus, dirty soda, and lots of chicken.

Plant by numbers: The West has highest household penetration, the South has the biggest sales volume, the Midwest is the fastest growing, the Northeast loves a vegan cheese.

Putting the junk in junk food: The Consumer Report on additives and contaminants in everyday products.

Low on stock? Letting customers know actually increases loyalty and spending.

June 1-July 16 (Virtual): Whole Foods Accepting Applications for 2026 LEAP

June 16 (Virtual): How GLP-1 Is Reshaping Food, Nutrition & Supplements

June 28-30 (NYC): Summer Fancy Food Show

June 18 (NYC): Margs & Momentum: A Summer Fancy Food Show Celebration

June 28 (NYC): Startup CPG Founder Dinner @ Summer Fancy Food 2026

July 7 (Virtual): The TikTok Shop Launch Playbook

July 12-15 (Chicago): IFT First

July 19-24 (New Orleans): Tales of the Cocktail 2026

Happy Tuesday. This week, we’re sharing:

🍷 How a first-time founder got canned wine into 200 stores, one door at a time
📰 Gen Z goes modular, when east meets west, everyone’s going private
☀️ Shows of summer: IDDBA, KeHE Holiday Show, Summer Fancy Food Show, IFT First

Meet Hogan Burrell, founder of PNKYS, a canned wine brand for people who like wine but aren’t “wine people.”

The idea started after a trip to Mexico, some questionable water, and a case of salmonella. During recovery, his doctor suggested red wine as one of the alcoholic drinks easier on the stomach.

So Hogan started ordering wine at bars. Looking for it at parties. The problem? Every trip down the wine aisle left him more confused than when he walked in. Cursive labels, complicated tasting notes, no idea why one cost $15 and another $150.

What he wanted was something simpler.

So he cashed out his 401k and spent more than a year figuring out self-distribution and how to build a brand that sells.

Today, PNKYS is in nearly 200 independent accounts, in conversations with major retailers, and scaling the old-fashioned way: one door at a time.

00:14 - The mind behind PNKYS
03:46 - The easiest to drink, that’s what we want
07:34 - Quit my job, cash out 401K, cash out savings
11:03 - 70% off premise, 30% on premise
14:15 - The exact opposite of every other wine brand
17:29 - Raising close to half a million right now
20:15 - I would do it all over again 100 times

• $60K: Initial investment from his 401k and personal savings

• ~200 accounts: Self-distributed as a one-man team

• 4–5/week: Number of in-store demos Hogan still does himself

Remove as much risk as possible for the retailer. When Hogan started pitching PNKYS to retailers, he thought they’d care about the brand story. Most didn’t. They wanted to know one thing: Will it sell? A new brand has no velocity data, no distributor, and no track record. Every reason to say no. So Hogan made the decision easier. He did tastings, promotions, and if the product didn’t move within 30 days, he’d buy it back.

The goal of a demo isn’t to create a sale. It’s to create a repeat customer. Hogan runs four or five tastings a week but caps new stores at two per month. Because retailers want to know what happens when the founder leaves. If sales only happen while you’re pouring samples, that’s not proof of demand. That’s proof you’re good at selling. The real test is whether someone comes back and buys it again when nobody’s watching.

Use trends to open doors, and your core products to stay there. Last summer, everyone was putting jalapeños in their Sauvignon Blanc. Hogan spotted it and launched a canned version before anyone else. “It’s fun and it’s definitely a door opener,” says Hogan. “If there’s an account we want, we’ll approach with the Jalapeño Sauvignon Blanc, let that sell, then bring our others on.”

Know what you’re actually selling. PNKYS is organic, well-made, and tastes good. But Hogan barely talks about that. He talks about “wine that just pairs well with vibe.” In a category obsessed with tasting notes and terroir, PNKYS competes on something else entirely: bright colors, tailgates, and high energy. The product is canned wine. The thing being sold is a good time.

Increase your surface area for luck. Hogan found his winery through a connection of a connection. He showed up to Expo West even though it was mostly non-alc. Neither opportunity promised an immediate payoff. One led to a production partner. The other validated the brand. Put yourself in more rooms. You never know which conversation changes the trajectory of the business.

Market signal → Over time, categories optimize for enthusiasts. Language gets more technical. Experience gets more intimidating. The opportunities are at the edge, where people are waiting for something made for them.

The retailer pitch checklist

Retailers aren’t buying your vision. They’re buying confidence that the product will move. Before your next pitch, make sure you can answer yes to all five:

1. Do you know where the product fits? Walk the store first and have a shelf placement in mind.

2. Do you know their margin? Most independents have a required margin range. Know it before the meeting and show how your pricing fits.

3. Can you reduce their risk? Buybacks, small opening orders, or flexible terms all make it easier to say yes.

4. Can you commit to driving sales? Demos, sampling, and in-store support show you’re invested.

5. Can you prove demand? Reorders from another account are gold, but repeat purchases and strong sell-through count too.

Have all five and you're not pitching; you're making it easy to say yes.

You’re already paying your invoices. But you could be earning on them.

Every time you pay a vendor via ACH or check, you’re leaving money on the table. Not because the invoice is wrong. Because you’re paying it the wrong way.

Most CPG brands have vendors who accept cards. They just never checked.

Our partner Dash.fi identifies which vendors accept cards automatically. Switch the payment method, start earning 3% back on those invoices. Done.

No manual reconciliation. No ops overhead.

Chances are you have more card-eligible vendor spend than you think. From invoices you’re already paying.

5 minutes to see how much you’re leaving on the table. See what Dash.fi recovers for you.

Get a free 5-minute demo

When east meets west: Consumers prefer authenticity over adaptation.

Nestlé acquires yfood: 3 months after Danone acquires Huel (and the 1st acquisition of new CEO Philipp Navratil).

