Audrey Burger - Leading Primal Kitchen Post-Acquisition

On this episode, we’re joined by Audrey Burger, the former President of Primal Kitchen and the founder of Pace Setters, a consultancy that helps CPG brands sharpen their strategy, strengthen their commercial foundations, and transition from an emerging brand into a long-standing, scalable business.

With deep experience in go-to-market strategy, portfolio planning, retail storytelling, and post-acquisition integration, Audrey brings a rare blend of BigCo discipline and emerging-brand speed.

Audrey breaks down what a retail-ready launch really requires and how she helps brands build smarter commercial plans, avoid preventable missteps, and grow shelf space over time. She also unpacks the rise of private label, category dynamics she’s watching, and what the strongest brands do differently when entering new channels.

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Episode Highlights:

📈 How brands can build a sharper commercial engine
🛒 The anatomy of a retail-ready product launch
🧮 Forecasting mistakes that cost brands real money
🧱 How to earn and grow shelf space over time
🧪 Why brands actually launch new SKUs—and how to know if you should
🏭 Integrating new SKUs into operations without chaos
🖥️ Optimizing PDPs for velocity and conversion
📦 Packaging design that improves shopability and brand recall
🤝 What it’s like joining a newly acquired & integrated CPG team
🏪 The accelerating rise of private label
🔭 Trends and brands Audrey is paying attention to in 2025

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Table of Contents:

00:00:00 - Intro
00:50:02 - How Audrey is helping brands
02:37:28 - A well-rounded retail ready launch plan
04:33:11 - Common forecasting pitfalls
07:54:13 - Fighting for more shelf space over time
10:32:02 - Why a brand launches a new SKU
12:27:24 - The keys to a successful product launch
14:30:05 - Integrating new SKUs into the production schedule
16:20:15 - Optimizing product detail pages
18:16:08 - Packaging design
26:15:18 - Joining a newly acquired and integrated team
31:09:24 - The rise of private label
35:55:00 - Trends and brands Audrey is watching

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Links:

Pace Setters – https://pacesetterscpg.com
Follow Audrey on LinkedIn – https://www.linkedin.com/in/audreyfburger
Follow Audrey's Substack – https://pacesetterscpg.substack.com/

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 Audrey Burger who recently just finished a tour of duty as the president of Primal Kitchen after a pretty long journey with the brand prior to Primal Kitchen Audrey spent about half a decade owning a brand management shops at craft primarily focused on the the uh frozen category which is seems to be having a bit of a moment right now since Audrey left probably Kitchen Audrey's been running Pace Setters a consulting firm focused on helping really emerging brands kind of find their stride so a lot of great experience really excited to dive into it maybe just a kind of start off for these up and coming operators that are actively looking for someone to help scale in terms of you know pay setters your focus in terms of how you're typically helping brands these days I love it well first um thank you for having me I'm a a fan and regular listen to listener to the pod so it's exciting to be here yeah for sure pay setters so Pay Setters was founded really with the goal of trying to help increase the chances of success for emerging brands um and turn them from just being brands into lasting businesses uh to be a founder is to have taken a great risk to have amazing insights and to get to that first million dollars is super hard um but the same things that get your product kind of onto the shelf off the ground um aren't necessarily the things that are going to make your business a fifty hundred million dollar brand and something that you could pass down to your kids or sell eventually and so my goal is to kind of pair founder mentality with know how and structure um to really set businesses up for success and then your second question was on strategy sprints so you can tell there's like kind of a running theme going on here I ran cross country and track in college and so it's been fun to to ideate in that space but a strategy sprint is really kind of a a set mission critical goal so call it two to four weeks what we're really trying to do is help founders or operators get an answer to a pivotal problem fast so something like a go to market plan or brand purpose work or really thinking about uh your differentiation if a new competitor is coming to space um so set engagements they give founders and operators tools quickly um and then you're not spending a ton of money on cash flow and fractional engagement you're really able to make sure that those dollars are immediately going into impact and affecting your business I feel like that's really helpful is kind of part of what you do this is a kind of a really broad answer and I know there's a a bunch of different ways you can answer it but you're just such an expert in this world retail ready launch plan looks like what what comes to mind yeah oh my gosh such a good question I would say really trying to think about the future first and that is so hard to do when you are in the day to day but really having a vision for where you wanna end up it's very easy