Jennifer Barney - Exiting One of the First Almond Butter Brands & Scaling CPG Brands in Today's Market

On this episode, we’re joined by Jennifer Barney, the founder of Barney Butter and one of the sharpest minds in CPG today.

Jennifer launched Barney Butter back in 2006—well before almond butter went mainstream—and scaled it into a household name before exiting the business in 2011. Since then, she’s become a go-to advisor to emerging food brands like Hero Bread and Oat Haus, an Entrepreneur-in-Residence at General Mills' venture studio, a Director at Positively Good Snacks, and a Substack author (The Business of Food).

In this episode, Jennifer drops serious knowledge on how early-stage brands can navigate retail, boost velocity, and avoid the cash traps of over-distribution. We dive into packaging strategy (why it’s often a band-aid for deeper issues), the foodservice channel, demo execution, bootstrapping vs fundraising, and her take on why A2 dairy is the trend she regrets not jumping on.

Episode Highlights:
🌰 How Barney Butter helped take almond butter mainstream
🛻 Picking up almonds in a Suburban (literally)
📈 Why early-stage brands should focus on velocity, not doors
💸 The dangerous lag in distributor cash flow
📦 When you should (and shouldn’t) rebrand
🎯 How to actually execute demos and merchandising at scale
🏪 What “retail readiness” really means for emerging brands
🥛 Why she’s bullish on A2 dairy (and missed the window)
🧃 The Trojan horse approach to packaging
💰 Bootstrapping tips in a tough funding environment
📦 Amazon
🧠 Why great packaging still won’t save you from poor execution

⏱️ Table of Contents
00:00 – Intro
03:00 – Buying Ingredients Direct & Building Relationships with Processors
05:00 – Why Velocity > Distribution
10:00 – Cash Flow Pitfalls in Retail
14:00 – Demo Strategy, Broker Coordination, and In-Store Tactics
18:00 – Foodservice Channel: Pros, Cons, & Guerilla Selling
22:00 – Trojan Horse Packaging & What Makes Design Actually Work
27:00 – Rebrand Readiness & Strategic Brand Identity Shifts
33:00 – Bootstrapping Smart: Premium Pricing and Efficient Growth
36:00 – The Amazon Beast: Common Pitfalls & Inventory Woes
38:00 – Trends She Missed (A2 Milk!)
41:00 – Where to Follow Jennifer

Links:
Follow Jennifer on LinkedIn – https://www.linkedin.com/in/jenniferbarney/
The Business of Food – https://jenniferbarney.substack.com

Follow Adam on LinkedIn - https://www.linkedin.com/in/adam-martin-steinberg

Check out https://www.kitprint.co/ for CPG production design support.

Transcript

Adam Steinberg (00:00)
Today we've got the pleasure of speaking with Jennifer Barney, joining us from Turlock, California, heart of almond country. And back in 2006, Jennifer founded Barney Butter, one of the first brands to really bring almond butter into the mainstream before ultimately exiting in 2011. And these days, Jennifer's a consultant and advisor.

the seven most exciting brands in the CPG space, including Hero Bread and Oathouse, just to name a few. Also an entrepreneur in residence at General Mills Venture Studio, a director at Positively Good Snacks, which seems like a really cool organization, which I would encourage you to check out. Also a member of the Angel Group, which is a CPG investor group, which is where Jennifer and I met. And she's also got a really awesome sub stack called the Business of Food that I'd really highly recommend you check out, which is where a lot of my kind of questions came out of.

Jennifer, the first question had just, you live in California, Central Valley, which is like really in the heart of farm country. And a question that came to mind for me was, what might current and aspiring food and beverage entrepreneurs that grew up in more like an urban or suburban environments who are probably more detached from where their inputs ultimately originate from, like what might they be missing?

How could they maybe be spent by spending more time closer to the source, potentially help them be better entrepreneurs in this space?

