Marc Brown - Creating a New CPG Category

On this episode, we’re joined by Marc Brown, Founder of ONOIN - the newly launched pre-chopped, flavored onions packed in 100% olive oil that can be used as topping, marinade, a base for a sauce, or any scenario where you want to spice up a meal.

Before launching ONOIN, Marc spent years leading R&D and commercialization at brands like Clio Snacks, Danone, and Hain Celestial, giving him a rare mix of chef-level intuition and big-CPG scale-up discipline.

With deep experience in formulation science, co-man development, and taking products from kitchen to retail shelf, Marc brings a brutally honest and highly tactical perspective on what founders actually need to know before going to market.

Marc breaks down why most early formulations are unscalable, how to avoid ingredient traps that kill margin, and what to look for in a co-packer long before you sign an MSA. He unpacks his full commercialization playbook - from securing your IP and managing redundancy to navigating the retailer-distributor-broker maze.

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Episode Highlights:

🧅 The origin story behind ONOIN and building a new pantry category
🔥 How to simplify your R&D and avoid unscalable ingredients
🏭 What founders overlook when choosing a co-packer
🔐 Securing your formulation IP and protecting the process
📦 Packaging: aesthetics vs. operational efficiency
⚙️ Redundancy, risk mitigation, and readiness for scale
📉 Commercialization pitfalls that derail early brands
🥄 How consumers are actually using ONOIN
📈 Channel strategy: DTC vs. retail vs. distributor
👀 Trends Marc is watching across food and kitchen shortcuts

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Table of Contents:

00:00:00 - Marc Brown intro
00:56:12 - Origin story and intro
02:48:01 - Where the brand sits in retail
03:52:13 - Consumer education
05:12:05 - How Marc is using ONOIN
06:37:17 - R&D and formulation
10:03:21 - Nailing down a copacker
12:11:27 - Brand identity and packaging design
16:03:02 - Copacker evaluation process
21:01:13 - Redundancy
23:13:14 - Securing formulation IP
24:30:24 - Commercialization
30:03:07 - Scalable ingredients
32:30:25 - Packaging design: aesthetics vs efficiency
35:12:11 - Copacker KPIs
37:12:04 - Learning lessons
39:22:16 - Trends Marc is watching

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Links:

ONOIN – https://www.eatonoin.com
Follow Marc on LinkedIn – https://www.linkedin.com/in/marc-brown-41500546/
Follow me on LinkedIn – https://www.linkedin.com/in/adam-martin-steinberg/

For help with CPG production design - packaging and label design, product renders, POS assets, retail media assets, quick-turn sales and marketing assets and all the other work that bogs down creative teams - check out KitPrint.

Transcript

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welcome to shelf help Today we're speaking with Mark Brown founder and CEO of Anawin who's joining us from the New York City area Anawin is your new cooking companion pre chopped flavored onions packed in 100% olive oil that can be used as topping marinade base for a sauce or probably a bunch of other scenarios I'm not even thinking up prior to to launching on Win Mark and R&D at fast growing Cleo snacks contract manufacturing and Haines Celestials so definitely know supply chain manufacturing very well in this space so excited to get into it but yeah Mark first off for the listeners that that aren't all that familiar with Anawin give us just quick lay of the land in terms of origin story why behind the brand four products flavors in the lineup and then maybe just a few places people can get their hands on them I know it's pretty early but yeah a few places people can get hands on them today and then we'll go from there yeah of course so hey thank you so much for having me on today Adam um yes I'm Mark Brown founder and CEO of Onwin and you know how this product really came about was actually was an idea in graduate school about almost 15 years ago we were looking at white space in the market and I saw that they had garlic you know minced and chopped in every way shape or form in water oil but not really onions I entered into a contest never really thought I thought I didn't think about it but knew I always come back to it someday um you know as you mentioned had a career in the food industry worked at Danone Cleo Snacks Hain Celestial and you know kind of with the education I'll say of working in R&D and commercialization in you know small medium large size companies I finally thought I had uh you know the bones to go do it myself so I I took the leap started developing the products and you know kind of came about to where we are today the initial product only was in oil but as uh as I've had two kids and love to cook and really you know my time was crunched I realized as I went to go make dinner I was always forgetting something an herb or this or that we ran out of garlic I don't have this it went bad so the thought of having everything all in one ready to go was really kind of born out of that you know give people an all in one solution that they can either use for culinary reasons or convenience reasons but you don't have to feel bad about it and where you can get your hands on them is right now on my DDC website Amazon and then we are doing a targeted regional launch in the New York City area so it'll be available in select shop rights in New Jersey and then stores like Uncle Giuseppe's De Chicco's and some of the more specialty markets in the tri state area I mean it seems like I mean it seems like this is essentially like seems to be a new category that you're creating to a certain extent and I'm kind of curious where where do you where does or where do you envision the brand's gonna sit in retail yeah so I want it in the produce aisle I hear anywhere from produce or deli appetizing honestly I want it in the perimeter what I'm really trying to avoid is the center of the store the oil pickle olive aisle where it's very overwhelming there's a lot of yellows and reds and you grab what you need and you get out you don't go there every time and you know mentioning chopped or minced garlic it's actually available in like three to four places in the store but the one that I want to merchandise it to is yes