to say yes to the first retailer that knocks on your door vice versa the first retailer that you knock on their door um but the decisions you make in the first three accounts could affect you for the next three years so really trying to think about how do you wanna price and position yourself at a Whole Foods or Walmart is going to drive how you act at an independent retailer um because your pricing and your margin strategy are going to cascade from there typically Walmart's going to be your cheapest retailer um or your your least expensive maybe a better way of saying it so you certainly don't want to price at a price point at Whole Foods and then by the time you go to Walmart you'd be losing money so really trying to think about that right balance um I also like to think a lot about product retailer fit it's not something a ton of people talk about but different retailers have very different consumer demographics so this might sound obvious but it's often overlooked like on the East Coast if you're going between a Wegmans or a Wakefern we'll hit the W's all the W's Whole Foods Walmart Wegmans Wakefern um you you're probably gonna have a lot more luck launching at a Wegmans well that is a heavier private label retailer they are a bit more natural leaning they're a bit more premium whereas a wake Fern is like tried and true you're gonna get consistent volume but it tends to be an older shopper more entrenched in their ways and so they perhaps are not gonna pick up a newer brand so knowing which retailer you're partnering with um at each step is super important to have that infrastructure in place to be able to support your business long term yep that's really helpful and in your own experience what have you found are like some of the most like common pitfalls are ways that earlier stage brands build out a forecast that ends up being way off and that you know can end up getting them in a in a tough cash position let's say yeah when I was interviewing them was tell me about a time when you when you made a mistake in a forecast because it's just not possible to not make a mistake you will we can't predict the future if we could we'd probably all be maybe investing in a different space and making a lot of money but what you can do is try to at least increase your odds of success um so earlier stage you have kind of two options you either maybe go on the low side and you piss off your retailers and you have bad CFR or you go on the high side and now you have $100,000 worth of inventory stuck on your balance sheet um at an earlier stage business my vote is to always kind of don't don't be pessimistic but I would say maybe go on the lower side of your estimate so your MOQ or your minimum order quantity is a great starting point really understanding if I have to run 3,000 cases where would they go and if that doesn't work if I've totally missed my forecast where will I sell them if you have a DTC site that's always a great place to say like okay at minimum I can sell these on DTC or at minimum I can sell these to grocery really thinking about m o q to start how can I deliver against that cause the reality is that people love a sellout story more than they love a heavy inventory story um there's a few pit falls that you know when I was thinking about this question um that have come up pretty repeatedly and say one is if you're estimating off of an existing item or competitor you need to be honest about ramp up so if I say that I think I'm estimating Audrey's Burgers is estimating off of Adam's Burgers um I think I'm gonna turn 60% relative to your product but your product is $3 cheaper than mine right we need to start to think about elasticity we need to say hey it's also gonna take me 12 weeks to get there so really trying to just be honest about what a ramp up period looks like and not overlooking that difference between dollars and units another big thing is what I call the d load so it's that low after initial buying of a product so typically retailers will buy one to two cases per store so if you have a six count case you're going to sell one unit per store per week you are not gonna get orders for like a solid month that can be super scary to have that goose egg come through and you're like oh my gosh you cut production you cut everything instead just like be ready for it they're gonna take time to move through inventory right and then the last one um was seasonality um it's human nature to believe when things go right like we've done we've done it um and when things go wrong it's someone else's fault and so if you launch during a period of high seasonality just be careful to not bring your entire forecast up because you launch during grilling season and you sell a product that's used on a grill um and vice versa if you've launched during a down period don't be scared that your product isn't gonna make it um really be conscious about seasonality is is super important early stages yeah I talked to I talked to operators and a lot of them told me like after the first year or two on shelf with a retailer even when the brand is like is the velocity leader in the category and all the numbers are looking good that I've heard that it can it can still be challenging to like and then get the opportunities to take advantage of side caps that kind of stuff I guess maybe partially just because like the big established brands even if you're