Startup To Scale: Recent Episodes

Foodbevy

Startup To Scale is your resource for growing your food, beverage, and CPG company from a young company to a successful business.

What does it look like to build a CPG brand when you’ve already seen both success and failure?

Kristoffer Quiaoit, founder of Good Journey Foods, shares how he’s approaching this company with a new mindset grounded in self-awareness, mental health, and long-term sustainability.

We start with how Good Journey is being built today, from decision making to daily practices, and why staying even keel has become a core part of his leadership style.

Then we go back to Nui Foods, the company that came before, and unpack what happened, what he learned, and how that experience forced him to confront parts of himself that ultimately made him a better founder.

We also get into the role of nutrition, parenting, and personal development, and why building a business often becomes the catalyst for deeper personal growth.

Startup to Scale is a podcast by Foodbevy, an online community to connect emerging food, beverage, and CPG founders to great resources and partners to grow their business. Visit us at Foodbevy.com to learn about becoming a member or an industry partner today.

Coco5 started with a simple mission: create a better hydration drink for athletes. What began inside the Chicago Blackhawks organization has evolved into a fast-growing, athlete-owned brand distributed across the country.

In this episode, Marc Doggett, CEO of Coco5, shares the realities of scaling a beverage brand today, from retail strategy and channel expansion to innovation decisions and leadership hiring. We explore why Coco5is investing beyond grocery, what they learned from Costco roadshows, how they think about product innovation, and the systems required to build a lasting brand in a crowded hydration category.

If you're building a beverage brand, navigating retail growth, or thinking about your next stage of scale, this episode is packed with actionable lessons.

Startup to Scale is a podcast by Foodbevy, an online community to connect emerging food, beverage, and CPG founders to great resources and partners to grow their business. Visit us at Foodbevy.com to learn about becoming a member or an industry partner today.

Distributor deductions can quietly drain a CPG brand’s margins, especially when there is no clear process for planning, reviewing, and disputing them. In this episode, I sit down with Yuval Selik, co-founder and CEO of Promomash, to explore how AI is changing deduction and trade spend management.

We discuss where AI can save time, why clean data and proactive planning still matter, and why experienced people must remain involved in every decision. Yuval also shares why relying entirely on AI could lead to inaccurate accruals, incorrect promotional matching, unnecessary disputes, and damaged distributor relationships.

Startup to Scale is a podcast by Foodbevy, an online community to connect emerging food, beverage, and CPG founders to great resources and partners to grow their business. Visit us at Foodbevy.com to learn about becoming a member or an industry partner today.

Creating a great product is only the beginning. The real challenge is getting people to notice it, remember it, and ultimately buy it.

In this conversation, I sit down withDuncan Alney, founder of Firebelly Marketing, to explore what it takes to grow a CPG brand in today’s crowded and fast-moving market. We discuss why founder-led storytelling matters, how brands can turn one core story into consistent content, and why consumers need to see your message multiple times before they take action.

Duncan also shares lessons from launching his own tea brand, Brown Warrior, and explains why smaller brands can use speed, creativity, and authenticity to compete with much larger companies.

Listen in to learn how to build awareness, create familiarity, support sales, and develop content that connects with real people, not just algorithms.

Startup to Scale is a podcast by Foodbevy, an online community to connect emerging food, beverage, and CPG founders to great resources and partners to grow their business. Visit us at Foodbevy.com to learn about becoming a member or an industry partner today.

AI is rapidly changing the packaging design world, but most founders are still trying to figure out where it actually creates value.

In this episode, I sit down with Michael Keplinger from SmashBrand to break down how AI is being used in packaging design today, where it helps accelerate creative workflows, and where human strategy and expertise still matter most.

We discuss:

The biggest misconceptions founders have about AI-generated packaging
What AI is genuinely good at in the design process
Why strategy and consumer psychology still can’t be automated
How founders can use AI to communicate ideas more clearly to agencies
The risks of relying too heavily on AI-generated concepts
How agencies are adapting their workflows internally
What packaging design could look like over the next 3–5 years

Whether you’re designing your first package or managing a growing retail brand, this episode offers a practical look at how to use AI as a tool instead of a shortcut.

Startup to Scale is a podcast by Foodbevy, an online community to connect emerging food, beverage, and CPG founders to great resources and partners to grow their business. Visit us at Foodbevy.com to learn about becoming a member or an industry partner today.

Getting in front of retail buyers can feel impossible, but it does not have to be a guessing game.

In this episode, I sit down with James Pippin of Good Now Foods and Harvest Hub to talk about what actually gets a buyer’s attention, how to send better pitches, when to follow up, and how brands can use the right data to improve their chances of getting on shelf.

Startup to Scale is a podcast by Foodbevy, an online community to connect emerging food, beverage, and CPG founders to great resources and partners to grow their business. Visit us at Foodbevy.com to learn about becoming a member or an industry partner today.

Packaging is often the first thing consumers notice, but knowing when and how to update it is one of the toughest decisions founders face.

In this episode of Startup to Scale, I sits down with Christopher Jane founder of Proper Good to discuss the real story behind his brand's packaging refresh. They unpack what prompted the redesign, the challenges of evolving a brand without losing existing customers, and what it was like working through a comprehensive packaging audit with EO Space.

Whether you're considering a subtle refresh or a complete overhaul, this conversation offers a behind-the-scenes look at the decisions, tradeoffs, and lessons every CPG founder should understand before changing what sits on the shelf.

Sponsored by EO Space.

EO Spaceis an agile food & beverage design studio helping growth-stage CPG brands create world-class branding, packaging, and marketing built for modern retailers and today’s consumers. Get an expert review of your packaging. Limited Offer: Free Packaging Audit

Startup to Scale is a podcast by Foodbevy, an online community to connect emerging food, beverage, and CPG founders to great resources and partners to grow their business. Visit us at Foodbevy.com to learn about becoming a member or an industry partner today.

Growth creates opportunity but also financial pressure.

As brands expand distribution, increase production, and invest in marketing, founders are often forced to make difficult decisions about how to fund that growth.

In this episode, I sits down with Dakota Sheets, founder of Dog Sauce, and Emily Reeves, VP of Capital Solutions at Bridge, to discuss the realities of scaling a CPG business. Dakota shares lessons from growing the brand and navigating cash flow challenges, while Emily provides an inside look at how lenders evaluate brands and what founders should know before pursuing capital.

Whether you’re preparing for your first major retail expansion or simply trying to better understand your financing options, this conversation offers practical insights from both sides of the table.

Startup to Scale is a podcast by Foodbevy, an online community to connect emerging food, beverage, and CPG founders to great resources and partners to grow their business. Visit us at Foodbevy.com to learn about becoming a member or an industry partner today.

In this episode, I talk with Adam O’Connor, founder of Smidge Beverage, about the financial side of building a CPG brand. We discuss cash flow, margins, inventory planning, forecasting, trade spend, billbacks, and why knowing your numbers is essential for growth.

Adam also shares how working with the right accounting partner helped him make better decisions and build a stronger financial foundation.

This episode is sponsored by BELAY, formerly Accountfully, which helps CPG brands with bookkeeping, accounting, tax support, and financial visibility.

Startup to Scale is a podcast by Foodbevy, an online community to connect emerging food, beverage, and CPG founders to great resources and partners to grow their business. Visit us at Foodbevy.com to learn about becoming a member or an industry partner today.

Amazon can drive sales, but that doesn’t always mean your brand is profitable.

In this episode, I talk with Ryan Eales of The Amazon Whisper about the common mistakes CPG brands make on Amazon, from ads and inventory to listings, keywords, and agency expectations.

If you’re selling on Amazon or thinking about launching there, this episode will help you understand what it really takes to grow profitably.

Startup to Scale is a podcast by Foodbevy, an online community to connect emerging food, beverage, and CPG founders to great resources and partners to grow their business. Visit us at Foodbevy.com to learn about becoming a member or an industry partner today.

What actually happens when a CPG founder and a creative agency build a brand together from the ground up?

In this episode, I sit down with Dana Francks of JK Creative NYC and Grace Finerman of Date Smarter Snacks to break down the real-world branding process behind an emerging snack brand.

We walk through how Date Smarter developed its visual identity, packaging, ecommerce presence, and overall customer experience and why having one connected creative partner can make scaling a brand significantly easier.

The conversation also explores:

The hidden operational cost of fragmented branding
How cohesive design improves retail readiness and ecommerce conversion
What founders should prioritize first when budgets are tight
How to create premium perception without overspending
The relationship dynamics between founders and creative agencies
Lessons learned from building a modern snack brand in a crowded category

If you’re building a CPG brand and trying to make your packaging, website, social content, and customer experience actually feel connected, this episode is packed with practical insights.

Startup to Scale is a podcast by Foodbevy, an online community to connect emerging food, beverage, and CPG founders to great resources and partners to grow their business. Visit us at Foodbevy.com to learn about becoming a member or an industry partner today.

Jeff Church has built, scaled, and rebuilt in CPG.

As co-founder of Suja Life, he helped take the brand from zero to $100M+ in just over five years, becoming one of the most recognized names in the beverage space.

We also get into what he’s building now, from mentoring founders and writing his book to launching a new protein soda brand, Proda, nationwide at Sprouts Farmers Market, and developing a CPG-focused AI tool.

As an 8x founder and BevNET Person of the Year, Jeff shares practical, execution-focused advice through CPG Founders Group that you can actually apply as you grow. Check out his free CPG toolkit atcpgfoundersgroup.com/resources.

Startup to Scale is a podcast by Foodbevy, an online community to connect emerging food, beverage, and CPG founders to great resources and partners to grow their business. Visit us at Foodbevy.com to learn about becoming a member or an industry partner today.

In this episode, I sit down with Danny Walsh, co-founder of Peak State Coffee, to talk about how he turned his own coffee and health problem into a $300K+ brand without relying on retail or outside funding.

We get into how Peak State grew through farmers markets, ecommerce, and repeat customers, why Danny chose to bootstrap, and how he’s balancing growth, profitability, and impact as a B Corp certified brand.

Sponsored by Peasy - the free operating system built by former CPG founders for modern, scrappy teams. Peasy gives CPG brands 100% free access to its full platform, no limits, no credit card, no contracts replacing spreadsheets with one simple system for purchasing, receiving, production, inventory, and sales. You can get started in under 10 minutes with hands-on onboarding support in just one week.

Startup to Scale is a podcast by Foodbevy, an online community to connect emerging food, beverage, and CPG founders to great resources and partners to grow their business. Visit us at Foodbevy.com to learn about becoming a member or an industry partner today.

Off-price and value retail is often misunderstood. A lot of founders think of it as a last resort for excess inventory, but it can actually be a strategic channel for discovery, customer acquisition, and incremental revenue.

In this episode, I talk with Matt Goldbloom, Founder and CEO of Common Shelf, about how brands can approach retailers like TJ Maxx, Marshalls, Ross, Burlington, and HomeGoods with the right strategy. We break down what buyers are looking for, how the treasure hunt model works, and how founders can think about pricing, packaging, and protecting brand equity.

We also get into how Matt is building a lean team using global talent and AI-supported workflows to move faster and reduce founder bottlenecks.

This episode is sponsored by Plus Forty, which helps CPG brands and service providers build lean, reliable teams with vetted global talent.

Exclusive Foodbevy Offer: Plus Forty is giving 2 brands 5 free VA hours with no upfront costs. Their CPG- and AI-capable VAs can help with retail research, content repurposing, admin cleanup, inbox support, data entry, SOPs, and reporting.

Apply for 5 free VA hours to see what a Plus Forty VA can do for your business. APPLY HERE

Startup to Scale is a podcast by Foodbevy, an online community to connect emerging food, beverage, and CPG founders to great resources and partners to grow their business. Visit us at Foodbevy.com to learn about becoming a member or an industry partner today.

Founders are getting more retail opportunities right now than we’ve seen in a long time.

But retail growth only works if the economics work.

In this episode, Abby Richards walks through how to pressure test a retail opportunity before you commit. We break down contribution margin at the case level, how trade spend actually impacts your numbers, and why volume alone won’t fix a broken model.

We also get into the three places most brands break: retailer economics, cash timing, and company-level reality.

If you’re scaling into retail or about to land a major account, this episode will help you make sure growth actually moves your business forward.

• Download The CASH FIGHT Framework - a free resource on our website

• Follow Abby on LinkedIn, Instagram or subscribe to The CPG CFO YouTube Channel

Startup to Scale is a podcast by Foodbevy, an online community to connect emerging food, beverage, and CPG founders to great resources and partners to grow their business. Visit us at Foodbevy.com to learn about becoming a member or an industry partner today.

Inventory is one of the most important and most overlooked parts of running a CPG brand. Too little inventory means missed sales and unhappy retailers. Too much ties up cash and creates operational chaos.

In this episode, I’m joined by Matt Lynn from BELAY to break down how emerging CPG brands should think about inventory management software when to implement it, how to choose the right system, and how to set it up correctly from day one.

We talk through the common mistakes founders make when moving from spreadsheets, what good inventory data actually enables in your business, and how the right systems can unlock better forecasting, production planning, and retail execution.

If you’re still managing inventory in spreadsheets or you’ve implemented a system but it still feels messy this conversation will give you a practical roadmap to get it right.

Startup to Scale is a podcast by Foodbevy, an online community to connect emerging food, beverage, and CPG founders to great resources and partners to grow their business. Visit us at Foodbevy.com to learn about becoming a member or an industry partner today.

In this episode, I sat down with Mac Villarreal, founder of I Eat My Greens, to talk about how he is bringing fresh, flavorful refrigerated soups to a category that has felt stale for years. We also get into the challenge of not just getting on shelf, but selling off the shelf, and Mateusz Drela from Retail Media IQ joins the conversation to share how digital retail media can help brands drive retail velocity and smarter growth.

Startup to Scale is a podcast by Foodbevy, an online community to connect emerging food, beverage, and CPG founders to great resources and partners to grow their business. Visit us at Foodbevy.com to learn about becoming a member or an industry partner today.

Big CPG brands don’t win just because they have bigger budgets.

They win because they understand how shoppers actually make decisions in-store.

In this episode, I sit down with Kevin Smith from SmashBrand to break down what large CPG companies know about shelf performance that most emerging brands completely miss.

We talk about:

Why most packaging fails before a shopper even reads it
The science behind shopper behavior and visual attention
What big brands test before going to retail
How founders can apply enterprise-level methods without enterprise-level budgets

If you're launching into retail or trying to increase velocity this episode is your playbook for competing smarter, not louder.

Startup to Scale is a podcast by Foodbevy, an online community to connect emerging food, beverage, and CPG founders to great resources and partners to grow their business. Visit us at Foodbevy.com to learn about becoming a member or an industry partner today.

In this episode of the Startup to Scale Podcast, I sit down with Smári Ásmundsson, founder of NØRSE CØDE and the former founder of Smári Organics.

Smári spent more than 10 years building Smári Organics into a nationally distributed yogurt brand carried by retailers like Whole Foods Market, Target, and Walmart, reaching $5M in annual sales. But when COVID hit, the business collapsed.

Instead of walking away from CPG, Smári started again.

Today he’s building NØRSE CØDE, a plant-based protein powder brand with a proprietary formulation, strong repeat purchase rates, and a focus on building a profitable, durable business from the ground up.

In this conversation, we talk about the emotional reality of losing a company, the lessons that only come from scaling to national distribution, and how Smári is applying 15 years of hard-earned experience to build his next brand the right way.

Startup to Scale is a podcast by Foodbevy, an online community to connect emerging food, beverage, and CPG founders to great resources and partners to grow their business. Visit us at Foodbevy.com to learn about becoming a member or an industry partner today.

Hiring a CPG broker can unlock retail growth or become an expensive distraction.

In this episode, I break down the real role brokers play in scaling a food and beverage brand with Lisa from Run the Numbers.From understanding retailer relationships and review cycles to structuring compensation and setting performance expectations, this is a tactical guide for founders navigating wholesale growth.

We cover:

What brokers actually do (and what they don’t)
When it makes sense to hire one and when it doesn’t
How brokers get paid and what that means for your margins
The differences between brokers, in-house sales, and fractional sales support
How to evaluate, manage, and measure broker performance

If you’re thinking about retail expansion or already working with a broker, this episode will help you make smarter decisions and avoid costly mistakes.

Read our Ultimate Guide to CPG Brokers Here: https://www.foodbevy.com/the-ultimate-guide-to-cpg-brokers/

Startup to Scale is a podcast by Foodbevy, an online community to connect emerging food, beverage, and CPG founders to great resources and partners to grow their business. Visit us at Foodbevy.com to learn about becoming a member or an industry partner today.

In this episode, I sit down with Kun Yang, CEO and co-founder of Pricklee, to talk about the brand’s shift from cactus water to natural hydration. We break down what sparked the rebrand, how the team tackled consumer education barriers, and why simplifying the message became key to scaling in a crowded beverage category.

This conversation also covers packaging strategy, retail rollout decisions, product-market fit, and the role clear positioning plays in driving trial and repeat purchase. A great listen for founders thinking about rebranding or refining how their product shows up on shelf.

Startup to Scale is a podcast by Foodbevy, an online community to connect emerging food, beverage, and CPG founders to great resources and partners to grow their business. Visit us at Foodbevy.com to learn about becoming a member or an industry partner today.

As companies grow, something subtle often happens: the business starts to change the founder. Decisions get filtered through investors, advisors, benchmarks, and expectations and slowly, the company can stop feeling like an extension of the person who started it.

Today I want to talk about identity drift what it looks like, why it happens, and how founders can reconnect with the voice and values that shaped their business in the first place.

I’ve invited on Veronica Lehman with JPG Resources to explore how founders lose (and rediscover) their intuition as they scale, how to stay aligned while bringing in outside voices, and the quiet warning signs that the business might be running you instead of the other way around.

Startup to Scale is a podcast by Foodbevy, an online community to connect emerging food, beverage, and CPG founders to great resources and partners to grow their business. Visit us at Foodbevy.com to learn about becoming a member or an industry partner today.

Affiliate marketing can be a strong growth lever for CPG brands when it’s approached with the right strategy. In this episode, I talk with David Abbey, co-founder of Endlss, about how brands can turn affiliate and ambassador programs into a real growth channel instead of treating them like one-off campaigns.

We talk about what makes these programs work, how to find the right partners, and how to build a system that drives sales over time.

If you’re looking for a place to start, we also included a link to Getting Started with Affiliate Marketing here: https://getendlss.com/resources/the-ambassador-program-playbook.

Startup to Scale is a podcast by Foodbevy, an online community to connect emerging food, beverage, and CPG founders to great resources and partners to grow their business. Visit us at Foodbevy.com to learn about becoming a member or an industry partner today.

What happens when collaboration becomes the growth strategy?

In this episode, we sit down with the founding team behind TUYYO Foods to unpack the decision to merge Nemi Snacks, Todo Verde, and TUYYO Foods into one unified cultural CPG brand.

This conversation goes beyond press-release headlines. We talk about the realities of building independently, the behind-the-scenes conversations that led to alignment, and why they believed growing together was the more powerful long-term move. From shared values and cultural integrity to operations, leadership, and representation, this is a rare look at what intentional scale can really look like in CPG.

Startup to Scale is a podcast by Foodbevy, an online community to connect emerging food, beverage, and CPG founders to great resources and partners to grow their business. Visit us at Foodbevy.com to learn about becoming a member or an industry partner today.

Gen Z is not shopping the way Millennials did and they are definitely not responding to the same packaging playbook.

In this episode, I sits down with Sanders, founder of Nuex Creative, to unpack how Gen Z discovers new food and beverage brands, what signals authenticity and what feels forced, and why traditional front of pack claims have stopped doing the heavy lifting.

They explore the visual languages Gen Z actually responds to, where bold design helps or hurts trust, and how founders with limited budgets can make high impact packaging decisions without a full redesign.

If you are building a brand for the next generation of consumers or wondering why your packaging looks great but is not converting, this episode will help you rethink what matters now.

Startup to Scale is a podcast by Foodbevy, an online community to connect emerging food, beverage, and CPG founders to great resources and partners to grow their business. Visit us at Foodbevy.com to learn about becoming a member or an industry partner today.

Scaling a CPG brand doesn’t always mean hiring fast or hiring locally. In this episode, I sits down with Luke Anthony, founder of Morning Made, to break down how he used global, VA-style talent to grow the brand without overextending cash or complexity.

Luke shares how international support helped him move faster across marketing, operations, and day-to-day execution, the lessons he learned managing remote talent as a founder, and the systems that made it all work. That hands-on experience eventually led to the creation of Plus Forty, an agency designed to help other founders do this the right way.

This episode is for founders who know they need help, but want to scale intentionally, not recklessly.

Startup to Scale is a podcast by Foodbevy, an online community to connect emerging food, beverage, and CPG founders to great resources and partners to grow their business. Visit us at Foodbevy.com to learn about becoming a member or an industry partner today.

Growing a CPG brand gets messy fast. More SKUs, more people, more tools, more decisions. In this episode, I sit down with Brian, co-founder of Peasy, to talk about why most founders feel overwhelmed not because they’re doing too much, but because they don’t have a clear operating system for their business.

Brian shares lessons learned from growing Mustard & Co and how building simple, repeatable systems helped his team stay focused, move faster, and make better decisions as the business scaled. We break down what a CPG operating system actually looks like, where founders should start, and how the right structure creates freedom instead of friction.

If you’re juggling growth, team management, and constant decision-making, this episode will help you step back and build a business that runs with clarity.

Startup to Scale is a podcast by Foodbevy, an online community to connect emerging food, beverage, and CPG founders to great resources and partners to grow their business. Visit us at Foodbevy.com to learn about becoming a member or an industry partner today.

In this episode, I talk with John Ferrante from EO Space about how high-growth CPG brands find white space, build emotional differentiation, and use packaging as a true growth lever. We break down why functional claims are no longer enough, how standout brands earn attention and convert on shelf and on social, and what founders should focus on when positioning their product to win in competitive categories.

Perfect for CPG founders rethinking branding, packaging, and long-term growth.

Startup to Scale is a podcast by Foodbevy, an online community to connect emerging food, beverage, and CPG founders to great resources and partners to grow their business. Visit us at Foodbevy.com to learn about becoming a member or an industry partner today.

I sit down with Rachel Vigil, Founder of UpClose Marketing, to break down one of the most overlooked sampling channels for emerging CPG brands: vacation rentals and short-term stays.

We talk about how placing products inside Airbnbs, mid-term rentals, and campgrounds allows brands to reach high-intent consumers in distraction-free environments without the high costs and chaos of festivals or in-store demos. Rachel shares which product categories perform best, how brands can collect real feedback and emails, and how this channel can support retail growth and long-term customer relationships.

