Sam Rose - The Ice Cream Pouch That's Disrupting Freezer Aisles

On this episode, we’re joined by Sam Rose, the founder and CEO of RoseBud Ice Cream, a Denver-based brand crafting nostalgic, indulgent ice cream with unapologetically high standards.

Sam launched RoseBud after years of self-teaching, boxing, and perfecting pints out of a Walmart ice cream maker. What began as a THC- and CBD-infused experiment has since evolved into a super-premium brand stocked in hundreds of stores, and recently expanded into a game-changing new format: squeezable soft serve pouches.

In this episode, Sam breaks down how he built RoseBud from a commissary kitchen to a national brand, the painstaking R&D behind his signature vanilla and chocolate flavors, and the very real challenges of building a frozen CPG company with no formal training, no capital, and no quit.

We dig into what makes a great package, how to pitch Whole Foods without a barcode, and why he believes founder-led demos outperform paid ones every time.

Episode Highlights:
📦 How RoseBud landed retail with mockups and Sharpie-labeled pints
🥄 The birth of their new squeezable soft-serve pouch
🎨 Packaging that “jumps off the shelf” and how he pulled it off
🚛 Distribution and cold chain chaos
🧾 What buyers actually care about in a pitch deck
💸 Planning for margin loss when working with a distributor
🧊 Why frozen is tough—and ice cream is tougher
🚀 How Sam thinks about trends (spoiler: he doesn’t)

Table of Contents
00:00 – Intro & Origin Story
03:30 – Building the Brand Solo
06:00 – Packaging Design & Flavor Naming
09:00 – Squeezable Soft-Serve Innovation
15:30 – Retail Buyer Response & Market Opportunity
18:40 – How Sam Pitched Early Retailers
22:00 – Retail Tools & Lessons in Pricing
24:50 – Distributors, Margins & Scaling
30:00 – Frozen-Specific Supply Chain Realities
34:00 – Trends, Brands Sam Respects & What’s Next

Links:
Rosebud Ice Cream – https://rosebudicecream.com/
Follow Rosebud on Instagram – https://www.instagram.com/rosebudicecream/
Follow Sam on LinkedIn – https://www.linkedin.com/in/samuel-rose-19998b1b0/

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)

Al right, welcome to Shelf Help. Today we're speaking with Sam Rose, who is joining us from Denver. Sam is the founder and CEO of Rosebud Ice Cream. Rosebud offers classic American style, super premium ice cream that really boasts high quality taste and texture with

some recipes that took more than half a decade of iteration and refinement. And Sam just launched recently a pretty game-changing product line that we're going to dive into here shortly. yeah, with that, let's get into it. So maybe, Sam, just first off, just for some of the listeners that aren't as familiar with Rosebud, maybe just give a quick lay of the land in terms of the origin story, why behind the brand, core product you guys offer, and some of the places that listeners can get their hands on the product.

Sam Rose (00:20)

That's right.

For sure.

Yeah. I guess, I mean, the origins of the ice cream business go back to me just loving ice cream as a kid. And by the time I was a senior in college, I wasn't really satisfied with what was out there. Um, I think I was kind of yearning for more of like the nostalgia, like inducing ice cream that like I was remembering when I was a kid. Um, but this was like 2015, 2016, and I was just

pretty dissatisfied with what my options were. There were some entrance to like the premium kind of ice cream space that were starting to take over, but I really didn't think that what they had was any good. And I was kind of also tired of dealing with like, you know, the big monolith brands that, you know, put out less than great product and refrain from naming them. But so I really wanted to.

try to make my own ice cream and make something worth remembering and got into making ice cream. And then a friend made a joke, I should just kind of start an ice cream company. And at the time I identified the best way to get into the ice cream industry would be to go in through what was, you know, back then an emerging market in the cannabis space. So I thought, okay, there's no one really doing an infused ice cream. Maybe there's something there.