the category leader just as paying for more shelf space and trying to box you out maybe that's part of it but yeah a similar experience at Primal Kitchen or other brands you work with and if so any like actually combat some of the challenges and be it's a very real issue right so I would say I had this problem when I was the market leader like of the entire category when I worked on Cool Whip and there was nothing else other than Cool Whip and getting an end cap was hard and it was hard at Primal Kitchen when we were the fastest growing item in the set I think that the reality is is that the retailers are very powerful and they're also fighting their own battles so to get an end cap for them maybe they are being measured off of the margin they can get against that or the units moved um often times retailers have very different objectives for end caps that might not match velocity objectives that we're seeking on shell so when we try to say like OK how do do we want this I think is always the first question there have been times where we have secured an encap and like everyone high fives and we're like oh my gosh we did it and then we get the Bill and we're like oh no that did not pay back so being like really critical about dollars moved and units moved are not the same thing and even if you moved a ton of units it might not actually pay back but then the second thing is like how can I compliment the retailer towards their objective this is one of the most valuable areas for them to make extra money so is it I'm selling hot dogs alongside the retailers private label buns and making that like an exciting opportunity for them because a lot of times it's a bit deeper than just performance some of those things are not things like especially early stage brands would even like know as a factor that's impacting them that's super helpful to know you launched like hundred I know this one question could probably be like but just like maybe at least from a high level what did the journey or process look like at Primal Kitchen that would lead the decision to actually bring a new skew to market yeah I think Primal Kitchen is such an interesting example of kind of the work that I'm doing at pay setter and saying early stage like when I first joined Primal Kitchen it was still very founder retailer LED in terms of what we were launching like it was legit DMs or like I just want to launch this because I know my consumer so deeply and they are my neighbors and so I'm going to launch this thing and that's great there's absolutely a time and place for that some of our best innovation were not things that we came up with they're things that retailers brought to us and they kind of knew where the category was going before we did I say later as we got bigger um we were a bit more structured naturally you know your m o Q's are getting higher the risk is higher every time you get bigger and you're launch launching something new and so we really tried to think about category shaping behaviors so what was gonna be next in a category being really proactive about price and pack and positioning um and then our guardrails are very stringent so Primal Kitchen has just like incredibly tight guardrails which I was always extraordinarily proud of but when we decided we wanted to launch like a chicken dipping sauce that might mimic a very popular chain of of chicken sauces but we wanted it to be two grams of sugar that was gonna take some time and so being really clear about what we wanted to do and making sure that we had a sense on hey the end outcome is X product if it's gonna take two years it's gonna take two years and really being a bit more proactive about that strategy once you guys decided okay yes we're gonna bring this new scooter market for the keys to a successful new product launch in in market in terms of hitting budget once um saying you want to launch January 1st I'd say on a launch and how do you know it works in market you know pretty quickly I think when something doesn't work people tend to be in denial about it um there are many many there is way more times that I've been like just give it another week just give it another week than being like oh my gosh in week 18 this totally popped off so I would say if you're seeing out of the gate traction is not where you projected act quickly there is probably a reason as to why it's not working whether it's the packaging or the communication something that like needs that initial hook to get people in but I would say like being really tight on those turn rates is always helpful to understand if it's a success and then kind of very connected to that I would say launching and making sure you hit your timeline sometimes those behaviors can be interconnected um so we always we use the term proud not perfect especially earlier on when we were trying to launch our top objective was making it on shell in time for a reset date and so if we were 90% happy with a product and it was kind of a two door decision so say I can't agree on it needs to be slightly sweeter slightly less sweet let's go with what we've got um if we could tweak it the next run we would just to make sure that we wouldn't miss a timeline um because those are trade offs that you are just going to have to make and then you're able to understand really quickly like hey maybe the reason it's not working is because that decision we