The Long Aisle with Lucas Ballasy: Personal Side of Building in CPG

Loren Castle started Sweet Loren's in her mom's kitchen in New York in 2011, obsessed with creating a better for you cookie dough that didn't exist yet. She rode the subway with her recipe and a toaster oven to demo at a New York City Whole Foods, standing there taking in what every person who tried it had to say. Fifteen years later it's the #3 three cookie dough in the country, in over 35,000 supermarkets, and it's gone well beyond cookie dough, expanding to everything from pizza crusts to oatmeal bar dough.

Loren has also had three kids in the last five years. Her first maternity leave didn't really happen, and what she took from that wasn't a lesson about delegating. It was that she couldn't be the parent she wanted to be and the only person responsible for the day to day. So she hired the company's first president and started handing over parts of the business, even those she loved doing most.

This conversation is about what that cost her, what it gave back, and what her mother taught her about being present that had nothing to do with hours.

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Find Sweet Loren's: www.sweetlorens.com

More about Lucas: www.lucasballasy.com

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The Long Aisle is hosted by Lucas Ballasy, CEO of Barrel, a digital agency for CPG brands. Each episode goes behind the scenes with a founder or operator building for the long haul — how they think, how they live, and what keeps them going. Learn more at www.thelongaisle.com.

Somia Farid Silber is CEO of Edible Brands, the company behind Edible Arrangements, the fruit bouquet business her dad, Tariq Farid, started on a counter in the back of his Connecticut flower shop. The first store opened when she was six years old. She grew up working in every part of it and took over as CEO in 2024. Today Edible Brands includes the arrangements business and Roti, a Mediterranean fast-casual chain, and she also serves as CEO of Edibles.com, a separate business that brings hemp-derived THC brands directly to consumers.

In this conversation, we get into how she grew into the CEO role without ever having a formal conversation about taking over, why her dad insisted she start on the tech side of the business when she wanted marketing, and why her family has never shied away from blending business and life.

We also talk about hiring for entrepreneurial spirit on a small team, balancing her instinct for data with her dad's instinct to trust his gut, and becoming a parent shortly before becoming CEO, and what it means to build in front of her daughter.

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Find Edible Brands: www.ediblebrands.com
More about Lucas: www.lucasballasy.com

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The Long Aisle is hosted by Lucas Ballasy, CEO of Barrel, a digital agency for CPG brands. Each episode goes behind the scenes with a founder or operator building for the long haul — how they think, how they live, and what keeps them going. Learn more at www.thelongaisle.com.

Loonen is bottled water that starts at a spring, moves in stainless steel, and goes into glass and only glass, never plastic. Every batch is tested by an outside lab for more than 350 contaminants, and the results are behind a QR code on the label. It launched at the end of last year, is now in Sprouts, and has turned into the bottle influencers and celebrities can't help posting on social.

Behind it are two people who came at this from opposite sides of the table: Clara Sieg and David Kimmell. Clara spent over a decade as a venture investor. Loonen came out of her own experiences during IVF and early motherhood. For the operating half, she called David Kimmell, who was on the founding team at Spindrift and spent nearly a decade running operations and R&D there.

In this conversation we get into why Clara calls having a kid an accelerant rather than a tradeoff, the two painful days of questions they ran before signing anything, and the night David chose a basement over General Mills. We also talk about the trade show Clara lost the argument on, the shipments that arrived on doorsteps as ice cubes and glass shards, and where the name (with extra letters) comes from.

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Find Loonen: ⁠www.loonen.com

More about Lucas: ⁠www.lucasballasy.com⁠

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The Long Aisle is hosted by Lucas Ballasy, CEO of Barrel, a digital agency for CPG brands. Each episode goes behind the scenes with a founder or operator building for the long haul — how they think, how they live, and what keeps them going. Learn more at ⁠www.thelongaisle.com⁠.

Anna Zesbaugh is the founder and CEO of Corpse Reviver, a non-alcoholic, tea-based sparkling electrolyte drink with a can design that looks unlike anything else on the functional beverage shelf. Furloughed at 24, she built three businesses over the next six years before closing two of them to bet everything on Corpse Reviver, which is now in stores such as Walmart, Whole Foods, and Erewhon.

In this conversation, we get into what it actually felt like to walk away from the first brand she ever built, visiting liquor stores to design her first can with her college neighbor, and why the team that got her to year three couldn't get her to year five.

We also talk about why she shares the wins and the losses publicly, the line she draws between the people she calls and the people she pays, and the note she stuck on her bathroom mirror in 2020 that's still there.