in produce like on the stanchions by the onions and tomatoes and things like that and while it's not always the most optimal place in the grocery store the chopped garlic uh seems to sell well so I will be right next to that people will see onions and garlic and kind of realize okay maybe I don't need to buy an onion right now either and I can just buy this product and save myself some time and effort tonight yeah that makes a lot of sense that's super smart how do you think about educating consumers about a new product type like this especially you know in the early days with what I imagine is is a more you know string in budget where you know if you're not introducing a new category people are kind of familiar with it but you're kind of how to educate some consumers to a certain extent how are you thinking about that in these early days yeah so it's something that's always been in the back of my mind that consumer education is always going to be tough it's not a beverage where if it's in a can of course you crack it open you drink it a snack open a bag you eat it you don't have to educate people of what to do with it and this has really been you know something I've thought about for a while even when I was handing samples out to family and friends people just eat it as a dip or straight and say oh I love it it's a great I'm so glad you do but there are a thousand better ways or not not better different ways to use it uh it's pretty much anywhere you can use an onion you put this you know kind of the the story behind the name is you can use it on or in obviously it looks like the word onion but on or in anything so it's always going to be a challenge to get people to understand how to use the product and for them to really understand all of the uses of it but again we had some some budget in there from the time be from the start of time for demos and coupons and things like that to really drive trial awareness on social media and I don't have like a trust style budget where it's gonna be every other post in your feed for months on end but the hope is to really sort of get that to that tipping point where enough people recognize it enough people are buying it enough people are using it in their meals and are happy with it and then kind of use those results and take it you know uh yeah I know you mentioned there's a lot of different use cases what's the the main few places or use cases that you're using it in in your own house these days yeah I would say the simplest uses would be like the jalapeno lime I put into taco meat when I'm cooking it's onions jalapeno cilantro lime salt vinegar everything that you should be putting in your food to make it taste delicious again you know no preservatives so I'll do things like that I will take the garlic and herb put into a pan open up a can of tomatoes I just made my own marinara sauce I take an avocado with the jalapeno lime I have guacamole chop up a tomato if you mix it with the garlic you have bruschetta you mix it with a jalapeno lime you have salsa so it's really really kind of very simple uses that I'm just using to add flavor without without the effort you know it's really like I said I have two young kids I love to cook but the thought of kind of preparing everything from fresh every night is pretty challenging especially with now starting my own company so having this you know with just a spoonful away is really helpful totally it seems like you know from the the layman's perspective ingredients are are pretty clean which is great and and simple and so if you know one might think the R&D and kind of formulation process may have been fairly straightforward but I'm just imagine it's a much more of a delicate journey than than one would think so I'm just kind of curious without giving away any trade secrets what were some of those kind of key variables you're playing around with the early days and kind of key tweaks you made between that first version you made to that version that you knew okay this is right I'm ready to take this to market you know and I think we're gonna get into it a little bit later about commercialization and scaling up but you know that that's really because I think of my history I was certainly of course I was worried about what it tastes like but at the end of the day you know the garlic and herb for example which was one of the first ones I developed is onions garlic herbs and oil it's kind of hard to mess that up and make it taste disgusting unless it's too salty or too you know whatever else it is it's it's kind of hard to make it taste bad I was really focused on the processing side of things and how I can replicate what I'm doing in my kitchen and what might scale eventually to a contract manufacturer so I was looking or I initially started kind of home canning it simulating a retort process after looking at commands and finding that there's not really many retort glass available that don't have ridiculously high MOQs okay great now it's probably gonna be hot fill how can I simulate a hot fill so that's really what I was playing around with most and also looking at sort of like the upper and lower limits on cook times and things like that or how much is too much oil or water or liquid I'm really trying to get a lot of the analytical and sensorial properties out of it first without worrying so much about the formula I've also been on site enough to know that like if you miss a pound of something here or there and your product tastes totally different you're in deep trouble it has to be I used to hate this term when I was an R&D but it has to be what we call a robust formula different suppliers different processes different things you all need to get to the same finished product and that was in the back of my head the whole time is whatever I can make in my kitchen cool it doesn't really matter if I'm building a brand out of it because it has to scale somewhat one thing I was curious about is you launch with a few you got a few skews you launch with a few flavors I'm curious as it maybe kind of like a chicken of the egg question like how you decide which flavor to launch with first were you playing around with a bunch of different combinations and doing some R&D that ultimately LED you OK the these group of you know flavors mixtures takes the best these are