And so I started working on infused ice cream recipes, started working out of my kitchen and eventually spent from like 2016 to 2019 trying to create this THC infused ice cream product. Eventually transitioned into a CBD infused product for just a lot of reasons. But one of the big ones is that, you know, at the time grocery stores were able to sell CBD products. So we had this kind of

niche entry or pathway to get on shelves in what is still a pretty crowded space and ice cream pints. And we are able to kind of meet having this like different or differentiator to get people's attention with my passion for making really good ice cream. But it's worth noting I didn't go to culinary school. I taught myself how to make ice cream in like home kitchens with like a

$30 Walmart ice cream maker But my first job out of school was actually in an ice cream kitchen so I could learn how to use professional equipment worked in some professional kitchens among the many odd jobs I had when I was first getting the company started and Launched in 2020 and have been kind of going since then We don't do CBD infused ice cream anymore though. That's important to know It's just super premium ice cream pints and now we have a new product line

I think is a true game changer, like you said.

Adam Steinberg (03:32)

Yeah, definitely excited to dive into that one for sure.

What feels like it's been the key to

kind of getting where you are as

a solo operator and what skills do you feel like you brought to the table that enabled you to do so and what have you felt like you kind of had to learn on the job to a certain extent?

Sam Rose (03:48)

Yeah, I mean, would venture to say it's still mostly just me. Been fortunate to bring in like a marketing intern from my alma mater, DePaul University, who she's really great. But for the most part, it's been me, like you mentioned, contracting certain things out. when we first started, it was me making every single point by hand out of a commissary up in Longmont, Colorado.

which sucked. Like it was just not what I enjoyed doing. So for the first two years we were doing that and then graduated to a co-packer. But I think part of what's helped me is like being ignorant to the CPG world. Like when I first started meeting with stores, I didn't know we had to put it into like pints in the cases. I thought we could just deliver them in like milk crates. Like I remember someone asking me about barcodes for our product in an early sales meeting and I just didn't know. So

I think I enjoy a challenge, so every step of the way has been challenging. But I think the biggest key to getting where we are today is just like kind of being really persistent, boxed for 15 years. And I liken a lot of the lessons in boxing to what has helped me get to where I am today in business as far as like, I didn't really start out being super, super athletic. I wasn't super naturally skilled.

But the thing with boxing is like, if you put in work and work really hard, like you will just progress and you get better. And that's the same with business is like, you take a lot of what feel like gut shots and you just kind of have to learn to keep going. And I think just being honestly really, really stubborn has helped me a lot. I think there's a lot of nos you get in the space, whether it's from, you know, co-packers not wanting to take your product in.

people not wanting to put your product on shelf or everything outside and in between and just kind of being like, okay, I'll figure out another way to go around that. So I think that's what's like been super helpful to get to where we are now.

Adam Steinberg (05:49)

Just persistence and putting one step forward every day. I think that totally makes sense.

The packaging is really awesome.

It definitely stands out

thinking about that way back when

to that original creative brief that you put together

What was that vision and what would you feel like were the most important points you want to call out in the package as you were going through that first kind of iterative design process?

Sam Rose (06:12)

Yeah, I think really when I like, I can't take too much credit for these. Like I had a vision that, you know, an artist was able to kind of articulate really well with the packaging, but going back to when it was like a THC thing, I wanted to make sure that it was like definitely punny or like had an element of humor. One thing I've liked about the business is just being able to be creative. like having silly, stupid names I think is fun, but there's a fine line.

before it becomes confusing. Like we used to have a flavor called lemon hazelberry. And like if I had a dollar for every time someone called it lemon hazelberry, like we wouldn't need to be fundraising. So there's just like that. But I think trying to get the point across that it's like it's ice cream, it's fun, it should be enjoyable. It doesn't have to be super serious. So trying to show off like that side where it's eye catching, it's appealing.

Adam Steinberg (06:51)

you

Sam Rose (07:06)

kind of jumps off the shelf is always the goal with any packaging, but not really. I didn't really have a design eye, so I just thought it'd be cool to put ice cream on mountains. And that's still kind of what we have now. It used to be more of like a scoop as a mountain top versus like ice cream cone mountains. But honestly, I think compared to what I had originally drawn up in a notebook to what we have now, this is way better, obviously.