Going private: Private label sales are onward and upward, reaching a record $283 billion last year.

… and it all starts with the morning cup: Private label wakes up and smells the coffee.

Gen Z wants a bit of this, a bit of that: Modular eating is the latest food trend.

The sweets and snacks winners: 2 new awards (Trailblazer and Powerhouse) and a lot of mix-and-match texture.

Tip your delivery driver: Instacart and DoorDash are the least stable gig work, fluctuating heavily based on order volume, variability, and location density.

June 7-9 (Orlando): IDDBA 2026

June 10 (Virtual): Live Packaging Audit: How to Make Your Brand Stand Out on Shelf

June 10-11 (Chicago): 2026 KeHE Holiday Show

June 11 (NYC): The FreshPitch: A Brand Pitch & Discovery Event

June 11 (Virtual): Getting Your Brand in the Media

June 12 (TX): Pre-Match Dinner

June 16 (Virtual): How GLP-1 Is Reshaping Food, Nutrition & Supplements

June 28-30 (NYC): Summer Fancy Food Show

June 18 (NYC): Margs & Momentum: A Summer Fancy Food Show Celebration

June 28 (NYC): Startup CPG Founder Dinner @ Summer Fancy Food 2026

July 7 (Virtual): The TikTok Shop Launch Playbook

July 12-15 (Chicago): IFT First

July 19-24 (New Orleans): Tales of the Cocktail 2026

Happy Tuesday. This week, we’re sharing:

• The founder who landed 1,000+ Target doors before she had a business

• Five years inside New York CPG (from someone who’s heard every pitch)

• The missing ingredient in plant-based food, summer of staying at home, and how minimalist rebrands are really just mobile optimization

If there's something missing from the list, just reply or drop a comment. Thank you!

Meet Liz Lane, founder of Scoops, a new high-protein peanut butter powder that just launched across 1,000+ Target doors.

But when Target signed on, Scoops didn’t have a registered business yet. “The business was officially established after the Target call,” Liz says. What it did have was a clear white space, deep supplier relationships, and 12 years of CPG experience behind it.

Liz spent her career as an early operator at industry darlings like Magic Spoon, Huel, and Clevr Blends. She knows what it takes to start and scale a successful brand. This time, she’s building her own.

00:19 - The mind behind Scoops
03:19 - Right after Target confirmed, I started raising
07:06 - More protein, more health focus, more brand
10:06 - It has to be delicious. There’s no point otherwise
12:24 - Airspace closed. Sea closed. Inventory was locked
15:04 - Just stay calm and keep everything moving

• $50K → $500K: Pre-launch budget to fundraise.

• 1,000+ doors: Awarded by Target, after pitching for only 500

• 20,000 units: First purchase order, per flavor

When something breaks, relationships are the only thing that holds. Weeks before launch, global conflicts disrupted logistics and grounded Scoops’ first inventory run. Airspace closed. Sea routes closed. What kept it from becoming a full crisis: a group chat. Suppliers sent real-time updates and moved inventory the moment a ceasefire window opened. “Everybody was doing everything they could to get this here on time,” says Liz. “I feel really lucky for that, because that’s not always how it goes.”

Branding gets trial. Taste gets velocity. Velocity keeps you on shelf. That’s the job. A great brand gets someone to pick it up once. The product has to do the rest. “All the founders I’ve worked with really nailed the branding,” she says. “But I do think it comes down to the taste. It’s food. If the taste isn’t there, it’s not going to sustain the sell.”

Don’t fight for shelf space. Own the aisle nobody’s fighting over. Everyone sees protein as the opportunity. Liz saw something more specific. The protein powder aisle: crowded, noisy, expensive to break through. The peanut butter aisle: enormous foot traffic, almost no innovation, one incumbent peanut powder brand that hadn’t changed since anyone could remember. Scoops was still the same high-protein product, but on a shelf where consumers had fewer alternatives and retailers had a reason to pay attention.

The shelf doesn’t reward best practices. It rewards contrast. Every incumbent peanut powder came in a plastic tub, looked functional, and skewed fitness. Scoops went bright, nostalgic, inclusive. And ditched the tub entirely. When Liz brought the packaging direction to Target, they didn’t just okay it. They loved it. Visual separation is worth more than another product that looks like everything already on shelf.

The best investors may already be on your team. Liz’s first round didn’t come from angels or funds. It came from her manufacturer, ingredient suppliers, and operators she’d worked with for years. They committed within a month. And because they have equity, the people responsible for production, pricing, and inventory are incentivized to make all of it work (not just their piece of it). A traditional investor can write a check. A supplier-investor can improve your bottom line.

Market signal → Consumers are done over-optimizing. The next big food brand won’t look like a supplement. It’ll look like food you actually want to eat.

The aisle audit

Before you pick a category, go to the store. (Not the website. The store.) Walk every aisle your product could potentially live in and ask:

• Who has the traffic? Look for aisles people are already shopping, but hasn’t had any significant changes in years.

• Who’s already there? Count the brands. Count the SKUs. Note who’s been there long enough to go stale.

• What does everything look like? If it all looks the same (same packaging, same font), it’s time for a change.

• Who is it for? If the whole aisle skews toward one type of person, everyone else is underserved.

• What would stop someone? What would make a real person pause and pick it up? That’s your brief.

If you’ve built a food or beverage brand in New York, there’s a decent chance Adrienne DeLisio knows your story.

The Executive Director of Naturally New York spends her days between the founders trying to make it and the buyers deciding whether they will. Five years of that adds up.

We talk about why community comes before capital, the reality of building in New York, and why the pitch that wins is rarely the one you expect.