If you’re curious whether this sampling strategy could work for your brand, you can contact Rachel by emailing me at intro@foodbevy.com, and I’ll be happy to make an introduction.

Startup to Scale is a podcast by Foodbevy, an online community to connect emerging food, beverage, and CPG founders to great resources and partners to grow their business. Visit us at Foodbevy.com to learn about becoming a member or an industry partner today.

You made it onto the shelf. Great. But now the real spending begins.

Trade spend is one of the biggest drivers of success in retail — and one of the fastest ways for emerging brands to lose money, stall velocity, or get discontinued. In this deep-dive conversation, I and Yuval Selik unpack the most common and most expensive trade spend mistakes founders make, and how to avoid them.

We cover:

Why most founders underestimate the true cost of staying on the shelf
The promo structures that quietly destroy margin
How to avoid “set it and forget it” promotions that never perform
What deductions actually mean — and how to stop paying for things you don’t owe
How to know when a promotion is working vs. when you’re just lighting money on fire
The cashflow impact that no one warns new brands about

If you’re selling in retail — or about to — Yuval will help you build a smarter, more profitable trade spend system from day one.

Startup to Scale is a podcast by Foodbevy, an online community to connect emerging food, beverage, and CPG founders to great resources and partners to grow their business. Visit us at Foodbevy.com to learn about becoming a member or an industry partner today.

In today’s episode, I’m joined by Ian Timmons and Billy Knox, founders of Beefy, and one of my favorite new snacks—featured in our Winter Foodbevy Insider Box.

We talk about:

what went wrong (and right) in early R&D
the complexity of manufacturing and scaling a brand-new product format
the GTM strategy that got Beefy their early traction
where they’re headed next as they expand beyond DTC

Startup to Scale is a podcast by Foodbevy, an online community to connect emerging food, beverage, and CPG founders to great resources and partners to grow their business. Visit us at Foodbevy.com to learn about becoming a member or an industry partner today.

In this episode, I share how one “small” packaging change can snowball into a six-figure problem—and how to stop that from happening to your brand.

I sit down with Maureen Dollard, founder of Complete Acuity, to break down where CPG founders go wrong: missing pieces in the scope, forgetting secondary packaging, and leaving regulatory to the last minute. If you’re planning a refresh or new launch in 2026, this is your cheat sheet to avoiding costly delays, write-offs, and do-overs.

Startup to Scale is a podcast by Foodbevy, an online community to connect emerging food, beverage, and CPG founders to great resources and partners to grow their business. Visit us at Foodbevy.com to learn about becoming a member or an industry partner today.

In this episode, I sit down with Joon co-founders Cody Allen and Alexandre Bennet to talk about how they turned a 300-year-old family pistachio recipe into one of my favorite new snack brands. We dig into how they chose pistachios, grew into 1,000+ doors in just months, and built a brand that stands out in a crowded snack aisle.

If you’re a founder who loves a good origin story and wants the playbook for smart, fast growth, you’ll want to hit play on this one.

Startup to Scale is a podcast by Foodbevy, an online community to connect emerging food, beverage, and CPG founders to great resources and partners to grow their business. Visit us at Foodbevy.com to learn about becoming a member or an industry partner today.

Most founders design packaging based on gut feeling — not data. But what if you could know, before launch, exactly how consumers will respond?

In this episode, I chat with Michael Keplinger, Managing Partner at SmashBrand, about how to bring the consumer voice into every stage of brand-building. We dive into the psychology behind the 3–13 second decision window, how packaging roles differ between e-commerce and retail, and how to create a testing roadmap that fits a startup budget.

Michael shares how data-driven testing can help founders not only improve packaging performance but also win over retail buyers with proof that their product converts.

If you’re building or rebranding a CPG product, this episode will help you make smarter decisions, reduce risk, and create packaging that sells itself.
Learn more about SmashBrand.

Startup to Scale is a podcast by Foodbevy, an online community to connect emerging food, beverage, and CPG founders to great resources and partners to grow their business. Visit us at Foodbevy.com to learn about becoming a member or an industry partner today.

Getting a meeting with a retail buyer is tough — but winning that meeting is even tougher. In this episode, I talk with Tia Ellis, Founder and CEO of Wildflower Insight, about how to pitch your product to retailers the right way.

Tia shares her Golden Retail Rule, breaks down the 3 types of pitches every founder should master, and reveals how to understand buyer psychology so you can connect, persuade, and close that coveted purchase order — all without relying on a broker.

💡 Want an intro to Tia or to collaborate on future episodes? Reach out at intro@foodbevy.com

Startup to Scale is a podcast by Foodbevy, an online community to connect emerging food, beverage, and CPG founders to great resources and partners to grow their business. Visit us at Foodbevy.com to learn about becoming a member or an industry partner today.

What does success really mean to you? For many founders, that answer gets buried under industry pressures, investor expectations, and comparisons to competitors. In this episode, I sit down with Howie Sher of JPG Resources to discuss how he helps founders uncover their own definition of success—and build their businesses accordingly.

We’ll talk about why defining success in personal terms is essential, how to avoid chasing metrics that don’t matter to you, and practical advice for aligning your business goals with the life you want to live. Whether you’re just starting out or deep into scaling, Howie’s perspective offers both wisdom and clarity.

Startup to Scale is a podcast by Foodbevy, an online community to connect emerging food, beverage, and CPG founders to great resources and partners to grow their business. Visit us at Foodbevy.com to learn about becoming a member or an industry partner today.

When I ran my own CPG brand, supply chain headaches nearly broke me — late POs, cash crunches, and endless supplier follow-ups. In this episode, I sit down with Helen Murphy, Founder and CEO of Opply, who’s building an operating system for small and mid-sized CPG brands to simplify sourcing, forecasting, and funding.

Helen shares how her background in consumer goods and tech inspired her to solve the pain points we’ve all felt — from ingredient sourcing to retail readiness — and how Opply helps founders unlock better pricing, smoother operations, and extended payment terms.

If you’ve ever felt stuck managing ops instead of scaling your business, this episode is for you.

👉 Want to unlock 60–90 day payment terms with your current suppliers? Email us at intro@foodbevy.com for an introduction to Opply.

Startup to Scale is a podcast by Foodbevy, an online community to connect emerging food, beverage, and CPG founders to great resources and partners to grow their business. Visit us at Foodbevy.com to learn about becoming a member or an industry partner today.

I sat down with Brad Ebenhoeh of Belay (formerly Accountfully) to unpack how CPG founders can actually make money during Black Friday and Q4 instead of burning it on discounts and excess inventory.

In this episode, we talk about:

Knowing your true landed costs and margins by channel
Forecasting demand without tying up too much cash in inventory
Negotiating supplier terms and securing credit before you need it
Deciding if Q4 is really your season—or if you should shift focus to Q1

Brad brings years of experience supporting CPG brands through the most stressful (and most profitable) time of the year.

👉 Want a direct introduction to Brad and the Belay Accounting team? Email us and we’ll connect you at intro@foodbevy.com.

Startup to Scale is a podcast by Foodbevy, an online community to connect emerging food, beverage, and CPG founders to great resources and partners to grow their business. Visit us at Foodbevy.com to learn about becoming a member or an industry partner today.

I sat down with Garrett Otondo, Director of Strategic Operations at Little Spoon, to explore how their team scaled from DTC to retail while shipping 30,000+ fresh meals each week.

We cover:

Cold chain packaging + logistics
Data-driven demand planning to reduce waste
How Owlery streamlined freight and retail launch

👉 Need help managing freight? Owlery is one of our partners and they’re offering CPG founders a 60-day free trial with a dedicated success manager to help you get set up and streamline shipments. If you’re sending freight every week, this is a powerful way to cut costs and ensure deliveries arrive on time.

💬 Want an introduction to Owlery? Just email us at grace@foodbevy.com we’ll connect you directly.

Startup to Scale is a podcast by Foodbevy, an online community to connect emerging food, beverage, and CPG founders to great resources and partners to grow their business. Visit us at Foodbevy.com to learn about becoming a member or an industry partner today.

I sat down with Semira Nikou and Bella Hughes, co-founders of Better Sour, to share how they’re redefining the candy aisle with bold sour flavors inspired by their roots in Hawaii and Iran. We talk about scaling into 4,000+ retail doors, building a new category, and the lessons they’ve learned along the way.

Sponsored by Highbeam – The financial platform built to protect and empower modern brands. Highbeam is a founder-focused cash and banking platform. With FDIC-insured accounts, high-yield cash management, and real-time financial visibility, Highbeam helps CPG brands stay liquid, secure, and ready for anything.

Foodbevy listeners can also get access to a free FDIC-insured bank account with Highbeam, plus tools designed specifically for growing CPG brands.

Just email us directly for the introduction: grace@foodbevy.com

Startup to Scale is a podcast by Foodbevy, an online community to connect emerging food, beverage, and CPG founders to great resources and partners to grow their business. Visit us at Foodbevy.com to learn about becoming a member or an industry partner today.

I sit down with Kyle Stoulil, founder of Kyle’s Organics, to explore how a trained chef turned his home-kitchen experiments into a pioneering brand in the nut and seed milk space. From the creation of his quinoa milk to developing clean-label nutrition bars, Kyle shares the story of building the brand, the strategic choice behind quinoa, and the realities of marketing two very different product lines under one umbrella.

If you’re a founder navigating a crowded category, wondering how to stand out, or looking for lessons in tenacity and taste, this conversation will give you practical insight and inspiration.

Startup to Scale is a podcast by Foodbevy, an online community to connect emerging food, beverage, and CPG founders to great resources and partners to grow their business. Visit us at Foodbevy.com to learn about becoming a member or an industry partner today.

Innovation is a buzzword in the food and beverage industry—but for emerging brands, it can be the difference between thriving and burning out. In this episode, Christy Lebor, Partner at SmashBrand, breaks down a practical approach to innovation that helps founders move beyond gut instinct into consumer-driven decision making.

We’ll explore:

How to avoid taking the wrong risks as an emerging brand
Why consumer testing—before launch—is your best insurance policy
Why packaging isn’t just design polish, but a core innovation driver
How to use packaging to improve velocities and even justify higher price points

Whether you’re launching your first product or planning your next line extension, this conversation will give you clear, actionable strategies to innovate smarter.

Startup to Scale is a podcast by Foodbevy, an online community to connect emerging food, beverage, and CPG founders to great resources and partners to grow their business. Visit us at Foodbevy.com to learn about becoming a member or an industry partner today.

If you’ve ever wondered how to get funding for your startup without giving away all your equity, this episode is for you. I’m joined by Kat Weaver, founder of Power to Pitch, who helps early-stage founders master their message, win grants, and pitch with confidence. Kat turned her own scrappy startup into a six-figure business by winning pitch competitions—and now she teaches others how to do the same.

In this episode, we break down:

How to find and win non-dilutive grants
What makes a pitch investor-ready
And how to create that elusive FOMO that gets investors to say yes

Whether you’re raising money now or preparing for the future, this episode is packed with actionable advice to help you fund your business on your own terms.

Startup to Scale is a podcast by Foodbevy, an online community to connect emerging food, beverage, and CPG founders to great resources and partners to grow their business. Visit us at Foodbevy.com to learn about becoming a member or an industry partner today.

Damiano Messineo, founder of Loopini, set out to reinvent pizza with lupini beans—creating a high-protein, high-fiber crust that actually tastes like pizza. From 13 months of recipe trials to launching at Pop Up Grocer and scaling across the Northeast, Damiano shares how he’s building a better-for-you brand while managing supply chain challenges and educating U.S. consumers on lupini beans.

Startup to Scale is a podcast by Foodbevy, an online community to connect emerging food, beverage, and CPG founders to great resources and partners to grow their business. Visit us at Foodbevy.com to learn about becoming a member or an industry partner today.

I sit down with John McGuckin, CEO of Clio Snacks and seasoned CPG executive, to unpack the brand’s remarkable journey from niche yogurt innovation to nationwide distribution. Clio’s Greek Yogurt Bars are now selling in 28,000+ doors — a case study in CPG scaling done right. We explore John’s leadership approach, how Clio has navigated the competitive snacking landscape, and what it takes to build a brand that earns shelf space and customer loyalty.

Whether you're a founder navigating your first retail pitch or a seasoned operator scaling your supply chain, this conversation is packed with insights you won’t want to miss.

Startup to Scale is a podcast by Foodbevy, an online community to connect emerging food, beverage, and CPG founders to great resources and partners to grow their business. Visit us at Foodbevy.com to learn about becoming a member or an industry partner today.

Being a founder is one of the most rewarding — and isolating — journeys you can take. In this episode, we sit down with Howie Sher to explore the emotional and strategic decisions behind building a business alone versus bringing on cofounders.

We unpack:

How to know if you’re meant to build solo or with a team
The pros and cons of going it alone
How to handle decision fatigue and emotional weight as a solo founder
Strategies for building your support system and avoiding burnout
What to look for in a cofounder — and what to avoid

Whether you’re going solo by choice or circumstance, this conversation offers real talk and practical advice for staying grounded, connected, and confident on the founder path

Startup to Scale is a podcast by Foodbevy, an online community to connect emerging food, beverage, and CPG founders to great resources and partners to grow their business. Visit us at Foodbevy.com to learn about becoming a member or an industry partner today.

Launching a CPG brand is never easy—but talking with Morgan Rucker and Olivia Stevermer of PSquared Foods reminded me just how rewarding the journey can be. In this episode, I sat down with them to hear the full story behind their shelf-stable, banana-flavored protein pudding in a spouted pouch—from awkward picnic samplings and 80+ product iterations to the uphill battle of finding a manufacturer and scaling a format that’s often dismissed as “just for kids.”

We talked about how they went from solo kitchen experiments in college to co-founders building a brand rooted in purpose, flavor, and community. You’ll hear insights on formulation, shelf-stability, and how they’re building customer excitement from the ground up.

Startup to Scale is a podcast by Foodbevy, an online community to connect emerging food, beverage, and CPG founders to great resources and partners to grow their business. Visit us at Foodbevy.com to learn about becoming a member or an industry partner today.

This episode is sponsored by Cin7 — the operating system for food and beverage brands. Foodbevy listeners get 50% off for 3 months when you sign up. Learn more at cin7.com/foodbevy

TÖST went from a simple, elegant idea to a global beverage brand — and the key to their growth wasn’t just demand, but operations. If you’re ready to take control of your COGS and scale with confidence, consider what tools like Cin7 can unlock for your team.

Learn more at cin7.com/foodbevy and grab a bottle of TÖST at tostbeverages.com. Thanks again to Chie Addington for joining us — and we’ll see you next time on Startup to Scale.

Startup to Scale is a podcast by Foodbevy, an online community to connect emerging food, beverage, and CPG founders to great resources and partners to grow their business. Visit us at Foodbevy.com to learn about becoming a member or an industry partner today.

Getting media coverage for your CPG brand can feel overwhelming—especially with limited budgets and time. In this episode, I chat with Heather and Austin Holmes, the co-founders of Signal Raptor and Publicity for Good, about a new, more accessible way to do PR. We dive into how AI, niche media, and earned storytelling are reshaping the landscape, and how their platform helps brands like yours get featured and grow visibility without breaking the bank.

If you're looking to boost your brand awareness, you won’t want to miss this—plus, we’re offeringa free month of Signal Raptor for the first 50 signups!

Startup to Scale is a podcast by Foodbevy, an online community to connect emerging food, beverage, and CPG founders to great resources and partners to grow their business. Visit us at Foodbevy.com to learn about becoming a member or an industry partner today.

In this episode, I sit down with Sabrina Kautz, a fractional CMO who helps emerging food and beverage brands grow their retail footprint. With a sharp focus on Whole Foods, Sabrina shares tactical strategies to drive sustained velocity—from in-store marketing to managing buyer relationships and executing demo programs that actually convert.

We cover:

Why velocity matters more than ever at Whole Foods
What new brands get wrong about retail marketing
How to evaluate the ROI of promotions, demos, and field marketing
Building a retail strategy that scales beyond your launch

If you're on shelves at Whole Foods or planning to be soon, this is a must-listen.

Startup to Scale is a podcast by Foodbevy, an online community to connect emerging food, beverage, and CPG founders to great resources and partners to grow their business. Visit us at Foodbevy.com to learn about becoming a member or an industry partner today.

Angie Kaminky launched Minky Muffins just months before giving birth—and never stopped moving.

In this episode, we dive into the reality of launching a food brand while navigating parenthood, production challenges, and early retail wins. A must-listen for founder-parents balancing growth and grit.

Startup to Scale is a podcast by Foodbevy, an online community to connect emerging food, beverage, and CPG founders to great resources and partners to grow their business. Visit us at Foodbevy.com to learn about becoming a member or an industry partner today.

When I launched my first brand, I made the mistake a lot of founders do—I built the entire brand around a hero ingredient. We were called TeaSquares, and yep, the name locked us into tea and a square shape, which made it tough to grow beyond our initial idea.

In this episode, I’m joined by Adam Feller, founder of Avidity Creative, to talk about why leading with your ingredient can actually hurt your CPG brand. We unpack how to focus your messaging on what customers actually care about—and it’s usually not chickpeas or apple cider vinegar.

We get into:

The real reason people buy your product (hint: it’s not the label)
How packaging can shape perception and drive trial
Why “better-for-you” isn’t a brand—it's a baseline
Tactical tips for testing your messaging in stores, at markets, and online

If you’re ready to move from niche to next-level, this one’s for you.

Startup to Scale is a podcast by Foodbevy, an online community to connect emerging food, beverage, and CPG founders to great resources and partners to grow their business. Visit us at Foodbevy.com to learn about becoming a member or an industry partner today.

Tariffs have been top of mind for every CPG founder I talk to—including myself. In this episode, I’m joined once again by my friend and frequent guest Yuval Selik, co-founder and CEO of Promomash, to unpack how tariff pressures are impacting our businesses beyond just the bottom line.

We dive into how tariffs are exposing hidden inefficiencies in supply chains, why blindly raising prices can damage your brand, and how distributor deductions can quietly drain your profits. Yuval shares his own story of navigating economic shocks, including the collapse of his brand during the 2008 financial crisis, and what founders can do now to build stronger, more resilient businesses.

If you’re running a CPG brand and feeling the pressure from rising costs, supply chain disruptions, or confusing chargebacks, this conversation is a must-listen.

Startup to Scale is a podcast by Foodbevy, an online community to connect emerging food, beverage, and CPG founders to great resources and partners to grow their business. Visit us at Foodbevy.com to learn about becoming a member or an industry partner today.

Accounting for beverage brands isn’t just about balancing the books — it’s about understanding the unique financial challenges that come with scaling a physical product business. In this episode, I sit down with Jessica Howes, founder of Wizard Accounting, to unpack the essentials of CPG accounting tailored specifically for beverage brands.

Jessica shares her insights on how to properly account for co-manufacturer fees like tolling and setup charges, how to calculate true gross margin across channels like retail, DTC, and Amazon, and how to manage inventory — including what to do about spoilage and outdated products. She also breaks down common accounting mistakes she sees early-stage beverage brands make, and offers one simple but powerful change founders can make today to boost their financial health.

Whether you're just getting started or looking to tighten up your financial operations, this episode is packed with actionable advice to help you run a smarter, more sustainable beverage business.

Looking for a new accountant? e-mail intros@foodbevy.com for an introduction to Jessica.

Startup to Scale is a podcast by Foodbevy, an online community to connect emerging food, beverage, and CPG founders to great resources and partners to grow their business. Visit us at Foodbevy.com to learn about becoming a member or an industry partner today.

Mallory Patton, co-founder of Saint Spritz, shares how her team turned a post-vacation craving into a fast-growing RTD aperitivo brand.

Learn how they launched with no beverage experience, landed retail deals with Target and Total Wine, and built a standout brand through design, family, and focus.

Startup to Scale is a podcast by Foodbevy, an online community to connect emerging food, beverage, and CPG founders to great resources and partners to grow their business. Visit us at Foodbevy.com to learn about becoming a member or an industry partner today.

If you're a CPG founder in 2025, Amazon isn’t optional—it’s foundational. But selling on Amazon today looks nothing like it did even a year ago.

Joining me are Shayan and Rafay, co-founders of Boost Up AMZ, who’ve helped scale dozens of consumer brands on the platform. In this episode, we break down exactly what you need to know to stay competitive—from the latest policy changes and rising fees, to the strategies separating top-performing brands from those getting buried in search.

We also debunk some of the biggest myths around Amazon advertising—and what most founders get wrong.

If you’ve ever felt overwhelmed by Amazon’s complexity, or you’re wondering how to actually make it profitable, this conversation is your roadmap.

Startup to Scale is a podcast by Foodbevy, an online community to connect emerging food, beverage, and CPG founders to great resources and partners to grow their business. Visit us at Foodbevy.com to learn about becoming a member or an industry partner today.

Landing a large retail or corporate order can be a breakthrough moment for your CPG brand—but it can also put a major strain on your cash flow. In this episode of Startup to Scale, we’re joined by Rohit Mathur, founder of Bridge, to break down how purchase order financing can help founders bridge the gap between opportunity and execution.

We discuss why PO financing is often a critical lifeline for emerging brands, how it works behind the scenes, what lenders look for, and the key cash flow challenges you should plan for when scaling production. Rohit shares real-world examples, actionable insights, and tips to help you fulfill big orders without draining your working capital.

Whether you’re preparing for your first retail rollout or managing growing demand, this episode will help you deliver with confidence.

Startup to Scale is a podcast by Foodbevy, an online community to connect emerging food, beverage, and CPG founders to great resources and partners to grow their business. Visit us at Foodbevy.com to learn about becoming a member or an industry partner today.

In this episode I’m joined by a true pioneer in the world of organic CPG—Matt McLean, the founder of Uncle Matt’s Organic.

Matt’s journey is a masterclass in scaling with integrity. From navigating the complexities of retail and supply chains to staying ahead of evolving consumer trends, Matt has built a mission-driven brand that’s not only profitable—but principled. He sold his company to Dean Foods, just to buy it back 2 years later when the acquirer went bankrupt.

If you care about sustainability, business leadership, and the real story behind building an iconic brand in a crowded market, this episode is for you.

So grab a glass of OJ and let’s dive in.

Startup to Scale is a podcast by Foodbevy, an online community to connect emerging food, beverage, and CPG founders to great resources and partners to grow their business. Visit us at Foodbevy.com to learn about becoming a member or an industry partner today.

In this episode, I sit down with Brad Ebenhoeh, co-founder of Accountfully, to unpack how CPG brands can build strong financial foundations to withstand tariffs, inflation, and whatever economic curveballs come their way. Brad shares practical strategies for cash flow management, margin protection, and forecasting so founders can stay resilient even in uncertain times. Whether you’re sourcing internationally or scaling into retail, this conversation will help you sharpen your numbers and make smarter financial decisions—before it’s too late.