the ones I'm gonna go to market with first or did you start with already in mind these are the kind of ones I'm gonna go after I'm gonna try to figure out how to dial these in until each of them are to the point that I'm happy with so I went with sort of the the most popular cuisines globally and what the US consumer will recognize so I kind of went with a Mexican or Latin inspired with the jalapeno a garlic and herb sort of a Mediterranean Italian inspired I wanted to do an Asian inspired that was actually the toughest one because there are so many different you know obviously Asian is a very broad category Chinese Japanese Thai you know whatever you want there I wanted to avoid a lot of the sauces and kind of making it look brown so that's why I decided not to go with like a soy sauce or something like that and then I wanted things that people understand what the flavors are but they probably don't keep them in their cap uh in their fridge today most people don't keep fresh parsley most people don't keep cilantro or jalapenos I can guarantee you most people don't have lemongrass uh so it's things like that where I wanted people to understand the flavors and be comfortable with them to try it but it's something they're probably not going to have in their shelves every day uh and then you know to kind of have a foot in every corner of the world and then last but not least you have to have original because people are going to want to add their own flavors on that so we have just the plain chopped onions but you know it's really the global flavors yeah that makes total sense alright so you got of the formulations nailed down tell me about that process of searching for a co packer ultimately nailing down the co packer you're gonna work with and then I guess getting to the point of completing that that first production run what did that journey look like yeah so I I I mentioned you know I spoke with a lot of different ones I spoke with a retort manufacturer and you know this was my my job previously was to identify and work with contract manufacturers so a little bit easier for me than maybe some other people but it was still not still really challenging I was talking to a lot of different ones between you know one of the most important things I think is a relationship if people will say pricing this that the other but if somebody's offering you rock you know rock bottom prices but you don't trust them at all are you gonna go with them so you it's really sort of a balancing act between I'll say quality communication m o Q's price and sort of who can you see yourself in business with not only today but the future so you know I was talking to some of the some smaller scale commands and after looking at it it was like the second I get a decent sized Po I'm gonna have to move out and go elsewhere which means more time money effort trying to industrialize it at another place so maybe you know this is not the best advice but kind of sliding into a command that's maybe a little bit too big for you right now but will give you operations uh room to scale that way when you do get that Po and you are scaling it's nothing you have to worry about yeah it was kind of in my thought what the thought in my head is I finished producing my my products totally at the end of September you know mid September I don't have to worry about that anymore now I can worry about selling and kind of building the brand and when I need new product I send in a Po I don't have to worry about can they make this are they gonna you know X y Z it's really kind of freeing yourself up to worry about the rest of it so that it's it's not necessarily the easiest or the the clearest answer I'll say but relationship relationship relationship because you are going to be working with these people they are going to be making your products they are stewards for your brand you need to have complete trust with one another and the last thing I'll say is transparency you know if they're not gonna be transparent on certain things there's no reason for that of course they should make a profit on all of these things it's a business after all but like if you say that oil went up 200% I wanna see that Po because if it did I have no problem adjusting my price and giving you that you know that money back but we need to kind of have a little bit of mutual trust with each other yeah totally talking about brand identity packaging design for a second the labels like really great by the way I'm kind of curious what were the kind of key variables that were top of mind for you when you're building out your your brief or whatever you designer agency workers as an as an example and yeah what was kind of top of mind for you so we talked about consumer education and the fact that people have to know what this product is the fact that the name is close to onion really helps me out but I think that was kind of the first thing I thought of was how can I convey what is inside of this product or jar sorry package to the consumer yeah it says Mark special sauce people have no idea what it is we talk about the zero moment of truth you basically have like point two seconds to get someone's attention on shelf then you have the first moment of truth where they actually look at it they start looking at it and they realize okay this what is this product all about but you have to get their attention within that zero moment so I spent a lot of time looking at the shelves walking through different stores and the three biggest things I thought of were brand block cohesion I want them to look really nice when they're sitting next to each other but they have to be very clearly identifiable as to which is which there's nothing worse than looking at a shelf and seeing what am I looking for did I buy the right thing and oh this one has X and doesn't have that like you shouldn't need a magnifying glass to understand what you're buying and then the third thing was I wanted visual representations on there people again shop with their eyes not really reading so the fact that you can again see an onion see exactly what's on there and kind of understand really quickly okay this is an onion there's probably some garlic and some lemon in there okay now I'm interested now I'm gonna pick it up now I'm gonna learn more about that product but