Show up, even before you have anything to show. What really differentiates the ones that make it versus the ones that don’t is making an effort to network within the community, building a strong group of advisors, and learning from their peers. If you’re not showing up, how are you really going to grow your network and build meaningful connections that could lead to something even greater?

Own your backyard before you go anywhere else. New York in general is just a really tough market. But it’s very important for any brand to really establish your presence and build a solid consumer base. I’ve heard from many investors and retailers: if a brand is not already owning their backyard, they shouldn’t think about expanding into other markets. Because it’s going to be a common question from folks in other markets. And honestly, it’s New York or nowhere.

The pitch that wins is the one nobody forgets. Certain pitches just stick out, mainly because of the opening line. When Keya Wingfield of Keya's Snacks submitted her pitch video to Fairway, the first line was, "I'm an Indian woman who fell in love with an American who hates Indian food." The judges were only supposed to award one winner, but they were so impressed they gave her a runner-up prize too. Damiano Messineo from Loopini took out a protein shake, a bar, all these things, and said you need to consume all of these… or just eat a Loopini pizza. Lori Gitomer of Whipnotic did whipped cream shots down the Whole Foods buyer pitch panel. Did it help them win? Possibly. But at the end of the day it was just a great pitch. Memorable, fun, something you don’t forget.

Read the rest of our Q&A

The missing ingredient in plant-based food: As they’re starting to achieve taste parity with meat and dairy products, what they need is a story.

The summer of staying at home: Spend is moving away from convenience and discretionary categories and toward staples and at-home consumption.

Does healthy = less convenient? Consumers look for snacks and breakfasts that require five minutes or less to prepare, and lunch and dinner in under 30 minutes.

The SPOONS to your cereals: WK Kellogg adds an on-pack nutrition guide to its cereal boxes. That’s simple ingredients (S), protein (P), outstanding fiber (O), other nutritious foods (O), nutrients you need (N), and single-digit sugars (S).

“Minimalist” rebrands are really just mobile optimization: Packages used to compete from 3 feet away. Now they compete from 6 inches away on a screen.

Mo’ meat, mo’ problems: As new Trump rules remove meat production limits, it adds risk to workers.

Are we still all eating tinned fish? The Pinterest Summer 2026 Trend report has spoken

June 2 (Virtual): Get In. Sell Through. Stay On Shelf. The Two Yeses of Retail.

June 2 (NY): Ugly Talks: Can Your Brand Thrive in Agentic Commerce?

June 3 (NY and Virtual): Clicks, Bricks & Everything In-Between

June 3 (Virtual): What to Build Next: A Founder’s Playbook for Smarter Innovation Decisions

June 4 (Waltham, MA): Startup CPG Boston Founder Social

June 5 (Virtual Deadline Submission): For Target’s Food & Beverage Brand Discovery Day on July 16

June 7-9 (Orlando): IDDBA 2026

June 10 (Virtual): Live Packaging Audit: How to Make Your Brand Stand Out on Shelf

June 10-11 (Chicago): 2026 KeHE Holiday Show

June 12 (TX): Pre-Match Dinner

June 28-30 (NYC): Summer Fancy Food Show

July 12-15 (Chicago): IFT First

Happy Tuesday. This week, we’re sharing:

• How a creative director and two scientists built the supplement section’s best-looking, best-working brand

• Whimsy is the new wellness, beverage as snack, a China mall’s viral eating contest

• A quick poll 👇

If there's something missing from the list, just reply or drop a comment. Thank you!

Meet Jane Kate Wong, CEO and co-founder of NOON, a cognitive wellness brand where neuroscience meets plant science.

Jane was a creative director at a global design consultancy in New York. Fun job, interesting work, demanding hours.

Then she hit a wall. Her doctor’s solution was two weeks of steroids. Hard pass.

That sent her down a path of adaptogens, nootropics, and a supplement aisle full of products that looked clinical and performed worse.

Together with naturopathic physician Dr. Julie Hwang and neuroscientist Dr. Christine Wong, she built the formulas from scratch. Then designed a holistic brand to match.

Eighteen months in, NOON sold over 19,000 units its first year, has customers reordering as many as six times, and just landed in 878 Target doors nationwide.

00:11 - The minds behind NOON
03:11 - This actually works, this is shockingly good
07:17 - Our whole thing is helping people find their best baseline
11:04 - Sleep is our bestseller by 20%
14:31 - Going into 878 Target doors
18:52 - People order at least 5-6 times
21:42 - Do less, but make it more impactful

• $250K: Total investment, self-funded and friends and family

• 19,000+: Units sold in year one (exceeding their first run)

• 878: Target doors for their nationwide launch

Format is the first thing a customer experiences. NOON started as a tincture. Bioavailable, effective, and deeply confusing. How many drops? On the tongue or under it? The brief for their gummy came from everything the tincture wasn’t: fun, shareable, low barrier to trial. “Everyone knows what a gummy is. You don’t need to give them more education.” The product that’s easiest to use is the one people will use.

Build margin in from day one. You’ll need it. NOON targeted mid-80% gross margin on DTC from day one. A four-month lead time, shipments from Asia, a 30% tariff. None of that is unusual. But all of it erodes margin fast… and it compounds. “Starting with a good margin is very important because it just goes downhill from there.”

Experience > explanation. Try explaining functional mushrooms and it falls on dead ears. Instead, NOON showed up in places where the product could be experienced: outside the sauna at Othership, sample kits at Pop-Up Grocer, a corner at Remedy Place. The goal wasn’t to educate. It was to become part of someone’s routine. Once you have that, no explanation’s needed.

Do less, but make it count. Year one is ‘yes’ to everything: every event, every retailer, every opportunity. And that’s great. You’re testing the market and collecting data. But you can’t move if you’re spread across 40 things at once. Year two is learning from that and going deeper on the two or three things that worked.