Adam Steinberg (07:30)

Yeah. It looks pretty good. It looks pretty good. Did you work with a, like branding agency, freelancer, some other option contractor, and then like whichever one you went with, how'd you decide to, who to work with and kind of like, what was that evaluation process thinking way back when?

Sam Rose (07:33)

Thanks.

Yeah, I would say it's traceable to luck. My business partner knew, just a graphic designer, that she was willing to work with us. And I was like, okay, that's like, I didn't really explore any other options. didn't ask for references or anything. I mean, she had like a deck that she showed us, but she was really professional and it kind of made me have to like up my game and dealing with people professionally. that was like one of the first relationships we built.

for the business and we just like frankly got really really lucky that she was easy to work with creative and able to put such a cool design out there, but now I think just in general when working with service providers or anyone who's whether it's like a Sales consultant or an ops or anyone like we do a lot more vetting now compared to me just being like, okay, we found someone

Adam Steinberg (08:36)

On the topic of packaging and say form factor in general, you mentioned it briefly when you were kind of given the quick intro. I you just rolled out a really innovative new product line. So let me just give you just like, what's the deal there? What's the new product rolled out? And then we can take it from there.

Sam Rose (08:54)

So this is our new squeezable soft serve ice cream. It's in a pouch. I think it's a really great game changer for a lot of reasons. And I definitely owe my sister. I'm always quick to give her credit for. I mean, since the origin of the company itself was started, I started pursuing it after a friend made a joke about starting an ice cream company, my sister made a joke about.

putting ice cream in a baby food pouch so I could give it to my nephew. And I was like, maybe there's something there. And so yeah, mean, that was brought up in 2023. We're just now bringing it to market in May of 25. There's been a lot of delays and as is to be expected, everything that can go wrong did go wrong. Unfortunately, I'm stubborn and persistent and here we are now getting it out. But I think what's really cool about this product

Adam Steinberg (09:21)

Yeah.

Sam Rose (09:47)

is ice cream in terms of differentiation or innovation follows a pretty standard cycle. That even I, you know, not calling anyone out on it, but I was guilty of it at the time. CBD seemed like it was going to really be this big thing. People are putting CBD in like hand sanitizer and all this random shit. So we put it in ice cream. That was our way to be different. It's a different ingredient. And then we ended up on a grocery store shelf and great. We got there, but now we're competing against

some of the biggest companies in the world who are in food trying to compete for consumer attention. And we did it with CBD, other brands did it with dairy-free products. Some companies did it with sugar-free. Now everyone's putting protein in this stuff. like, there's just these trends that inspire new recipe formulations in ice cream. Those recipes, however unique they are to the trend, usually end up in a pint.

and then you're in a really saturated competitive space. So with this, we know people like indulgent ice cream. We're pretty clean label with our ice cream. We're not putting like mono and diglycerides in there. So having something indulgent, we know people like indulgence. We know people like convenience. And this just in its form is different than what you see in the frozen sets currently. So I think it's a really great opportunity for us to hopefully stand out more on the shelf.

You never know if someone goes in there like with what they're looking for in mind, they might not see it. Hopefully we can catch, you know, capture some new attention there. But what's really exciting to me is that the form factor makes it more convenient to eat in places beyond just wherever you're eating ice cream out of a pint now. So we're really excited to expand it across different channels. I'm talking to different types of customers rather than just grocery stores for the first time.

Whereas, you know, say a movie theater, like doesn't make too much sense to bring up a pint in there. This is something that you could watch in your seat at the movies and no mess, more fun. So that I think is what really excites me the most beyond it being just different for the sake of it looking different. There's a lot of functional kind of utility there that makes sense. Like talking to a lot of parents with young kids, like.

Little kids know how to eat pouches without making a mess. If you give a kid an ice cream cone, you better have like seven napkins too. So this just makes it a little bit easier. Like I said, no mess. I think makes it more fun.