Jennifer (01:15)
Well, first of all, thank you, Adam, for having me. It's really a pleasure. And that's such a great question because I was one of those people. grew up in the Bay Area. And I didn't know really where my food came from exactly. I didn't really understand the impact that California had on the whole world, but particularly our nation and the foods that we eat. So I became aware of the source of our food.

when I entered this industry, which happened quite by accident. I was making almond butter at home just for my family and my kids. And that was the background. I had no aspirations of building a business or having a big exit because 20 years ago, that really wasn't a thing. So it's a completely different environment today. It's really hip and cool to have a food brand. But yeah, to your question.

there are opportunities to source direct. And it's very much a people kind of network and business. So if you have a product that you're using raw ingredients that are derived from California and you're interested in trying to get a

access to a farmer processor, whether that be dairy, whether that be tree nuts, there's a lot of row crops here. But there's even shelf stable products that are derived from either IQF or shelf stable powders that are derived from local crops. just follow the stream of like, where is the transparency that everybody is.

aspiring to, if you just kind of linearly follow that, can end up with, where is the source? I think a lot of startups obviously have limited ability to buy in bulk and volume. But I'll tell you that a lot of farmer processors are very, very open to allowing you to buy in small quantities. So I remember when I was first starting out, mean,

Obviously, I was local here to my source, so I could physically drive over there. But I would drop the kids off at school, and then I'd drive the suburban over to pick up at the way. You'd have to weigh in all the semi trucks. You'd have to weigh in at the almond processor. And then you would go, I'd just have them load the pallet in the back of the car. I'd take the seat out and load the pallet in the back of the car, and then I'd weigh out and drive out. And it seems a little bit crazy.

It is unconventional, but it is possible. And there's a couple of benefits to doing that. It's not always just about price and transparency and everything, but you develop a relationship with these people. And you get a really good education about the particular specification of what you're buying, because everything has real complex varietals. And same with anything, even in dairy. The dairy components, it's not just what comes out of the cow.

It can be. And if that's your thing, that's really cool too, because then you can learn about the seasonality and higher fat during the summer months and lower fat in other months. But there's just a lot of advantages to not only being able to message that way to your consumer, but also being able to have more of, I guess, a relationship for both raw material security, but

just understanding the quality and the differentiation of the inputs of your products.

Adam Steinberg (04:48)
Yeah, that makes a lot of sense. I never really thought about potentially like, you know, especially the early stage entrepreneurs and they're just starting out if they actually will spend the time to go directly to the source, actually the farmer, they can probably

get,

smaller quantities and you know, more competitive pricing that can work in some of those earlier stages, especially.

Jennifer (05:05)
Yeah, exactly.

Adam Steinberg (05:07)
great.

well, yeah, so like shifting gears a little bit, it feels like almost every week I see experience with CPG operators, you know, sharing a similar message where, and a preaching focus on velocity versus, you know, getting as many distribution points as fast as possible, which I've seen you write about in your sub stack as well. So I'm kind of curious, you know, for, for the up and coming, you know, and our first time CPG operator, can you just help them understand why they should focus on velocity versus expanding distribution?

points as fast as possible.

Jennifer (05:39)
Yeah, I think it's a concept that people understand in stages. So I think the initial understanding is kind of like intuitive, like, yeah, it makes sense. need to make sure that consumers really like it beyond just my circle of friends. So then that's the first level of understanding, that, yeah, of course, in order for it to move off the shelf, if a consumer buys it,

If they don't like it, they're not going to come back and buy it again. So that's kind of, I would say, the baseline first step of understanding that brands have. But the next level of understanding comes with how much cash do you have to actually now take that next step to go to a larger set of retailers, to expand beyond your backyard.

And it's not just the upfront cash of, can make it and then I can sell it. It's the cash conversion cycle of when you're going to get paid back. And so I'll say there's a sub bullet in there, which is getting over that first six months with the distributor. So more than likely, you're going to go through a K here at UNFI in order to get to the end retailer. And they don't pay you until the second order.

And so oftentimes, it's not just 60 days or 90 days. It can be many months before you see that first check. And then in addition to that, you have gone in, it depends on the program that you choose to go in under, but there can be instances where you are substantially promoting in order to get the retailers to pick it up. And so therefore, there are a lot of deductions off of your invoice.

And so then what you get back might be zero. So there's just a real practical understanding of, I have the cash to continue to supply my existing customers while I expand and don't get paid for a very long time? So I would say that's like the second level of understanding. But I would say that that can be modeled. And a lot of times, brands do a superficial level of modeling that.