Every CPG company is a media company. “If I were to redo this, I’d do the whole build-in-public thing a lot sooner,” Jane says. “’Build and they will come’ doesn’t happen anymore. There are too many products on the market.” What’s your story? Why are you the best person to create this product?

Market signal → People don’t come back because of product. They come back because of habit. Brands with retention figured out a moment, a format, a routine that makes repurchase automatic.

The routine is the product

Jane spent two years figuring out how to make NOON stand out in market. Here’s what she discovered:

1. Moment: Is it attached to something they already do? If they have to create a new behavior, most won’t.

2. Format: Is it the most frictionless version? People come back to the easiest option, not always the best one.

3. Delight: Is it something they look forward to? Things like taste, texture, packaging make the experience worth repeating.

4. Price: If they have to think twice about the price, the habit breaks. Find their repeat purchase ceiling.

5. Shareability: Do they tell anyone about your product? Word of mouth is retention’s compounding interest.

Meta overbilled you last month. You just don’t know it yet.

This week’s partner Dash.fi audited $20M in ad spend and found 5-33% in billing discrepancies across the board. Misallocated budgets, inflated metrics, out-of-geo ads you paid for that never reached your customer.

To put it into perspective, if you’re spending $50k/month, that’s up to $15k gone. Every single month.

Most founders find out too late. Or never.

Dash.fi catches it automatically. Flags every discrepancy, recovers the difference, and gives you 3% back on every ad dollar on top.

This isn’t a better credit card. It’s a margin recovery tool that happens to be a credit card. See what Dash.fi recovers for you.

Get a free 5-minute demo

Brami raises $33M in Series B: The two-ingredient brand is the fastest-growing pasta in the U.S.

Gen Z no longer shops by aisle: When mood, need, and occasion replace snacks, meals, and beverages.

Beverage as snack? For consumers who “snack” on beverages, 46% pick soft drinks, 32% sip fruit juice, 26% reach for coffee, and 15% pour a glass of milk.

Most frequent shopper: Men shop more frequently than women (1.6 trips a week vs 1.4) and Gen Z outpaces millennials (6.7 trips a month vs 6.1)

Whimsy is the new wellness: “I got this really cute coffee machine, made little sprinkles and all these things that were just for me.

Vote for a farmer. The 2026 Friend of a Farmer Choice Awards are open through May 29, 12:00pm EST. Your vote helps direct $1,000 grants to farmers.

Chinese mall turns secret classroom snacking into viral eating contest: That’s all.

May 28 (NY): Naturally Rising New York: The Conscious Business Pitch Competition

May 20 (Virtual): Workshop: AI for CPG Brands

May 20 (NY): DTC Dinner Club

May 20 (NY): How Smart Brands Win in a Crowded Aisle

May 20-21 (NY): The Lead Summit

May 31 (Virtual): Bon Appetit Pantry Awards Submission Deadline

June 2 (Virtual): Get In. Sell Through. Stay On Shelf. The Two Yeses of Retail.

June 3 (NY and Virtual): Clicks, Bricks & Everything In-Between

June 7-9 (Orlando): IDDBA 2026

June 10 (Virtual): Live Packaging Audit: How to Make Your Brand Stand Out on Shelf

June 10-11 (Chicago): 2026 KeHE Holiday Show

June 12 (TX): Pre-Match Dinner

June 28-30 (NYC): Summer Fancy Food Show

If you’ve built a food or beverage brand in New York, there’s a decent chance Adrienne DeLisio knows your story.

As Executive Director of Naturally New York, she spends her days between the founders trying to make it and the buyers deciding whether they will. Five years of that adds up.

We talk about why community comes before capital, the reality of building in New York, and why the pitch that wins is rarely the one you expect.

00:19 - The road to Naturally New York
01:36 - Founders who succeed vs. those who don’t
02:37 - How to make it in New York CPG
04:51 - The secret to a winning video pitch
06:42 - Make your pitch memorable
08:18 - Adrienne’s favorite NNY event
09:42 - The biggest challenges in CPG today
11:22 - The best $100 in CPG

Text answers below have been edited for length and clarity. Full answers are in video. (We highly recommend watching!)

Brands that make it vs. brands that don’t

What really differentiates the ones that make it versus the ones that don’t are making an effort to network within the community, building a strong group of advisors, and learning from their peers. If you’re not showing up, how are you really going to grow your network and build meaningful connections that could lead to something even greater?

Even if you’re not ready now, this is the time to prepare yourself to be ready later. A lot of brand members are pre-launch. And they’re still interested in being a part of our community because they want to foster those connections. See what else is happening in market, what competitors are doing, and how you can maybe position yourself differently.

What does it take to make it in New York CPG?

New York in general is just a really tough market, but it’s important for any brand, especially if you’re local or grew up here, to really establish your presence.

Many investors and retailers have told me if a brand is not already owning their backyard, they shouldn’t think about expanding into other markets. Because it’s going to be a common question from folks in other markets.

As a born and raised New Yorker, and someone that has grown their career here, there’s definitely a different hustle. It just never feels like the day ever ends. You’re kind of always working even when you’re not. But I think that’s actually what makes us so great and why I’ve never really thought about working anywhere else. I thrive off that energy. And I think a lot of people here do too. It’s important to tap into that, or you’re not gonna make it. And honestly, it’s New York or nowhere.

What’s the secret to a pitch people remember?

Certain pitches just stick out, mainly because of the opening line and being memorable. When Keya Wingfield of Keya's Snacks submitted her pitch video to Fairway, the first line was, "I'm an Indian woman who fell in love with an American who hates Indian food." The judges were only supposed to award one winner, but they were so impressed they gave her a runner-up prize too.