Adam Steinberg (12:13)

everyone who likes ice cream would say that most people love soft serve, just the consistency and the experience. so I have to imagine there are other brands that have been in the ice cream space for a while have tried to bring

a soft serve product in some form to retail.

I haven't really seen any in the grocery stores that I've seen. And I know you mentioned it took quite a while to actually get it to market. So without giving away too many trade secrets or anything, what was the key to actually get it to this final form where you actually made it work and you're able to commercialize it and bring it to market?

Sam Rose (12:47)

Yeah, I think the biggest like there, I would just like group it down to three main differences for like a hard ice cream versus a soft serve. So ice cream, the creaminess is based on a butterfat percentage of butterfat used in there. Our pints are 14 % butterfat and that's considered by ice cream standards, super premium. Happens to be convenient that super premium makes it sound fancy and we like that too. But for this,

it's a lower butterfat and that's usually because when it's in that machine where it's like spinning, if it's too high of a butterfat, it'll churn into like an actual solid butter. So most soft serves are like 2 % butterfat. We're going with a higher butterfat percentage here. It's about a six and a half percent. So I like to say it's premium soft serve, but that's like the butterfat is the big one. The air content, hard ice cream has less air spun into it.

when it's in the machine, and I'll try to avoid getting super nerdy and technical, but while it's spinning in that machine, it's just pumping air in. So that makes it that fluffier, lighter, softer ice cream texture is just the air content. There's more air in soft serve versus hard ice cream. So we lowered the butterfat, put more air into it. And then ultimately the big thing is the serving temperature, pulling something out of whatever your freezer is set to. You know, maybe if you're getting it out of a scoop kit, like a cabinet.

and it's being kept in a pretty cold temperature for a hard ice cream. serve comes out of that machine and it's a little bit warmer just because it's getting the air right away. So with this, part of it is, know, like depending on what you have your freezer set to, I could pull mine out of the freezer and I'm good to go and realistically like 20, 30 seconds and you're just able to eat out of this. So I think this form factor helps to create it to be that soft serve type experience.

We went with a bigger mouth hole on it too, so that it kind of feels like, you you can just eat it right out of there and it's, it's like soft serve versus we've seen some companies do like soft serve in a quart and then it just still kind of feels like ice cream anyways. think a lot of the time when you're eating soft serve, maybe you're doing it out of a cup, but I think of a cone, this is kind of like a contained cone. So the biggest thing to get it from

concept to what we have now has been just finding the machine to, you know, we work with a company, they have all the stuff to make ice cream, but nothing to extrude it into a pouch. So that was the biggest challenge was finding the right manufacturing partner, getting the thing made. And then, you know, actually implementing it into the production line, which has been, I think I've, I've aged in dog years throughout this process.

Adam Steinberg (15:14)

Mm-hmm.

Sam Rose (15:30)

I can't say realistically how long it's been, but it feels like an eternity.

Adam Steinberg (15:34)

Yeah, well it seemed like it was worth it.

Sam Rose (15:38)

I hope so, otherwise change my name, move to another country.

Adam Steinberg (15:41)

I know it's really early, so you may not have a whole lot of data points to share so far, what's been even anecdotally, what's been the response from either retailers and the buyers that you work with and or consumers?

Sam Rose (15:51)

Yeah, I think dealing with retailers, you know, coming to them with a pint is like kind of bringing sand to the beach. It's like we already have plenty. Maybe, you know, I pride ours, our pints on being the best ice cream in America, but taste is kind of subjective and a lot of people think it tastes good. But at that rate, we're really just competing for awareness. And that's really expensive. We're not a well funded capitalized company. Everything's been bootstrapped. You know, like we're not able to go out and spend a million dollars on an ad campaign.

so dealing in pints for so long, we knew that we'd be able to get success. The more people try it, the more that they buy it. It's just a longer game to compete in that space. Some of our recent success came at again, at, the misfortune of others and the plant-based space. think consumer preference has definitely shifted back to the indulgent ice creams. So there's more shelf space being made for that.

