Brand Start Goes Healthy - Brand Development for Better-for-You Food and Beverage CPG Podcast

Failure can be a stepping stone to lead you to where you're supposed to be and make you even more lethal at what you do. Kyle Peters is the former founder of a healthy food brand called Carter & Oak, which manufactured and sold high-protein, no sugar, frozen desserts.

In this episode, he talks to Leonard about his journey of starting, building, and subsequently closing his brand and the many invaluable learnings both on the business aspects of running a CPG brand as well as his personal and professional growth.

Listen to this episode to learn:

1) How do you assess and decide on closing your CPG business?

2) What are the main factors that can contribute to either success or failure for your healthy f&b brand?

3) What is the hardest part in running a healthy consumer packaged good product?

4) How do you deal with failures and the pressures that come with it?

5) How do you bounce back stronger after falling down in your entrepreneurial career? Be sure to subscribe to the podcast so you don't miss on any new episodes.

Also, support Kyle's new venture at https://www.linkedin.com/company/we-got-the-goods/.

Marketing is an important aspect of growing your healthy food and beverage business and it's not just about having ads or digital platforms. There has to be a strategy in place that is aligned with your product and your customers.

In this episode, Leonard is joined by Erica Rankin, Founder of BroDough, who talks about her entrepreneurial journey and how she used a human-based marketing approach to generate awareness and interest for her product. 

Listen to this episode to learn:

1) How to be scrappy and quickly validate initial product-market fit for your healthy food and beverage product?
2) How do you brand your product so customers will pick it up?
3) What is human-based marketing and how can you apply that for your brand?
4) How can you leverage Tiktok to build awareness?
5) How do you balance long-term goals vs short-term gains in your CPG business?

Learn more about BroDough and support them at brodough.ca.  

P.S. We help better-for-you food and beverage CPG brands stand out, appeal to customers, and drive product trials through brand development. If you need help, visit www.thevineyardbc.com/talk.

Midday Squares has sold millions of their functional and healthy chocolate bars.

The key to their success? Understanding the importance of creating an emotional connection, offering transparency, and building trust among your customers.

In this episode, Leonard talks to Jake Karls, co-founder of Midday Squares, who shares their journey from being a homemade product to scaling to a multi-million brand that is driven to disrupt the chocolate industry.

Listen to this episode to find answers to questions such as:

1) How do you launch with a bang for your product?

2) How do you leverage entertainment and media to generate awareness?

3) Why is brand strategy important to differentiate your product and connect with your consumers?

Learn more about Midday Squares and support them at https://www.middaysquares.com.

P.S. We help better-for-you food and beverage CPG brands stand out, appeal to customers, and drive product trials through brand development. If you need help, visit www.thevineyardbc.com/talk.

Prabal Chaudhri found an unmet need in the market for chicken jerky when he saw that all products appeal mostly to men and do not have clean, healthy, and honest ingredients. This is what led him to start Brave Good Kind, a brand that offers healthy chicken jerky, bites, and bars while advocating for positivity.

In this episode, he shares how branding became a core component of everything that they did for their business and how he rolled out a strategic way to secure funding that allowed him to raise $3.5M in investment.

Listen to this episode to find answers to questions such as:

1) Why is branding important for healthy food and beverage products?

2) How do you leverage brand strategy for business growth?

3) How can you become retail ready at day 1 of your business?

4) What is a gated approach in raising capital?

5) What's the triad of validating business-market fit?

Be sure to listen to the whole episode and catch the code that Prabal shares if you want to get some free products. If you find this helpful, subscribe and leave us a rating.

Learn more about Brave Good Kind and support them at www.chickenbites.com.

P.S. We help better-for-you food and beverage CPG brands stand out, appeal to customers, and drive product trials through brand development. If you need help, visit www.thevineyardbc.com/talk.

Getting your healthy food and beverage CPG product in retail is a goal for every founder. It signifies growth and readiness to scale.

But, the question is, what are the steps that you should do to gain retail distribution for your healthy f&b brand?