Adam Steinberg (07:42)
Yeah, that makes a lot of sense.

Jennifer (07:56)
So I think it's important to do a week by week cash flow model, even though it's all kind of made up. You're creating a scenario that may not actually play out exactly x, y, the way you've, because you don't know when exactly they're going to order. They say they've taken you in, and then you're sitting around waiting for the PO. But the point of the exercise is to say, once these POs start to get filled,

and you ship, right? What are all the things that are going to happen throughout the touch points of the distributor to the retailer from the back stock to the actual shelf? And then when the shelf tag is going to get put on and initially there's usually an initial promo. So when is that TPR tag going to get put on? And all of this is like a really crazy game of

It's like project management. And so all of these things have to work out in a timing, in a certain way. It's almost like a critical timeline. And before then, you even trigger that, OK, they're going to reorder and then get paid. So that second level of understanding is really about the cash. But then the third thing that people sometimes need to come to understand

that I wish they'd know ahead of time is just because your product tastes amazing, just because it completely is in a white space, just because you've done an excellent job of choosing a category that's right for disruption and your packaging is like A++, all of these things, right? The moving off the shelf is still

totally about tactics and execution. So everything I said earlier about, OK, you've done the math to know I need however much in dollars so that I can get through this period of growth, OK, you're still making the assumption that all of the things are going to happen in terms of you're going to get placement on the shelf where they said you would. The TPR is going to get on the way that

You planned it to be. Your merchandising teams are actually going to go out the week that they said they were going to go out. And all of these things are not automatic just because people say that they're going to do it and they should. And I'm not saying there's bad people out there and I'm not saying this is a crappy industry to be in. What I am saying is it takes a huge amount of resources to ensure the execution. And until the execution is perfect,

and you've really greased those wheels and dialed that in, your expansion plan may not, like one thing goes wrong, and then it all kind of falls apart. And then your whole plan of growth falls apart. So where I want people to learn is incrementally starting with making sure your velocities are there. Because once you add extra layers of complexity,

those executional priorities, you have to know how to handle them and how they're, you have to have the experience of having done it and managed through it before you move on to like the next geography and the next region and the next retailer.

Adam Steinberg (11:16)
Yeah, that makes a lot of sense kind of systematizing and making sure you're doing it right in

the current,

distribution network before you expand it. That makes total sense. In terms of those tactics, you kind of touched on a little bit, think, know, merchandising and demos and how those really help drive velocity does, most retailers make it pretty easy to secure that demo time as it helps move inventory off their shelves or?

Does it sometimes take a fair amount of convincing and negotiating? And if so, for those ones worth a bit more of a battle, what's the best way to get them on board to offer as much demo time as a brand can afford, at least?

Jennifer (11:49)
Yeah, that's a great question. And you're going to hate the answer because the answer is it depends. So let me just kind of paint a picture. If you start out with some independent retailers that you know, so they're in your hometown and you visit them regularly and you know the buyers, you have a relationship, you're much more likely to be able to get in and do demos. Now, once you start that way, what's great is you learn what works and how to do a good demo.

Adam Steinberg (11:55)
you

Jennifer (12:18)
And I'd strongly encourage people to do their own demos, at least at first, before you then contract out to hire a demo team. So that's the first thing. The second thing I'll say is it gets harder with the larger retailers. So yeah, mean, it's usually part of your promotional program. And you have to plan it well, well, well in advance to do a demo with a Sprouts or whatever. But yeah, they're highly effective.

you want to instill confidence with your buyer that you're going to pull it off. Because a lot goes into a demo that, again, goes back to earlier talking about growing your retail footprint. You have to make sure you have product on hand. And that's not easy when it's going through Kehi. So all of that pre-planning, it's really reliant on your relationship with your buyer or your broker's relationship with your buyer.

to make sure that everybody is on board with your plan and everybody is going to order ahead the proper amount of inventory and that the demo is actually going to take place. And once you instill that confidence, then it makes it so much easier for the second time around. So I would say the first time around of doing demos in a national retailer is always the hardest, but it's usually in conjunction with.

your entire promo plan for the whole year. You don't just wake up one day and say, you know what? I think I'm going to do some demos and just fire off a random email to your buyer and be like, hey, when can I come in for some demo? It's not like that. We need to really be thoughtful about managing our retailer relationships so that you are low maintenance.

and you're effective. so obviously, then it goes back to like, if you're doing well as a brand, then they're going to want to see more of you. They're going to want you to invest. And demos is really an investment.