That's how we grew to be in more stores. But, you know, I've been trying to reach out to folks, sell ice cream pints for years, who they weren't interested and we were getting approvals from just a, like a mock-up photo before I actually had any packaging, something that didn't look anything like this. We were able to get people to be like, hey, how soon can you have that? So it's unlike anything I've ever seen before. We're really helping to deal with

lot of good problems and instead of the normal problems that we deal with but I Just think it's it's a lot easier to catch people's attention, especially, you know sampling at an ice cream You know if I'm set up in Whole Foods giving out some of our pints Probably 30 % of the time people first thing they ask is what makes it special versus this is like well you can

you know, eat this with one hand on the drive home if you really like it. So it's just a little bit different selling something new versus what people have seen as long as I've been eating ice cream, it's been in pints.

Adam Steinberg (17:51)

Yeah. Yeah. It feels like putting a,

more standard product in just like a new different form factor can really go a long ways and just helping stand out from both the buyer and the consumer standpoint.

Sam Rose (18:02)

Yeah, I mean, if you look across different part of the grocery aisle, there's a company called Grazza. They do olive oil out of a plastic, squeezable, easy to drizzle thing. And like, it's a quality product and a new form factor. And I look at them with envy because they seem really successful. you know, if we can have a quarter of their success, I'll be pretty stoked.

Adam Steinberg (18:21)

Yeah, yeah, it's a good example.

Yeah, for sure. Now that's a great example on the topic of, uh, of retail in general

thinking back to,

what you did to get yourself and the brand ready to pitch that first retailer way back when, what, what do you remember?

what were those things you did to kind of get ready to say, I'm going to, I'm ready to go walk into this first retailer to pitch this buyer?

Sam Rose (18:44)

Yeah, I really had to figure it out. mean, each step, like we continue to level up where the first store we went to is just like a two store chain in Denver. I didn't have like actual finished pint packaging. It was still in an unlabeled, like white pint that I bought off Amazon and just labeled with a Sharpie and didn't really understand anything. I thought we would be selling.

You know, it's CBD ice cream, so it's new. People are going to hear about that because we're going to be on, you know, in a local, we'll have social media. We'll get all this attention. We'll sell 50 pints a week. And like, you know, average is like, maybe you're really cooking at like three or four pints a week. So I just didn't know what I was getting into. And I tried to be smart and not talk too much so that I could be like, that's what you're looking for. Sure. there's a store in Denver called leavers local board that

I met with them before I had a finished product and their store was still under construction. It's like one of my favorite stores in Colorado. One of my favorite stores that we've worked with. They've always been really great, but going into that meeting, was just like, they didn't have a freezer in their spot yet. They pointed to like a marks point on the floor of where it was going. I gave them something in an unfinished pint container and it just felt like a very good kind of place for us to be meeting in the middle.

As we've continued to grow, still do a decent amount of cold calling. And fortunately I sold knives, cutco knives, you know, going into college. So got all of that anxiety out of the way many years ago. But I think with the learning curve has been like, stores can't just like bring in product. If you talk to them on Friday, they can't have it on Tuesday.

Once you get to a certain level, if you're dealing with like a Whole Foods or a Sprouts, like they have a set review time of year, they make their decision and then five to six months later it gets implemented. like going from not having finished product to kind of knowing what I was selling to then understanding how it all worked. It's like night and day.

Adam Steinberg (20:50)

in terms of retail, when you're thinking about, now that you've got into a few hundred locations, what are like the top,

one to three metrics that you're tracking?

Sam Rose (20:59)

I think just trying to be in the loop on how many units are leaving our distribution partners and keeping track of like what they're moving from a distribution facility standpoint. We don't pay for data because it's super expensive. So we try to extrapolate through what we have available to us. And so that's a good way for us to have a rough idea of how many units we're moving in a week from like that level.

And then trying to make sure that we're hitting fulfillment and that the distributors are actually putting product in the stores and that there's no empty shelves. And then on the back end, trying to be really, really conscious of our cogs and what is something that's going to make a different price. Doing things last minute and without much planning usually makes things more expensive.