made at the last second about the claim we might have gotten that wrong and not being scared to change quickly versus saying like oh we need to wait 26 weeks to decide if this is working or not you only have one shot you know right totally how do you think about um and I guess more specifically yeah I'm sure all our apps friends that are listening to this are like ah yes Adam thank you for asking this question cause I think it's so often overlooked we even changed at one point the way that we were approaching our kind of like stage gate style to bring ops in earlier because this tends to be a sticking point it's um if you have a lot of claims or allergens how do you fit that into the line time schedule you wanna run it at the same time as other allergens um how is it gonna cannibalize other items is always a really important question we're asking in forecasting uh huh um because this might be a slam dunk in isolation but if it's totally gonna eat into like my top Turner it's gonna mess up the schedule as well so we're always trying to think about how could you build off of existing bases some of our commands um across many product lines that I've worked on they'll want you to have a base like an OG original product and then you can kind of iterate on top of that that makes a lot easier for ordering patterns it also helps you stay really efficient from a scheduling perspective um but then also really trying to think about how do you build something that isn't just a line extension like does this have the ability to be a core item in the future um and if not then only order the m o q or make it limited time only like just be realistic with yourself about what this is to your portfolio and how many hoops you're gonna make your ops team jump through to produce it yeah yep this is like a much more in the weeds question what's from what have you found is the key to having a oh okay good one um that's it it's hard because you have so much real estate compared to when you are selling something on shelf you have your billboard of packaging and for salad dressing you have only a few inches for frozen meal I had much more space to play with um but when you're online kind of you can choose the fonts you can choose what goes where the world is a little bit more of your oyster um so what I always try to think about is knowing what you're selling um is a is an oversimplification but uh it's arguably the most important thing behind taste is setting appropriate expectations for a consumer so if the number one purchase driver in your category is you're selling Mac and cheese and it's made with real cheese you're probably gonna Wanna highlight that um but if your number one reason to switch is that you're organic you're gonna Wanna make sure that's on the page maybe three times um like several places not just the USDA bug the clearer you are unlike your reason to play I have real cheese but then your reason to win I am organic um the clearer you can be for consumers that are shopping really quickly they're scrolling whether they're on the Instacart app or they've pulled up your phone like while they're in store and they're trying to get more information like that's true yeah take advantage of that because a lot of people do shop on two screens that's a good point that's a really good point like a Yuka to test to scan the barcode and see like what the score is for my health so right knowing that people are like actively checking your work if you will or checking for alternatives is is helpful to understand yeah that's a really good point when it comes to packaging design or packaging redesigns you can totally get correct me if I'm wrong here but I think I heard you say something along the lines of you know definitely test before you change but the average consumer might only see it like once every month or two um yeah it's interesting when you like take a step back and reflect on that like every single day I would look at Primal Kitchen Mayo packaging I know that by heart I could see it with my eyes closed but for most shoppers they're coming to the aisle maybe once a month if they're a heavy user and so because of that or a light user right they're coming maybe once every six months you are just not as important to them um as you as you believe you are and so when I think about testing protocols for an earlier stage brands even less so right you have less mental models that a consumer knows you by that is a good thing and a bad thing good thing if you change they probably don't remember you bad thing if you change too much they're never gonna remember you right so earlier on it's just not realistic to have a ton of money to go test and learn um get people outside of the industry highly recommend outside of the industry and build like a little community of your consumer your target consumer text them pictures of packaging get their opinion on any sort of change does this move the needle does it not and then really really importantly go to shelf print out your packaging the highest quality that you can go to FedEx go to whatever find a bottle that looks something like what you have or a box or a package and put it on shelf there have been so many times that I've seen a beautiful package on my computer screen and been like yes ship it and then it gets to shelf and I'm like oh my gosh everything else is white I cannot believe we chose to launch