Startup to Scale is a podcast by Foodbevy, an online community to connect emerging food, beverage, and CPG founders to great resources and partners to grow their business. Visit us at Foodbevy.com to learn about becoming a member or an industry partner today.

Today we’re into the behind-the-scenes journey of taking a beloved cult-favorite product from small-batch to store shelves across the country. I’m joined by the Justin Oleesky, COO of Coconut Cult, a brand that’s made waves in the probiotic space with its ultra-potent coconut yogurt—and a company that’s learned a lot about what it takes to scale into national distribution without losing your mind.

We’ll explore the operational challenges that come with growing fast: managing complex retailer requirements, staying resilient through economic uncertainty and tariffs, and keeping logistics on track when your systems start to buckle under volume. You’ll also hear how they chose CRSTL as their EDI partner, what makes CRSTL different from other providers, and how that decision transformed their backend operations—saving time, reducing errors, and unlocking growth.

Whether you're just starting to think about wholesale or already in retail and feeling the pressure of scale, this episode is packed with actionable lessons for founders, COOs, and operations leads alike.

Sponsored by CRSTL

Crstl is the smarter way to EDI. Get 25% off your entire first year and onboarded to any trading partner in 2 weeks or less. No complex setups, no delays—just fast, reliable, automated EDI at the lowest total cost of ownership. E-mail grace@foodbevy.com

Startup to Scale is a podcast by Foodbevy, an online community to connect emerging food, beverage, and CPG founders to great resources and partners to grow their business. Visit us at Foodbevy.com to learn about becoming a member or an industry partner today.

In this episode I dive deep into how brands can succeed selling to Sprouts Market, one of the premier national natural channel retailers. I’m joined by Luke Abbott, founder of VDriven, a CPG growth consultancy that works closely with Sprouts.

You’ll learn about how to succeed in Sprouts generally and in their innovation set.

Want to work with VDriven to launch in Sprouts? E-mail us at grace@foodbevy.com to get an introduction.

Startup to Scale is a podcast by Foodbevy, an online community to connect emerging food, beverage, and CPG founders to great resources and partners to grow their business. Visit us at Foodbevy.com to learn about becoming a member or an industry partner today.

The cash conversion cycle is one of the most challenging things to manage in a CPG business. Join me as I talk with Samantha Abramson, CEO of Just Date as she shares her exact process including:

Using AION to fund her working capital needs
Her Weekly Cashflow Management Process
How She Budgets

You can get a free AION bank account and access AR financing for your business here

Sponsored by Aion.

Startup to Scale is a podcast by Foodbevy, an online community to connect emerging food, beverage, and CPG founders to great resources and partners to grow their business. Visit us at Foodbevy.com to learn about becoming a member or an industry partner today.

Today, we’re tackling one of the most critical—and often misunderstood—aspects of growing a food or beverage company: the relationship between brands, distributors, and retailers.

Think of this ecosystem like a three-legged stool—each leg plays a vital role, and if one isn’t strong, the whole thing collapses. To help us break this down, I’m joined by Howie Sher, a seasoned expert in the CPG industry and a leader at JPG Resources, a firm that helps brands navigate growth from startup to scale. Howie has seen firsthand what makes these relationships work—and what causes them to fall apart.

In this episode, we’ll explore:

What’s in it for each party—the brand, the distributor, and the retailer
Why you need each of them and why they need you
The biggest misconceptions brands have about distributors and retailers
How to align your strategy so all three legs of the stool support growth

Startup to Scale is a podcast by Foodbevy, an online community to connect emerging food, beverage, and CPG founders to great resources and partners to grow their business. Visit us at Foodbevy.com to learn about becoming a member or an industry partner today.

In this episode of Startup to Scale, I dive into the essential backend tools that brands need to streamline their operations, manage cash flow, and access working capital.

I sit down with the Mel and Branden from Settle to discuss:

✅ The key challenges brands face when scaling—especially aligning sales, operations, and financing.
✅ When to transition from spreadsheets to more robust business management tools.
✅ The must-have tech stack, including sales orders, bill pay, inventory management, and procurement.
✅ The best ways to fund growth, including the pros and cons of different debt funding options.

Interested in Settle? Get started HERE

Want to connect?
👉 Reach out to Mel on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/melissacafagna/
👉 Or connect with Branden: www.linkedin.com/in/brandenfoote/

Startup to Scale is a podcast by Foodbevy, an online community to connect emerging food, beverage, and CPG founders to great resources and partners to grow their business. Visit us at Foodbevy.com to learn about becoming a member or an industry partner today.

Struggling to run effective e-commerce ads? It might just be your landing pages and offer. I’m having this problem with Joyful Co, so I reached out to Andrew at AdCrunch to break down how to build effective landing pages that actually drive sales.

We cover:

Creating Compelling Messaging
Landing Pages that Answer All Your buyer’s Questions
Making an Irresistible Offer

Unlock Winning Hooks & CTAs for Your Brand For FREE!

Watch Now

Startup to Scale is a podcast by Foodbevy, an online community to connect emerging food, beverage, and CPG founders to great resources and partners to grow their business. Visit us at Foodbevy.com to learn about becoming a member or an industry partner today.

How do you turn an ancient Italian superfood into a modern snack brand that stands out in the crowded U.S. market? Aaron Gatti, founder and CEO of Brami, set out to do just that.

Inspired by the Mediterranean diet and his Italian roots, Aaron discovered the lupini bean—a protein-packed, fiber-rich legume with incredible health benefits. But while lupini beans were popular in Europe, they were virtually unknown in the U.S. In this episode, Aaron shares how he built Brami from the ground up, from introducing an entirely new category to American consumers to scaling in retail, Amazon, and direct-to-consumer.

If you’re an emerging food brand founder, this episode is packed with real-world lessons on bringing an innovative product to market and growing it into a national brand.

Startup to Scale is a podcast by Foodbevy, an online community to connect emerging food, beverage, and CPG founders to great resources and partners to grow their business. Visit us at Foodbevy.com to learn about becoming a member or an industry partner today.

Eric Skae is the CEO of Carbone Fine Food, the premium pasta sauce offshoot of New York’s Iconic Carbone Restaurant. Over his career, Eric has led and scaled multiple consumer brands across beverages, snacks, and specialty foods – think New Leaf iced tea, Iceland Spring water, Popcornopolis popcorn, and the famous Rao’s Specialty Foods sauce line, where he took over as CEO and led the company through a rebrand and exit.

With that track record, Eric knows a thing or two about taking a startup and scaling it to new heights. In our conversation today, we'll dive into actionable insights on everything from crafting growth strategies for emerging CPG brands to cracking the code on distribution and retail expansion. It’s going to be a dynamic, insight-packed discussion for any founder looking to scale up their brand.

Startup to Scale is a podcast by Foodbevy, an online community to connect emerging food, beverage, and CPG founders to great resources and partners to grow their business. Visit us at Foodbevy.com to learn about becoming a member or an industry partner today.

I thought TeaSquares’ unique multi-serve pouch would stand out—it did, but for the wrong reasons. Customers were confused by the packaging, and sales suffered. We switched to single-serve bars that aligned with category norms, and sales improved significantly.

In this episode, I sit down with Sanders, founder of NUEX Creative, to discuss how packaging design can make or break your product on the shelf and online. We’ll dive into strategies for creating packaging that attracts customers and drives sales.

🔗 Connect with NUEX Creative:

Website: NUEXcreative.com

Instagram: instagram.com/nuex.creative

X/Twitter: x.com/nuexcreative

🔗 Connect with Sanders:

Sanders Personal X/Twitter: x.com/sanderswashere

Startup to Scale is a podcast by Foodbevy, an online community to connect emerging food, beverage, and CPG founders to great resources and partners to grow their business. Visit us at Foodbevy.com to learn about becoming a member or an industry partner today.

Soon, AI will just become a commonplace tool in business. Are you prepared? Join me as I talk with Andreas Duess, from 6 Seeds about the structure of the CPG industry and how emerging brands can utilize AI to navigate data complexities and drive growth. We discuss the importance of integrating AI tools while ensuring that these technologies enhance rather than replace the human touch that is so critical for brands.

Tune in to learn practical strategies for employing AI in your CPG brand without losing the personal connection that customers value.

Startup to Scale is a podcast by Foodbevy, an online community to connect emerging food, beverage, and CPG founders to great resources and partners to grow their business. Visit us at Foodbevy.com to learn about becoming a member or an industry partner today.

Expo West is coming up, and it’s like the Super Bowl for CPG. while I won’t be there, I invited on Heather Holmes to share some tips and suggestions on how to make the most of the show. We discuss:

Setting clear goals and outcomes
Creating a content plan
Being proactive about building relationships
Gathering data and feedback
Generating press and PR

Startup to Scale is a podcast by Foodbevy, an online community to connect emerging food, beverage, and CPG founders to great resources and partners to grow their business. Visit us at Foodbevy.com to learn about becoming a member or an industry partner today.

Retailers are raising the bar when it comes to liability coverage, and the process of securing the right insurance is becoming more complicated than ever. Not only are brands facing higher coverage limits, but the third-party companies verifying Certificates of Insurance don’t always understand how coverage works—leading to unnecessary denials and costly delays.

To help us make sense of this evolving landscape, I’m joined by Russ Taylor from SecureCPG, an insurance company specializing in coverage for consumer packaged goods brands. We’ll unpack what’s happening behind the scenes, how you can ensure compliance with retailer requirements, and what you need to know to avoid costly pitfalls.

Startup to Scale is a podcast by Foodbevy, an online community to connect emerging food, beverage, and CPG founders to great resources and partners to grow their business. Visit us at Foodbevy.com to learn about becoming a member or an industry partner today.

In this episode, I’m joined by Yuval Selik, CEO of Promomash, to explore the challenges and strategies of securing investment for CPG brands in today’s tight market conditions. Despite the availability of capital, the CPG sector often struggles to attract investment. Yuval shares expert advice on making your brand more appealing to investors by honing in on crucial aspects of your business, particularly profitability.

We'll delve into the essential actions CPG founders need to take, the key metrics they should be monitoring, and the reporting standards that can make or break investment opportunities. Additionally, Yuval provides valuable resources on crowdfunding and other financing alternatives that could be vital in navigating these challenging times.

Tune in to gain practical lessons that can help position your brand for success in the investment arena. Whether you're preparing for your first round or looking to scale up, this episode is packed with guidance to maximize your appeal to potential investors.

Startup to Scale is a podcast by Foodbevy, an online community to connect emerging food, beverage, and CPG founders to great resources and partners to grow their business. Visit us at Foodbevy.com to learn about becoming a member or an industry partner today.

Join us as Rachel Kane, co-founder of Sprinkle Bites, shares her journey of bringing a Dutch-inspired snack, Hagelslag, to kids in the U.S. Sprinkle Bites isn’t just about sprinkles—it’s a high-protein, sugar-free treat packed with plant-based nutrients, perfect for on-the-go snacking.

Learn how Rachel and her co-founder Nicole are revolutionizing snacking with sprinkles that are as nutritious as they are fun. Tune in to hear about their innovative product development, go-to-market strategies, and what it takes to build a category-defining CPG brand!

Startup to Scale is a podcast by Foodbevy, an online community to connect emerging food, beverage, and CPG founders to great resources and partners to grow their business. Visit us at Foodbevy.com to learn about becoming a member or an industry partner today.

Join us as we dive into the inspiring journey of Orleatha Smith, co-founder of Sip Herbals—a caffeine-free, prebiotic-rich herbal coffee alternative. From overcoming personal health challenges to creating a groundbreaking product loved by the wellness community, Orleatha shares her story of innovation, resilience, and the lessons learned along the way.

Discover what it takes to grow a brand in a niche market, the power of listening to customers, and the behind-the-scenes experience of pitching on Shark Tank. Don’t miss this episode packed with insights for entrepreneurs and coffee lovers alike!

Startup to Scale is a podcast by Foodbevy, an online community to connect emerging food, beverage, and CPG founders to great resources and partners to grow their business. Visit us at Foodbevy.com to learn about becoming a member or an industry partner today.

Popadelics, founded by wife and husband team Marilyn and Michael makes crunchy mushroom chips. They’re a bootstrapped company that’s used creative debt financing to fund their operations and grow to over 3000 stores. They worked with Kickfurther, which offers inventory financing to decrease their cashflow gap when producing orders for the new distributor and retailer launches. Marilyn is also still working a full time job and building Popadelics.

Join me for an engaging conversation about how to build a business that works best for you.

CPGrow Pitch Competition

Applications are open for Kickfurther’s CPGrow 2025 Pitch Competition! You could win $250,000 in no-cost inventory funding, plus incredible grand prizes from partners.

Submission Deadline – January 31st, 2025

Submit Here

Startup to Scale is a podcast by Foodbevy, an online community to connect emerging food, beverage, and CPG founders to great resources and partners to grow their business. Visit us at Foodbevy.com to learn about becoming a member or an industry partner today.

Storytelling is crucial to building your brand, and PR is a great way to get your message out in the world. But where to start? On this episode I talk with Heather Holmes, founder of Publicity for Good to break down how to think about PR for CPG Brands to build awareness and ultimately drive sales.

We also do a live virtual PR audit for my brand, Joyful Co and discuss which elements of our story are most compelling and which mediums we should focus on.

Want an audit for your brand?

Book a free consultation call with Heather to help map out your PR Strategy
Register for our free webinar to get an audit of your PR Strategy and listen to others.

Startup to Scale is a podcast by Foodbevy, an online community to connect emerging food, beverage, and CPG founders to great resources and partners to grow their business. Visit us at Foodbevy.com to learn about becoming a member or an industry partner today.

Building a profitable CPG business is possible, but it takes a special product and business model. Join me as I sit down with Sean Hall one of my favorite bootstrapped entrepreneurs who founded Wellious as we talk through what it took to build a profitable business, how he carefully chose a category and built a product in a crowded category.

Startup to Scale is a podcast by Foodbevy, an online community to connect emerging food, beverage, and CPG founders to great resources and partners to grow their business. Visit us at Foodbevy.com to learn about becoming a member or an industry partner today.

Founded by former KIND Snacks Exec Lindsay Hancock, My Better Batch was created to make baking from scratch as effortless as possible. Lindsay did 90% of the work by sourcing premium ingredients and crafting an easy, mix-and-bake solution so customers can make cookies that taste homemade with just the addition of egg and butter.

In this episode, learn how she is starting her company and getting into retailers like Sprouts.

Startup to Scale is a podcast by Foodbevy, an online community to connect emerging food, beverage, and CPG founders to great resources and partners to grow their business. Visit us at Foodbevy.com to learn about becoming a member or an industry partner today.

In this episode I dive into the essential strategies for building successful relationships with service providers that help your business thrive. From aligning on goals to fostering transparent communication, we cover actionable tips to maximize the value of these critical partnerships. Joining me is Brad Ebenhoeh, CEO of Accountfully.

Key topics include:

Alignment: Setting clear expectations and ensuring your provider has the capability to deliver.
Expectations: Defining timelines, pricing, deliverables, and involvement to stay on track.
Communication: How frequent, transparent, and engaged communication transforms the relationship from a transaction to a true partnership.

Tune in to learn how to strengthen your collaborations, trust your partners, and create a foundation for mutual success. Whether you're working with agencies, consultants, or contractors, this episode offers insights you can apply today.

Don’t miss this practical guide to getting the most out of your service providers! 🎧

PS. Get in touch with Brad from Accountfully if you’re looking for an outsourced bookkeeping firm.

Startup to Scale is a podcast by Foodbevy, an online community to connect emerging food, beverage, and CPG founders to great resources and partners to grow their business. Visit us at Foodbevy.com to learn about becoming a member or an industry partner today.

In 2024, Sarjesa, founded by Alexandra Sangster announced that she acquired Buzzd Nutrition, a superfood creamer brand founded by Lauren and Alex Burrows. What’s really exciting is that Sarjesa is an emerging brand itself and co-manufactured the Buzzd product. I had a lot of questions for Alexandra about what it looks like for one emerging brand to acquire another, and we break down all the details in this episode.

Startup to Scale is a podcast by Foodbevy, an online community to connect emerging food, beverage, and CPG founders to great resources and partners to grow their business. Visit us at Foodbevy.com to learn about becoming a member or an industry partner today.

As a startup you need a bank account to transact business, but who should you partner with? Retail banks like Chase and Wells Fargo? Or online banks?

Let’s talk with one of my favorite partners, Aion Financial that offers free online banking tools for businesses of all sizes including:

Banking
Debit Cards
Bill Pay
Receivables
Credit and Lending

Watch Video Here

Startup to Scale is a podcast by Foodbevy, an online community to connect emerging food, beverage, and CPG founders to great resources and partners to grow their business. Visit us at Foodbevy.com to learn about becoming a member or an industry partner today.

Discover the latest Amazon marketing tools and strategies designed to help your brand thrive this holiday season. In this episode, we explore Amazon Brand Tailored Promotions, a powerful feature that enables you to connect with targeted audiences, including:

New Customer Acquisition: Convert customers interested in your brand.
Customer Retention: Boost loyalty by engaging existing customers.
Re-engagement: Win back lost or churned customers.
Cross-sell Opportunities: Promote complementary products to current buyers.

Plus, learn about Additional Coupon Targeting options to engage:

At-risk customers.
Brand cart abandoners (7-day and 90-day).

Joining me is Luke Tierney from EcoD2C, sharing insights on how to implement these strategies effectively in your business.

📺 Watch the full video: https://www.foodbevy.com/amazon-brand-tailored-promotions-and-additional-coupon-targeting/.

Startup to Scale is a podcast by Foodbevy, an online community to connect emerging food, beverage, and CPG founders to great resources and partners to grow their business. Visit us at Foodbevy.com to learn about becoming a member or an industry partner today.

One of the biggest challenges growing a brand is aligning sales and operations. What systems did you put in place to do so? I talk with Corey Stary, VP Revenue & Ops at Kahawa 1893 on when their spreadsheets broke, and how they set the business up for the next stage.

Joining us is Wiley Jones, co-founder of Doss to talk through how to build your operational system.

Startup to Scale is a podcast by Foodbevy, an online community to connect emerging food, beverage, and CPG founders to great resources and partners to grow their business. Visit us at Foodbevy.com to learn about becoming a member or an industry partner today.

Debt financing is a tool that can be incredibly useful for emerging CPG brands, but is also fretted with questions. When is debt the right tool for you? What are the different financing types? How much should I take out? For this episode I invited Daniel Taylor, CEO of Bagsto help break down these answers.

Interested in connecting with Bags?Book a free financial growth session with their team here!

Startup to Scale is a podcast by Foodbevy, an online community to connect emerging food, beverage, and CPG founders to great resources and partners to grow their business. Visit us at Foodbevy.com to learn about becoming a member or an industry partner today.

Do you have a set plan on how to launch into new retailers? If not, this episode is for you. We break down how to plan your first 30-60-90 day selling periods, how to drive traffic to store, increase velocity, and measure data along the way.

I’m joined by Tate Glasgow and Harrai Khalsa, both with extensive CPG sales experience to discuss everything you need to know.

Sponsor: This episode is supported by Promomash, a company that helps CPG brands better plan and execute your trade and promotions plan.

Startup to Scale is a podcast by Foodbevy, an online community to connect emerging food, beverage, and CPG founders to great resources and partners to grow their business. Visit us at Foodbevy.com to learn about becoming a member or an industry partner today.

The intersection of digital and retail marketing is made easier with digital sampling. Now you can use trackable digital marketing tactics to drive customers to purchase in store, while simultaneously intercepting customers in-store through demos and adding them to your digital marketing and loyalty program. Join me for a conversation on how to use advanced digital product sampling and rebate programs to drive sales and velocity for your brand.

We discuss:

The Key Opportunities for Using Digital Sampling
Specific Tactics for Using Digital Rebates to Have the Best ROI

I’m Joined by Justin Lutz, CEO of Sampoll, a digital sampling and rebate company for emerging CPG brands.

Sampoll offers a “Bring Your Own Marketing” plan designed to help brands acquire new customers and boost sales velocity. Deploy targeted retail focused (or DTC) digital product trial offers in just a few clicks! For $399/month, brands receive 1,000 signups to support their marketing initiatives. Additionally, as a limited-time offer, the first 10 customers can get the first month for just $199—50% off the regular price. This plan provides an affordable, efficient way to expand your customer base and drive growth.

Startup to Scale is a podcast by Foodbevy, an online community to connect emerging food, beverage, and CPG founders to great resources and partners to grow their business. Visit us at Foodbevy.com to learn about becoming a member or an industry partner today.

AI is taking over every industry, which begs the question, can AI act as your Bookkeeper? I invite on Alice Zhang, founder of MyPocketCFO who’s been integrating AI into their accounting software for CPG Brands. In this episode we discuss what AI can and can’t do, and what the future may hold.

Startup to Scale is a podcast by Foodbevy, an online community to connect emerging food, beverage, and CPG founders to great resources and partners to grow their business. Visit us at Foodbevy.com to learn about becoming a member or an industry partner today.

Today, I have the pleasure of speaking with Isabel Washington, the founder of Laurel's Coffee, a brand that’s redefining canned coffee. Isabel's journey from concept to cup has been one of passion, persistence, and purpose. Her focus on ethically sourced, high-quality beans paired with using A2 dairy makes Laurel's Coffee stand out in a crowded marketplace.

Startup to Scale is a podcast by Foodbevy, an online community to connect emerging food, beverage, and CPG founders to great resources and partners to grow their business. Visit us at Foodbevy.com to learn about becoming a member or an industry partner today.

Running a family business comes with a lot of benefits, and a few challenges along the way. You know you have someone you can trust, but what happens when you have different ideas on how to grow?

I talk with Josh and Shlomo, two of the 2nd generation owners of Josh Packaging about how they navigated joining their family business. We also discuss their share values around always delivering for the customer. They share some practical advice on how to work with multiple family members over decades in business together.

Looking for a Packaging Supplier?

For flexible films like pouches, bar wrappers, and bags, turn to Josh Packaging—a trusted, family-owned business based in New York. They specialize in supporting emerging CPG brands with top-notch service and expert guidance on selecting the best materials for your packaging. Plus, their reliable lead times ensure you get your products out on schedule. Get a free consultation with Josh Packaging today and see how they can elevate your brand's packaging!

Startup to Scale is a podcast by Foodbevy, an online community to connect emerging food, beverage, and CPG founders to great resources and partners to grow their business. Visit us at Foodbevy.com to learn about becoming a member or an industry partner today.

I delve into the often misunderstood world of distributor partnerships and explore how brands can build strong, productive relationships with their distributors. Our discussion tackles the common misconceptions brands have about working with distributors, shedding light on what often goes awry and how to set the foundation for a successful collaboration.