Trying to be on top of things that you wouldn't consider, like decisions that have an effect on the way of increasing or decreasing how much we're selling something for versus how much it's costing us to make it. Those are always front of mind.

Adam Steinberg (22:08)

What have you found are the core tools, the average CPG brand should have in their tool belt to be able to pitch buyers and also just have success at retail? I'm talking about things like sales decks, sales sheets, one-pagers, shelf talkers, aisle violators, anything like that that you feel like are key to helping you get in the door and then helping maximize that velocity, let's say.

Sam Rose (22:30)

I think it's important to remember that when you're dealing with a buyer, like you're not there to sell them your product because like whatever makes it so great. If it doesn't fit what they're looking to solve on their shelves, like how does it help them sell more units of what they're overseeing? So going into it, understanding that you're trying to offer a solution or a way to improve their lives.

by having something that's going to add some incremental growth to their category. Looking at it that way rather than just like, I've got this really great product. Frankly, I think it's a lot easier to get on the shelf than it is to stay on there. Because if you can make a compelling enough case and understand like what you're going to do to support it and be able to clearly share that.

Hopefully you can get the opportunity to go on there and then you really don't want to blow it. So having a plan that is easy to get the point across in like maybe two to three minutes on a slide and then actually having all of the pages of work on the back end to execute what that's going to be once you're on shelf. So yeah, mean, having a good deck, having a sales sheet, those things are helpful, but

really being thoughtful about who you're speaking to once you're on shelf and what you're going to do to stand out. mean, pricing strategy is something that I didn't know about for the basically the first eight months that I was in stores. I didn't know what a TPR or temporary price reduction was. That's, you know, an important thing to consider in terms of like, that's a way to catch people's attention when there's a yellow tag for a lower price instead of a white tag. So stuff like that is important.

but also just knowing like if you can put on shelf talkers, what's the budget for that? Anything you do that you might have great ideas, but can you execute what's it gonna cost you? And like how quickly is it gonna be that you're spending $5 to sell a $4 item?

Adam Steinberg (24:27)

Yeah.

so once you scale to a certain point, I know you jumped on board with one of the largest distributors out there in the world, what stage of the business did you decide, okay, it's time to engage one of these big distributors versus doing what I assume was self distribution

And how did you know it was the right time?

Sam Rose (24:50)

I didn't know it was the right time. I wanted to try to work with them earlier than probably we should have. And I mean, there's just, there's pros and cons to any sort of working relationship. the scale when you're working with large distributors of who they can bring things to makes it possible. It's also kind of chicken and egg where like large retailers won't work with you unless you work with their preferred distributor.

distributors won't take you on unless you have the relationships established with the retailer for them to distribute your product to. So finding the balance of, okay, approaching the store, making sure we can get in with their distributor and then making sure that everything is, you know, you're protecting your margin that you're going to give up by working with them and adjusting your pricing to where it's not going to triple because you're going through, you know, a middleman, so to speak. But

I think for me, I was doing a decent amount of deliveries by just like loading my car with dry ice and coolers and then working with someone who had a frozen van. That's not scalable. So I think we just knew that we needed to work with them from early on. It was just kind of making it so that we had enough stores interested that it made sense to add them. So I would just say like, there's probably a right time to like,

Adam Steinberg (26:08)

Yeah.

Sam Rose (26:14)

have that and to figure that out. I didn't know what it was and I like, I don't know how to tell people how to plan for it because I did poor job of it.

Adam Steinberg (26:23)

Yeah, I'm sure there's no exactly right time, just when you feel like it's the point where it's getting unmanageable to start doing that self-distribution and delivering stuff in your car, which makes sense.

Sam Rose (26:33)

Yeah.

Adam Steinberg (26:34)

how can a brand, what things I guess should they keep in mind as they're getting ready to partner with their distributor to maximize the success of that partnership?

Sam Rose (26:42)

Prepare for the worst, hope for the best. There's a lot that, you know, the contracts are really long. You need to make sure that you're fully understanding what you're signing and make sure that you have a plan in place to be reviewing. These are really, really big companies that are working with thousands of brands. Sometimes things are, errors get through and it affects your bottom line.