you have to have somebody to pick it up and look at it in the first place so those are the biggest things and the key to my mind is has to look good together but you have to kind of differentiate very quickly what's what so I came to you and told you I was launching a new CPG free brand as well you know six months year behind you about to just kick off the same process with any I guess what are like things that come to top of mind in terms of things I could should keep top of mind that might trip me up along the way or just kind of tips that you would say definitely keep this in mind yeah I would say just be very very careful is not the right word but just making sure that people are understanding what your product is so if it's a snack or whatever else it's a popcorn that might be a little bit easier but if it's something like a marinade or a dressing or something that's not immediately in a drink or a snack category it's what is this product the second advice I would say is walk the shelves walk the shelves in several different markets look at your set find what you like find what you don't like find what's missing then walk the rest of the aisles kind of see what stands out to you is it colors is it visual representations what exactly do you like or don't like about that packaging and try your best and I'm not an artistic person but really try to write down or just verbalize why do you like that package or why don't you like that package and you'll start to kind of see some some trends come up of I don't like that because it's really hard to see the words or I can't understand the flavors or I'm not sure the color is whatever but just to get a sense of what you like or don't like for example in mine the category is very old world cento B&G foods so I wanted to go very modern I don't say minimalist but sort of very different than anything that exists out there which is again that very old world Italian style kitchen so I went something you know a different way I didn't want to fit into the crowd so I would say it's there's no substitute for walking the aisles and taking pictures and looking at as many products you can get your hands on I think there's a little bit I know between Cleo Snacks Hain Celestial to known you definitely got a lot of experience and all things R&D formulation commercialization contract manufacturing all that type of thing and you touch on that a bit in terms of how important that relationship with relationship is but maybe beyond that in terms of just finding the right contract manufacturer co packer getting production off the ground anything else that you didn't speak to earlier in terms of kind of what a evaluation checklist should look like or you know other factors that are the things that should be top of mind I mean you'll definitely want a contract I I know it's you don't want to slow yourself down but you at least want to look at what the contractor presenting to you is if there's anything in there that you look right away and say whoa whoa that that's gonna be a problem for me kind of get that out of the way in the first place and understand why that might have been put into the contract something for you know a smaller brands might be minimums you have to guarantee minimum quantity never put a take or pay that's that's what's called into your contract you never want to have to guarantee volume if you're a growing brand kind of explain that and if they don't want to be in business with you then you might need to find somebody else until you can get to that point it's I hate to say it's vibes based like the kids but it's really is sort of again do you trust this person do you want to be in business with them you should be talking to them all the time I don't care if you're only sending POS once a quarter inventory shipments this that checking in you need to like this person and you need to trust them yeah not that you're best friends with them but price everything else they're all going to work themselves out but you know you have to have a partner that's in it for the long haul and understands that they again I've said this before they are stewards of your brand they are the ones making your product they are the ones that if there's a recall you're going to go to them first product quality anything so it's you have to feel comfortable with it and then you can kind of look at all the rest of it of turnkey and this and that but you know it it has to start with like do I am I you know do I get a pit in my stomach every time I have to talk to this person that's that's a problem that's not a good sign no once you've got to decide when you want to work with I assume you would say that it's a good practice to go and actually visit the facility in person what should a new founder kind of look out for during one of those plant tours to predict any future potential headaches or QA issues yes so this this might be a little bit different if you haven't worked in sort of the R&D or quality part of things but take a look around and are things dirty are things out of place are things labeled are people sort of following rules and I know that might be difficult to see but you know like our GMP's good manufacturing practices does anybody have any earrings in do they have any necklaces you know are are people sort of being aware of what the rules are and then focusing on them every command's gonna kind of run their own way but it's it's really important if you can look at any of their records or inspection you know almost treat it like a quality audit that's kind of where I said if you don't have that background it might be tough but kind of Google what a quality audit might look like and then ask some of those similar questions of what do you handle in terms of a recall how do you do X how do you do y what are your payment terms manufacturing you know who's your longest ten year employee can I talk to them you know just just to really sort of in ingrain yourself in the because like I said if they're the owners of your brand then they're technically your employees also you know all the people that work there they're gonna be making your products talk to them get a sense of how it works what doesn't work and yeah in your experience like what are there any hidden line items that are the most common things and kind of