something white so yeah when you're scrappier like earlier do that take the time when you're bigger you're gonna probably want to test more simply because the risk is higher um it is fairly rare it's more common maybe it's a different way of saying it that packaging kind of totally messes with someone's brain and they never buy you again than you would think um and so testing with light shoppers and heavy shoppers equally is very important if we think about like the classic kind of how brands grow model is that light shoppers are the ones that are gonna drive your business and if they're the ones coming least frequently it's most important that you are thinking about their mental model how do you fit into Primal Kitchen is the green brand with a green cap if that's the only thing they know about primal I could move the other pieces around and like still be okay um but if they don't have anything in there like it's a very risky move um so making it really easy for people to find you whether it's light or heavy buyers but really not overlooking the risk of the light shoppers that have less affinity to you is is super important yeah yeah a fresh look with you know especially for those existing customers the Tropicana bungalow which everyone talks about all the time is like a classic one but yeah how do you think about that that balance is my question they're never gonna make it they're the textbook example um but for for those people that somehow missed it um Tropicana back in gosh late like mid 2009 maybe um they went from that like classic straw poked in an orange to this like Super Modern Juice visual I don't even know how to describe it they also moved their logo they changed their logo they changed the primary name of the product it was like the example of just like changing too much too fast yeah we're fairly simple people um when it comes to being a consumer I've been in consumer research where you basically take um piece of paper give it to consumers and you say draw the packaging from memory and you'll see that like they're actually pretty good at it you can also find out when they draw like a previous iteration of your packaging maybe five years prior or 10 years prior and you realize kind of what are your distinctive assets um for them their distinctive asset was totally that orange straw situation they wanted to become more modern natural clean and instead they just like lost everyone everyone was confused so if you're gonna modernize like do it amazing but keep things in the same place if you're gonna update your logo um be wary of like making major visual changes at the same time as making layout changes because it's just overwhelming for consumer behavior to need to like look in seven different places and also be presented with a totally new positioning all at once on the flip side I've heard you talk about Chobani's you know rebrand or packaging refresh whatever you want to call it which was like and I think in part due to the fact that they I think as you said it train their consumers before the switch that's I was really curious what what do you mean by that that they train their consumers yeah if I'm a Chobani bully I'm a or a Tropicana bully I'm a Chobani fangirl um Chobani was on top of the world when they rebranded which I just find the whole situation to be very fascinating typically you see a rebrand come from like an area of weakness it's like the last ditch effort like I gotta save this or we gotta change consumers minds and hearts and I think instead they saw it as wow what we have is amazing but like if we wanna get from here to there we need to change something and so um this is a an audio medium but go Google like Chobani before and after it's dramatic they went from like a pretty standard like Greek style uh style font um and everyone was looked the same it was like totally copycat I remember like actually buying Chobani in this era and pulling the lid off and underneath the lid where like it's like such classic consumer behavior that like there's yogurt stuck in there you lick it off great and underneath that was like New Look coming and it was a picture of the new packaging whoa really and I remember being like wow that is so smart this is so interesting so if you're a habitual shopper um or even not super habitual I was like oh great okay I know to expect this the next time that I come the other thing about the change was that it was bold they were trying to sell for like a copycat moment and so even if you hadn't gotten pre warned when you got to shelf you saw something different something that was totally different from the stark white they went to this like creamy white matte finish like hand drawn versus photography it popped on shelf in a way that like even if consumers weren't warned they were shocked into knowing um which I thought was really just very fascinating in the way of changing consumer behavior at shelf um and it really I think changed a lot for them it opened up their ability to go from being a Greek yogurt to being like this modern natural dairy brand and I've loved to watch like the way that they've continued to tweak it over time to expand their product line now they sell far more than than yogurt um and I do think that that change was like a very important pivot point for them yeah yeah shifting gears a little bit um to craft I believe like right when that Primal Kitchen