Damiano Messineo from Loopini took out a protein shake, a bar, all these things, and said you need to consume all of these… or just eat a Loopini pizza. Lori Gitomer of Whipnotic did whipped cream shots down the Whole Foods buyer pitch panel. Did it help them win? Possibly. But at the end of the day it was just a great pitch. Memorable, fun, impossible to forget.

My favorite event by far is the Holiday Bazaar.

A couple of years ago, I was hearing a lot of complaints about how hard it is for brands to activate at trade shows. The cost was just out of their means. I really wanted to provide a solution for that. The Holiday Bazaar is my mini expo: very affordable, just a few hundred dollars for you to activate, sample, sell products, and connect with industry professionals.

Over the last two years, we’ve had at least 300 attendees at each. It continues to grow and it’s getting to the point we’re outgrowing our space.

I know there are other showcases, but it’s just something I wanted to do to really celebrate all the hard work brands did that year and end on a high note. It’s one I look forward to every year.

Naturally New York started in the fall of 2021.

It was still a very post-COVID climate with supply chain disruptions and fundraising challenges. We broke out of that and there were sunnier days for a while, but I feel like we’re going back into some of those challenges again.

Fundraising has been harder recently, maybe because there’s more competition. Investors are being very conservative. Retailers are being more selective. You need patience and perseverance. One day, if it’s meant to be, the spot will open for you.

Another big concern is around distributor relationships. There seems to be a lack of transparency and at the end of the day, brands don’t even feel profitable. They’re at the distributor’s mercy because how else is your product going to get in stores?

I’m grateful for companies like Adventure CPG that are trying to change the game and make it more accessible for brands to activate. It’s going to be hard to fight against the bigger distributors (I won’t say those names, but I think you know who they are), but hopefully something will change.

We have dedicated pavilions in Expo West and the Fancy Food Show. It’s good to have that community because we help bring traffic and broker the introductions you’re looking for.

Someone once told me it’s the best $100 you could ever spend as a brand founder.

I feel like a proud mom when I walk into any store and recognize some of the brands. I’m like, “Oh, I know that founder.”

It really is such a joy to see them and be able to just act as a consumer and support them. These brand founders, they have my phone number. They know they can text me anytime, or call, send me an email.

We do at least 50 events a year outside of any trade show activations. At least one networking event a month, educational webinars, and quarterly boot camps.

If you’re not a member of Naturally New York, visit us at naturallynewyork.org. There are tons of events there that you can start to register for. It’s as little as $100 for brands a year. Someone once told me it’s the best $100 you could ever spend as a brand founder.

Happy Tuesday. This week, we’re sharing:

• How a senior nutrition company secured multi-millions to shake up a stale category

• The Instacart strategy that takes you from 2x to 15x ROAS

• The biggest one-month jump in grocery prices, where everyone’s getting their health advice, say bye to your caprese salad

Meet Jess Haghani, founder of Lucille, the first better-for-you senior nutrition shake that just closed a multimillion-dollar funding round.

The company is named after her 92-year-old grandmother, who still drives herself into the city, day trades, and says her 90s are the best years of her life. But when Lucille started facing health challenges, the nutrition drinks meant to help her were so bad she could barely finish them.

Jess took it to nutritionists at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health. Their reaction: she couldn’t engineer a worse ingredient list if she tried.

Nutrition for older adults hadn’t really changed since the 1980s. Someone needed to do something about this. That someone, it turns out, had a grandmother named Lucille.

00:14 - The mind behind Lucille
02:40 - Her 90s are the best time of her life
04:49 - I can’t put a single worse ingredient in any of these shakes
07:17 - Grandma Lucille is our lead tastemaker and she’s quite opinionated
10:01 - It’s simple, it’s nutrition for older adults
12:47 - Not going to sugarcoat it, raising is really hard
15:57 - The end consumer matters the most
18:47 - A feeling like nothing I’ve ever experienced

• 40 years: How long the senior nutrition category has gone without meaningful innovation

• 10 months: From first test to market-ready formula

• 0: Ingredients shared with existing incumbents (other than water and salt)

The biggest opportunity in CPG isn’t a niche. It’s a blind spot. Adults 65+ are nearly 20% of the US population, yet account for less than 1% of food and beverage innovation. The products designed to help them haven’t changed since the 1980s. Nearly 50 years of neglect in one of the largest consumer segments in the country. That’s not a gap. That’s an wide-open opportunity.

Study what’s broken, not what’s working. When Jess brought existing products to the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health, the nutritionists didn’t suggest improvements. They told her to throw them out. “I cannot put a single worse ingredient in any of these if I tried.” She started from scratch, using none of the same ingredients except water and salt. Most brands try to slightly improve what already exists. Sometimes the better move is to see what’s broken and start over.

The end consumer and the buyer are different people. You have to win both. In senior living, the resident doesn’t choose what gets stocked. The facility does. That means Lucille has to be delicious enough for residents to finish the product, and effective enough for buyers to justify the premium. Jess started at the source. When residents like what they’re drinking, outcomes improve, waste lessens, and the cost per serving works itself out.

Feedback is just raw material. Pattern recognition is the real skill. Jess ran blind taste tests, hosted events at senior living communities, sampled at conferences. She heard all kinds of opinions: loud, contradictory, occasionally stinging. “There will be a lot of noise. One person’s feedback can sting harder, but it’s not representative of the majority.” The job isn’t to listen to everyone. It’s to identify the difference between personal opinion and larger pattern.

Packaging is part of the product. Lucille’s lightweight carton, disposable straw, and easy-puncture tab aren’t just nice design. They’re accessibility. As people age, things like grip strength, joint mobility, and dexterity change. A tightly sealed cap that feels normal to most consumers can become a daily frustration. Removing that is part of what makes the product stand out.

Market signal → The best opportunities in CPG aren’t always in what’s trending. Sometimes they’re in who’s been ignored.