balloon the actual landed cost and this could be maybe having to store the store the product if it's not moving as fast as you think or test batch premiums or anything that brand should kind of try to address up front in a co pack agreement to kind of avoid any of those surprise costs that end up coming in and the margin looks a lot lower than you were planning on yeah I mean this then this may not be necessarily tied to margin and finished product but I would say just watch your cost when commercializing if you're not going to be able to run salable batches how much money are you are you going to put out before you even have product that you can take to market how many batches what are the requirements is it going to be for those that don't understand turn key versus toll are you going to be buying the ingredients and labels or is your manufacturer because if so let's say you need 50 pounds of an ingredient but you're the one buying it the minimum is £500 are you gonna buy all that is that all gonna sit in your co man now so a hidden line item might be you have a pallet of an ingredient that you use once every whatever now that's sitting in their warehouse you're paying $20 a month on it it might go bad it might be this so it's really just kind of watching all of the anything that's not directly tied to your product cogs I would say just be really really careful make sure that if there's any packaging costs or tariffs built in just to really understand the three main drivers of cost at a command are raw pack toll understand the the drivers of costing within each of those buckets and then you can kind of see where things going higher where things going lower and also then what kind of fits outside of your cogs whether that be freight or whatever else but just to understand where are you bleeding within that PNL I think in probably the earlier days you probably say like you know supplier co packer redundancy is just not that important you just need to get the first production runs out the door prove this product market fit and all those things but I guess at what point should a brand start thinking about supplier and co packer redundancy to the point you know if something happens you've got that backup waiting you know we we always have one over this at my previous company and it was always uh a very heated discussion I'll just say I think supplier redundancy is I don't say way more important but a lot easier to achieve sure so in the example I you know I gave about my my ingredients and my process we've used a different type a different couple types of herbs or garlic or lemongrass to make sure that the product looks and and operates the same no matter what the input is it it can become a little bit more challenging on the co main side of things because you know thought exercise you go find a co main unless they're right next to right next door is their pricing the same or is it cheaper if it's cheaper why wouldn't you move your business there if it's the exact same and everything is the exact same you know then why are you doing all this work so I would say it's really only I don't say only applicable but I would start looking to onboard a second command when you're doing nationwide so if your command is in one side of the country and you're sending a lot of product to the others and it actually makes sense from a freight standpoint and you can justify spending $50,000 to bring a second co packer on board then it would be justified but again the thought is like if you brought it bring in that second co packer and they're cheaper why wouldn't you move there if your goal is to squeeze every penny out then move all your products there and then kind of deal with the freight back to the other side so it's it's always a kind of give and take of how much you want to put on your plate also again is it turnkey or toll are you buying all these ingredients do you have to buy you have to set them up as vendors with the same people what is the product gonna look like depending on your team or budget or time it may just not be the thing that you wanna attack first which is why I would say vend uh you know suppliers and vendors being redundant is extremely important people run out of things all the time shipments will be late vendor might go under or this or that whatever but that I think is the the most important going back to what I called the robust formula that if I switched out every single thing in my in a my formula I should still get the same product new onions new oil whatever else nobody should notice yep cool that makes sense in instances where you're not bringing a totally complete formulation to the table and you're I guess doing some work with your copacker in terms of IP how do you think about that do you always recommend doing it takes to secure that formulation IP you know it's really challenging um you know you bring up a good point about your command so that should be addressed in your contract that they should not be making similar products or anything substantially similar whatever language you want to put within your within your contract all of the know how and IP should be yours is it protectable that I think is something you know completely different story I would say personally I don't think it's worth it to protect your IP you're building a brand I mean listen I'll just come out and say it it's onions oil XYZ there's nothing really proprietary most food products do not have anything proprietary in it you can try and get to it but there's nothing really proprietary so an example is you know people say they own the formula for plain yogurt it's milk and cultures haha it has an FDA definition so what exactly do you own that's where I'm focusing really around like the process and how to turn X into y I think that is more protectable the actual you know summary of steps taken to get an onion into this product not just the formula itself yeah that makes total sense leading to the next question talking about my new product development and commercialization actually bringing a product to market we're kind of coming at the the keys to a successful new product launch in terms of hitting the budget that you were planning for from the beginning and also from a launch timeline I feel like that's often you see so many times a brand stark and