Adam Steinberg (14:08)
Yeah, in building on that related to demos and more like, guess like the merchandising side for in terms of,

end caps and other off shelf display opportunities. How would you recommend brands approach retailers to give them the best chance that securing this kind of,

really valuable space

like this?

Jennifer (14:27)
Well, mean, the friction is usually always cost. It's very expensive. You have to buy the space. So the friction isn't necessarily like, gee, I'm competing with somebody else for it. It's more like if you have the dough to do it, to do an end cap, I mean, by all means, you should do it. Because a secondary placement is very effective. ⁓ So it just goes back to.

Adam Steinberg (14:35)
Can you afford it is the main question.

Yeah.

Jennifer (14:54)
being well-funded. But you don't always have to have like, I don't know, we could talk about funding and all of that later. There are ways to grow a business without having to raise a bunch of cash. You can be efficient and grow a little bit slower. And if you've got really, really good margins, there is a way to reinvest.

Adam Steinberg (14:56)
Yeah.

Mm-hmm.

Jennifer (15:21)
But it's super hard to do, and you have to be so laser focused and so disciplined.

Adam Steinberg (15:27)
Yeah, on that front actually,

all the things that you're saying, it's clearly takes a lot to just generate sustained success at retail, which I imagine you can correct me I'm wrong, is probably part of the reason why it seems like the food service channel is becoming a big focus for brands right now. And maybe that's just what I'm seeing

but it seems like that is. I imagine it's partly because there's not having to secure the demo. It's not having to secure that, you know, the, the expensive display space and what that's, I'm curious, like from your point of view, what are the pros

and cons of the Food Service Channel and maybe why people are so focused on it right now.

Jennifer (15:57)
Yeah, no. Yeah,

no, the food service channel is super, super attractive for those reasons. You avoid a lot of the costs of selling because you don't have trade spend. You don't have to do consumer promotions. There's no couponing, all that stuff. And usually you get paid pretty quick. But food service is a really tough one because not everything is like

amenable to food service. And I don't just mean like, case pack and pack size, but I guess it's similar to retail in that you have to have the end user want it. So it's not about just getting into a food service distributor and letting them sell it in. It's like, if you want to sell into like, the juice shop or whatever.

you really have to sell them on your product and understand how they want it in the format. And then they need to, you kind of have to get something pre-made that's ready to go. And then they request it from the distributor, and the distributor brings it in. And it can be in line with your current distributor relationships. So for example, like dot foods will.

They sell food service packs to restaurants and so forth. And they can source from Kehi. So you can just add a SKU to Kehi. And then you can go through DOT, and you can get started that way. So it's not like a completely different. It doesn't have to be like a completely different thing. can also, obviously, people like it because you can go direct. there are specific food service. Like everybody wants to get in the food kitchen at Google.

specific food service distributors that are just for Silicon Valley. But it's obviously super, super competitive. I don't know. The food service channel is not my area of super expertise. But I hear a lot of the stories that a lot of people hear, which is you're hiding out in the parking lot, and you're waiting for that one moment for like,

somebody to open the door, and then you shove your granola bar in their face. And you're like, put this in your lunchroom and have somebody call me. And sometimes you hear these stories work. So I don't know whether to encourage this gorilla-type approach. But certainly, yes, I think that the reason why brands feel like food service is the way to go is because of

the seeming ease at which they can realize their net profits back, their net sales back, and retain a better margin. The last thing I'll say is one way to test it is through Faire. So I know that some restaurants or bakeries, cafes will source.

from Faire buckets of things or large volume kind of boxes of loose food service boxes of things. And that's a, I think a fairly easy way to test if there's demand for your product in food service.