The blank page brief

The instinct is to study the incumbents and iterate. The problem is you end up building a better version of something that’s already wrong. Start here instead:

1. Autopsy the incumbent. Don’t look at what’s working. Look at what are settling for because nothing better exists.

2. Write your negative brief. What would you never put in your product? What would you never compromise? Sometimes the “no” list matters more than the feature list.

3. Find what nobody ever tried. Not what the category does badly. What it never attempted at all. The unasked questions are where the white space lives.

4. Build from scratch, then compare. Pretend the category doesn’t exist. What would you make? Then compare it to what’s on shelf and find your differentiators.

5. Turn the gap into the pitch. The distance between what exists and what you built is the story. Not “we’re better.” Better for who? Better how? Better why?

Most CPG founders think about Instacart wrong.

They see it as a logistics channel. A way to get product into grocery orders. Something that “just runs in the background.” And because of that, they set it up once, let it run on auto, and wonder why results are mediocre.

Here’s what the brands actually winning on Instacart understand: it’s not a delivery app. It’s a media platform. And once you see it that way, everything changes.

Mateusz Drela, founder of RMIQ, has spent 17 years in performance marketing helping CPG brands drive real sales through retail media. Here’s how he thinks about Instacart.

Instacart is the great equalizer. Because Instacart has no physical shelves, it has no physical shelf politics. No slotting fees for eye-level placement. The algorithm doesn’t know your revenue. It knows your bids and your relevance. That’s it. And crucially: when a shopper types “tortilla chips” into Instacart, they’re not thinking about you. They’re browsing. That’s the moment you win them.

The one format that actually moves product. Instacart offers a suite of ad products: Reach, Engage, Acquire. Ignore most of them. The format that matters is Sponsored Products (also called Sponsored Search). It’s the only format directly tied to sales velocity. Ads appear where decisions get made: search results, homepage, “frequently bought with” sections, and checkout.

A note for early-stage brands. If you’re spending under $150/day on Instacart, A/B testing is probably a waste of time. You won’t reach statistical significance fast enough to draw conclusions. Instead, run auto campaigns first. Not as your long-term strategy, but as a keyword harvesting tool. Let the algorithm identify what’s converting. Take those insights, build a manual campaign, and go from there.

Start converting on Instacart

The biggest one-month jump in grocery prices in nearly four years: The category called “food at home” (aka, your grocery store)

Where are you getting your health advice? If you’re like half of U.S. adults under 50, the answer is influencers and podcasters.

Say bye to your caprese salad: The price of tomatoes are up almost 30%.

When Costco says, “I’m built different”: Why Costco pays $30/hr and Target doesn’t.

The most-followed big box retailer on TikTok: Target launches Club Target and Target Ambassadors (after retiring its previous commissions-based creator program).

Groceries get a side gig: Prepared food sections grew 2.8% in dollar sales and 1.8% in unit sales the last year.

May 19 (NY): Consumer Founders Rooftop Happy Hour

May 20 (Virtual): Workshop: AI for CPG Brands

May 20 (NY): DTC Dinner Club

May 20 (NY): How Smart Brands Win in a Crowded Aisle

May 20-21 (NY): The Lead Summit

May 21 (Virtual): Where the Dogs Of Society Howl: CPG, Growth, and the Exit Nobody Posts

May 31 (Virtual): Bon Appetit Pantry Awards Submission Deadline

June 3 (NY and Virtual): Clicks, Bricks & Everything In-Between

June 7-9 (Orlando): IDDBA 2026

June 10-11 (Chicago): 2026 KeHE Holiday Show

June 28-30 (NY): Summer Fancy Food Show

June 29 (NY): The Early Round: Founders & Investors

Most CPG founders think about Instacart wrong.

They see it as a logistics channel. A way to get product into grocery orders. Something that “just runs in the background.” And because of that, they set it up once, let it run on auto, and wonder why results are mediocre.

Here’s what the brands actually winning on Instacart understand: it’s not a delivery app. It’s a customer acquisition platform. And once you see it that way, everything changes.

Mateusz Drela has spent 17 years in performance marketing and now runs RMIQ, an AI-powered retail media platform that helps growing CPG brands generate real sales across retail media networks. Their clients include Smash Kitchen, Smearcase, Heirloom Coffee, and Kooshy Croutons.

Here's how he thinks about Instacart.

00:07 - The moment Amazon became an ad network
02:39 - A platform where size doesn’t matter
04:38 - Your first 30 days on Instacart
08:00 - More keywords, more problems
10:02 - 3 brands, 3 different ROAS

Why Instacart is the great equalizer.

Instacart doesn’t own a single store. But it sells across 1,800 national, regional, and local retail banners, covering nearly 100,000 locations in all 50 states. For a startup with distribution at three regional chains, that’s the same playing field as a Fortune 500 conglomerate.

Because Instacart has no physical shelves, it has no physical shelf politics. No slotting fees for eye-level placement. No penalties for being a small brand. The algorithm doesn’t know your revenue. It knows your bids and your relevance. That’s it.

And crucially: when a shopper types “tortilla chips” into Instacart, they’re not thinking about you. They’re browsing. That’s the moment you win them.

Up to 90% of sales generated through Instacart ads are from customers who have never bought your brand before on the platform. Of those, 30–50% become repeat buyers. This is new-to-brand acquisition at a scale that’s genuinely hard to replicate anywhere else.

The one format that actually moves product.

Instacart offers a suite of ad products: Reach, Engage, Acquire. Ignore most of them.

The format that matters is Sponsored Products (also called Sponsored Search). It’s the only format directly tied to sales velocity. Ads appear where decisions get made: search results, homepage, “frequently bought with” sections, and checkout. It’s performance-based. It’s measurable. And it’s where 70–80% of total Instacart ad spend should go.