I interview Elizabeth Hemphill-Burns is a seasoned sales leader and business strategist with over a decade of experience in the natural, specialty, and organic food and beverage industry. Elizabeth has an extensive background in building strong relationships with distributors, managing P&L, and expanding market reach for innovative brands like Pressed and KeHE.

Key points we'll cover include:

Understanding Distributors: Unpack the critical aspects that brands often overlook when working with distributors. Learn about the expectations from both sides and how misalignments can impact the relationship.
Building Strong Relationships: Discover actionable strategies to foster trust and cooperation with your distributors. We'll discuss communication techniques, mutual benefits, and the importance of aligning goals to enhance partnership longevity.
Navigating Chargebacks: Chargebacks can be a thorn in the side of many brands. We'll explain why chargebacks happen, how they can be managed, and preventative measures to minimize their occurrence. This segment aims to equip you with the knowledge to handle these financial setbacks effectively.

Need help managing distributor deductions? Glimpse uses AI to automatically download, categorize, and contest dispute deductions on your behalf. It works faster, costs less, and recoups more money than doing deductions manually or using any existing services. Get a 2 month free trial to see how much money you can save and free sales dashboard and tracking inventory: Tryglimpse.com

Startup to Scale is a podcast by Foodbevy, an online community to connect emerging food, beverage, and CPG founders to great resources and partners to grow their business. Visit us at Foodbevy.com to learn about becoming a member or an industry partner today.

Let’s break down exactly how to get a buyer to agree to take your meeting and then get them to say “yes” to bringing your product in store. For this conversation I talk with James Pippin with Good Now Foods and share actionable tips and tricks to stand out.

Looking for a Directory of Retail Buyers, Category Reviews, and Review Schedules? Check out Harvest Hub.

Startup to Scale is a podcast by Foodbevy, an online community to connect emerging food, beverage, and CPG founders to great resources and partners to grow their business. Visit us at Foodbevy.com to learn about becoming a member or an industry partner today.

As a CPG founder, you’ll encounter new risks at each stage of your business. I spoke with Russ Taylor of SecureCPG to share a roadmap for anticipating potential challenges and proactively addressing them, ensuring that your brand is resilient and prepared for success at every stage of your journey.

Startup to Scale is a podcast by Foodbevy, an online community to connect emerging food, beverage, and CPG founders to great resources and partners to grow their business. Visit us at Foodbevy.com to learn about becoming a member or an industry partner today.

Plastic storage containers for food and home organization are a fairly commoditized category. I spoke with Pall Musaev about how he purchased the Mr. Lid brand from the original founders and is transforming it into a fun brand that supports sustainable storage solutions.

Learn More at https://mrlid.com/

Startup to Scale is a podcast by Foodbevy, an online community to connect emerging food, beverage, and CPG founders to great resources and partners to grow their business. Visit us at Foodbevy.com to learn about becoming a member or an industry partner today.

So, you’re growing in retail and think you may be ready to start searching for a system to manage your trade spend, deductions and promotions. Have you thought about what you need internally to be ready for such a system? Do you have the right team in place? Does that team have the skill sets needed? How much guidance are you going to need? I invited on Chris Ambarian, Co-Founder of Promomash, to provide his perspective after working with dozens of brands through this transformation.

Startup to Scale is a podcast by Foodbevy, an online community to connect emerging food, beverage, and CPG founders to great resources and partners to grow their business. Visit us at Foodbevy.com to learn about becoming a member or an industry partner today.

Just a few years ago it seemed like Compostable packaging was hitting mainstream, even with large multinational corporations starting to implement. Now, there are few CPG products with compostable packaging on the market. I talk with Shlomo and Elie from Josh Packaging about the state of the Compostable Packaging industry, the challenges and opportunities, along with what you can do to make your packaging more sustainable.

Need help with flexible packaging for your brand? Josh Packaging is a family owned business that works with emerging brands to create custom packaging to fit your needs.

Startup to Scale is a podcast by Foodbevy, an online community to connect emerging food, beverage, and CPG founders to great resources and partners to grow their business. Visit us at Foodbevy.com to learn about becoming a member or an industry partner today.

We take hundreds of photos of our products, but often times we keep coming back to using the same dozen or so. But why do these photos stand out more than others? It’s often because they share a compelling narrative about your brand/products that the others don’t capture. So how do we take more of these effective photos? It starts by understanding the role of each photograph, why you’re taking it, and the point you need it to get across.

I talk with Carrington Crothers of Prospect Street Studio to break down how to create highly effective photographs every time.

Startup to Scale is a podcast by Foodbevy, an online community to connect emerging food, beverage, and CPG founders to great resources and partners to grow their business. Visit us at Foodbevy.com to learn about becoming a member or an industry partner today.

We’re at a pivotal time in the CPG industry right now. The dry spell of capital has put a lot of VC funded companies out of business and is preventing the launch of many more. So what’s a founder to do? I’ve invited on Howie Sher, who’s been in the food industry for decades and has seen it all. Howie grew up in the grocery store business before starting his own CPG nut business, What-A-Ya Nuts, which he ran for 10 years. Now he consults with CPG founders and runs JPG’s Founder Cohort program.

I am excited to share that after a successful Spring/Summer session, our friends at JPG Resources are now recruiting for the Fall/Winter Founder Cohorts!

This is a B-School course approach for Founders, covering subjects including Fundraising, Marketing, Data, Sales, Regulatory, Legal, Supply Chain, and beyond in sessions led by some of the industry’s most recognized leaders.

The Cohort is an opportunity for personal and brand growth – where you meet and learn from industry experts and former founders while sharing collective experiences with peers.

Sign up by August 30th for early-bird pricing and receive a 20% discount for the Fall/Winter 2024 Cohort!

Program duration: October 2024 – April 2025
12 virtual sessions, 90 minutes each
Industry Experts in every session, covering topics critical to CPG
EARLY-BIRD PRICING INCLUDES 20% DISCOUNT:$720 per month ($4,320 total)
INCLUDES A BONUS: 5 hours of individual advising from JPG experts

To find out more about Founders Cohorts and take advantage of the early-bird pricing.

Email us at grace@foodbevy.com.

Startup to Scale is a podcast by Foodbevy, an online community to connect emerging food, beverage, and CPG founders to great resources and partners to grow their business. Visit us at Foodbevy.com to learn about becoming a member or an industry partner today.

Getting funding to support your business growth is the #1 concern I hear from founders. How do you get access to the financing you need to make an impact? I’ve invited on Matthew Featherstone, founder of Hiatus Cheesecaketo share their story on how a line of credit fromAion Financial gave them the cashflow to fund inventory to expand into hundreds of new retailers.

Need working capital for your business? Sign up with Aion Financial and access credit lines from $10,000 to $5,000,000. As a special offer for the Foodbevy community, Aion is completely waiving their fee of $99/month to access credit lines.” E-mail us to get this deal: grace@foodbevy.com

Startup to Scale is a podcast by Foodbevy, an online community to connect emerging food, beverage, and CPG founders to great resources and partners to grow their business. Visit us at Foodbevy.com to learn about becoming a member or an industry partner today.

As a founder, it’s important to have a strong grasp on your business financials, but when do you actually hire someone to help? In this episode, we talk through what is the role of a CFO, Controller, and Bookkeeper, and when’s the right time to hire them as a contractor or full time role. Joining me for this conversation is Brad Ebenhoeh, founder of Accountfully to provide his expert experience.

Need help with bookkeeping or CFO Strategy for your CPG Brand? Check out Accountfully, who specializes in working with CPG Brands.

Startup to Scale is a podcast by Foodbevy, an online community to connect emerging food, beverage, and CPG founders to great resources and partners to grow their business. Visit us at Foodbevy.com to learn about becoming a member or an industry partner today.

Getting insurance can be a little bit of a black box for companies, what coverage do you need? How do your application answers affect pricing? What are common red flags or issues that can delay or complicated the application process? I invite on Russ Taylor with SecureCPG to discuss how to apply and audit your insurance coverage to make sure you’re getting the best coverage and pricing.

Startup to Scale is a podcast by Foodbevy, an online community to connect emerging food, beverage, and CPG founders to great resources and partners to grow their business. Visit us at Foodbevy.com to learn about becoming a member or an industry partner today.

Developing a food or beverage product is deceptively hard. Anyone can whip up a batch of say, BBQ sauce or cookies in their home kitchen, but commercializing them takes a lot of time, nuance, and consideration. I’m joined today by Jamie Valenti-Jordan, founder of Catapult Consulting to discuss the new product development process for CPG brands.

Startup to Scale is a podcast by Foodbevy, an online community to connect emerging food, beverage, and CPG founders to great resources and partners to grow their business. Visit us at Foodbevy.com to learn about becoming a member or an industry partner today.

Kristin Taylor is the co-founder of Mom Juice, a unique wine brand that's reshaping the narrative around motherhood and wine. Kristin, inspired by her Southern roots and a memorable visit to an Italian vineyard, co-created Mom Juice to bring women and mothers together over a glass of wine. With a commitment to authenticity and simplicity, Mom Juice has grown rapidly, offering wines made with just eight ingredients.

Join us as we dive into Kristin's journey, the story behind Mom Juice, and how it's making waves in the wine industry.

Startup to Scale is a podcast by Foodbevy, an online community to connect emerging food, beverage, and CPG founders to great resources and partners to grow their business. Visit us at Foodbevy.com to learn about becoming a member or an industry partner today.

Debbie Wei Mullin, founder and CEO ofCopper Cow Coffee, the sustainably sourced and (soon to be) very first certified organic Vietnamese coffee company. Debbie founded Copper Cow in 2016 out of her sister’s garage with a mission to transform Vietnamese coffee farming via sustainable practices – now, they’ve sold 20 million+ coffees to date, all while supporting farmers in Vietnam. they've certified Vietnam's first-ever organic coffee farms, and later this year Copper Cow will become the first organic certified Vietnamese coffee brand (8 years in the making!). They've invested over $100K into converting the farms to organic + pay farmers 2x the market rate for their coffee.

Startup to Scale is a podcast by Foodbevy, an online community to connect emerging food, beverage, and CPG founders to great resources and partners to grow their business. Visit us at Foodbevy.com to learn about becoming a member or an industry partner today.

Tip Top Proper Cocktails is an Atlanta-based beverage company that is making delicious cocktails available on the go. The company co-founders, Yoni Reisman and Neal Cohen, are music industry veterans who identified quality cocktails as a missing piece in the beverage offering at festivals, music venues and other high volume events.

Join me as I talk with Neal on building the business during the pandemic, launching with Delta Airlines, and testing out product innovation and pack size.

Learn more at https://tiptopcocktails.com/

Startup to Scale is a podcast by Foodbevy, an online community to connect emerging food, beverage, and CPG founders to great resources and partners to grow their business. Visit us at Foodbevy.com to learn about becoming a member or an industry partner today.

Imagine you finally get to a point as a beverage company where you can upgrade to your first printed cans. You had to secure a new contract with a can company and co-packer to make it happen. Everything is all set for your production run, and the co-packer starts running your product through the line.

But then, disaster strikes. All 10,000 cans come out of the tunnel pasteurizer with labels peeling off. All that product is unsellable, and effectively lost. The copacker blames the can company, and the can company says the facility wasn't approved. You're caught in a frustrating "he said, she said" scenario, with no one taking responsibility. To make matters even worst, your business insurance isn’t setup to cover this type of product loss. This is exactly what happened to Sara Delaney, founder of Sarilla.

Join me as I talk with Sara along with Russ Taylor, from SecureCPG to learn how this happened and how proper insurance can help you prevent issues like this from happening to your company.

Learn More About Sarilla: https://www.drinksarilla.com/
Learn More About SecureCPG: https://securecpg.com/

Startup to Scale is a podcast by Foodbevy, an online community to connect emerging food, beverage, and CPG founders to great resources and partners to grow their business. Visit us at Foodbevy.com to learn about becoming a member or an industry partner today.

Alex Matthews is the co-founder and CEO of De La Calle, a brand that's bringing tepache—a fermented pineapple drink with roots dating back to pre-Columbian Mexico—to the forefront of the beverage industry. Alex's journey is one of passion, innovation, and a deep respect for cultural heritage.

We'll dive into how Alex discovered tepache, the challenges he faced in bringing this unique beverage to market, and how De La Calle has grown to become a beloved brand among consumers looking for authentic and refreshing drinks. From navigating the complexities of fermentation to building a brand that honors its cultural origins, Alex's story is a testament to the power of perseverance and creativity.

Startup to Scale is a podcast by Foodbevy, an online community to connect emerging food, beverage, and CPG founders to great resources and partners to grow their business. Visit us at Foodbevy.com to learn about becoming a member or an industry partner today.

You need to know where you’re going in order to get there. For CPG brands this means creating a brand strategy, knowing your business, and then mapping a path to getting where you want to go. I’ve been pitched by agencies who charge $50,000 for this service, but if you’re like me, you have no where near that budget to pay for strategy.

So how can you do it yourself? I’ve invited on Ashley and Sarah, co-founders of The Squeeze, a strategic brand, marketing & retail consultancy to share how you can build your own brand strategy for free.

Download your free Bootstrap Your Brand Strategy Guide

Startup to Scale is a podcast by Foodbevy, an online community to connect emerging food, beverage, and CPG founders to great resources and partners to grow their business. Visit us at Foodbevy.com to learn about becoming a member or an industry partner today.

Launching a CPG brand is definitely hard, but competing in the highly competitive snacking category is comes with it’s own unique challenges. Laurel Orley, the co-founder of Daily Crunch just launched her sprouted nut snacks in over 450 Target stores nationwide.

In this episode you’ll learn about how she and her team hold themselves accountable through KPIs and weekly check-ins, how to acquire new customers for retail, and more.

Startup to Scale is a podcast by Foodbevy, an online community to connect emerging food, beverage, and CPG founders to great resources and partners to grow their business. Visit us at Foodbevy.com to learn about becoming a member or an industry partner today.

It’s no secret that money is tight for CPG brands. The era of surplus investor funding is gone for now, and businesses need leaner operations. That said, you still need cash to grow, so when and how can you get it? I’ve invited on Jim and Carly from Aion to discuss when you should access working capital as a CPG Brand.

Learn more about Aion Financial Here

Startup to Scale is a podcast by Foodbevy, an online community to connect emerging food, beverage, and CPG founders to great resources and partners to grow their business. Visit us at Foodbevy.com to learn about becoming a member or an industry partner today.

When Ori left his previous VC funded tech startup, he was determined that his next company would be bootstrapped so he could control his own destiny. Ori co-founded Burlap & Barrel with Ethan Frisch, a single-origin spice company. They made sure the company was profitable from day 1 (without paying themselves). Initially they put all the money back into the company, doing consulting on the side and by year 3 they were able to start paying themselves completely from the company.

Listen to our conversation as we discuss the conscious choice to be profitable, how they found success with a unique value proposition selling “commodities”, and their upcoming expansion into retail.

www.burlapandbarrel.com

Startup to Scale is a podcast by Foodbevy, an online community to connect emerging food, beverage, and CPG founders to great resources and partners to grow their business. Visit us at Foodbevy.com to learn about becoming a member or an industry partner today.

Building a CPG brand can be a winding road. Often times the product you start out creating ends up changing as you learn and iterate with your customers. Now, changing from your original idea can be hard, but ultimately you’ll create a better product if you align your core vision with customer feedback.

Shibani Baluja knows this journey well. She’s a long time friend and founder of Lil gourmet’s, a line of baby and toddler food for adventurous eaters. I invited her on to share her journey of building the company, her original vision, and the changes she’s had to make to get to where she is today.

Startup to Scale is a podcast by Foodbevy, an online community to connect emerging food, beverage, and CPG founders to great resources and partners to grow their business. Visit us at Foodbevy.com to learn about becoming a member or an industry partner today.

Will Nitze created IQ Bar, a protein bar to increase mental health and cognition, and now runs a multi-million dollar brand selling bars, hydration sticks, and mushroom coffees.

Learn his strategy for growing a brand to a projected $55 million including fundraising, channel strategy, and mindset.

Startup to Scale is a podcast by Foodbevy, an online community to connect emerging food, beverage, and CPG founders to great resources and partners to grow their business. Visit us at Foodbevy.com to learn about becoming a member or an industry partner today.

As a CPG founder, it’s necessary to understand where you want to go in your business in order to get there. Financial Modeling, Forecasting, Budgeting are crucial steps to turning your strategic vision into actionable steps.

Join me for a conversation with Brad Ebenhoeh, CEO of Accountfully as we break down how to do each of these for your business.

Need help with your finances? Accountfully specializes in working with CPG brands. Explore how they can help: Accountfully.com

Startup to Scale is a podcast by Foodbevy, an online community to connect emerging food, beverage, and CPG founders to great resources and partners to grow their business. Visit us at Foodbevy.com to learn about becoming a member or an industry partner today.

Kaitlin Mogentale founded Pulp Pantry in 2019 to reduce food waste and increase nutrition using upcycled veggie pulp. She had great initial traction getting accepted into Target’s Accelerator, airing on Shark Tank, and launching in major retailers. She found that while consumers say they are interested in sustainable messaging, labeling her product as “pulp” and “upcycled” was turning away potential customers who thought they would taste bad.

So in 2024 Kaitlin listened to her customers and rebranded to Trashy, an energetic and edgy brand to attract a new wave of customers.

Listen in to hear behind the scenes of her transition.

Support her WeFunder Equity Crowdfunding campaign

Startup to Scale is a podcast by Foodbevy, an online community to connect emerging food, beverage, and CPG founders to great resources and partners to grow their business. Visit us at Foodbevy.com to learn about becoming a member or an industry partner today.

As you launch in retail most brands will start by taking orders manually via email, phone call, or even text. But once you start working with larger retailers, they’ll usually require you to process orders via EDI.

In this episode I break down:

What is EDI?
When do you need it?
How does it implement for a brand?
How to choose an EDI provider?
How long does it take to set up?
How much should I expect to pay?

CRSTL is a new modern EDI provider priced for emerging brands that works with any retailer that uses EDI. I recommend them because of their easy to use platform, great customer service, and simple pricing. I negotiated with them for you to Save 25% off your entire first year, let me know if you'd like an introduction.

Startup to Scale is a podcast by Foodbevy, an online community to connect emerging food, beverage, and CPG founders to great resources and partners to grow their business. Visit us at Foodbevy.com to learn about becoming a member or an industry partner today.

If you find yourself constantly putting out fires, this episode is for you. I talk with Katie Armistead about how to build strong relationships and processes across your supply chain so you don’t have to solve every issue that comes up.

We discuss building SOPs (Standard Operating Procedures) and how to improve those with your partners.

I am excited to announce our friends at JPG Resources are celebrating their 15th anniversary with the launch of Founder Cohorts!

Cohorts is a B-School course approach for Founders, covering subjects including Fundraising, Marketing, Data, Sales, Regulatory, Legal, Supply Chain, and beyond in sessions led by some of the industry’s most recognized leaders.

This is an opportunity for personal and brand growth. Founders can learn from industry experts and former founders, while sharing collective experiences with peers.

Spots are filling up quickly, as JPG is actively recruiting the final companies for its Spring 2024 Cohort!

· Program duration: May – October 2024

· 12 virtual sessions, 90 minutes each

· Industry Experts in every session, covering topics critical to CPG

· In-person events at major industry expos

· PRICING INCLUDES 20% DISCOUNT for the Foodbevy Community:

$720 per month ($4,320 total)

· BONUS: 5 hours of individualized advisory services from the JPG Resources team

HURRY! Limited spots remain, Sign Up here today and mention FoodbevySpecial to receive your 20% Discount.

Startup to Scale is a podcast by Foodbevy, an online community to connect emerging food, beverage, and CPG founders to great resources and partners to grow their business. Visit us at Foodbevy.com to learn about becoming a member or an industry partner today.

Tia Lupita Foods pitched on Shark Tank in April 2023 and made a deal with Kevin O’Leary. So what’s new? I invited on Jose Carrillo, Tia Lupita’s Head of Marketing and Strategy to discuss. We get into how Shark Tank affected their brand awareness, channel strategy, and a packaging rebrand to better communicate to consumers.

Listen in!

Startup to Scale is a podcast by Foodbevy, an online community to connect emerging food, beverage, and CPG founders to great resources and partners to grow their business. Visit us at Foodbevy.com to learn about becoming a member or an industry partner today.

Launching a new CPG business is tough at any time, but launching one in 2024? Let’s find out. I invited on Brian Bethke, founder of Bear Maple, a new Ginseng Maple Water. Brian first came up with the idea in 2020 when looking at Maple Trees outside of his window. Fast forward a few years, he officially launched the brand at Expo West 2024 to much fanfare, winning the KeHE Trendfinder “Golden Ticket”, designed to help fast track young, leading edge brands.

Listen in to Brian’s exciting story to hear what it took to bring his new brand to market and where it’s going from here.

Startup to Scale is a podcast by Foodbevy, an online community to connect emerging food, beverage, and CPG founders to great resources and partners to grow their business. Visit us at Foodbevy.com to learn about becoming a member or an industry partner today.

As a CPG brand, understanding your business financials is imperative to building a successful company. You first need to understand your business goals to get where you want to go. I’ve invited on Brad Ebenhoeh from Accountfully to talk through how to build a strong financial foundation for your business.

We discuss:

The difference between Bookkeeping, Accounting, and Finance
Choosing between Profitability and Growth at a Loss
Calculating your product margin
and more.

If you need help with understanding your business financials, talk with Brad and his team at Accountfully.

Startup to Scale is a podcast by Foodbevy, an online community to connect emerging food, beverage, and CPG founders to great resources and partners to grow their business. Visit us at Foodbevy.com to learn about becoming a member or an industry partner today.

Telling your brand story comes naturally for some, but challenging for others. In this episode I invite you to learn how to build a compelling story for your brand so you can influence how customers thing about you. I invite on Jake Ahles to walk though his F.E.E.E.D. Method to story telling.

F.E.E.E.D. stands for:

Facts
Emotion
Education
Engagement
Differentiation

Startup to Scale is a podcast by Foodbevy, an online community to connect emerging food, beverage, and CPG founders to great resources and partners to grow their business. Visit us at Foodbevy.com to learn about becoming a member or an industry partner today.

Business insurance is one of those things that most founders think about once, and never thing about again. That is, until a major problem happens and they’re desperately trying to figure out if insurance will cover it. As your brand grows, you should be reviewing your insurance needs annually to make sure you’re covered in all the ways you need, incase something goes wrong.

To talk about all the things that can go wrong, I’ve invited on Russ Taylor, Head of Business development for Secure CPG to share how to avoid these common mistakes.

Learn More:Link to: Secure CPG

Startup to Scale is a podcast by Foodbevy, an online community to connect emerging food, beverage, and CPG founders to great resources and partners to grow their business. Visit us at Foodbevy.com to learn about becoming a member or an industry partner today.