Adam Steinberg (19:17)
Yeah, that makes a lot of sense. think I actually saw someone post on LinkedIn or Twitter or something, how someone was making a comment, how they said like one of the mistakes that they see a lot of brands make on Faire, that they're having their,

case packs or their MOQs

too big and you should,

have those MOQs, those case pack sizes much smaller. And it's a chance for them to really test that demand and see if it, you know, where the demand is, which sounds like you're saying a similar thing.

Jennifer (19:42)
Exactly. Yep.

Adam Steinberg (19:43)
Yeah,

that makes total sense. Well, yeah, shifting gears a little bit in your sub stack, you recently highlighted a LinkedIn post that I found really interesting too that was written by Fred Hart,

at how to approach a brand refresh or packaging design. And he touched on this concept called the Trojan horse positioning. So I'm just kind of curious, just first off, like why did this post resonate with you so much?

Jennifer (20:07)
Yeah, I love Fred Hart. He's an amazing brand strategist and designer. Yeah, I reposted a LinkedIn post that he had talking about this concept of a Trojan horse positioning. And I'd never really heard of it that way. But it made so much sense to me because a lot of times brands will think about their packaging label as like, I need to really show off my differentiation on pack to the consumer.

And yeah, that makes sense. But the concept of Trojan horse is to go in and leading with what matters most to the consumer, not necessarily what makes your product unique. an example, oftentimes, is like a sustainability claim. That might be the thing that makes your product different. But it's typically not why consumers, the number one reason why consumers buy you.

So obviously, everybody wants something that's tasty. So it goes without saying that the package needs to signal that the product is super delicious. So don't compromise on clearly identifying what your product is. There has to be no confusion about that. And then highlighting number one, what it is that it makes it, if it's the flavor, that makes it

that signals that it's so tasty, then that's going to trump. So when you think about hierarchy on pack, there always is a hierarchy. I think it's hard sometimes when you're rebranding to like, people will just say, I want this a more modern feel, or I want it to be more, you know. And it is the job of the designer to really bring that to life, whatever it is that you're wanting. And they don't want you to tell them, make this bigger, and make this smaller, and make it blue instead of green.

However, when you say, I need it to signal whatever the differentiator is, that might not necessarily be the number one prominent hierarchy placement on PAC. Because of that Trojan horse, you want to come in with what is the highest need. And then you kind of are like secretly saying, and also kind of like the reason to believe.

So we are delicious, and we are cheddar cheese, and then the sustainability claim, or the high protein claim, or the gluten-free claim, or whatever it is that's the reason to believe this thing is now differentiated.

Adam Steinberg (22:31)
I can see why it resonated with you. Building on that a little bit, I like I came to you and I had a better for you brand and I told you I was considering packaging, design, refresh. What questions might you ask me that would help me confirm if this is the right strategy? Because I don't think it always is the right strategy. think some people feel like sales may be getting challenged or something along those lines and they maybe feel like a packaging refresh is the solution. But I'm kind of curious what questions you'd ask me to help me confirm.

if that is the right strategy.

Jennifer (23:02)
Yeah, that's such a great. So you're actually touching on something I think is really important. And that is that as a consultant and advisor to brands, one of the things that I think is really important for me to do is to help brands create really good creative briefs for their service providers. And this is not an easy thing. A lot of brands don't do it because they don't

They think like, I know how to talk to my person. I know what I need. But it's so much more effective. And it can be a lot less expensive when you come to a design team or somebody like yourself that's taking an existing set of assets and having to just implement a certain change. It's so much more effective.

when you're given a very clear mandate of what it is that the packaging is not doing and what is it that you want it to be doing. And so you don't have to be. In fact, it's better if you're not a designer yourself, unless you're going to do it yourself. But because that sometimes muddies the waters a little bit, it's better to just express what it is that you're trying to accomplish. So I always ask the question, what is it not doing for you?

What do you want it to do? And it could be, we have learned that our consumer chart, we thought it was this certain kind of psychographic or demographic. And then what we've learned over time by analyzing our meta audience or just literally standing in the store and just spying on people that are buying my product off the shelf, we've learned it's actually this other audience.

Adam Steinberg (24:23)
Yeah.

Jennifer (24:47)
And so we feel like we're not connecting with our audience. We want to better connect to this type of person. It can just be that.

