Startup To Scale

 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.