You know, we've had it where we've been charged by mistake for other companies' promotions and that impacts our receivables. Fortunately, the companies we work with have been helpful in getting those issues resolved. But, you know, when you're expecting a few thousand dollars and you get a few hundred dollars because of maybe an error that went through or something that you didn't realize you had signed up for because you didn't thoroughly read your contract and realize that you had agreed to give up.

certain percentage of something. Those things make a big difference really fast. So I just think that it's worth it to stay on top of it. And like, it's a relationship that needs a lot of attention, because it's an important one. So you have to make sure that you're holding up on your end to make it their jobs easier, and make sure you're staying on top of it so that life stays easy as well.

Adam Steinberg (27:57)

Yeah, totally.

partnering with a distributor. You know, it's just part of the deal is like you have to brand has to expect.

some level of margin reduction

brands that are getting ready to start thinking about working with a distributor, just so they have a realistic expectation in mind, what should they like realistically expect in terms of

impact to their margin once they start partnering with a distributor?

Sam Rose (28:17)

yeah, I mean, there's, I've heard different things from different people. depending on the relationship that the distributor has with the retailer, their markup could range from 10 to 30%. and it's just, you don't know how much you're going to have to kind of adjust your pricing. You know, it's all a little bit of algebra in terms of like, what is

What are you paying to get it there on your own versus what are you paying to have it go through them? So like taking that into consideration or knowing what their relationship is with the store is definitely important. But yeah, you just want to calculate a certain amount of kind of wiggle room for when things go wrong. Like I said, if you get charged with someone else's promotion and that takes off $500 out of your $3,000.

you know, invoice or whatever, like that's substantial. And so you just, there's no really way to know exactly what you're going to get into. Um, but you know, trying to come up with a reasonable threshold of maybe 20%, uh, for just like worst case scenario planning. I definitely have found that it's really helpful to kind of, like I said, plan for the worst case scenario. And if it comes to fruition, you plan for it.

anything better is a bonus. So there's just a lot of moving parts, especially when you're widgets to hundreds or thousands of places across the country. There's a lot of room for things to not go perfect. So don't plan for perfect.

Adam Steinberg (29:49)

Yeah,

yeah, I plan for the best or plan for the worst, for the best, I think is a good general approach to that partnership for sure.

for someone that's considering building a brand that's focused on Frozen, what would you say are a few things that they should keep top of mind or have some realities from an expectation standpoint as they're walking into this?

Sam Rose (30:08)

Yeah, just like kind of what I alluded to earlier, just have your supply chain really figured out, have multiple partners that can do the same thing, whether that's cold storage. And again, like it's different than just rolling up to a warehouse, opening the door and throwing it into like a room that, you know, is 65 degrees. There's only so many people that can store frozen things and freezers are not like things go wrong with them.

so knowing that it's just subject to, it's a sensitive kind of product that you're moving and there's a lot that can go wrong with it. So have backups, multiple storage partners, multiple, you know, freight carriers who can handle moving something frozen and then be prepared for,

I guess more no is coming because you're going into a limited space at wherever it is you're selling because there's only so much freezer space you can work with but I think just dealing with that Having multiple kind of backups is something that very recently we've learned we need to do because You just can't put to like life happens

Trucks break down if you're expecting or only have one partner to work with and they're out of commission because, know, like something we dealt with, like just a natural gas line got struck and put an entire county out of natural gas. That messed things up for us for two weeks, you know. So there's just lots of things where life happens. And so definitely need to have backups, especially with something that needs to stay cold.

Adam Steinberg (31:46)

Yeah.

Yeah, sounds like, yeah, with Frozen having points of redundancy is an important thing to consider.

Sam Rose (31:54)

Yeah. And again, even if you're going into ice cream, like selling frozen ice cream is different in storage and transit than selling frozen waffles. Ice cream usually needs to be stored. The ideal temperature range is minus 10 to minus 20 waffles or waffles are bad example because I don't know their temps, but some things can be kept in storage and moved in transit at like zero to 10 degrees.