Every CPG brand I’ve talked to over the past year has been laser focused on expanding into retail. While the initial order volumes can look promising, growth takes significant investment in managing those relations and driving sales.

So how do you keep track of what’s going on once you’re in in thousands of stores? My guest today is Will Salcido, founder of Bedrock Analytics who’s here to discuss what CPG brands can do in 2024 to drive success in retail.

Access 3 Free Reports from NielsenIQ’s Byzzer Platform

Startup to Scale is a podcast by Foodbevy, an online community to connect emerging food, beverage, and CPG founders to great resources and partners to grow their business. Visit us at Foodbevy.com to learn about becoming a member or an industry partner today.

Growing in retail means managing orders in multiple formats. Email, EDI, it can get overwhelming. Join me for a conversation with Ian Leaman, founder of Pantry as we breakdown some of the common challenges founders face and how proper order management, forecasting, and AI can overcome them.

Learn more about Pantry here: Pantry.ai

Startup to Scale is a podcast by Foodbevy, an online community to connect emerging food, beverage, and CPG founders to great resources and partners to grow their business. Visit us at Foodbevy.com to learn about becoming a member or an industry partner today.

The past year has been excruciating for emerging CPG brands. The lack of capital, rise in expenses, and sales challenges have been really tough. This year looks like more of the same, but the good news is that you can position your business to not just survive, but thrive this year. So today, I want to share some strategies on how to build a resilient CPG brand and invited on Jeff Grogg, CEO of JPG Resources. Jeff helps founders across the entire business process from manufacturing to sales.

Learn More:

Jeff Grogg Linkedin
Link to: JPG Resources Talent

Startup to Scale is a podcast by Foodbevy, an online community to connect emerging food, beverage, and CPG founders to great resources and partners to grow their business. Visit us at Foodbevy.com to learn about becoming a member or an industry partner today.

The foodservice channel is one of my favorite channels for CPG Brands, but it’s gone through some change over the past few years. I’ve invited on Kristi McGill VP of Sales at Rooted Food Sales to talk through foodservice trends for 2024 and how to build a strategy for your brand.

Startup to Scale is a podcast by Foodbevy, an online community to connect emerging food, beverage, and CPG founders to great resources and partners to grow their business. Visit us at Foodbevy.com to learn about becoming a member or an industry partner today.

Amazon is an amazing platform for CPG brands to reach your customers where they want to buy. As a seller, there are a ton of tools on Amazon, and you may be wondering what are the most impactful ones to grow your sales.

There’s a lot of talk recently about Premium A+ Content, and the impact it can make for you. I’ve invited on Daniela Bolzmann, founder of Mindful Goods for this episode, as she and her team help brands create high performing Amazon listings.

Listen to learn how A+ content can increase your sales 300% and how to unlock it.

Get 10% off Mindful Goods created Amazon Listings. Use coupon code FOODBEVY at Mindfulgoods.co

Guide for how to Unlock Premium A+

https://mindfulgoods.co/brand-story-magic

Guide for Designing Premium A+

https://paper.dropbox.com/doc/Premium-A-Training-Modules-by-MindfulGoods.co--CIOPnvvq7zpFCj5lS~4OrW6NAQ-EvoG9MRtc3CpsClELCsbD

Data we see when brands upgrade to Premium A+

https://mindfulgoods.co/premium-aplus-data

Startup to Scale is a podcast by Foodbevy, an online community to connect emerging food, beverage, and CPG founders to great resources and partners to grow their business. Visit us at Foodbevy.com to learn about becoming a member or an industry partner today.

Fundraising for CPG brands in this environment is extremely challenging, especially for emerging brands. My guest today, Jimmy Semrick is the founder of Brella and has managed to raise $650 thousand dollars in the past 2 years and is using that money to expand distribution with MolsonCoors + Anheuser-Busch while extending their manufacturing space.

Listen to learn how he built investor relationships and what stood out about his business to close the deal.

Startup to Scale is a podcast by Foodbevy, an online community to connect emerging food, beverage, and CPG founders to great resources and partners to grow their business. Visit us at Foodbevy.com to learn about becoming a member or an industry partner today.

What does it take to build a successful CPG business in 2024? In this episode I invite on a panel to talk through industry trends, founder survival, and finding the support you need to grow your business.

My guests are:

Christine Couvelier
Sachi Kittur
Tricia Ryan

From foodbizmentoring.com

Startup to Scale is a podcast by Foodbevy, an online community to connect emerging food, beverage, and CPG founders to great resources and partners to grow their business. Visit us at Foodbevy.com to learn about becoming a member or an industry partner today.

As you launch into new retailers, what tools do you have to drive sales and velocity outside of the store? Retail E-commerce is a new marketing category that’s recently grown, which can help you make all your digital marketing shoppable. I talk with Louis Condon at Pear Commerce on exactly how to utilize it to:

Driving Trial and Discovery
Velocity and increasing sell through
Key sales boosts at launch and for category reviews
Increasing volume to move inventory

Visit Pear Commerce
Link to Previous Podcast Episode

Startup to Scale is a podcast by Foodbevy, an online community to connect emerging food, beverage, and CPG founders to great resources and partners to grow their business. Visit us at Foodbevy.com to learn about becoming a member or an industry partner today.

Branding is more than just your logo or packaging design. Branding is how you and your company show up in the world, and how people view your actions, your values, your products, your mission, and your vision. Your visual identity just becomes a shorthand for customers to easily identify all the other more meaningful things.

Join me for one of my favorite recent conversations with Leonard Grape, founder of The Vineyard, a branding firm for CPG brands to share his insights.

*For content creation services, choose Happy Copy and use code Foodbevy20 to enjoy a 14-day free trial along with a 20% discount! 🌟

Startup to Scale is a podcast by Foodbevy, an online community to connect emerging food, beverage, and CPG founders to great resources and partners to grow their business. Visit us at Foodbevy.com to learn about becoming a member or an industry partner today.

As CPG founders, we spend a lot of our days reacting to the world around us and not enough time strategizing and planning for the future. It can leave you feeling unbalanced and constantly behind. One of the best things you can strategize is your sales and inventory planning, so that everyone on your team can be on the same page.

Today I’ve invited on Yuval Selik, CEO of Promomash to talk about how to planning process so you can make more informed decisions.

Startup to Scale is a podcast by Foodbevy, an online community to connect emerging food, beverage, and CPG founders to great resources and partners to grow their business. Visit us at Foodbevy.com to learn about becoming a member or an industry partner today.

Having a Social Media presence for your brand is a given for businesses today, but how do you actually build a strategy that provides value to your brand? I talk with so many founds who spend hours a week sharing photos and posting reels, just to feel like it’s not actually doing anything meaningful.

So today I’ve invited on Elle de Freitas, founder and CEO of Wonderkind to discuss How to begin building your social media strategy as a small brand.

Learn more about Wonderkind.

Startup to Scale is a podcast by Foodbevy, an online community to connect emerging food, beverage, and CPG founders to great resources and partners to grow their business. Visit us at Foodbevy.com to learn about becoming a member or an industry partner today.

My guest today is David Delcourt, founder of Grown As* Foods and Seed Ranch Flavor Co. If you’re on Linkedin, you’ve likely seen David on your feed in a bright yellow jump suit talking about his plant-based Mac and Cheese. We break down how David built a profitable brand and is raising an equity crowdfunding round to fund the next phase of the business.

If you're interested in supporting his venture and being a part of this exciting journey, check out the crowdfunding campaign.

Startup to Scale is a podcast by Foodbevy, an online community to connect emerging food, beverage, and CPG founders to great resources and partners to grow their business. Visit us at Foodbevy.com to learn about becoming a member or an industry partner today.

Today’s guest is Jasmine Neveles, co-founder and CEO of Uncharted Coffee, a Black-woman-owned ethical coffee roaster with rare and limited-edition coffee bean drops produced by multi-generational coffee farmers across the globe.

Starting as a way of connecting with their ancestral roots and mother – Jasmine learned more about the disparities amongst coffee farming communities and the negative impacts of the primarily white-dominated industry. To reclaim the BIPOC narrative around coffee, Uncharted was founded and now produces ethically sourced and single-origin beans that are environmentally sound with a 1% promise for the planet, farmer equity, and transparency.

Startup to Scale is a podcast by Foodbevy, an online community to connect emerging food, beverage, and CPG founders to great resources and partners to grow their business. Visit us at Foodbevy.com to learn about becoming a member or an industry partner today.

Let’s be honest, most businesses will fail and every business will go through challenging times. How do you maintain resiliency through your entrepreneurial journey?

Just because your business fails, doesn’t make you a failure.

I’m joined by Keith Kohler and Kristoffer Quiaoit as we each share our story of shutting down a business and reinventing ourselves afterward.

Startup to Scale is a podcast by Foodbevy, an online community to connect emerging food, beverage, and CPG founders to great resources and partners to grow their business. Visit us at Foodbevy.com to learn about becoming a member or an industry partner today.

The Holidays are quickly approaching, and you’ve definitely seen the specific holiday displays in store from Halloween to Thanksgiving, Hanukkah to Christmas.

But should you participate in these in-store merchandising displays as an emerging brand? I’ve invited on George Tzafis, who works with emerging brands at Trax to discuss how to build a holiday merchandising plan.

We discuss:

Which holiday merchandising tactics perform best?
Is it too late to plan for holiday merchandising?
What are the top holiday buying events, and for what types of products?
Should brands invest in custom packaging, custom displays, or both?
What is necessary to support the rollout of displays? Should you rely on retailers or do it with yourself or any outsourced team?

Startup to Scale is a podcast by Foodbevy, an online community to connect emerging food, beverage, and CPG founders to great resources and partners to grow their business. Visit us at Foodbevy.com to learn about becoming a member or an industry partner today.

Join us in this insightful podcast as we dive into the world of data-driven decision-making in the retail industry. Discover how emerging CPG brands can leverage data not just to measure success but to inform and drive growth strategies.

Learn from experts like Patrick Dougherty from Nielsen IQ as we explore the importance of understanding market dynamics, measuring incrementality, setting meaningful benchmarks, and integrating data across the organization. Whether you're a small CPG brand or an industry enthusiast, this podcast will equip you with the knowledge you need to navigate the competitive retail landscape successfully.

Get Free Data Access

Startup to Scale is a podcast by Foodbevy, an online community to connect emerging food, beverage, and CPG founders to great resources and partners to grow their business. Visit us at Foodbevy.com to learn about becoming a member or an industry partner today.

We all know that getting on shelf is hard, but selling off the shelf is even harder.

On this episode I’m joined by Andy Segal, Senior Sales Manager at Honey Mama’s to share how he manages sales and promotions.

He breaks down how he creates a strategy for the year using tools like Promomash and Crisp, and then uses them to evaluate the success of the various promotions.

If you need help managing sales strategy, trade spend and deductions, try Promomash and Crisp yourself. Foodbevy members get a free 30 day trial of both tools.

Startup to Scale is a podcast by Foodbevy, an online community to connect emerging food, beverage, and CPG founders to great resources and partners to grow their business. Visit us at Foodbevy.com to learn about becoming a member or an industry partner today.

Building a CPG brand is like playing a game of which came first, the chicken or the egg. You need inventory to feel confident making sales, but you need sales to have the money to pay for inventory. This is especially true with products that have a short shelf life. What’s the answer? Utilizing proper forecasting tools to know how much product you should make.

I’ve invited on Ian Leaman, co-founder and CEO of Pantry AI to discuss how to improve your forecasting.

Startup to Scale is a podcast by Foodbevy, an online community to connect emerging food, beverage, and CPG founders to great resources and partners to grow their business. Visit us at Foodbevy.com to learn about becoming a member or an industry partner today.

In our recent webinar with JPG Resources, we delved into the fascinating journey of product development, where we explored the process of transforming your cherished recipe formulations from the cozy confines of your kitchen and benchtop to a grand production scale. We dived deep into key topics, including:

the critical aspects of shelf stability
crucial task of selecting the right manufacturer
invaluable insights on approaching manufacturers such as ingredient quality, process adaptation, simplicity, focus, and cost management

Startup to Scale is a podcast by Foodbevy, an online community to connect emerging food, beverage, and CPG founders to great resources and partners to grow their business. Visit us at Foodbevy.com to learn about becoming a member or an industry partner today.

Aaron Luo, CEO and co-founder of the new DTC Spanish charcuterie brand, Mercado Famous. Aaron was born in China, but raised in Madrid, where he grew up eating a blend of Spanish cuisine incorporating Chinese ingredients. He’s also the co-founder of Caraa, a fashion apparel brand.

This episode we discuss building a DTC CPG brand, focusing on long-term growth, and digital advertising.

Startup to Scale is a podcast by Foodbevy, an online community to connect emerging food, beverage, and CPG founders to great resources and partners to grow their business. Visit us at Foodbevy.com to learn about becoming a member or an industry partner today.

How do you determine your marketing budget and how do you find a way to stretch those dollars when in comes to content and social media? I’ve invited on Emily Teater, founder of Set Creative Studios who works with emerging CPG brands to create content and run their social media and e-mail campaigns.

Learn more about Emily Teater and Set Creative Studios

Startup to Scale is a podcast by Foodbevy, an online community to connect emerging food, beverage, and CPG founders to great resources and partners to grow their business. Visit us at Foodbevy.com to learn about becoming a member or an industry partner today.

We all hear that working with influencers can be beneficial for your brand, but I find most founders are highly underutilizing the opportunity.

So how can you do better? I invited on Esther Kim, founder of Maven Reach to talk through how you can better leverage influencers for your brand.

Startup to Scale is a podcast by Foodbevy, an online community to connect emerging food, beverage, and CPG founders to great resources and partners to grow their business. Visit us at Foodbevy.com to learn about becoming a member or an industry partner today.

Building a beverage brand comes with its unique challenges. I sit down with Victor and Jordan, co-founders of Bawi to learn how they’ve navigated their journey. Bawi takes a modern twist on agua frescas by creating a health-conscious and bubbly version of the classic Mexican beverage.

Learn how they started in farmers markets to now launching in Sprouts.

Startup to Scale is a podcast by Foodbevy, an online community to connect emerging food, beverage, and CPG founders to great resources and partners to grow their business. Visit us at Foodbevy.com to learn about becoming a member or an industry partner today.

Is your company vision aligned with how you’re growing your business and choosing your sales channel strategy? If it’s not, you’ll find yourself on a journey that you didn’t intend to and that takes away your energy. Join me for a conversation with Caroline Grace, a retail strategist for Emerging CPG Brands | Founder & CEO of Product & Prosper.

We discuss how to create a clear vision for the way you want to design your journey as a founder, the key foundational steps you need to build as a business, and creating a sales channel strategy that aligns with that. There’s lots of amazing content in this episode, so let’s dive in.

Startup to Scale is a podcast by Foodbevy, an online community to connect emerging food, beverage, and CPG founders to great resources and partners to grow their business. Visit us at Foodbevy.com to learn about becoming a member or an industry partner today.

Do you know how your business is performing? If you aren’t crystal clear, then it’s time to learn how to review your finances to make sure you’re on track to hit your goals.

Join me as I discuss how to review your business finances with Alice Zhang, CEO of MyPocket CFO, a platform that helps you achieve financial independence through automated bookkeeping, simplified planning & analysis, and access to cash & capital.

Startup to Scale is a podcast by Foodbevy, an online community to connect emerging food, beverage, and CPG founders to great resources and partners to grow their business. Visit us at Foodbevy.com to learn about becoming a member or an industry partner today.

The retail landscape is experiencing another whiplash in buyer and consumer behavior. Are you prepared for the changes? Join me for a conversation with Steve Zurek, VP of Advanced Analytics and Thought Leadership for NIQ. We discuss:

Post pandemic assortments and what they mean for small brands.
Forced trial…or discovery. How supply shortages for the big guys benefits small brands.
Knowing your consumer and their worth to the retailer gets your foot in the door.
Proving that you’re bringing incremental sales to the category.

Get Free Data Access

Startup to Scale is a podcast by Foodbevy, an online community to connect emerging food, beverage, and CPG founders to great resources and partners to grow their business. Visit us at Foodbevy.com to learn about becoming a member or an industry partner today.

Good accounting will reveal the fundamentals of your business performance and show the good and bad. But great bookkeeping can be challenging for inventory based businesses.

Join me for a conversation with Mike Pignatelli, Co-Founder of Unloop Accounting as we break down the top accounting mistakes CPG Companies make and how to solve for them.

Solve your accounting needs with Unloop, starting at just $299/month. Start Here

Startup to Scale is a podcast by Foodbevy, an online community to connect emerging food, beverage, and CPG founders to great resources and partners to grow their business. Visit us at Foodbevy.com to learn about becoming a member or an industry partner today.

On today’s episode I talk with RollinGreens’ CEO and co-founder, Lindsey Cunningham. She started RollinGreens in a food truck in Boulder, CO, and launched a CPG product that’s now expanded into Sprouts’ Innovation Centers and into over 2,600 Walmart's so valuable. Now 12.5 years into their journey, Lindsey shares her key points for building a successful CPG brand.

Startup to Scale is a podcast by Foodbevy, an online community to connect emerging food, beverage, and CPG founders to great resources and partners to grow their business. Visit us at Foodbevy.com to learn about becoming a member or an industry partner today.

Sanzo has experienced skyrocketing growth over the past 4 years building the first Asian-Inspired sparkling water brand. I sit down with founder Sandro Roco to discuss what led to starting the brand and how he’s navigated their fast growth.

Startup to Scale is a podcast by Foodbevy, an online community to connect emerging food, beverage, and CPG founders to great resources and partners to grow their business. Visit us at Foodbevy.com to learn about becoming a member or an industry partner today.

We all know that raising your first few fundraising rounds can be incredibly challenging, with many investors wanting to see elusive “proof of success” before they invest large sums of money. One way to lower the cost of investment and show interest in your business is through an equity crowd funding campaign.

But here’s the magic, you don’t need to only raise from “consumers”, you can create a campaign to raise smaller checks from angel investors, who instead of having to contribute $50,000, can contribute $5,000. It lower’s their initial risk threshold, while allowing them to experience working with you before writing a larger check.

Join me as I talk to David Cisneros, founder of Origo Brands about how he’s leveraging this approach to fundraise and how you can do it too.

Startup to Scale is a podcast by Foodbevy, an online community to connect emerging food, beverage, and CPG founders to great resources and partners to grow their business. Visit us at Foodbevy.com to learn about becoming a member or an industry partner today.

Building a profitable business is possible for CPG brands, but it takes focus to get there. Join me and Keith Kohler for a conversation on how to achieve profitability and build a sustainable business in the process.

We’ll be breaking down:

Why profitability needs to be a clear go to reach it.
How to analyze your P&L statement.
Cash requirements and debt options for profitable brands.
and more.

Startup to Scale is a podcast by Foodbevy, an online community to connect emerging food, beverage, and CPG founders to great resources and partners to grow their business. Visit us at Foodbevy.com to learn about becoming a member or an industry partner today.

Did you know that most retailers start planning for the holidays now? That means planning out displays, promotions, and brand features, all while most of us are still sweating under the summer heat. As founders, we usually find ourselves reacting to our business week by week, but it can cause us to miss out on opportunities because we don’t plan far enough out.

I sat down with Sari Kimbell from Food Business Success on her podcast to discuss what you need to think about with retail and E-commerce planning for the holidays.

Startup to Scale is a podcast by Foodbevy, an online community to connect emerging food, beverage, and CPG founders to great resources and partners to grow their business. Visit us at Foodbevy.com to learn about becoming a member or an industry partner today.

New York City is home to the densest metro area in the US, but launching a CPG product there has its own unique set of challenges.

Trent has helped launch dozens of brands into the market and leads a team of high-impact merchandisers. We discuss what it takes to be successful and how you can stand out.

Startup to Scale is a podcast by Foodbevy, an online community to connect emerging food, beverage, and CPG founders to great resources and partners to grow their business. Visit us at Foodbevy.com to learn about becoming a member or an industry partner today.

Welcome to Problem Solved, a Startup To Scale mini series co-hosted by myself, Jordan Buckner and Aaron Gailmor, founder of Brass Roots.

On this episode, Aaron and I discuss the challenge CPG brands have reaching profitability and specific steps Aaron did at Brass Roots to reach that point.

Begin with profitability in mind
Review your products and channels to find unprofitable product lines and cut them.
Review your business structure, how you’re manufacturing and the SG&A

Startup to Scale is a podcast by Foodbevy, an online community to connect emerging food, beverage, and CPG founders to great resources and partners to grow their business. Visit us at Foodbevy.com to learn about becoming a member or an industry partner today.

Building a beverage brand is one of the toughest categories in CPG. The order MOQs are high, competition is fierce, and the heavy product makes DTC challenging. So how do you succeed? I invited Noah Wunsch, founder of Ruby Sparkling Hibiscus to share how he approaches building the brand, which involves an extensive field marketing plan executing 15-30 demos across the country each week. These in person events are an integral part of the brand’s research, development, and evolution.

Listen in to learn Noah’s formula to building a great ground game and getting liquid to lips.

Startup to Scale is a podcast by Foodbevy, an online community to connect emerging food, beverage, and CPG founders to great resources and partners to grow their business. Visit us at Foodbevy.com to learn about becoming a member or an industry partner today.

Margarita Womack is the founder of Mas Panadas, a line of frozen empanadas. She built her business to profitability by self-manufacturing and creating a private label line, while supporting immigrant hispanic women. Learn how she managed to do it all and what’s next for the company.

Startup to Scale is a podcast by Foodbevy, an online community to connect emerging food, beverage, and CPG founders to great resources and partners to grow their business. Visit us at Foodbevy.com to learn about becoming a member or an industry partner today.

Search is still one of the primary ways customers learn about your brand. Are you doing everything you can to be found? Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is the practice of making your website content easily discoverable on search engines like Google and Bing, so customers can find you.

The reality is that most founders don't have a strong SEO strategy and leave it as an afterthought. Join me for a conversation with Roger Bautista, a BigCommerce growth coach who trains merchants on how to sell successfully online.

We will discuss what you can do to build a strong SEO strategy including:

What is SEO and why it’s important
Understanding who your users are and how to create Keywords and phrases matching what your customers are looking for.
How to implement an SEO strategy on site

Startup to Scale is a podcast by Foodbevy, an online community to connect emerging food, beverage, and CPG founders to great resources and partners to grow their business. Visit us at Foodbevy.com to learn about becoming a member or an industry partner today.

Consumers have sifted from buying food D2C back to retail, but many are still buying through platforms like Instacart.

