Gross To Net

Today I talked with Alison Cayne. Alison is the founder of Haven's Kitchen which was originally a cooking school and turned into a CPG brand. She also runs In The Sauce podcast (like and follow) and writes This Is Not An Advice Column on Substack. 

Alison is an entrepreneur's entrepreneur.

We discuss everything including building and shutting down her brand, all the things she learned along the way, how she's giving back now, and what she got out of all of it.

Errol Schweizer scaled Whole Foods' grocery division from $1B to $5B as VP, launching brands like Beyond Meat and Vital Farms while setting national standards for organic and regenerative agriculture. Now he documents grocery consolidation and corporate profiteering as a Forbes contributor and newsletter writer.

In this episode, Errol breaks down how Whole Foods industrialized better-for-you food at scale, the economics behind grocery pricing power, and why Walmart's dominance shapes what gets grown and sold in America. He explains the math that drives food systems—from profit compulsion in publicly traded companies to the challenges of scaling regenerative agriculture—and makes the case for public grocery stores as a backstop to corporate food monopolies.

We dig into the uncomfortable truths about grocery margins, the difference between HEB and Kroger, why local food systems struggle to gain traction, and what it actually takes to operationalize the right to good food. Errol brings receipts on price gouging during COVID and explains why the middle of the food system—not farm-to-table movements or food tech—is where real change needs to happen.

If you want to understand how grocery actually works and what needs to change, this is essential listening.

Follow Errol's writing at The Checkout: https://grocerynerd.substack.com/

I talked to Jimmy DeCicco who co-founded Super Coffee with his brothers in a dorm room. Jimmy has raised over $100mm to grow his company to the third largest bottled coffee in America and we talk about growing pains and how they had to change what they optimized for. Jimmy and I also talk about life and fitness and what it's like to hire your replacement at the company you started.

Jimmy is now an investor at Anthos Capital and you can learn more about him, Anthos, and Super Coffee by following him on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jimmy-decicco/

Jimmy helps me on my quest to learn the meaning of life.

Today I talked with Daniel Giacopelli who has spent a lot of his career interviewing and writing about entrepreneurs. Originally the host of "The Entrepreneurs", one of the industry's first podcasts about entrepreneurship, Daniel is now running a newsletter called For Starters (https://forstarters.co/) where he shares stories and ideas on how to be an entrepreneur living a life you love. 

Daniel specifies that this is specifically not for founders who want to raise $100mm and go public.

I talked to Ellen Donnelly (Ellen from The Ask) about making the transition from recruiting into coaching entrepreneurs. We talk about why people even start businesses and I get some free, on-air consulting. 

Ellen turns the tables back on me but then I turn them back again. My, my, how the turntables have...turned?

I recommend subscribing to Ellen's newsletter, The Ask, at https://the-ask.uk/newsletter

Today I talk with Eric Martindale about the digital shelf and how he's spent his life chasing arbitrages. Follow Eric on LinkedIn for nearly daily posts about where food and bev retail media is going: 

https://www.linkedin.com/in/eric-martindale-amazonagency/