Adam Steinberg (24:56)
Yeah.

how do you balance the need for a fresh look, which is obviously one of the reasons why I assume brands are approaching a packaging refresh, with also the importance of keeping the familiar and legacy brand elements for existing customers that really resonates with those existing customers and what they know and love to a certain extent.

Jennifer (25:16)
Yeah. OK, so I'm going to say something a little unconventional. So I think that a lot of times emerging brands, startups and emerging brands, they overestimate what their customers recall about their brand. They overestimate unaided.

awareness. So that is good news. If you come to accept that, that is very freeing, because then it allows for you don't have to hang on too closely to some of those design elements. Right? The more mature you are as a brand. So when I was working in my big CPG job and I was running innovation for a big frozen food company, we were going through a brand

Refresh, OK? And this is a company that was over 50 years old already. And the amount of time and the amount of trepidation over where the shadow was going to cast on the teeny tiniest little corner of the logo that had a little like, you know, it was like the shape of like a window, OK? I mean,

we were definitely afraid to do anything. And when I say we, I mean the brand team. I wasn't on the team. definitely afraid to do anything because, my god, good lord, should someone not recognize that it's the brand, right? So unless you're like a super legacy brand and you have a lot that you have to preserve, I think that, again, just going back to what is working or not working, I if it's just a matter of like, you don't like it or,

It doesn't pop. It's not resonating with my consumer, know, all those sorts of things. I feel much more bullish about it's OK to change because more than likely your consumer is not going to even like notice. I don't mean that in a bad way. mean, like they're not going to suddenly not find you.

Adam Steinberg (27:30)
when you think about some of the most cited or game changing packaging refreshes, I'm talking about the ones that came to mind, RX bar, Celsius, Oatly compared to maybe the ones that fell flat.

I'm curious why you might think that some work and some didn't. I could be wrong, but it feels like all three of those, they made a pretty significant change. And that's what maybe was the big impact. But I'm curious what your thoughts are.

Jennifer (27:54)
OK, well,

Adam, you're giving me way too much credit that I can analyze those three brand refreshes and tell you why they worked. Like, I don't know. I mean, I think, yeah, I mean, think, OK, here's what I'll say. I think possibly, I mean, we don't have these up to show a side by side before and after. But I'm going to take a stab that I think that possibly it's about taking things away.

So sometimes when you are more reductive, you are better. And it allows for more space for the things that are important. So remember I talked about the hierarchy of communication. Sometimes people have like six, seven, eight, 10, 12 things that they want to say on the front of the pack. And it ends up getting lots like nothing is being said well. So when you just reduce to, I our X bar, everybody says like, know, they were the first ones that did like the ingredient list on the front of the pack, you know, and that was their big like.

thing that we can all point to as really revolutionary that many people have emulated. I don't know what it was before, but I'm going to guess that maybe they were saying other things too. And they just said, you know what? This is all we're about. So it's the logo, and it's the three or four or five ingredients, and that's it. Other than that, it's the net weight because you have to have it for FDA.

Adam Steinberg (29:02)
Yeah.

Yeah, that's actually funny. You said that because my next question was going to be related to like putting ingredients on the front. I don't know if you've seen the, you know, some of the news coming out about the FDA saying they were seriously considering like acquiring nutritional panels on the front. what do you think? I was gonna ask, what do think about this? Clearly you're not on board with it.

Jennifer (29:18)
terrible idea.

Terrible, terrible idea.

Not a fan. You know what? It's because here's the thing. I'm not a fan because I'm not a fan of putting more regulation on small business. We are already regulated to the hilt. Okay? And so now you're going to require us to not only have a full nutritional ingredient panel on the back, but you're going to require us to have a regulated, and it's going to be ugly. And is this going to make people eat better? Like if somebody wants

Adam Steinberg (29:51)
Yeah, it's really getting out.

Jennifer (29:56)
a treat, you know, like they want a donut or they want an Oreo cookie or they want a super delicious, you know, cookie or whatever, putting that it's got X amount of sugar or fat or whatever on the front. I don't think, I don't think that anybody's walking around thinking that an Oreo cookie is really healthy. So putting that on the front, because that's the rationale, right? The FDA's rationale is, is that we have an obesity problem in the United States because

Consumers do not know, they're not aware. They think that the FDA feels like if they made a more simplified and more visible nutritional on the front of packaging, that all of a sudden America is gonna be like, my God, I had no idea. I'm not gonna buy that, right? And I don't think that that's the case.