This episode I talk with Kevin Gawronski, of Gawronski Food and Beverage to get an overview of Instacart advertising and the opportunity. We discuss:

Instacart advertising tools, which ones are most effective
How to know if Instacart is right for your brand.
Optimizing your product listings
Ad credits $$$ for women and minority founders.

Want to drive sales through Instacart for your brand? Reach out to Kevin, and he’s happy to get you setup. kevin@gawronskimedia.com

Startup to Scale is a podcast by Foodbevy, an online community to connect emerging food, beverage, and CPG founders to great resources and partners to grow their business. Visit us at Foodbevy.com to learn about becoming a member or an industry partner today.

Learn why working with regional distributors may be a better path for your business. I talk with Sid from Wild Bay about how his kombucha company started self distributing and now distributes for other brands.

Startup to Scale is a podcast by Foodbevy, an online community to connect emerging food, beverage, and CPG founders to great resources and partners to grow their business. Visit us at Foodbevy.com to learn about becoming a member or an industry partner today.

Everyone’s talking about UGC content, but how can you really implement it for your brand? Join me as I talk with my guest Anna from No Revisions and break down

The different types of content.
How to create it.
The cost of working with creators.
Best practices for utilizing UGC content.

Show Notes:

Norevisions.co and use code FOODBEVY for 20% off

https://www.kalecard.com/

Anna’s favorite places for finding and working with UGC creators:

https://www.usetwirl.com
https://insense.pro
https://stackinfluence.com
https://minisocial.com
https://pearpop.com
https://www.aspire.io/
https://www.storyclash.com

Startup to Scale is a podcast by Foodbevy, an online community to connect emerging food, beverage, and CPG founders to great resources and partners to grow their business. Visit us at Foodbevy.com to learn about becoming a member or an industry partner today.

Curious about how to build a Google Ads strategy for your brand?

Join me for an insightful conversation with Andy Janaitis from PPC Pitbulls, as we discuss the strategies and tactics behind building a strong Google presence and running effective Google Ads campaigns. We use my other brand Joyful Co as an example.

Gain valuable insights into marketing plans, measuring success with Google Analytics, and implementing a winning Google Ads strategy. Whether you're a business owner or a marketing enthusiast, this podcast episode provides key takeaways for driving brand growth and optimizing your online advertising efforts.

Startup to Scale is a podcast by Foodbevy, an online community to connect emerging food, beverage, and CPG founders to great resources and partners to grow their business. Visit us at Foodbevy.com to learn about becoming a member or an industry partner today.

Summer is here, and for many brands, it brings a peak consumer buying season. Families are having parties, people are traveling, and there’s a huge uptick in demand. As brands, are you taking advantage of this key time? How are you merchandising your products differently? Should you run promotions?

I’ve invited on Georgios, VP of sales specializing in Emerging Brands with Trax to answer these questions.

Startup to Scale is a podcast by Foodbevy, an online community to connect emerging food, beverage, and CPG founders to great resources and partners to grow their business. Visit us at Foodbevy.com to learn about becoming a member or an industry partner today.

Sustainability has made it into the business discourse and is starting to change how companies behave in the world. At the same time, the pandemic forced many companies to release single serve packaging that resulted in higher waste. How are brands supposed to balance sustainability with their business and consumer needs?

To answer this question I’ve invited on Sherry Frey, VP of Total Wellness at NIQ, to talk about the evolving business case for sustainability.

Startup to Scale is a podcast by Foodbevy, an online community to connect emerging food, beverage, and CPG founders to great resources and partners to grow their business. Visit us at Foodbevy.com to learn about becoming a member or an industry partner today.

Building a company in 2023 has a vast number of challenges: increased competition, constricted financial markets, and higher supply chain costs. So what are founders to do about it? Mike Fata joins me to share his perspective on what founders can do today to set themselves up for success tomorrow.

Mike is a prolific writer, mentor, and entrepreneur in the CPG industry. Mike co-founded Manitoba Harvest in 1998, which he grew for over 20 years until selling to $419 million. Since selling the company, he’s published a new book, Grow: 12 Unconventional Lessons for becoming an unstoppable entrepreneur, and has invested in a number of companies including Nuts For Cheese, Mid-Day Squares, and Sol Cuisine.

Startup to Scale is a podcast by Foodbevy, an online community to connect emerging food, beverage, and CPG founders to great resources and partners to grow their business. Visit us at Foodbevy.com to learn about becoming a member or an industry partner today.

Are you active across Amazon, Shopify, Meta, and Google without a cohesive strategy? Most founders are operating each in a silo and missing out on combined learnings from each.

Luke Tierney is the founder of Eco D2C and joins me as we discuss how to leverage the strengths of each digital platform to continuously optimize your product listings and marketing to tell a cohesive story designed to convert.

These learnings will increase your sales as you optimize your conversion rates.

Don’t have time to implement these tips in your business? Reach out to Luke and the Eco DTC team: luke@ecod2c.com

Startup to Scale is a podcast by Foodbevy, an online community to connect emerging food, beverage, and CPG founders to great resources and partners to grow their business. Visit us at Foodbevy.com to learn about becoming a member or an industry partner today.

Starting a beverage company is one of the toughest categories to launch in. MOQs are much higher, cash requirements are high, shipping costs are expensive due to weight, ingredient lead times are long, and so much more. At the same time, consumers are drinking more RTD beverages than ever and there are a ton of leading trend indicators that show opportunities in the marketing.

Join me for a conversation with Brian Post and Greg Kaminski of G&B Filling Station, a beverage launchpad on opportunities and watch outs for emerging brands. They combine formulation, sourcing, co-manufacturing, and storage in house.

Startup to Scale is a podcast by Foodbevy, an online community to connect emerging food, beverage, and CPG founders to great resources and partners to grow their business. Visit us at Foodbevy.com to learn about becoming a member or an industry partner today.

Affiliate marketing is one of the best ways to leverage word of mouth to grow your brands, but is often incredibly challenging for CPG brands to properly execute. I invited on Krik Angacian, a two-time CPG founder (Protes and CandyCan) with one exit under his belt. He most recent founder of CPG Affiliate Partners LLC where he helps brands traverse the convoluted affiliate marketing space.

We break down why founders often fail and the 5-step process on creating a successful affiliate strategy

SET CLEAR GOALS
OFFER CREATION
FIND THE RIGHT AFFILIATES
PROVIDE VALUE TO YOUR AFFILIATES
TRACK YOUR PERFORMANCE

Startup to Scale is a podcast by Foodbevy, an online community to connect emerging food, beverage, and CPG founders to great resources and partners to grow their business. Visit us at Foodbevy.com to learn about becoming a member or an industry partner today.

Food VC was approaching the industry like they do tech, which is based on market-size and growth. That hasn’t been working the last few years
Companies that grow sustainably and don’t require much capital to do so.
Do companies have strong gross margins. Money in and money out.
Building customers that love you
Building strong companies that are made to last and have their own manufacturing.

Startup to Scale is a podcast by Foodbevy, an online community to connect emerging food, beverage, and CPG founders to great resources and partners to grow their business. Visit us at Foodbevy.com to learn about becoming a member or an industry partner today.

Choosing your product packaging is one of the most important decisions you’ll make in starting your company, but it often gets rushed over. Your packaging impacts your shelf-life, branding, manufacturing method, and more. Join me for a conversation with Jeff Jacobs with ePac as we discuss what you need to consider when choosing packaging for your brand.

Startup to Scale is a podcast by Foodbevy, an online community to connect emerging food, beverage, and CPG founders to great resources and partners to grow their business. Visit us at Foodbevy.com to learn about becoming a member or an industry partner today.

Alec Jaffe, the founder of the climate-conscious and gut-friendly ice cream brand Alec's Ice Cream. Alec’s Ice Cream is the first and only regenerative-verified & USDA organic certified ice cream. On this episode we discuss the regenerative agriculture movement, building an ice cream manufacturing plant, and launching nationally into Sprouts.

Startup to Scale is a podcast by Foodbevy, an online community to connect emerging food, beverage, and CPG founders to great resources and partners to grow their business. Visit us at Foodbevy.com to learn about becoming a member or an industry partner today.

True Scoops is an innovative, premium ice cream mix company helping to bring the joy of making ice cream at home without the use of an ice cream maker. Founded by Shelly Marshall and Kelly Williamson who met at Penn State University’s “Ice Cream School”. On this episode we discuss the challenges of launching ice cream outside the ice cream aisle, how to succeed with merchandising, and their new Kickstarter launch.

Learn more: https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/maketruescoops/true-scoops-ice-cream-mixstarter

Startup to Scale is a podcast by Foodbevy, an online community to connect emerging food, beverage, and CPG founders to great resources and partners to grow their business. Visit us at Foodbevy.com to learn about becoming a member or an industry partner today.

Financing a new food and beverage business is a huge hurdle, especially when investing in growth. After being a bootstrapped small business with a local fan base and distribution for a couple of years, Arik Markus, Founder of Herbn’ Pantry picked up the largest account he could have imagined- Fred Meyer. The PO came in for 4 pallets of his sauces, a pallet of each, a total of over 11,000 bottles and 30 day delivery terms.

Arik turned to James and the Aion Financial team to fund that order collateralized by the PO. This funding allowed Arik to launch with Fred Meyer while only taking on a reasonable interest rate.

Learn more about Herbn’ Pantry Here

Learn more about Aion Financial Here

Startup to Scale is a podcast by Foodbevy, an online community to connect emerging food, beverage, and CPG founders to great resources and partners to grow their business. Visit us at Foodbevy.com to learn about becoming a member or an industry partner today.

Daniel launched Dan the Baking Man, a plant-based baked goods company with his broth. Their goal is to create great tasting gluten-free and vegan sweets, starting with their cookies. Learn about how they got started and how the journey is going.

Learn more: danthebakingman.com

Startup to Scale is a podcast by Foodbevy, an online community to connect emerging food, beverage, and CPG founders to great resources and partners to grow their business. Visit us at Foodbevy.com to learn about becoming a member or an industry partner today.

Conversations around finance are often stuck in budgets and forecasts, leaving out the most important part: our relationship with money. We all have limiting believes that are holding us back from fully engaging with our finances and this episode breaks them down.

All of us have deep seeded emotions from childhood that shape our relationship with money.

Listen to my conversation with Keith Kohler, the Financing Man to uncover how the limiting stories you tell yourself might be holding you back.

Keith is offering every founder in our community a free 30min financing strategy call to set your business up for the next 3 years. Just visit: http://www.yourfinancingreview.com/

Startup to Scale is a podcast by Foodbevy, an online community to connect emerging food, beverage, and CPG founders to great resources and partners to grow their business. Visit us at Foodbevy.com to learn about becoming a member or an industry partner today.

Most brands aren’t investing in merchandising and they’re losing on shelf. Merchandising is the process of placing your product in store, at the right places to get in front of the right consumers with the best offer. This includes everything from making sure your product is actually on shelf to setting up out of aisle displays.

Join me as I talk with Georgios Tzafis, VP of sales specializing in Emerging Brands at Trax Retail.

Startup to Scale is a podcast by Foodbevy, an online community to connect emerging food, beverage, and CPG founders to great resources and partners to grow their business. Visit us at Foodbevy.com to learn about becoming a member or an industry partner today.

Welcome to Problem Solved, a Startup To Scale mini series co-hosted by myself, Jordan Buckner and Aaron Gailmor, founder of Brass Roots. I’m partnering with Aaron as he’s a friend and fellow food founder who’s in the trenches everyday.

For today’s episode, we’re going to turn the mic on Aaron as his Shark Tank Pitch recently aired and I have a ton of questions for him.

Startup to Scale is a podcast by Foodbevy, an online community to connect emerging food, beverage, and CPG founders to great resources and partners to grow their business. Visit us at Foodbevy.com to learn about becoming a member or an industry partner today.

Tax season is here, and for businesses, most of our taxes are due very soon. Do you have any questions as you prepare to file? Whether you work with an accountant or file taxes yourself, this episode is for you. I put together a panel of finance experts to discuss common accounting mistakes. We discuss:

The biggest accounting mistakes CPG brands make.
The R&D Tax Credit and how it applies to CPG Brands.
When to hire a salaried employee vs. an independent contractor.

Panelists:

Eric Sonsino, CPA - myPocketCFO

Jarrett Warner, CPA - Sensiba San Filippo

Austen Legler - TaxTaker

Startup to Scale is a podcast by Foodbevy, an online community to connect emerging food, beverage, and CPG founders to great resources and partners to grow their business. Visit us at Foodbevy.com to learn about becoming a member or an industry partner today.

Welcome to episode 100 of the Startup to Scale Podcast! I can’t believe that we’re here… 99 interviews later. Today, I want to share my gratitude that you chose to join me on this journey of building a thriving Food and Beverage Ecosystem.

On today’s episode, I want to share my personal reflections on the state of the food and beverage industry.

There are 3 major themes that have stood out.

The food and beverage community is extremely positive and supportive of small businesses, and there are so many great relationships that have turned into friendships.
It’s incredibly easy to start a food and beverage company, but extremely difficult to find product market fit and a critical momentum that propels your business forward.
Now is a time of great opportunity.

So let’s dive into each

Startup to Scale is a podcast by Foodbevy, an online community to connect emerging food, beverage, and CPG founders to great resources and partners to grow their business. Visit us at Foodbevy.com to learn about becoming a member or an industry partner today.

What’s it like to bootstrap a food business for 10 years? Sarah Lanphier launched Nuts about Granola in 2008 and embarked on the wild ride of entrepreneurship. She built her own brand and sold to top retailers like Costco, Self-manufactured and built a private label business, and ultimately left the business.

We discuss her journey and her top lessons learned.

Sarah posted about rebranding. https://drivnfoodbeverageagency.com/i-must-be-nuts

Startup to Scale is a podcast by Foodbevy, an online community to connect emerging food, beverage, and CPG founders to great resources and partners to grow their business. Visit us at Foodbevy.com to learn about becoming a member or an industry partner today.

Distributor chargebacks collectively cost brands millions of dollars per year. Most of these are in the distributor agreement, but many of them are erroneously charged to brands, and it’s up to them to contest it.

When I ran my brand TeaSquares, in 2019 we invoiced KeHE for $32,000 worth of product at our wholesale cost. After all the deductions and fees, we were paid out $21,000. That’s an $11,000 difference, with $8,400 of those fees because of a poor retailer relationship.

Today’s conversation is all about pulling the vail back on deductions and how you can effectively manage them. To help me with this conversation, I’ve invited on Yuval Selik, founder of Promomash.

Startup to Scale is a podcast by Foodbevy, an online community to connect emerging food, beverage, and CPG founders to great resources and partners to grow their business. Visit us at Foodbevy.com to learn about becoming a member or an industry partner today.

Sean Hall is the founder of Wellious, a line of almond protein powders. I was impressed at the scappy DIY nature that Sean built the brand and became an Amazon Best Seller for his category. Join me as I talk with Sean to uncover how he’s building a successful brand on Amazon with incredibly high repeat rates, and how he leverages TikTok to drive traffic to his e-commerce store.

Startup to Scale is a podcast by Foodbevy, an online community to connect emerging food, beverage, and CPG founders to great resources and partners to grow their business. Visit us at Foodbevy.com to learn about becoming a member or an industry partner today.

Chris Cuvelier founded Zola in 2002 and led the business as CEO for 17 years until 2019. Originally started as an Acai Juice business, he added coconut water 10 years later and eventually dropped the Acai Juice to focus on the Coconut Water.

Chris had a goal to build Zola to be a $100 million business and sold the company to a private equity firm in 2016 while staying on a CEO. Join me as we unlock how he built his business, the pivots along the way, and advice he has for emerging founders now.

Startup to Scale is a podcast by Foodbevy, an online community to connect emerging food, beverage, and CPG founders to great resources and partners to grow their business. Visit us at Foodbevy.com to learn about becoming a member or an industry partner today.

Today I want to talk about how to manage your grocery business as your number of retailers and doors grow. I’ve found that once you surpass about 500 stores it becomes really challenging to understand what’s happening at each one.

Some of the key data you need to measure and track are your velocity by SKU and retailer, Flagging spoiling product and out of stocks, tracking distributor charge backs.

To help me with this conversation I’ve invited on Maya Blackburn and Tony Miller, who work with emerging CPG brands at Crisp, one of my favorite data partners.

Startup to Scale is a podcast by Foodbevy, an online community to connect emerging food, beverage, and CPG founders to great resources and partners to grow their business. Visit us at Foodbevy.com to learn about becoming a member or an industry partner today.

On today’s episode I want to address some areas that CPG founders are concerned with according to last month’s state of the CPG industry Report I released. For this conversation I’ve invited on Brad Ebenhoeh, founder of Accountfully to provide actionable guidance from a finance perspective.

We discuss reaching profitability, selling across multiple sales channels, and how to manage retail sales.

Startup to Scale is a podcast by Foodbevy, an online community to connect emerging food, beverage, and CPG founders to great resources and partners to grow their business. Visit us at Foodbevy.com to learn about becoming a member or an industry partner today.

Join me as I talk with Louis Condon from Pear Commerce about the e-commerce strategies of Liquid Death, Olipop, and Reishi Tea.

We also dive into Retail E-commerce, a new sub-channel of online sales that came around due to the pandemic. It’s comprised of retailers selling their groceries online for shipping, same-day delivery, and in-store pickup. Most brands in retail are underutilizing this sales channel as a way to drive sales at their retail partners.

Startup to Scale is a podcast by Foodbevy, an online community to connect emerging food, beverage, and CPG founders to great resources and partners to grow their business. Visit us at Foodbevy.com to learn about becoming a member or an industry partner today.

When growing in retail, you have to “Play to win, don’t play not to lose.” This advice from Amber Bylund is the key to succeeding in retail, as it’s a challenging environment for any emerging brand. Amber Bylund is the VP of Sales Strategy at Siddhi.

In this episode we discuss

How brands should start in retail
Building a retail launch strategy
And more

Startup to Scale is a podcast by Foodbevy, an online community to connect emerging food, beverage, and CPG founders to great resources and partners to grow their business. Visit us at Foodbevy.com to learn about becoming a member or an industry partner today.

Marcus and Jenni are the co-founders of Modest Coffee and recently experienced the worst of what could happen when a distributor partnership goes bad. What started as a huge win for with a Walmart launch, ended with KeHE returning $250,000 worth of product and the company $200,000 in debt. Listen to learn what happened, their top lessons learned, and how the internet saved their business.

Link to full story from Modest Coffee: https://www.modest.coffee/2022/12/how-we-got-grifted/

Startup to Scale is a podcast by Foodbevy, an online community to connect emerging food, beverage, and CPG founders to great resources and partners to grow their business. Visit us at Foodbevy.com to learn about becoming a member or an industry partner today.

Have you tried running Google Ads and seen them as a complete waste of money? Let’s face it, running paid ads is challenging, especially for CPG brands. How do you know if you’re even ready for paid ads and what should you expect? Join me for a conversation with Andy Janaitis, founder of PPC Pitbulls as we break down:

What it takes to be successful running Google Ads
You minimal budget spend
How to setup campaigns
What Return on Adspend you can expect

Get a free PPC Assessment for your brand here: ppcpitbulls.com/assessment

Startup to Scale is a podcast by Foodbevy, an online community to connect emerging food, beverage, and CPG founders to great resources and partners to grow their business. Visit us at Foodbevy.com to learn about becoming a member or an industry partner today.

How can building your company in public help build your brand? I talk with Lex Evan, founder of Lexington Bakes about how he turned his passion for baking into a Luxury Baked Goods Business. He’s sharing every step of the journey on Linkedin and his newsletter so you can see behind the scenes.

Doing so has brought in new partnerships, retailers, and customers. Lex also sees it as a way to give back to other founders and share his years of marketing experience.

Startup to Scale is a podcast by Foodbevy, an online community to connect emerging food, beverage, and CPG founders to great resources and partners to grow their business. Visit us at Foodbevy.com to learn about becoming a member or an industry partner today.

Foodservice is an amazing channel for food and beverage products, but can be incredibly challenging to break into.

I sit down with my friend Matt Cotton, founder of Rooted Food Sales, who helps CPG brands sell into and succeed in Foodservice channels.

We discuss:

How to get into your first corporate office
The difference between a distributor and an operator
What are the job titles to reach out to
How to expand once you have a foothold

Foodservice 101: https://www.foodbevy.com/how-foodservice-can-propel-your-brand/

Foodservice Distributor and Operator Landscape: https://www.foodbevy.com/the-foodservice-distributor-and-operator-landscape/

Startup to Scale is a podcast by Foodbevy, an online community to connect emerging food, beverage, and CPG founders to great resources and partners to grow their business. Visit us at Foodbevy.com to learn about becoming a member or an industry partner today.

Brands are more visible now than ever and consumers expect you to be visible everywhere - online, in store, on TikTok, and beyond. The strongest brands have a strong point of view, and that resonates in their storytelling and design.

Join me as I talk with Mike McVicar, co-founder of Gander a Brand Design agency as we dive deep into how to create a meaningful brand.

Startup to Scale is a podcast by Foodbevy, an online community to connect emerging food, beverage, and CPG founders to great resources and partners to grow their business. Visit us at Foodbevy.com to learn about becoming a member or an industry partner today.

“The best system is the one that gets used”

I interview Jessi Freitag, Operations Freelancer and host of the Startup CPG podcast. In this episode, Jessi and I discuss the challenges and opportunities of scaling a startup, with a focus on the operational side of things. From co-manufacturer services and full commercialization to managing sales leads and ingredient suppliers, Jessi will provide practical advice and insights on how to stay organized and set your startup up for growth.

Resources Mentioned in the Episode:

Sunsama

Jessifreitag.com

Notion.so

Fiddle.io

Startup to Scale is a podcast by Foodbevy, an online community to connect emerging food, beverage, and CPG founders to great resources and partners to grow their business. Visit us at Foodbevy.com to learn about becoming a member or an industry partner today.

You don’t know what you don’t know. Starting a business is filled with unknown problems, and it sometimes feels like you’re stumbling through mistake after mistake. But it doesn’t have to feel that way.

Join me as I talk with Bill Skeens, founder of Prairie City Bakery, which successfully sold after 25 years. Bill has been through it all, and joins me to discuss the top 10 lessons he learned from his experience running a CPG business.

Startup to Scale is a podcast by Foodbevy, an online community to connect emerging food, beverage, and CPG founders to great resources and partners to grow their business. Visit us at Foodbevy.com to learn about becoming a member or an industry partner today.

What does it take to build a profitable business? I sit down with Kyle Koehler, Co-Founder of Wildway to find out. Wildway is now 10 years into their business and became profitable after their 5th year in business. I talk with Kyle about what it's like to run a company without raising capital, self-manufacturing, and growing using debt financing.

Startup to Scale is a podcast by Foodbevy, an online community to connect emerging food, beverage, and CPG founders to great resources and partners to grow their business. Visit us at Foodbevy.com to learn about becoming a member or an industry partner today.