In this special episode, Leonard talks to Caroline Grace, a go-to-retail strategist where they talked about items like:

1) How do you get your product in retail?

2) What are the 4 different approaches to getting into retail?

3) How do you increase your sales on the shelves?

4) What are the costs involved in retail distribution?

Listen to this if you are a brand who wants to get your product in retail or grow your sales velocity if you are already on the shelves. Did you find this helpful?

Be sure to subscribe and leave us a review and rating.

Learn more about Caroline's retail consulting company called Product & Prosper at www.productandprosper.com.

P.S. We help better-for-you food and beverage CPG brands stand out, appeal to customers, and drive product trials through brand development. If you need help, visit www.thevineyardbc.com/talk.

Arshad Bahl started Amrita Health Foods ten years ago and has grown it into a strong and trusted healthy food brand.

In this episode, he shares how he found his path to becoming an entrepreneur within the healthy food industry and his journey of growing his business. You should listen to this episode if you want to find answers to questions such as:

1) How do you grow a healthy food brand?

2) How do you phase your growth trajectory as a CPG business?

3) What are the healthy margins that you should be targetting as a CPG company?

4) What are the common mistakes of founders in the healthy food and beverage industry that you should avoid? Did you find this helpful?

Be sure to subscribe and leave us a review and rating.

Learn more about Amrita Health Foods at www.amritahealthfoods.com.

P.S. We help better-for-you food and beverage CPG brands stand out, appeal to customers, and drive product trials through brand development. If you need help, visit www.thevineyardbc.com/talk.

Hillside Harvest is a natural hot sauce brand that competed in such a highly competitive category. Its founder, Kamaal Jarrett, talked about how he leveraged brand strategy, product positioning, and communicating a culture to establish differentiation for their products.

He shared how focusing on local markets and understanding their consumers per locality and taking advantage of a retail-first strategy helped fuel growth for their business.

Listen to this episode if you want to get insights on how to grow a healthy sauce and condiment product, tips on getting into retail, using d2c as scale trial, and strategies to thrive in a mature market. Learn more about Hillside Harvest at www.hillsidesauce.com.

P.S. We help better-for-you food and beverage CPG brands stand out, appeal to customers, and drive product trials through brand development. If you need help, visit www.thevineyardbc.com/talk.

Ali Elliott has always been a passionate foodie who also has a strong inclination to entrepreneurship.

Her business, The Farmer Foodie, started as a food blog. But when she saw a gap on the availability of delicious, healthy, and long shelf-life cashew parm, she took action to solve this problem and launch her first healthy food and beverage CPG brand called Everything Cheeze. Now, they are gearing up to greater heights as they are set to relaunch their brand and expand their business.

This episode talks about her starting journey, her milestones, learnings, and core insights on what it really takes to start and build a start-up healthy food and beverage product. 

Learn more about The Farmer Foodie at www.thefarmerfoodie.com. 

P.S. We help better-for-you food and beverage CPG brands stand out, appeal to customers, and drive product trials through brand development. If you need help, visit www.thevineyardbc.com/talk.

Not all healthy food and beverage brands survive and thrive. Knowing when to accept the fact that your product won’t make it is not a bad thing. It’s a reality for being a start-up CPG product and it can do you better to know when to close shop than to continue with a non-thriving business.

P.S. We help better-for-you food and beverage CPG brands stand out, appeal to customers, and drive product trials through brand development. If you need help, visit www.thevineyardbc.com/talk.

Climate Candy is not your typical candy product. It’s a healthy treat made from fruits and vegetables. Its founder and CEO, Amy Keller, wanted to rescue unharvested ugly produce and upcycle them into a candy product that is not only delicious but also helps address issues of climate change.

Listen to this episode to learn about the importance of doing feasibility study in the healthy food and beverage industry, iterating your hypothesis, knowing your audience, honing your brand positioning and message, and raising capital for growth as a CPG product. Learn more about them at www.climatecandy.com.

P.S. We help better-for-you food and beverage CPG brands stand out, appeal to customers, and drive product trials through brand development. If you need help, visit www.thevineyardbc.com/talk.