hey I want to launch this product or this you know product on extension something on X date and ends up being two three months later yeah timelines I could speak to a lot about I did some uh some project management and you know the the tools the two schools of thought are you gonna build it forward or backward I personally like building the timelines backward from launch of to your point about okay I have to hit this new retailer when do I have to ship on this date kind of build everything backward of lead times for labels this that approvals and then kind of go back to where I am where am I today and what are the immediate next steps I get to hit those critical milestones yeah get to that point and how to really kind of manage that scope creep is always sort of really tough of what are the must haves what are the nice to haves and then if possible to get a cogs target upfront that way when you're doing flavor work or things like that being able to understand okay my finished jar has to cost five dollars and ten cents I'm at $5 right now if you talk to the flavor company tell them you only have 10 cents to play with that makes their job a lot easier so it really cogs targets but also same thing about must haves or nice to haves you have 10 cents to work with but it has to be kosher organic this that the other without kind of really understanding the bounds you're really shooting in the dark and I would say just being as tight as you possibly can on all of those things will just help you out later on of course you know what you're launching but price and you know what the the non negotiables I'll call it what's the most common place that brands underestimate cost or I guess complexity which may plays into getting you know leading to a delay in launch in in this kind of commercialization stage yeah I I mean it's it's really the actual commercialization I mean plant trials they fail a lot at big companies small companies whatever else if you're walking in and you're doing something you've never done before yeah if it's a new flavor that's the exact same everything else sure that's pretty easy you could probably run a saleable trial something that you've never done before you go in you think oh I'm gonna we're gonna figure it out right away no you're gonna run that trial and there's three more things that kind of pop out at you and then you have to fix and then go back so it's the actual commercialization and giving yourself enough time for that an example I used people will build timelines and say okay we need to order graphics it takes eight weeks for lead you know for whatever blah blah blah alright we have a you know a month for shelf life for for trials what if that trial doesn't work what if you need two what if you need months you know what that's really where you kind of get messed up is I think in the actual commercialization building a brief and saying what you need to have what you don't have you should be able to sit down in a room and do that approving graphics or paying for them to be put to the front of the line or whatever else sure money can solve a lot of issues it cannot solve sort of trials where you don't know what's going on you have to go back to the drawing board maybe go back to the pilot talk to an expert talk to a supplier get new vendor in that is where a lot of thing you know people don't understand that the actual bringing something from bench top to a commercial plant the equipment is all different the people are all different the guys that ran your your product last time was on first shift now you're on second shift no one's ever seen this before they have no idea what you're talking about they've never run this that that's kind of where you get you know you can get into trouble and continuity issues kind of right yeah yeah and you know to I don't say to add to that but I was always when I was doing the industrial trials I people would ask me questions I said pretend I'm not here you know what would you do if I was not here I'll be there if the if the answer is wrong or whatever else but it it's kind of has to be that everybody has to be able to make these things when you're not there whether you're a founder this that you might be there for the first or second productions but god willing I'm making this stuff every week I'm not gonna be able to be on site all the time right even if I even if I insource it I'm not gonna be on the floor for every production so you know you really need to empower people and you know whether that's a co manager or employees to to understand the process and to do it themselves and how do you think about and this I'm not sure how applicable this is to when you're working with a co man and they've got you're assuming they've got you know excess capacity versus if it's you're more vertical and everything is in house I'm not sure if that's what it looked like at Deno but I'm I'm curious like how do you think about introducing new products into an existing production line schedule you don't want to decrease the number of units you're producing for the existing product lines already selling well yeah I think it would be just to be as clear as possible and upfront with the command of what your expectations are also with distributors you know when you get a Po what is that lead time if you tell them you need four weeks versus you know maybe they'll carry more inventory but to really kind of understand what your turnover looks like and what the inventory turnover and then what the line time at the command looks like you know have a call with them and say hey are you guys booked up for the next two months and they say yeah we have absolutely no days available there's no line time okay you know you might need to start planning things on a on a more quarterly basis if they're more flexible and you may be only running for a couple hours or a day here or there then you can kind of have more flexibility and understand what the pros and cons might be of building up a lot of inventory or kind of making it made to order also yeah when we spoke like a week or two ago I think you touched on kind of the importance of using scalable ingredient supply chains in your formulation can you kind of touch on this bit and why it's important and maybe if you have some example of what LED you to know this