Zach and Delisa Harper created Funky Mello, a line of plant-based marshmallow creams. Join me as Zach and I discuss their founding story, building a company with your spouse, and launching in Sprouts.

Startup to Scale is a podcast by Foodbevy, an online community to connect emerging food, beverage, and CPG founders to great resources and partners to grow their business. Visit us at Foodbevy.com to learn about becoming a member or an industry partner today.

This episode is going to be a little different from my standard podcast format. Today, I want to talk about how to optimize your life going into 2023 so that you can be the best version of yourself possible. I’m excited because I’ve found the right Work + Life Flow that works for me and prioritizes everything I care about.

But it wasn’t always this way. As a CPG founder, I used to live every week in chaos. My priorities were out of balance and I was spending countless hours doing things that I didn’t really care about.

Let's break down how you can optimize your life and find Work + Life Flow going into the new year too

Startup to Scale is a podcast by Foodbevy, an online community to connect emerging food, beverage, and CPG founders to great resources and partners to grow their business. Visit us at Foodbevy.com to learn about becoming a member or an industry partner today.

In this episode, I sit down with Monica Watrous, Managing editor of Food Business News and Editor of Food Entrepreneur to discuss food and beverage trends for 2023 . Get a front-row seat to the trends we're expecting and how you can prepare.

Startup to Scale is a podcast by Foodbevy, an online community to connect emerging food, beverage, and CPG founders to great resources and partners to grow their business. Visit us at Foodbevy.com to learn about becoming a member or an industry partner today.

Are you looking to breathe some life into your e-mail campaigns? I talk with Emilia from Kaleidocopy about her process for creating a personality-infused email flow, including the importance of researching your ideal customer and using great copywriting to build a relationship with them.

Emilia and I partnered together to audit my GoodFoodBrands.com e-mail flows, and completely re-write two of them. Learn why we made those changes and what you can apply to your brand.

Startup to Scale is a podcast by Foodbevy, an online community to connect emerging food, beverage, and CPG founders to great resources and partners to grow their business. Visit us at Foodbevy.com to learn about becoming a member or an industry partner today.

Welcome to Problem Solved, a Startup To Scale mini series co-hosted by myself, Jordan Buckner and Aaron Gailmor, founder of Brass Roots. In episode 2, Alex Bayer, founder of Genius Juice asks how life changes as an entrepreneur when you become a parent.

Aaron and I are both parents of young kids and share our perspectives as dads. We discuss:

Having Kids can Make You a Better Founder
Organization and Time Management
Management of Mental, Physical, and Emotional Health

We'd love for you to share your perspective by sharing this episode on Linkedin and providing your comments.

Startup to Scale is a podcast by Foodbevy, an online community to connect emerging food, beverage, and CPG founders to great resources and partners to grow their business. Visit us at Foodbevy.com to learn about becoming a member or an industry partner today.

Retaining existing customers for longer is the highest ROI activity you can do as a CPG brand. Join me for a conversation with Dan Cohen, head of Marketing of Upscribe, an e-commerce subscription app.

We'll discuss:

A customer made their first purchase, now what?
Getting customers to make the second purchase
Building customer purchase habits
How to convert customers to subscribers
Reorders without a subscription
Setting the right reorder cadence options
Making it easy for customers to manage their orders
How to communicate with customers to encourage and maintain subscription habit

Startup to Scale is a podcast by Foodbevy, an online community to connect emerging food, beverage, and CPG founders to great resources and partners to grow their business. Visit us at Foodbevy.com to learn about becoming a member or an industry partner today.

More and more brands are shifting to investing in retail growth over their e-commerce sites as consumer trends lean back to in-store purchases for CPG products.

Now, this doesn’t mean you should cut off your digital marketing completely. In fact, it should be one of your most powerful tools in driving in store sales.

On today’s show I’d like to welcome two guests to talk about this topic.

Jessica Malach is the VP of Marketing & Insights with Social Nature, a digital sampling platform for emerging CPG brands.

And

Courtnie Alvear-Beceiro who is the head of marketing at Haven’s Kitchen, a line of delicious refrigerated sauces.

Startup to Scale is a podcast by Foodbevy, an online community to connect emerging food, beverage, and CPG founders to great resources and partners to grow their business. Visit us at Foodbevy.com to learn about becoming a member or an industry partner today.

Q1 is prime time for BFY brands, are you ready? People are coming out of the holidays looking for healthier habits and it’s the best time to attract new customers and loyalists to your brand. Join me for a conversation with Kevin Gawronski as share specific strategies and tips that you can leverage this time of the year.

Startup to Scale is a podcast by Foodbevy, an online community to connect emerging food, beverage, and CPG founders to great resources and partners to grow their business. Visit us at Foodbevy.com to learn about becoming a member or an industry partner today.

Running retail promotions for CPG brands is necessary to moving your product off the shelf, but many brands fear running promotions because they don’t know how to manage them. I’ve invited on Yuval Selik, the founder of Promomash to share insights on how brands can overcome the promotions challenge, and a new partnership that now allows brand to track in-store promotional performance.

Now, brands can track the ROI of each trade spend tactic, from discounts to demos and measure which ones have the highest ROI at each location.

Startup to Scale is a podcast by Foodbevy, an online community to connect emerging food, beverage, and CPG founders to great resources and partners to grow their business. Visit us at Foodbevy.com to learn about becoming a member or an industry partner today.

Junita Flowers created her cookie company as a way to help herself and others heal from domestic violence, and is now selling in stores across the country, including Target. Join me for a conversation and learn why she created her company, her decision to self-manufacture with the pros and cons, and how she's planning to scale her enterprise.

Startup to Scale is a podcast by Foodbevy, an online community to connect emerging food, beverage, and CPG founders to great resources and partners to grow their business. Visit us at Foodbevy.com to learn about becoming a member or an industry partner today.

Myles created a line of homestyle Mac & Cheese that mirrored the food he ate around the dinner table and bring those flavors to the larger community. Listen to his story from Civil Engineer to Food founder as we discuss the challenges and success along the journey.

Startup to Scale is a podcast by Foodbevy, an online community to connect emerging food, beverage, and CPG founders to great resources and partners to grow their business. Visit us at Foodbevy.com to learn about becoming a member or an industry partner today.

What should you do when capital markets dry up?

Aaron and I share 10 concrete strategies and tactics on Problem Solved, a new Startup To Scale Podcast mini-series co-hosted by myself, Jordan Buckner, and Aaron Gailmor, founder of Brass Roots.

In this series, we invite CPG founders to submit questions about the most pressing issues with their businesses. We’ll then share some ideas and perspectives on how to solve those problems.

For our first episode the first question we answer a question by Parker Olson of Forij, “How do I navigate a business environment when capital markets dry up?”

We discuss-

👉 Finding Opportunity in Challenging Times

👉 Leveraging Mentors

👉 How to extend your vendor payment terms to 60+ days

👉 Improving customer retention with e-mail

👉 Optimizing product assortment

👉 Alternative financing sources

And more

Startup to Scale is a podcast by Foodbevy, an online community to connect emerging food, beverage, and CPG founders to great resources and partners to grow their business. Visit us at Foodbevy.com to learn about becoming a member or an industry partner today.

Do you have a good grasp on your business financials? I’ve invited on Brad Ebenhoeh, founder of Accounfully on the show to discuss how to build a strong financial and accounting foundation for your business. We break down the top financial mistakes most CPG brands make and how to fix them.

We discuss:

Inventory and COGS
Unit Economics
Managing Cashflow
Distributor Chargebacks
and more…

Startup to Scale is a podcast by Foodbevy, an online community to connect emerging food, beverage, and CPG founders to great resources and partners to grow their business. Visit us at Foodbevy.com to learn about becoming a member or an industry partner today.

Retail buyers are looking for brands with great stories and compelling data to bring on shelf. Does your pitch effectively sell why your product will be a fit for the retailer in a way that gets them to say yes? Join me for a conversation with Marc Santos who works with emerging brands at NielsenIQ to help them create compelling stories using data.

We discuss:

What data you need for buyer pitches
How to speak a buyer’s language
The best ways to source data
and more

I’ve partnered with NielsenIQ to offer 3 free reports to our listeners so you can get answers to your data questions. Access your free reports here: https://bit.ly/3Eec23r

Startup to Scale is a podcast by Foodbevy, an online community to connect emerging food, beverage, and CPG founders to great resources and partners to grow their business. Visit us at Foodbevy.com to learn about becoming a member or an industry partner today.

Vasa Martinez created Perfy after he developed pre-diabetes (which he's now reversed). He needed to cut carbs and sugar from his diet. The traditional sodas and diet sodas he loved so much did nothing for him nutritionally (and were part of the reason I ended up pre-diabetic), and all of the healthier sodas were for gut health. So he created Perfy, a delicious, low-sugar soda enhanced with nootropics and adaptogens for a happy brain.

In this episode we discuss his:

R&D process for creating a beverage
Converting online marketing to online sales
Using a NFT Doodle character to create a brand mascot
And more

Startup to Scale is a podcast by Foodbevy, an online community to connect emerging food, beverage, and CPG founders to great resources and partners to grow their business. Visit us at Foodbevy.com to learn about becoming a member or an industry partner today.

Are you looking to build an army of affiliates to support your brand? Most find it nearly impossible to get started because of the amount of work needed upfront. Those who get it right can see amazing sales coming in from their outsourced community of salespeople.

I invited on Kelsey Eyers, founder of Rexxy to discuss how to build an affiliate program. We talk through the details of her 4-step process:

Design (set goals and structure)
Setup (using the best software
Launch
Managing and scaling

This is the episode to listen to if you're looking to build an affiliate program

Startup to Scale is a podcast by Foodbevy, an online community to connect emerging food, beverage, and CPG founders to great resources and partners to grow their business. Visit us at Foodbevy.com to learn about becoming a member or an industry partner today.

CPG is one of the most wasteful industries when it comes to packaging, with most products sold in single-use bags, pouches, and boxes. While many brands talk about sustainability, my guests today are taking action.

Join me as I discuss the future of sustainability and creating a circular economy with my guests Mike Newman - CEO of Returnity and Alex Torrey - CEO of The Rounds.

Startup to Scale is a podcast by Foodbevy, an online community to connect emerging food, beverage, and CPG founders to great resources and partners to grow their business. Visit us at Foodbevy.com to learn about becoming a member or an industry partner today.

What do consumers expect from online delivery these days? Join me as I talk with Sada and Jordan, founders of XpressRun about consumer delivery options in 2022. We discuss how to enable Same-Day and Next-Day delivery for your brand.

Startup to Scale is a podcast by Foodbevy, an online community to connect emerging food, beverage, and CPG founders to great resources and partners to grow their business. Visit us at Foodbevy.com to learn about becoming a member or an industry partner today.

We're entering Q4 and it's a wild time for CPG. Retail buyers are focused on holiday items and DTC will have its largest buying events of the year. On top of all this we're in a quasi-recession, affecting consumer demand in unknown ways.

I sit down with my friend and retail expert Alli Ball to discuss both mindset shifts and tactics to increase sales during Q4. Listen to the episode and you'll walk away with valuable information on how to approach the last 3 months of the year.

Alli Ball is the founder & CEO of Food Biz Wiz. As a former grocery buyer-turned-wholesale consultant, she helps brands understand how to land on the retail shelf - and have high sales once you’re there - through Retail Ready® - her course, coaching, and community on wholesale success. Find the full Retail Ready® course outline here, send Alli a DM on Instagram here, or find her weekly on the award-winning Food Biz Wiz podcast on Apple Podcasts or Spotify!

It's no secret that consumer behavior is changing. But how are you responding? Join me for a conversation with Sherry Frey, VP of Total Wellness for NielsenIQ, as we break down the generational shift in wellness shopping habits. Listen in to learn how consumer behaviors are changing and discover new opportunities to market to each age group.

Want to explore data further? NielsenIQ is offering 3 free reports to analyze sales data for your brand or the category: Sign up here https://bit.ly/3Eec23r

Have you ever purchased a product from QVC or those late-night TV ads? Probably not. But live-stream shopping is getting a facelift with companies like Amazon and Crafted pioneering it's rise in the US. While current usage has a long way to go, nearly 30% of people in China have purchase products from live-streams, showing the potential in the US.

Join me for a conversation with the founders of Crafted to understand how you can get in on the early wave of Live-Stream Commerce.

Let's talk through the Four Financial Tools You Need as a CPG Brand. Joining me for this conversation is Jim Shehigian with Aion. We can discuss:

Banking
AR/AP
Bookkeeping and Insights
Flexible Working Capital

Startup to Scale is a podcast by Foodbevy, an online community to connect emerging food, beverage, and CPG founders to great resources and partners to grow their business. Visit us at Foodbevy.com to learn about becoming a member or an industry partner today.

Do you have a clear picture of your business? There's a lot to manage between sales, marketing, operations, and finance. It's easy to get conflicting information about how your business is performing. Join me for a discussion with Rick Wingate, founder of Sherpa ERP on how to create an operating system for your business.

SherpaERP helps founders manage their ingredient ordering, manufacturing, inventory, sales, and wholesale customer data in one place. They are aware of the financial difficulties all brands are going through right now and offering 50% off their monthly cost for an entire year, bringing it down to $199/month. E-mail me at jordan@foodbevy.com for an introduction.

There are dozens of incubators, accelerators, and programs for emerging CPG brands and it's difficult to know when and if you should apply. I sit down with Michelle Breyer, CMO of SKU to discuss the benefits and differences of programs. We also discuss criteria to evaluate if a program is right for you.

Startup to Scale is a podcast by Foodbevy, an online community to connect emerging food, beverage, and CPG founders to great resources and partners to grow their business. Visit us at Foodbevy.com to learn about becoming a member or an industry partner today.

Have you considered influencer marketing but haven’t figured out how to make it work for your brand? In today’s episode, we break down the six-step process of building an effective influencer marketing program and walk through exactly how to do it. I’m joined by Yash Chavan, founder of Saral, an influencer marketing tool that makes tracking each step much easier.

We discuss:

Creator Prospecting
Creator Outreach
Deal Making and Negotiation
Creator Engagement
Performance Tracking
Building a Relationship

Startup to Scale is a podcast by Foodbevy, an online community to connect emerging food, beverage, and CPG founders to great resources and partners to grow their business. Visit us at Foodbevy.com to learn about becoming a member or an industry partner today.

Jane McKay and her co-founder Meg Barnhart founded the Zen of Slow Cooking a line of spice blends made for easy slow cooker meals. What started off as a blog quickly turned into a CPG company that grew from selling in Farmer's Markets to Walmart. Now, Jane helps other founders grow along the same journey through her company Astute Ideas. We'll also discuss her current work in the Low/No alcohol space and the future of that category.

Building a consumer brand in 2022 has fundamentally changed. Brands are looking for more than good taste (although that's still the most important attribute). Consumers are looking for authentic brands that represent their values, and bring some fun and entertainment along the way.

Join me for a conversation with David Howitt, Founder of Meriwether Group as we discuss how to build a successful brand in 2022.

Startup to Scale is a podcast by Foodbevy, an online community to connect emerging food, beverage, and CPG founders to great resources and partners to grow their business. Visit us at Foodbevy.com to learn about becoming a member or an industry partner today.

If you've been on Linkedin, I'm sure you've seen Parker Olson's daily posts sharing his journey building Forij. The content is fun, exciting, and raw, as he showcases the highs of landing new accounts, to the lows of having his van break down in the middle of nowhere and having to sleep at a rest stop. Join me for a fun conversation as we discuss why he decided to publically showcase his daily journey and how it's benefited the company.

Startup to Scale is a podcast by Foodbevy, an online community to connect emerging food, beverage, and CPG founders to great resources and partners to grow their business. Visit us at Foodbevy.com to learn about becoming a member or an industry partner today.

This is episode 3 in our 3 part Finance Mini-Series for CPG Brands with Alice Zhang, founder of myPocketCFO. Today we’re discussing working capital and cashflow for CPG brands including:

Cash conversion cycle
How to track and finance your working capital
Cashflow forecasting
Cash runway forecasting

myPocketCFO helps founders to take care of all the above. E-mail alice@mypocketcfo.com to:

Try out their auto-bookkeeping for an introductory price of $99 for three months and then $199/month
Receive their working capital financing option list and fundraising checklist

This is episode 2 in our 3 part Finance Mini-Series for CPG Brands with Alice Zhang, founder of myPocketCFO. Today we’re discussing common CPG accounting mistakes including:

Incorrectly adding inventory as an expense
Distributor Chargebacks
Amazon sales
Shopify Sales

myPocketCFO helps founders to take care of all the above. E-mail alice@mypocketcfo.com to:

Try out their auto-bookkeeping for an introductory price of $99 for three months and then $199/month
Receive their working capital financing option list and fundraising checklist

This is the first episode in our 3 part Finance Mini-Series for CPG Brands with Alice Zhang, founder of myPocketCFO. We're discussing capital raising and financing for CPG brands including:

Overall Strategy (Angels, VCs, Equity Crowdfunding, Rewards Crowdfunding, Debt)
Pros and cons of each approach (Angels, VCs, Equity Crowdfunding, Rewards Crowdfunding, Debt)
Getting your Balance sheet and P&L ready for fundraising
How to tell your company story through numbers

myPocketCFO helps founders to take care of all the above. E-mail alice@mypocketcfo.com to:

Try out their auto-bookkeeping for an introductory price of $99 for three months and then $199/month
Receive their working capital financing option list and fundraising checklist

Are you a fan of hummus? Amy and her sisters started Soom Foods to bring the world's best tahini (a key ingredient in hummus) to you. Join me for a conversation as we discuss what it's like building a family business, how they go their start in foodservice working with top chefs, and navigating changing consumer behaviors during the pandemic.

Startup to Scale is a podcast by Foodbevy, an online community to connect emerging food, beverage, and CPG founders to great resources and partners to grow their business. Visit us at Foodbevy.com to learn about becoming a member or an industry partner today.

Building a business takes time. For Jeff Wiguna at Kuju Coffee, it took 6 years to break even. That was after years of investing in a vertically integrated manufacturing process and building their customer base. Join me for a conversation on how building a financially sustainable company is now giving him more options to grow the business during this next phase.

Startup to Scale is a podcast by Foodbevy, an online community to connect emerging food, beverage, and CPG founders to great resources and partners to grow their business. Visit us at Foodbevy.com to learn about becoming a member or an industry partner today.

Steve launched Traveler’s Soda in 2017 and ultimately decided to shut down the business 5 years later. Join me as we discuss why he started the company, his journey in building the brand, and his final decision to close it.

We discuss the operational hurdles he experienced, along with the mental and emotional feelings that came with the decision.

If you're looking to start a beverage business, check out our How To Manufacture Your Beverage Product Guide: https://www.foodbevy.com/how-to-manufacture-your-beverage-product/

Startup to Scale is a podcast by Foodbevy, an online community to connect emerging food, beverage, and CPG founders to great resources and partners to grow their business. Visit us at Foodbevy.com to learn about becoming a member or an industry partner today.

What does your company stand for? Many people think that a brand is your logo, font, and colors, but those are just markers. "Brand" is a promise you make and how you go about making that promise real.

Join me as I talk with David Lemley, President of Retail Voodoo as we discuss how to build a brand that stands for something, and why that's central to creating customer loyalty.

Startup to Scale is a podcast by Foodbevy, an online community to connect emerging food, beverage, and CPG founders to great resources and partners to grow their business. Visit us at Foodbevy.com to learn about becoming a member or an industry partner today.

Are you leveraging smart sampling to gain customer trial? Smart sampling is utilizing a virtual platform to identify target customers and individually send samples to them for feedback. Join me as I talk with Mathieu Gamache, Chief Sales & Marketing Officer at Zero dB on how he leverages Sampler's smart sampling program to:

Get 1000s of new customer product trial
Create a target customer profile based on demographics
Tweak product flavors and taste based on reports
Leverage sampling data in retailer pitches
Drive trial when launching new distribution

Learn more about working with Sampler Here: sampler.io

Startup to Scale is a podcast by Foodbevy, an online community to connect emerging food, beverage, and CPG founders to great resources and partners to grow their business. Visit us at Foodbevy.com to learn about becoming a member or an industry partner today.

Learn how Good Pops drove a 40% increase in sales from rebranding, design effectiveness, the re-naming checklist, and the rise of Adorkable design. I talk with Fred Hart, Creative Director and Partner at Interact Brands, arguably one of the best branding agencies in the CPG world right now, having designed for Koia, Fat Snax, Califlour, and more.

This episode is filled with insanely valuable info, so check it out.

Startup to Scale is a podcast by Foodbevy, an online community to connect emerging food, beverage, and CPG founders to great resources and partners to grow their business. Visit us at Foodbevy.com to learn about becoming a member or an industry partner today.

Almost every product on the market today is leading with a health claim, but what happens when you lead with "Not Healthy, Just Delicious"? Let's find out on today's episode with Sam Tichnor, founder of FFUPs. What are FFUPs? It's a line of crunchy puffed snacks that are designed for the couch potatoes at home.

Sam has a rich background working in Brand Innovation at Harry's (the DTC razor company) and took that consumer research experience and launched a brand all around taste and flavor. We dive into his process and what makes the brand stand out.

Startup to Scale is a podcast by Foodbevy, an online community to connect emerging food, beverage, and CPG founders to great resources and partners to grow their business. Visit us at Foodbevy.com to learn about becoming a member or an industry partner today.

This is such a fun episode. I sit down with Ale Rodriguez, Head of Marketing for Bon Bon Bon, a chocolate confection company based in Detroit. During this episode, we discuss building a sustainable E-commerce brand, from packaging to people. We also discuss the tools you need to build a high-functioning e-commerce site.

This episode is in partnership with BigCommerce, a leading e-commerce platform that empowers merchants of all sizes to build, innovate and grow their businesses online. Learn more about how BigCommerce supports food and beverage businesses here: https://bigcommerce.com/dm/foodbevy

Startup to Scale is a podcast by Foodbevy, an online community to connect emerging food, beverage, and CPG founders to great resources and partners to grow their business. Visit us at Foodbevy.com to learn about becoming a member or an industry partner today.

Building a business is challenging, accelerate your success with seven mindset shifts. We’ll be talking about the mental side of being a founder, and how to overcome the common challenges that every founder goes through. Join me as I talk with Sari Kimbell, Business Coach for Food Founders.

This webinar is for you if you ever feel stressed, overwhelmed, or just want to set yourself up for success running your business.

Sari is a business coach for CPG foodpreneurs to help you achieve a big goal faster with accountability, industry expertise and mindset coaching so you can get out of your own way and get to the work of creating a successful business.