Everything else is brand awareness. That matters eventually. But if you’re a founder trying to move units, Sponsored Products is where the work happens.

The 4 moves that separate average from excellent.

Here’s where most brands leave money on the table. They set up Instacart’s automated campaign tools, watch ROAS hover around 2.0–2.5, and call it a day. But automated campaigns are designed to be good enough for everyone. Which means they’re optimized for no one.

Moving from automated to advanced management isn’t complicated. It’s just specific.

Move 1: Go manual. Automated campaigns work by spreading budget across categories and testing keywords at scale. Instacart’s algorithm can’t favor one brand over another, so it defaults to average.

Switching to manual campaign setup puts you in control of where dollars go and why. Brands that make this switch consistently see ROAS jump significantly. One specialty coffee brand went from 2.4 to 4.9. A tortilla chip brand went from 2.2 to 4.3.

Move 2: One ad group per product. Grouping multiple SKUs into a single ad group feels efficient. It isn’t. Different products have wildly different performance profiles. One SKU might return 3x ROAS. Another returns 6x.

When they’re bundled together, you can’t bid specifically for the winner. You end up underinvesting in your best performer and subsidizing your worst one. Build one ad group per product. It takes longer to set up, but it pays off immediately.

Move 3: Bid at the keyword level, based on your data. Instacart will offer you “suggested bids.” Ignore them. Suggested bids are calibrated across all advertisers in a category, not for your margins, your ROAS targets, or your specific product.

Instead, build a product-keyword matrix. For each product, map out which keywords actually convert and bid according to your own performance data. A tortilla chip brand should bid aggressively on “tortilla chips” and much lower on “crackers” (even if crackers are technically relevant).

Your bid should reflect what you can afford to pay per click while still hitting your target ROAS. Start with a target (say, 4.0), calculate your maximum allowable cost-per-click, and build your bids around that number.

Move 4: Maintain weekly, not monthly. This isn’t a set-and-forget channel. Extract performance data weekly. Kill underperforming keywords. There’s a catch: Instacart’s UI doesn’t let you pause keywords.

The workaround is to either drop the bid to the $0.30 minimum or rebuild the ad group without the keyword. It’s annoying. It’s also the difference between wasting budget on irrelevant terms and running tight, efficient campaigns.

A note for early-stage brands.

If you’re spending under $150/day on Instacart, A/B testing is probably a waste of time. You won’t reach statistical significance fast enough to draw conclusions. Instead, run auto campaigns first. Not as your long-term strategy, but as a keyword harvesting tool.

Let the algorithm identify what’s converting. Then take those insights, build a manual campaign structure, and go from there. Scale, then optimize. In that order.

The operational details most founders miss.

• Retailer-specific ads. Instacart generally runs ads across all retailers where your product is listed. But if you want to advertise specifically on Sprouts’ or Thrive Market’s website, you need a separate account — unless you’re running through a unified third-party platform.

• Data feed timing. If your product isn’t showing up on Instacart, the issue is almost always the retailer’s data feed. National chains update weekly. Regional retailers often update monthly. If you just got a new account, you might be waiting. Chase your retailer to make sure they’ve included you in the specific feed Instacart pulls from.

• SKU-level targeting. If you have an exclusive product at one retailer, you can effectively target only that retailer by running ads only for that SKU. It’s a useful workaround for retailer exclusivity situations.

Instacart is the virtual number three grocery retailer in the United States. It’s also the most underutilized acquisition channel in CPG for brands that are still treating it like a logistics tool.

The brands winning have made a simple mental shift: stop thinking about how your product gets delivered. Start thinking about how your brand gets discovered. That shift changes how you build campaigns, how you bid, how you measure, and ultimately, how you grow.

For more about retail media, check out Mat’s new book Retail Media: Strategy, Structure, and Execution: A Practical Framework for Brand Managers and CMOs.

Happy Tuesday. This week, we’re sharing:

• How childhood best friends turned a Saturday hangover into a bottled cocktail brand

• The hot girlification of grocery

• Diet Coke parties, carnivores bond over brisket and butter, ice cream therapy

Meet Michael Gu and Perry Ya, co-founders of Wild Mannered.

Their parents were neighbors in New Jersey, the only Chinese families in the area. They’ve known each other since birth. “Like the cousin you’re forced to see every Christmas or New Year’s,” recalls Michael.

They both ended up in tech, spending their late-20s closing out Friday nights in NYC’s Koreatown over green-bottle soju. Then came the hangovers and the questions: What’s in this and why isn’t there a cleaner version?

So they made one. A ready-to-serve, lower-ABV cocktail with a soju and wine base.

The name flips “mild mannered,” a backhanded compliment Asian American kids grow up hearing. The product flips the usual RTD format: not a single-serve can, but a bottle you pour for those around you.

After a pivotal rebrand, sampling shots through a plexiglass case, and select partnerships with mahjong clubs and gaming lounges, Wild Mannered is in almost 100 accounts across New York, growing 130% year over year.

✍️ This week’s Founder Feature was written by Param Gopalasamy. He runs PG Marketing Consulting, specializing in content, product messaging, events, and more. In his free time, he enjoys creative writing, rewatching the same 3-4 shows, and working on his golf swing (where he’ll be spending most of his later years if things go according to plan).

00:11 - The minds behind Wild Mannered
01:29 - 2 p.m. on a Wednesday tasting soju and getting tipsy
05:58 - It’s like eating a piece of black licorice
08:19 - The person that doesn’t grab the High Noon variety pack
11:45 - About to hit 100, which is a huge milestone
15:27 - Chock-full of fun little restrictive tidbits
19:39 - 85-90% of our business is retail
22:32 - Voice of customer matters more than ours

• 130%: Year-over-year revenue growth from 2024 to 2025, trending higher in 2026

• ~100 accounts: Retail footprint across New York

• 3 initial SKUs: Strawberry Basil, Cucumber Lime Mint, Pineapple Ginger. The original Gen 1 lineup. (Yes, that's a Pokémon reference.)

