She walked out of a federal prison with no money, no manufacturer, and no retail relationships.

Today Comeback Snacks is in 4,500+ stores across Canada and Walmart is next.

Emily O'Brien built the entire foundation of her brand from inside Grand Valley Institution for Women in Kitchener.

No internet.

No laptop.

Just handwritten letters, a prison library, and a business partner mailing her logo sketches through the post.

In this conversation, Emily breaks down the full journey: from popping flavoured kernels in a prison kitchen, to walking cold into a Mississauga factory with no appointment and leaving with a manufacturer, to navigating her first Sobeys listing and learning that getting on the shelf is only half the battle.

She also covers

• why she renamed the brand from Cons and Kernels
• how tariffs killed their US business overnight
• the brand licensing deal she stumbled into through a podcast appearance
• why employees with criminal records often outperform those without — backed by research.

4,500 stores. Built from a mailbox and a library card.

Shelf to Scale is a weekly podcast for CPG and FMCG founders navigating distribution, retail, and scaling. Hosted by Devesh Tilokani.

Comeback Snacks Instagram - @comebacksnacks

Emily's Instagram - @emz.obrien

Website - https://comebacksnacks.com/

For a month in 2025, a Dubai chocolate brand outsold Cadbury Dairy Milk in the UK .

They launched just months earlier, with nine flavours, zero retailhistory, and a founder who'd failed six times before getting here.In this episode, we discuss:

• The distributor strategy that contradicts everything the big FMCG brands taught him and why it got Meltz to 48 countries faster
• What a signed distribution agreement actually signals about the person across the table (it's not what most founders think)
• The story of a founder who handed over North and South America before selling a single unit and the 16 months he'll never get back
• Why building a premium product isn't enough — and the brutal lesson six failed brands finally taught him
• The exact threshold that told Mohit it was time to stop contract manufacturing and buy the factory outright

Mohit Mirpuri spent 15 years in FMCG trading before building Meltz — a Dubai chocolate brand now in 48 countries with 12 million bars sold and 62 SKUs in its portfolio. He launched in four months, hit 200,000 bars a week in the UK alone, and reached the 12 million bar milestone by February 2025. This episode is the unfiltered version of how that happened — andwhat almost stopped it.

Guest links:- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/meltz_dubai/- Website: https://meltzdubai.com/

Shelf to Scale is a weekly podcast for consumer brand founders navigating distribution, retail, and international scaling.

Hosted by Devesh Tilokani.

A software engineer turned e-commerce founder walks through how Claymoo scaled from $5–10K to $100K a month in under two years and why his technical background was the first thing he had to stop relying on.Matthew Wong covers:- the creative production ladder they use to test every ad before spending real time on it- the meta ad strategy that drives their growth- how manufacturing in-house became a strategic advantage- where AI is actually useful for a brand at this stage — and where it's still a distraction.GUESTMatthew Wong — ClaymooLinkedIn: @ithinkwongWebsite: claymoo.coSHELF TO SCALEWeekly conversations with consumer brand founders on distribution, retail, and scaling. Hosted by Devesh TilokaniTimestamps: 00:29 — From software engineer to selling clay kits — the pivot nobody saw coming04:11 — $5K to $100K/month in under two years: the honest numbers08:15 — How they de-risk every product launch (and the mystery kit trick for dead inventory)11:56 — The meta ads strategy behind all their growth15:00 — The static ad system: one customer review becomes three steps of content18:48 — Stop making polished videos until you prove this first23:31 — You're advertising to the wrong person — the targeting shift that changed everything25:38 — Why his tech background was a distraction, not an advantage36:30 — The one piece of advice for early-stage founders: maniacal focus

Rohit Kumar found a bamboo toothbrush listed only in Japanese on a website in 2011, validated it by walking into Bay Area farmers markets with physical samples, and built it into 2,000 store accounts before Colgate and Oral-B released their own versions. In 2026, ChatGPT, Perplexity, and Claude still name his brand as the best.In this episode:• Why the early retail stores are actually the easiest to close and the specific free fill strategy that gets a buyer to say yes with zero risk• How Rohit validates every new SKU across four brands before risking a dollar of inventory• Why first mover advantage is now a six-month window, not a three-year runway and what to build instead.The Indian factory in Gujarat running Chinese machines with Indian workers • • What the India supply chain shift actually looks like on the groundWhy taking VC funding for a CPG brand with no IP or moat could cost you 15 years of your lifeRohit went from Deloitte consulting to a failed web startup to discovering a Japanese-language toothbrush listing online and built a brand that still dominates AI search results more than a decade later. This episode is the real mechanics: how the first stores happened, what free fill actually means, how he sources across India and China, and what he'd do differently at 25.Guest links:Instagram: @itsrohitkumarWebsite: neworigins.comShelf to Scale is a weekly podcast for consumer brand founders navigating distribution, retail, and scaling. Hosted by Devesh Tilokani.

Shelf to Scale is a podcast featuring conversations with the founders, operators, and industry leaders behind today’s growing consumer products.

Each episode explores how brands expand distribution, navigate retail partnerships, and scale across new channels and markets.

From emerging CPG/FMCG startups to established manufacturers, we unpack the real-world challenges of growing consumer products across retailers, regions, and distribution networks.

Hosted by Devesh Tilokani, Shelf to Scale brings together perspectives from across the consumer goods ecosystem to share what it takes to scale successfully in an ever-changing market.