Learn more: https://www.foodbizsuccess.com/sarikimbellcoachingStartup to Scale is a podcast by Foodbevy, an online community to connect emerging food, beverage, and CPG founders to great resources and partners to grow their business. Visit us at Foodbevy.com to learn about becoming a member or an industry partner today.

The reality is that most CPG brands will fail and go out of business. By learning from the lessons of others, you can have a chance of succeeding. Join me for a conversation with Yuval Selik who previously launched a CPG brand that failed at retail. Yuval now runs Promomash, a platform to help founders manage promotion and demo strategy and execution so they can succeed at retail.

Startup to Scale is a podcast by Foodbevy, an online community to connect emerging food, beverage, and CPG founders to great resources and partners to grow their business. Visit us at Foodbevy.com to learn about becoming a member or an industry partner today.

SOMOS is a new line of authentically made in Mexico meal-kits co-founded by Daniel Lubetzky (founder of KIND), Rodrigo Zuloaga, and Miguel Leal. Join me as I talk with Miguel to learn how they decided to launch the brand, overcame supply-chain obstacles, and are creating a story resonating in households across America.

Startup to Scale is a podcast by Foodbevy, an online community to connect emerging food, beverage, and CPG founders to great resources and partners to grow their business. Visit us at Foodbevy.com to learn about becoming a member or an industry partner today.

After watching many great CPG companies rise and fail, I've become an advocate of founders building a Profit First business model. This means they prioritize finding product-market fit and a model to breakeven to become a sustainable business. Ami Bhansali is one of those founders. She started Chai Diaries after coming to the United States to build her dream business. Ami comes from a family steeped in tea production and utilized that background to create delicious products. Best of all, Ami has now build a profitable business and we talk about how she achieved this.

Startup to Scale is a podcast by Foodbevy, an online community to connect emerging food, beverage, and CPG founders to great resources and partners to grow their business. Visit us at Foodbevy.com to learn about becoming a member or an industry partner today.

Are you interested in selling at Target? I talk with Ryan Rogers, a former Target buyer who spent 18 years working at the company. Ryan now runs Retail Optics, a consultancy to help CPG brands navigate their sales and growth strategy.

We discuss:

The size of the grocery business at Target
Customer shopping behavior
The best way to pitch Target buyers
How to succeed on shelf

Startup to Scale is a podcast by Foodbevy, an online community to connect emerging food, beverage, and CPG founders to great resources and partners to grow their business. Visit us at Foodbevy.com to learn about becoming a member or an industry partner today.

How do you go from a cafe pioneering Unicorn Lattes to launching a CPG Beverage? Join me as I talk to Bret Caretsky, founder of Unicorn Beverages and learn about his journey.

Startup to Scale is a podcast by Foodbevy, an online community to connect emerging food, beverage, and CPG founders to great resources and partners to grow their business. Visit us at Foodbevy.com to learn about becoming a member or an industry partner today.

Are you interested in selling your products in Whole Foods Market? Join me for a conversation with Will Betts, VP of Local Merchandising and learn what it takes to be successful selling with Whole Foods. We discuss getting on the shelf, and more importantly, how to sell off the shelf.

Whole Foods Market launched a new Local and Emerging Accelerator Program (LEAP) and is looking to assemble a cohort of 10 participants whose products are not yet sold in Whole Foods stores. Applications for LEAP are available on Whole Foods' website and are due April 8th.

Startup to Scale is a podcast by Foodbevy, an online community to connect emerging food, beverage, and CPG founders to great resources and partners to grow their business. Visit us at Foodbevy.com to learn about becoming a member or an industry partner today.

When Zach founded Wildland Coffee, he already had the experience of launching and closing a previous coffee company. He made a ton of mistakes the first time around, but learned from them and was able to create an even better business. Join me for a conversation with Zack as we discuss coffee, failed partnerships, building a Profit First business, and more.

Startup to Scale is a podcast by Foodbevy, an online community to connect emerging food, beverage, and CPG founders to great resources and partners to grow their business. Visit us at Foodbevy.com to learn about becoming a member or an industry partner today.

While the food industry is abuzz with talk around functional foods, the consumer market is still at its early stages. Join me for a conversation with Alexa and Ericka, co-founders of Zippy Pantry, an online marketplace to buy functional products. Learn how their experience in the beauty category prepared them for bringing functionality to the food and bev industry.

Startup to Scale is a podcast by Foodbevy, an online community to connect emerging food, beverage, and CPG founders to great resources and partners to grow their business. Visit us at Foodbevy.com to learn about becoming a member or an industry partner today.

Raising money from investors has always been difficult for food and beverage founders. The current environment is even more challenging, especially for founders under $1 million. For this conversation, I talk with Michael Movitz and Tom Malengo from Brandjectory about the opportunities and obstacles that emerging brands face.

Startup to Scale is a podcast by Foodbevy, an online community to connect emerging food, beverage, and CPG founders to great resources and partners to grow their business. Visit us at Foodbevy.com to learn about becoming a member or an industry partner today.

E-commerce is getting increasingly crowded, with thousands of companies vying for attention. I talk with Kelly Ferris from BigCommerce about the 6 things brands need to do in 2022.

Tell Your Brand Story
Identify the right channels and use them well
Use social proof
Consider repeat purchase strategies
Delight the customer from purchase to delivery
Improve not just your B2C experience, but your B2B experience too

As a special offer, BigCommerce is offering a free ecommerce consult with one of their ecommerce experts. If you are considering making a platform decision within the next six months, or even considering taking your B2B business online, this is a great opportunity to get an outside perspective on your website.

You’ll receive expert guidance on:

Best practices for website migration and launch (if you’re not already selling through your own site)
Website design
Review of your purchase funnel + conversion rate optimization strategies
Omnichannel marketing tactics

Startup to Scale is a podcast by Foodbevy, an online community to connect emerging food, beverage, and CPG founders to great resources and partners to grow their business. Visit us at Foodbevy.com to learn about becoming a member or an industry partner today.

I talk with David Boyle of Sherpa CPG on some of the intermediate challenges that founders face when working with co-manufacturers. We discuss how to build strong relationships with manufacturers, how to structure contracts, and more.

If you want to connect with David, visit SherpaCPG.com

If you're looking for a primer, check out Episode 24, Working with Co-manufacturers with Ashley Sutterfield.

Startup to Scale is a podcast by Foodbevy, an online community to connect emerging food, beverage, and CPG founders to great resources and partners to grow their business. Visit us at Foodbevy.com to learn about becoming a member or an industry partner today.

So this is a really cool one if you’re looking to raise money. I talk with Ben from SMBX about crowdsourced debt, a new way to raise money through microlending that doesn't require you to give up equity. We also talk about equity crowdfunding and when to utilize each for your business.

Startup to Scale is a podcast by Foodbevy, an online community to connect emerging food, beverage, and CPG founders to great resources and partners to grow their business. Visit us at Foodbevy.com to learn about becoming a member or an industry partner today.

I first met Clark a few months after launching Golden Ratio Coffee and doing $10k in sales at launch. Now two years later he's built a successful business on it's way to being profitable this year. Join me for a conversation and learn exactly how Clark launched, and how his business has gotten easier and not harder as he's grown.

Startup to Scale is a podcast by Foodbevy, an online community to connect emerging food, beverage, and CPG founders to great resources and partners to grow their business. Visit us at Foodbevy.com to learn about becoming a member or an industry partner today.

Building a CPG product is damn hard, and building one across multiple channels takes a ton of time and resources. Join me for a conversation with my friend Steve Gaither, brand strategy and marketing expert who's worked with a hundred companies. We'll discuss how brands can build an omnichannel strategy, new ways of standing out to consumers, and more.

Startup to Scale is a podcast by Foodbevy, an online community to connect emerging food, beverage, and CPG founders to great resources and partners to grow their business. Visit us at Foodbevy.com to learn about becoming a member or an industry partner today.

Starting a CPG business is full of challenges, and they only keep getting bigger as you grow! Join me as I talk with Sari Kimbell, who runs Food Business Success on what challenges founders encounter on their journey from $0 to $1 million.

Food Business Success is an online, self-paced program to help you learn the basics of running a food business combined with one-on-one consulting.

Learn More Here

Startup to Scale is a podcast by Foodbevy, an online community to connect emerging food, beverage, and CPG founders to great resources and partners to grow their business. Visit us at Foodbevy.com to learn about becoming a member or an industry partner today.

Building an effective marketing strategy is incredibly challenging. I talk with Arica and Kristen from Hart and Highland about how brands can build an effective strategy using a combination of Paid Social, Organic Social, and Influencer Marketing.

My favorite quote from this episode: "You have the let go of the idea that you’re on Instagram to sell your product, you’re there to build your community."

Startup to Scale is a podcast by Foodbevy, an online community to connect emerging food, beverage, and CPG founders to great resources and partners to grow their business. Visit us at Foodbevy.com to learn about becoming a member or an industry partner today.

Thrive Market is one of the fastest-growing e-commerce grocery markets for natural products. Join me for a conversation with Jason Bidart, Thrive Market's Senior Director of merchandising for food. We discuss:

Thrive’s consumers and what types of products are they looking for.
How has Thrive’s business changed this year and what are their plans for next year.
What categories are seeing the most growth
What are some of the most successful products and what do they have in common
How to submit your products for Thrive Market

Startup to Scale is a podcast by Foodbevy, an online community to connect emerging food, beverage, and CPG founders to great resources and partners to grow their business. Visit us at Foodbevy.com to learn about becoming a member or an industry partner today.

Kyle Peters started Six Pack Creamery, a frozen dessert company inspired by his mother's battle with cancer. As a first-time founder, he overcame roadblocks, found success on his journey including launching in GNC stores, and navigated a rebrand to Carter and Oak. Ultimately, he realized the margins just didn't work without sacrificing product quality and decided to shut down the company. Even though the business failed, Kyle gain invaluable experience as a founder. Join me for an in-depth conversation and learn how to apply lessons from Kyle to help your business.

Startup to Scale is a podcast by Foodbevy, an online community to connect emerging food, beverage, and CPG founders to great resources and partners to grow their business. Visit us at Foodbevy.com to learn about becoming a member or an industry partner today.

Most brands will end up working with a 3rd party contract manufacturer (co-manufacturer) over their lifetime, but many of these partnerships are tenuous at best. I talk with Ashley on how to prepare for working with a co-manufacturer, and what steps you can take to build a successful partnership. A few tips:

Think of manufactures as an extension of our business and cultivating that relationship will lead to success.
Make sure that your values align with co-manufacturers.
Manufacturers are expensive, but view it as buying back your time so you can focus on building sales and business.

Looking for co-manufacturers? Check out our directory of 2069 partners here: Co-Manufacturer Directory

Startup to Scale is a podcast by Foodbevy, an online community to connect emerging food, beverage, and CPG founders to great resources and partners to grow their business. Visit us at Foodbevy.com to learn about becoming a member or an industry partner today.

What's it like bootstrapping your company and finding success? Join me as I talk with Allision, CEO of Sweet Logic about why she made the decision and the opportunities and challenges that came with it. We also discuss the mental and emotional health challenges of being a food founder and how to develop a process to navigate through it.

Startup to Scale is a podcast by Foodbevy, an online community to connect emerging food, beverage, and CPG founders to great resources and partners to grow their business. Visit us at Foodbevy.com to learn about becoming a member or an industry partner today.

Michelle and her co-founder Nikki launched Elavi, a line of collagen protein bites during the pandemic. We check-in after their first year in business on all the lessons learned. We discuss everything from the mental toll of entrepreneurship to an effective strategy to fundraise during the pandemic. This is a great episode that you don't want to miss.

Startup to Scale is a podcast by Foodbevy, an online community to connect emerging food, beverage, and CPG founders to great resources and partners to grow their business. Visit us at Foodbevy.com to learn about becoming a member or an industry partner today.

Selling on Amazon is a full-time job, but take it seriously and you can see great returns for your brand. Join me as I talk with Shannon Roddy, Amazon expert and founder of Marketplace Seller Courses about how to be successful in this channel. We discuss the role Amazon plays in your business the role known demand and unknown demand plays in your success, and much more.

This is a great follow-up episode to my conversation with Daniela in Episode 9, so take a listen to that.

Startup to Scale is a podcast by Foodbevy, an online community to connect emerging food, beverage, and CPG founders to great resources and partners to grow their business. Visit us at Foodbevy.com to learn about becoming a member or an industry partner today.

What are VCs looking for when investing in CPG Brands? I talk with Diana Melencio, partner at XRC Labs on how brands can stand out to VCs, diversity, equity, and inclusion, and how to show your brand can reach $200 million. We also discuss the XRC accelerator program which invests $135k in brands and provides in-kind services.

You can learn more and apply to Cohort 13 here, the deadline is December 12th, 2021. Want to meet the XRC Labs team? You can sign up for office hours here.

Startup to Scale is a podcast by Foodbevy, an online community to connect emerging food, beverage, and CPG founders to great resources and partners to grow their business. Visit us at Foodbevy.com to learn about becoming a member or an industry partner today.

Trade show booths can be a polarizing investment for CPG brands. Some find it extremely helpful and others find it a complete flop. Join me for a conversation with Jonathan Wright, Design Director at Coppinger Exhibits to learn how to think strategically about trade shows and how to design your booth to stand out.

Startup to Scale is a podcast by Foodbevy, an online community to connect emerging food, beverage, and CPG founders to great resources and partners to grow their business. Visit us at Foodbevy.com to learn about becoming a member or an industry partner today.

Vanessa and her sister Kim created Omsom to celebrate Asian flavors from Asian chefs in an authentic and modern way. “No more diluted dishes, no more cultural compromise.” Join me as I talk with Vanessa about her journey starting Omsom and the lessons learned along the way.

Startup to Scale is a podcast by Foodbevy, an online community to connect emerging food, beverage, and CPG founders to great resources and partners to grow their business. Visit us at Foodbevy.com to learn about becoming a member or an industry partner today.

Founders love writing the text for their packaging, website, and branding, but sometimes you’re so deep that the language isn’t resonating with new customers. Join me as Chrissy shares how to build a “sticky” brand so that your copy can be memorable in your customer's mind.

You want your copy to:

Use Clear Language
Make Your Customer the Hero of Your Brand
Have fun and standout

Learn More about Chrissy's Raw Honey Copy

Startup to Scale is a podcast by Foodbevy, an online community to connect emerging food, beverage, and CPG founders to great resources and partners to grow their business. Visit us at Foodbevy.com to learn about becoming a member or an industry partner today.

When Chris moved on from his first CPG startup, he took everything he learned and leveraged it to launch Proper Good, 90sec meals for busy people. He created a digital-first brand, leveraged manufacturing partners to test and launch new products every 6 weeks, and infused the brand with a ton of personality. Chris shares the details of how he launched and leveraged Shark Tank to build his community.

Startup to Scale is a podcast by Foodbevy, an online community to connect emerging food, beverage, and CPG founders to great resources and partners to grow their business. Visit us at Foodbevy.com to learn about becoming a member or an industry partner today.

When Erica launched Gr8nola, she had a secret weapon. She worked in Silicon Valley and was able to get her premium granola into tech offices like Google and others. Business was good. When the pandemic hit, everything changed and Erica had to pivot into DTC and Retail, which wasn't as easy as it sounds. Erica had to change her packaging design and messaging to reach a new consumer.

Startup to Scale is a podcast by Foodbevy, an online community to connect emerging food, beverage, and CPG founders to great resources and partners to grow their business. Visit us at Foodbevy.com to learn about becoming a member or an industry partner today.

Crickets were all the rage in food a few years ago, and then seemingly dropped off the map. Not so said, Matt Beck. Learn how he founded Hoppy Planet Foods to make Acheta (Cricket) protein more accessible and then acquired EXO Protein to tap into a dedicated customers base. We talk about building a category that requires high education, overcoming an ingredient stigma, and what it looks like to acquire a company.

Startup to Scale is a podcast by Foodbevy, an online community to connect emerging food, beverage, and CPG founders to great resources and partners to grow their business. Visit us at Foodbevy.com to learn about becoming a member or an industry partner today.

Karen Green joins to discuss what most food founders don't understand about starting a company, and what they need to do to properly set expectations to succeed. Karen is the founder of Food Mentor and helps dozens of CPG founders start and grow successful businesses.

Startup to Scale is a podcast by Foodbevy, an online community to connect emerging food, beverage, and CPG founders to great resources and partners to grow their business. Visit us at Foodbevy.com to learn about becoming a member or an industry partner today.

Alex and his co-founder Denetrias created Avec as a better-for-you cocktail mixer utilizing unique flavors including Yuzu and Lime, and Jalapeño and Blood Orange. Learn about their journey, successes, and mistakes along the way.

Startup to Scale is a podcast by Foodbevy, an online community to connect emerging food, beverage, and CPG founders to great resources and partners to grow their business. Visit us at Foodbevy.com to learn about becoming a member or an industry partner today.

Saffi Foods is a line of premium oils and vinegar started by Sascha Dhanjal. Learn how she differentiated her products by selling a premium branded item in the bulk section of grocery stores, how she pivoted during covid, and the difficulties of changing consumer behavior.

Startup to Scale is a podcast by Foodbevy, an online community to connect emerging food, beverage, and CPG founders to great resources and partners to grow their business. Visit us at Foodbevy.com to learn about becoming a member or an industry partner today.

Bella Hughes is a CPG founder, Community Organizer, Artist, Curator, Mom, and does it all with a clear personal mission. Join me for a fun and amazing conversation and learn how Bella helps farmers cultivate Mamaki Tea native to Hawai'i, grew Shaka Tea to 10,000+ doors, built an accelerator focused on AAPI-Female founders in Hawai'i, and more.

Shaka Tea: https://www.shakatea.com/
Found Her: www.foundher.org

Startup to Scale is a podcast by Foodbevy, an online community to connect emerging food, beverage, and CPG founders to great resources and partners to grow their business. Visit us at Foodbevy.com to learn about becoming a member or an industry partner today.

Amazon can be your best friend or your worst enemy. As a brand, there's so many nuances to succeeding that Amazon can be a full time job. Daniela Bolzmann spends all her time on Amazon helping brands get started and building optimized product listings using A/B testing and analytics.

Join me for a conversation on

How to build your Amazon strategy.
The 3 steps to optimizing your product listing.
Amazon's newest tools that you should be using.

Resources

Reach Out: Mindfulgoods.co use code FOODBEVY for 10% off

Amazon DIY Course: https://bit.ly/3iwg2Rq

SEO Keyword Data: Helium 10, Jungle Scout

PickFu: https://www.pickfu.com/ use code MINDFUL for 50% off

Startup to Scale is a podcast by Foodbevy, an online community to connect emerging food, beverage, and CPG founders to great resources and partners to grow their business. Visit us at Foodbevy.com to learn about becoming a member or an industry partner today.

Ashley created B.T.R. Bar, a functional protein bar while taking care of her parents battling cancer. Now she helps other's live a healthy lifestyle through her low sugar bars and mantra of "Be Bold, Tenacious and Resilient". Join me for a fun conversation about how she's been able to build an amazing and loyal community around her brand.

Startup to Scale is a podcast by Foodbevy, an online community to connect emerging food, beverage, and CPG founders to great resources and partners to grow their business. Visit us at Foodbevy.com to learn about becoming a member or an industry partner today.

I talk with Perteet Spencer who co-founded Ayo Foods with her husband, Fred Spencer. Ayo Foods creates handcrafted West African dishes made accessible in the grocery store. Join me as we discuss what it was like starting a business during the pandemic, the challenges she faced, and how she's working to overcome them.

Startup to Scale is a podcast by Foodbevy, an online community to connect emerging food, beverage, and CPG founders to great resources and partners to grow their business. Visit us at Foodbevy.com to learn about becoming a member or an industry partner today.

Genius Juice is an innovative line of coconut smoothies that is a rising star in the CPG industry. Alex Bayer has lead the company through many transitions and just recently raised over $1 million through equity crowdfunding. Join me as I talk with him about overcoming obstacles in building a beverage company.

Startup to Scale is a podcast by Foodbevy, an online community to connect emerging food, beverage, and CPG founders to great resources and partners to grow their business. Visit us at Foodbevy.com to learn about becoming a member or an industry partner today.

Selling in grocery stories is different in every single region, and Chicago and the Midwest have particular nuances that every CPG brand should know. Join me as Tina Adolfsson and I talk with industry legend, Don Fitzgerald on the launch of Dom’s Market and Kitchen, Chicago’s new innovative food hub. Don was previously the Group VP of Merchandising and Marketing for Mariano’s, another pioneering midwest grocer which was acquired by Kroger.

YOU’LL LEARN

How Dom’s Kitchen and Market is adapting to the changing grocery landscape
How to succeed in grocery in the midwest
What merchandising strategies work for CPG brands
How to stand out from the shelf
What are the hottest product categories

Startup to Scale is a podcast by Foodbevy, an online community to connect emerging food, beverage, and CPG founders to great resources and partners to grow their business. Visit us at Foodbevy.com to learn about becoming a member or an industry partner today.

Have you thought about getting started on TikTok but then felt completely overwhelmed! TikTok does require some work to be successful, but when done right, it can be amazing at quickly building a large audience. Join me as I talk with TikTok master Erica Rankin of Bro Dough who has grown her TikTok following to 130k followers and over 2 million likes in 5 months. She’s leveraged this channel to drive new sales for her cookie dough brand.

YOU’LL LEARN

How to get started on TikTok
Setting goals and expectations
Using trends to show up in search and stay relevant
Converting your followers into customers

Startup to Scale is a podcast by Foodbevy, an online community to connect emerging food, beverage, and CPG founders to great resources and partners to grow their business. Visit us at Foodbevy.com to learn about becoming a member or an industry partner today.

I talk with Liz Giorgi of Soona on new trends in content creation, how to stand out on Instagram, and why using models helps your brand stand out.

Startup to Scale is a podcast by Foodbevy, an online community to connect emerging food, beverage, and CPG founders to great resources and partners to grow their business. Visit us at Foodbevy.com to learn about becoming a member or an industry partner today.

I talk with Julie Blubaugh, the Local Coordinator for Whole Foods Market Midwest Region about how to launch a brand, being successful on the shelf, and how to grow from a regional to a national brand

Welcome to Startup to Scale, a podcast by Foodbevy. Foodbevy is an online community to help food and beverage founders and providers grow your business by providing access to tools, knowledge, and experts. If you run your own packaged food business or work with those who do, this podcast is for you. Every week I’ll be talking to founders, retailers, marketing experts, and everyone who works in our industry to find out what lead to their success or failure, and lessons learned so you can build an incredible business and make an impact on people's lives.

Startup to Scale is a podcast by Foodbevy, an online community to connect emerging food, beverage, and CPG founders to great resources and partners to grow their business. Visit us at Foodbevy.com to learn about becoming a member or an industry partner today.