Your category decision is also your distribution decision. Michael and Perry didn’t choose a soju-wine hybrid just because it tasted better. Wine carries lower federal taxes, fewer DTC shipping restrictions, and access to channels: beer-and-wine restaurants, cafes that convert into wine bars, accounts without full liquor licenses. The product category determines where you can sell.

The first stores aren’t where you make money. They’re where you find out what the product actually is. At launch, Wild Mannered’s $19.99 bottle sat next to $5.99 mass-market soju. Customers got sticker shock. Not because the price was wrong; because the positioning was. Their ready-to-serve bottle is something you bring to a social gathering, something you share with the people around you. Once that clicked, everything else followed: new name, different shelf, different conversation entirely.

Find where your product makes sense. Then keep showing up there. Soju isn’t just a beverage. It’s a behavior. The pour-for-each-other, take-a-shot-together move that happens naturally around a table. Wild Mannered became the exclusive alcohol provider for a mahjong club. It show up at supper clubs. It’s on the menu at a gaming lounge. Every partnership reinforces the same core idea of bringing people together.

Go deep in one market before you go wide. Two years in, Wild Mannered is still focused on New York, where every store is individually owned. No liquor chains, no one call that opens fifty doors. “It’ll grind your gears,” Perry says. But that grind gave them a pitch that works, positioning that lands, and the emotional calluses to handle rejection without spiraling.

Buyers listen to the voice of a customer. Not yours. A woman in Queens DM’d them that Wild Mannered was the best thing she’d ever tasted. She buys a bottle every week. When her store held off on reordering after the rebrand, she went in and asked for it herself. The store placed the order that day. “The voice of a customer matters so much more than ours,” Michael says. “If a customer wants this stuff, the store’s going to order it.”

Market signal → Brands are at their strongest when the purchase is about more than the product. If you can build emotional connection to an occasion, that's the juice (in today's case, soju) that drives sales.

The occasion fit test

Every placement is a bet. Here’s how to know if it’s worth taking.

• The occasion: What is the moment your product is for? Not the demographic. The moment. The morning commute, the post-workout window, the dinner party. Be specific. “Anytime” is not an answer.

• The ritual: Is there already a behavior your product slots into, or are you trying to invent one? (Think Oreos in milk building off dunking biscuits in tea.) Leaning on a ritual that exists is the easier path. Teaching a new one is harder.

• The placement: Does this shelf, venue, or event put the product in front of someone at the right moment? Or are you just happy to be there?

• The partner: Does this partnership reinforce the occasion or dilute it? If you’d take the deal for the reach alone, that’s a sign. Reach without occasion is borrowed.

I wrote about hot girl food for Cool Shiny Culture. And it starts with pickles.

Regular pickles ask nothing. Hot Girl Pickles have plans. Regular soda is a beverage. Hot Girl Soda is a whole thing.

Gendered food isn’t new. It’s just never been this fun. For decades, “food for women” meant 100-calorie packs, Special K, anything “lite.” Hot girl is something else entirely.

What makes something “hot girl” isn’t the product. It’s the feeling of buying it. These brands aren’t trying to speak to everyone. They’re designed so the right person picks them up immediately and everyone else puts the jar back down.

For a long time that would’ve been considered a problem. Every brand wanted to be for everyone. The bigger the audience, the better the business. Now, niche is the point.

Read the whole thing

Meta overbilled you last month. You just don’t know it yet.

This week’s partner Dash.fi audited $20M in ad spend and found 5-33% in billing discrepancies across the board. Misallocated budgets, inflated metrics, out-of-geo ads you paid for that never reached your customer.

To put it into perspective, if you’re spending $50k/month, that’s up to $15k gone. Every single month.

Most founders find out too late. Or never.

Dash.fi catches it automatically. Flags every discrepancy, recovers the difference, and gives you 3% back on every ad dollar on top.

This isn’t a better credit card. It’s a margin recovery tool that happens to be a credit card. See what Dash.fi recovers for you.

Get a free 5-minute demo

$4.99 vs. $5: Out of 500 grocery items on Walmart.com, only five (~1%) ended in .00.

Ice cream therapy: For Mental Health Month, Van Leeuwen and Rula turned the “treat yourself” impulse into a therapy session.

Diet Coke parties: In India, scarcity made Diet Coke a status drink. People are paying $16 a ticket to sip “Coke-tails.”

Oatly’s first full year of growth: First growth quarter since going public, thanks to repositioning from alt-dairy to “an experience canvas for the beverages market.”

And at the other end of the table: Carnivores bond over brisket and butter at Meatstock.

Meatless MREs are coming: The U.S. Army is the ultimate CPG stress test: shelf-stable, palatable, manufactured in combat zones.

Cheers to beer sales: Anheuser-Busch InBev sold more drinks for the first time since 2023 in the first quarter.

May 13 (Virtual): Practice Your Retail Buyer Pitch

May 20 (Virtual): Workshop: AI for CPG Brands

May 20 (NY): DTC Dinner Club

May 20 (NY): How Smart Brands Win in a Crowded Aisle

May 20-21 (NY): The Lead Summit

May 31 (Virtual): Bon Appetit Pantry Awards Submission Deadline

June 3 (NY and Virtual): Clicks, Bricks & Everything In-Between

June 7-9 (Orlando): IDDBA 2026

June 10-11 (Chicago): 2026 KeHE Holiday Show

June 28-30 (NYC): Summer Fancy Food Show