Adam Steinberg (30:43)
Yeah. In the case that, unfortunately, if this does become a reality, any thoughts how brands can prepare for this change and maybe ways they can use this maybe unfortunate opportunity to differentiate themselves in some way or another?

Jennifer (30:58)
I mean, there's going to be how big it can be, and it has to be this much removed from any other letter on the pet. There's going to be rules about how you can put it. I mean, if it goes through, then we have to comply. And yeah, certainly, when life gives you lemons, make lemonade. So I mean, if you are a better for you brand, then

Yeah, it may be helpful that your stats are really good. But in general, I just think that it's pretty clear in today's market, the grocery industry, the food industry, it's pretty clear what foods are like junk food and what foods are better for you.

healthy, conscious-minded foods. We have so many ways of signaling that now, today. And we don't need an extra label on the front to tell us that.

Adam Steinberg (31:53)
Right.

Yeah, I think that's a great point. I that's a really good point. I want to circle back to one that you brought up earlier, which I feel like you can definitely speak to, especially in this environment in terms of going the fundraising route versus going the bootstrapping route. think you can correct me if wrong, but I think generally a lot of, especially in the earlier stage, CPG operators would say the fundraising environment is pretty challenging right now. So for ones that are feeling, again, maybe that's not the route I want to go, I would just want to try to bootstrap this and get this as far as I can.

What kind of, know, how would you suggest brands, brands approach that to give them the best chance of success?

Jennifer (32:41)
Yeah, great question. mean, number one, just be very realistic about what your costs are and be very realistic about the.

the cost of doing business so that you have healthy margins. And most brands that are able to succeed doing that, starting really small and being able to do really small runs, are brands that are premium. They're premium positioned and therefore then premium priced. And so it stands to reason that those are the brands that end up disrupting categories.

Adam Steinberg (33:10)
Yeah.

Jennifer (33:16)
So I'll give you a great example. Hay Day Canning Company, they're a beans, they're canned beans company. I think it's $4.50 to $5 for a can of beans. Well, you can get a can of beans for $0.69 or $1.99. I don't really know what it is. But when's the last time you went down the canned bean aisle and you were like, I really need to be careful with the prices here? Right. But however,

Adam Steinberg (33:21)
Mm-hmm.

Jennifer (33:43)
This is product that is absolutely genius because, OK, we could talk about disrupting sleepy categories and beans, whatever. But what I just said is this is a premium product because this is a meal. I can now shop for a meal in the can. When do you go through and buy canned beans and say, is my meal? No, this is an ingredient. Now I have to do something with this. I have to open up this can.

And now I have to season it, and I have to add it to this and that or whatever. So when you have the ability to be that much more expensive because you're offering the consumer a solution that they don't currently have, particularly in that format for that occasion, then if the numbers work out the way that they should, you now potentially have the luxury of growing

sustainably to where you don't have to necessarily raise a ton of money.

Adam Steinberg (34:42)
Yeah, I mean, that definitely makes sense.

you probably agree some of the best learnings come from experiences, come from the times where things didn't go as expected exactly. I'm curious, anything that really jumps out in your...

your career in terms of like whether it's a strategy or initiative that you worked on that didn't necessarily work or go as planned and like looking back, is there anything you would have done differently that really jumps out?

Jennifer (35:03)
my gosh. I mean, we could just talk for like another hour about all the mistakes and the things that I wish had gone differently, decisions that I made that were not great. But you see all of my clients are the beneficiaries of all my mistakes. I don't know how to pinpoint it into one thing, but one thing that does come to mind is.

And this was not with my personal brand, but just what recently I have been battling with some of my clients is being really effective on Amazon. So there's definitely so many great ways to be visible on Amazon. And you have to

set yourself up for success on Amazon, but just thinking like, can just program these ads and it's going to like my ads are actually going to activate. It's really kind of hard to do. I think some things that don't work and are frustrating are when you've planned for a certain amount of sales to happen because you've done everything that you think you need to do to be effective in a certain channel.