Adam Steinberg (32:13)

you

Sam Rose (32:19)

which is like a 30 degree difference of where you might need to be. So ice cream frozen is tough. It's limited storage, all that stuff. I've been saying, but ice cream takes it to another level of like, you're even more limited with who you might talk to a frozen storage place and they don't do ice cream because it needs to be too cold.

Adam Steinberg (32:39)

Yeah, less margin of error is what it sounds like.

any brands and or trends that you're kind of excited about or things that you're tracking at all?

Sam Rose (32:48)

no, I think there's...

Adam Steinberg (32:49)

You're just laser

focused on just bud, which I respect.

Sam Rose (32:51)

I mean, I don't really align. think a lot of trends that are happening, I just are a little over my head. don't. If you go on like LinkedIn and you're in the CPG space, I feel like I'm seeing a lot of the same buzzwords get used, whether it's like protein being added to things that you wouldn't think of, like gummy worms or something, or, you know, people who are really big into like adaptogens, probiotic, prebiotic, all this stuff that

Frankly, I just don't, I don't give it too much mind because I think every year, like I talked about where there's a big trend for the most part, as far as I can recall in the last 10 to 11 years, like the same big companies like Ben & Jerry's, Haagen-Dazs, Breyers Dryers, Edie's, who have not really specialized in selling sugar-free or whatever the trend is. Like I could think of one exception where

Halo top in 2015 did like 300 million in sales and Other than that though, it's the same people dominating the ice cream space and they sell indulgent ice cream so I think there's something to be said there of like there are lots of brands who are competitive and successful in the alternative space and I hope they continue to succeed but I just don't think that's our path and like that's not really what we're interested in so

I do, I mean, there are some groups like I like to follow along the beverage spaces. There's a company called Corp Survivor who I like their founder. She's really cool. They make cool products. Another one is called Leisure Hydration. Really cool guys that run that and really great product as well that I'm very fond of. I'm also, you know, friendly with some other folks in the ice cream space. So I wish everyone who's in CPG well.

as long as they're well-intentioned, which most of the people I associate with are. So I think that it's a tough game and that's why I don't really pay too much mind to what's trendy because what's happening now could be different a month from now. Realistically, yeah, but we'll see.

Adam Steinberg (34:53)

for sure.

Yeah, totally. Yeah, I'm a big fan of Leisure Hydration too. I love their drinks, especially the lemonade flavor. ⁓ Well, yeah, Sam, I think I definitely really respect your pragmatic approach to CPG and building a business in this space and building a booth shop business. I definitely appreciate it. I think this has been great. Really appreciate the insight. Where can people follow along with you and where can people follow along with, where's the best place to follow along with Rosebud as well?

Sam Rose (35:00)

yeah.

Yeah, so I I am on LinkedIn. Just I think it's Samuel Rose, but you can just call me Sam if you ever shoot me a DM on there. yeah, definitely follow Rosebud on Instagram, LinkedIn and Facebook. It's just at Rosebud Ice Cream. That's where we share all of the big announcements and we're getting ready to let everyone know where they can start picking up these vouchers from starting next week.

Adam Steinberg (35:40)

are the first places that consumers can get their hands on the pouches?

Sam Rose (35:43)

Yeah, starting next week, we're going to be rolling out and select Whole Foods in the Rocky Mountain region. And then we're also going to be launching in Lonson Barley's in Minnesota, Rayleigh's in Northern California. and then there's a lot of others that I cannot remember just because there's so much chaos going on, but anyone who's carrying Rosebud, you know, they're a great store.

Adam Steinberg (36:00)

you

Perfect, I'm actually moving to Minneapolis in like two, three weeks and Lunds & Byerly's is definitely one of the places that's local. So I'm happy it's gonna be there too.

Sam Rose (36:14)

Yeah, they're great.

Adam Steinberg (36:17)

Awesome, Sam, I appreciate the time and I hope you have a great day.

Sam Rose (36:19)

Yeah, thank you very much for having me.

Adam Steinberg (36:22)

For sure.