was important in terms of things came up in the past yeah I mean I think it's really just my first I'll say big boy job was at Danone and really just looking at okay when we need strawberries we have to contract them from all over the world in 15 countries and they need six months in advance because we're buying hundreds and hundreds of thousands of pounds so if you are calling out that your product is only made with Moroccan strawberries what happens when there's a drought there right when now you have to change your packaging forget finding a new vendor now you have to change your entire communication so it's really important or I think it's really important to yeah have like we talked about a flexible supply chain where if these onions aren't available great I can go to somebody else you know for that for that reason people have asked me oh are they you know Vidalia onions or this I say no those are available from one place one time a year they're yellow onions available globally not a specific type not Spanish not sweet whatever those are all sub varieties of yellows but they're just yellow onions so that I think is just really important because you do not want to get yourself into a position where you think you can scale or CPG's one of the only places where you can 3 x your business very quickly in succession by getting new regions new doors whatever else you do not want that to be the issue where oh I'm sorry I'm buying this one herb from the regions of whatever they can't buy it for another year that's really tough and agricultural commodities are even tougher when you're talking like that because they're only usually available once per year and that way people contract them until the next cycle you might be overpaying this that the other but a lot of spot markets can really kill you and I think we saw that with kind of Coco in the past years where a lot of brands were really hurting because they didn't plant things properly the Coco market exploded and if they were saying oh we're only from the Ivory Coast or whatever else it didn't leave them a lot of options to sort of flex within their supply chain and if they didn't have the cash flow or the margins to really survive that people could have been in a lot of trouble from a production line standpoint you've been really on this contract manufacturing side really close to being on the floor and in factories and what not how do you recommend brands kind of balance the desire to have the best packaging that's gonna stand on the shelf the most often times that doesn't really jive with the most fishing from an operational standpoint so I'm curious how do you think about that balance of making it look really good but also minimizing you know labor and touch points optimizing for automation that kind of stuff you know I I would say unless you're gonna have something really really outlandish or it's going to become your signature I mean go to a wine store or something like that everyone has a different bottle it's nothing is really sort of driving that home to me so I personally people would ask me when I was talking with all these co men they said what jar do you want I said what do you have I don't I want what you have on site because like we talked about if I need lead times oh great my glass is still in in Taiwan it's gonna take you know 16 weeks to get over whatever all this stuff what do you have what are you running today that's available on site you have you're gonna get your volume discounts you're available so unless you're gonna go something so outlandish and I wrote down wrote down some examples of like the there's like a hot sauce that's in a grenade or the vodka I could just buy like yeah yeah or the vodka that's in the skull which I think is Dan Ackroyd's company but like unless you're really gonna go something so outlandish that is a you have to stop and look at it and may not even buy it but just be like oh that's really cool I don't think it's really worth it to have those added costs on such an early stage budget I would focus really on the graphics and you know kind of try and be bold like that rather than a long skinny jar that you know I'm the only person that buys it in in America that just doesn't really help out anybody yeah I think that makes total sense I think that's a pragmatic way to look at it pretty much yeah alright so let's just say a brand has kicked off things with a co packer what does an effective SNP process look like yeah I I mean of course it depends on how often you're running with them and how often you feel you need your touch points to be um how many shipments are going out but I would say you want to have at least a biweekly touch point people you know after two weeks you your own brain start kind of starts to go and you forget what people are talking about so just having something on the calendar at least again every two weeks with that person to say hey no orders this week or we're planning on producing or are we still good for this or any problems or how's your production schedule or whatever else it is they can be 10 minute conversations they can be five minute conversations but during one of those times you will have a much deeper conversation that will make it worth it it's you do not want them to forget about you yeah so it's it's a little bit hard to say you know for sure how often you should be meeting with them or you know for SOP planning but it you want to make sure that you have enough inventory to make something should you need it or depending on you know what your calendar looks like if you're again guaranteeing people within a week that you're going to have product you better have the inventory or the mechanisms to go get it right away a bit of a related front I'm not sure what sophistication level the average copacker has but like in terms of tracking KPIs and a dashboard on a daily weekly basis let's just say you know wake up in the morning numbers you want to look at to make sure everything is on track from production standpoint what is kind of the ideal KPI dashboard look like I mean the two biggest things are service are you ordering what you know are you getting what you're ordering and then you know uh what we call OTIF on time in full not only are they making it but is it the full order mm hmm you know you need to