And we've talked a lot about retail and all of the pitfalls of that. But I want to talk about e-commerce a little bit because it feels more like you're in control. And so the lessons there are I think Amazon is its own special channel. And unless you have the time and ability to manage every aspect of it yourself,

Like, it's so worth it to hire somebody to help you, because there's the operational side of Amazon that if you don't get that right, then what happens is you're out of stock a lot. And then all of the ads and everything, and I'm just talking about this now, Adam, because I've been going through it with some brands, is things that don't work, like the best laid plans, but they don't work because you suddenly are deactivated or flagged for this or that or.

you know, the heavy, heavy ad spending that you think is going to be effective, it isn't effective, and it's very frustrating. So kind of peeling back the onion and fixing everything, it really starts with, you know, adhering to those strict inventory performance metrics, the requirements that they have, and just being like having somebody on top of it, and I'm talking about on a daily basis.

Adam Steinberg (37:25)
Yeah, you're not the first person to tell me that Amazon is its own beast for sure.

Any like trends that you saw, you remember now coming across, you wish you would have jumped on.

Jennifer (37:35)
Yes. I have been tempted to get back in myself a number of times. So I will say something that I think is a bit of a slow cooker but is going to take off is A2 milk and A2 dairy products. So I had this idea well before I

don't know that very many people knew what A2 milk was. So for those that don't know, A2 is a type of beta casein protein in milk. So you have casein and you have whey. Those are the two types of protein in milk. And a lot of people think like, I'm just lactose intolerant, so I have to go plant-based. And a lot of times, really what it is is they're A1 intolerant. So there's two kinds of casein proteins. One is A1 and one is A2. And I'm probably saying casein wrong. It's probably casein or something. I don't really know how to pronounce it.

But anyway, being from California, being in dairy, and my husband is a CFO of a agricultural operation. have dairies, dairy farms, and a lot of the herds now are A2, but it's just now becoming like an ingredient that is available. So Alex ice cream, for example, they're an A2 ice cream. So it's really about digestibility of the dairy. And Laurel's coffee, which is an amazing ready to drink.

latte. And the reason why I know this and how I learned about A2 is because my daughter, when she was at Cal Poly, you know, she's already like an adult, she suddenly developed a food allergy and we couldn't figure out what it was. And I was like, this is strange because none of us in our family have food allergies. So we went and got her tested and they said she was, you know, allergic to dairy. And I kind of scratched my head and said, well, that is so strange because

you've not been allergic to dairy this whole time. Why, as a 19 or 20-year-old, are you allergic to dairy? So I dug into it a little bit more, and that's how I learned that actually she was allergic to A1 casein. And so she's able to have A2 type of dairy. So that is something I think is on the horizon if people don't know about pretty much lactose-free milk has taken share of dairy milk.

And we've seen that growth in fluid dairy. With fluid dairy, there is an actual branded A2 milk that has kind of surged and resurged a little bit in terms of California or the US. It's a New Zealand company. But I think where there's a lot of growth in dairy are in the value added products such as cottage cheese, ice cream, and yogurt.

And so when we start to see this differentiation in the type of dairy, I think that that is an exciting, I guess, trend that I was passionate about and I probably missed. Because I didn't jump in, but I am like 100 % behind these brands that are doing it. I think it's super brave, and I think it's bold. And I do think that.

there's going to be its own segment just like lactose free is a segment.

Adam Steinberg (40:34)
Maybe it's not too late, but. Well, yeah, anyway, Jennifer, this has been great. I really appreciate the time. think this was really valuable. Can you maybe just remind everyone where they can find your substack and anywhere else where it makes sense to follow along with you?

Jennifer (40:48)
Yeah, the business of food. It's on Substack. I publish newsletters and it's all about tips and insights for not just CPG founders, but also ag producers because I am very close to agriculture here in the Central Valley of California.

Adam Steinberg (41:03)
Awesome, well, Jennifer, I appreciate the time and this has been awesome and yeah, hope you have a good rest of your day. Alrighty.

Jennifer (41:09)
Thanks Adam.