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Find Corpse Reviver: www.drinkcorpsereviver.com

More about Lucas: www.lucasballasy.com

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The Long Aisle is hosted by Lucas Ballasy, CEO of Barrel, a digital agency for CPG brands. Each episode goes behind the scenes with a founder or operator building for the long haul — how they think, how they live, and what keeps them going. Learn more at ⁠www.thelongaisle.com⁠.

George Milton co-founded Yellowbird Foods with his partner Erin Link, tilling up their Austin backyard for 150 habanero plants and building a national hot sauce brand on the belief that real food shouldn't need preservatives, sugar, and salt to taste good. He came to it from a music career, selling bottles out of a backpack at his own shows, and ran it self-funded for years before it became something that could pay him back.

In this conversation, we get into the Substack post where he publicly announced he'd hired his own replacement as CEO, the slow realization years earlier that he'd one day make this shift, and what it feels like now to sit in the room while other people make the calls he used to make.

We also talk about building a company alongside a life partner, why he used to personally call customers over a single damaged bottle, the resilience he pulls from endurance workouts, and the question he still can't fully answer about who you are when the thing you built no longer needs you.

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Find Yellowbird: www.yellowbirdfoods.com

More about Lucas: www.lucasballasy.com

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The Long Aisle is hosted by Lucas Ballasy, CEO of Barrel, a digital agency for CPG brands. Each episode goes behind the scenes with a founder or operator building for the long haul — how they think, how they live, and what keeps them going. Learn more at ⁠www.thelongaisle.com⁠.

Gardar Stefansson, co-founder/CEO of GOOD GOOD, built a no-added-sugar jam brand out of Iceland, a country of 350,000 people, by betting that a sugar-free spread could actually taste like something worth eating. He started with a stevia sweetener company that didn't work, pivoted to jam, and has been scaling ever since.

In this conversation, we get into how a follower bet with his marketing team turned into running two marathons in a strawberry jar suit within two weeks of each other, the overconfident retail expansion that taught him why getting into stores is the easy part, and what he's still sitting with at night even after a decade of building.

We also talk about what it takes to run a company with co-founders on a different continent, why he thought it would get easier with scale and was completely wrong, and what building something meaningful actually looks like when you strip everything else away.

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Find GOOD GOOD: www.goodgoodbrand.com

More about Lucas: www.lucasballasy.com

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The Long Aisle is hosted by Lucas Ballasy, CEO of Barrel, a digital agency for CPG brands. Each episode goes behind the scenes with a founder or operator building for the long haul — how they think, how they live, and what keeps them going. Learn more at ⁠www.thelongaisle.com⁠.

Michael Fisher, founder/CEO, built Rotten from his kitchen with zero food science background, a 90s gross-out aesthetic, and a belief that better-for-you candy shouldn't have to look the part.

In this conversation, we get into what it felt like to receive a cease and desist from Ferrara, makers of Nerds, before a product even launched, how $200K worth of sticky, off-spec gummy worms became a TikTok campaign, and why Michael calls his executive coach "therapy, except you just talk about work."

We also talk about the mental game of building, protecting your physical health when the business is consuming everything, and what it means to grow a brand in a way that lasts.

Read takeaways from this episode here.

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Find Rotten: www.eatrotten.com

More about Lucas: www.lucasballasy.com

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The Long Aisle is hosted by Lucas Ballasy, CEO of Barrel, a digital agency for CPG brands. Each episode goes behind the scenes with a founder or operator building for the long haul — how they think, how they live, and what keeps them going. Learn more at ⁠www.thelongaisle.com⁠.

Lucas announces the launch of The Long Aisle, while on a run, and what inspired the series.

In the last episode of 2025, Lucas and Nate discuss the evolving landscape of consumer packaged goods (CPG) as they reflect on the year and share insights on trends expected to shape 2026. They explore the importance of customer retention strategies beyond subscriptions, the critical role of a strong website, the rise of private label brands, and the impact of algorithms on consumer choices. The conversation emphasizes the need for brands to adapt to an omnichannel world and to focus on delivering quality products that resonate with consumers' evolving preferences.

In this episode, Lucas and Nate interview Maya Ayed, founder of Alya Health, a brand that integrates Mediterranean wellness traditions into modern routines through olive oil shots. Maya shares her journey from her family's olive oil estate in Tunisia to launching a health-focused product aimed at improving gut health. The conversation explores the challenges of entrepreneurship, the importance of customer feedback, and the strategies for educating consumers about the health benefits of olive oil. Maya emphasizes the significance of community and plans for future growth as she navigates the competitive landscape of the CPG market.