make sure that you're actually getting what you ordered so those are the two biggest things of are they are they holding up their end of the bargain right secondly would be sort of the deeper things of um quality sort of metrics so like you wanna do complaint per you really and aside about complaints don't have a total number of complaints peg it to something like units or tons or something like that because that's the really only way to see if you're getting better or worse at these sorts of quality issues is to track your you know your your complaint by metric ton or something like that not so much a KPI or a data but really wanted to track like how they're looking at innovation and cost savings or they kind of come to you with ideas about not so much innovation but cost savings of hey we saw this it's inefficient if you got super sacks of sugar instead of this we could be a lot more efficient and tolling would go down or or something like that um and then I mean the actual dashboard or something might be waste I would say of making sure that if if you have 2% waste allowance that yeah that's actually being uh you know held to it of so kind of again go through your numbers if you have a thousand pounds and each one is a you know each each of your packages is a pound you should have 998 assuming a 2% loss is that real you know just to kind of keep tracking that cause I think that's a big one where people really don't look at waste cost can add up there too right yeah yield and waste is a big one that people don't really look at are you using the correct amounts of ingredients is your consumption all you know lining up so that's a big one with just with all your experience in this area looking back anything comes to top of mind like a decision or strategy that in hindsight maybe you would have done differently in terms of the so R&D formulation commercialization contract manufacturing world that might just be helpful for some other up and coming operators that may may avoid some of the learning lessons you've had to get along the way yeah I mean you know there's more than one way to skin a cat more than one way to bring a product to market you know with my background I really focus on the product you can build a brand and you can do all these things but the product has to be there and you know an anecdote I've always I've thought about for many years is the sandwich cookie Hydrox and Oreo who was first to market Hydrox who's worth $50 billion today not Hydrox so it's focusing on the product and the brand they're two completely separate things in my opinion you need to have the product you need to have something that people are going to want to buy something that tastes good and like we talked about with Coman I really focused on okay I have a product people like the concept that people like now I need to industrialize it and while I was sort of honing in on a manufacturer that's when I really started to build the brand out more and do the whole brand identity and everything else I mean my advice would be if you had more than one human being to sort of do these things uh simultaneously but at least me personally I focused on getting the brand right and then doing the product first then the brand which that meant the artwork great now our artwork in the brand book is done now packaging okay that's done now we need to have a photoshoot because I need assets for a website that's all going to kind of bring everything together and it finally came you know came to a head with for me at the end of the summer early fall where all of those things came into place and I was able to launch it took me almost a year and a half of kind of doing all those things behind the scenes little by little so you could probably do it faster if you just sort of multitask but then just be be aware that you might need to kind of go backward and understand for example we're talking about jars and labels and manufacturers how are you going to design a label if you don't know your jar and you don't know your dye line yep things like that you can get so far and you could have your brand identity but you cannot finish your packaging and your dye line until you know your jar you don't know your jar until your comment you don't know there's there's too many things that kind of go back and forth where it it it it has to be a sort of step by step process and you don't want to go too far out of order because it's going to make your life kind of miserable on the back end where right and I had to design two labels because it's has to be insured or whatever else yep totally last question for you Mark this has been great but any any uh any brands trends in this CPG space that you're just kind of particularly excited about things you've been tracking at all yeah I think you know the one trend I like is the home cooking trend obviously with my my brand but I think you know products like Momofuku and fly by Jing hey day canning have really shown that you can have really tasty delicious food in your own kitchen and in jars and cans and all of these things it's sort of our generation that's not going to accept the TV dinners and the bland and whatever else that you can have good natural food that you can still cook at home without breaking the bank so I really love that trend the trend that I don't love protein I mean it's it's everywhere of course I think fiber is still the big one it's gut health and fiber I was an Activia guy I worked at Danone so I really love the gut health trend I think that's a really underrated study I'm not going to try and make any claims with the microbiome and people's brain health but I think there is a link there we'll see what happens but I I really like and think that's a really big thing of fiber gut health protein could take it or leave it awesome Mark this has been great what's the best place for people to fall along with with you and then best place to people for people to fall along with on a win in these these early days which I think there's gonna be a lot of exciting updates coming yes lots of exciting updates we're gonna be rolling out in stores soon Amazon uh you can find me on Instagram eat dot on OIN perfect don't let the uh the typo fool you on OIN on Instagram and TikTok and LinkedIn perfect awesome Mark this is a great appreciate the time