acquisition was happening or just had happened what was that process like for you coming into that team yeah I moved to Primal Kitchen right after the acquisition and I felt very lucky to do so I had long admired the brand I was ready for kind of a more natural era in my life if you will and so it felt like a good opportunity and a culture fit what I think I was really lucky about is that Kraft had not been very acquisitive during the era that Primal Kitchen was acquired but basically everyone else had been so there was like this era of gobbling up all these smaller natural brands and we had the opportunity and we talked about it regularly what worked and what didn't work from those other businesses so okay this brand immediately integrated and switched packaging this brand immediately switched sales teams what worked what didn't work and what we decided to do was to set Primal Kitchen up to be largely autonomous so um unique systems we had a separate sales team we had a separate structure separate email addresses which I know seems small but like is impactful when you think about kind of some of those firewalls but what we did was we took Core Craftine employees who we thought were good culture fits and we moved them to Primal Kitchen instead of trying to force Primal Kitchen to move into craftine and so for me I was one of the first employees to do that there were two other um employees on our leadership team and then several over time but took the mentality of like there's multiple right ways to do something just because I did something at craft times and there was a different approach at Primal Kitchen didn't mean that anyone was right or wrong um it just was a question we needed to ask ourselves on what was right in this moment yeah so if craft times had a leg up on like regulatory or legal um natural fit we're gonna go that way um if we thought that PK had a leg up like our in house agency or sales team that just understood premium and natural we nurtured the PK side of things and so I really do give Kraft Heinz like so much credit for giving the brand the space to grow up and leverage the mothership when necessary um but then also leave the things that really worked and allow them to grow as well yeah yeah that's that's super refreshing to hear for maybe it's you know director VP chief marketing offers an example or ops leaders um any recommendations you might have for them in in terms of I guess how they should approach this fucking mindset standpoint kind of during and and after this integration process which I imagine you know like what's gonna happen to my role how am I supposed to integrate within this team and yeah how they should kind of think about approaching that in the right way it's hard it is like I think if you're going through this like it's very hard and I would go back to this idea of like there is not a right way or wrong way to do anything and so even if your acquirer says like they're talking in acronyms and you like leave a call and you're like I have no clue what anyone just said that does not mean that you are not smart and do not deserve to continue to grow in the organization um and so really just like trying to like value yourself value what you built but then ask questions like if there is a change coming I would say like stage gate is a really good example it's something that like founders or early operators like tend to brush off it's gonna slow us down it's totally unnecessary like I don't wanna do this what we try to do is hey like you wanna do stage gate great why oh you just need to see the financials perfect we can give you financials but we're not gonna go to stage gate because we wanna launch on our timeline we have different retailers we have different reasons etcetera etcetera and so really trying to figure out like why are we trying to change this system processy approach is there a light version that we can do and like how do you get to the minimum amount of information needed right as you get bigger naturally you're probably gonna have to give more information but like give yourself bite size opportunities to learn and then also vice versa say like oh maybe they are doing something that I hadn't thought of and let's test it in a certain area um but really try to protect your team from corporate uh overload it's not a bad thing there's absolutely reasons for systems and structures but you don't need it for everything right that's a good balance I like that that's a good way to approach it but I saw that you wrote about the rise of private label fairly recently in your sub tag which definitely seems to be things that something that people are talking about a lot give us just kind of general lay of the land in terms of the state of private label and kind of trends you're seeing these days yeah private label I don't know it's like a passion topic I remember when I first started in food and I mentioned to one of our executives that I barely bought any branded products and they were like completely distraught by this information we're like there's no way you sure and I was like yeah for the most part there's like only a few brands that I like actively buy um and so you know it stood out to me that I didn't think this was just me um and it wasn't just my frugality um we've really seen retailers reshape private label and what it means to consumers in the past five years call it maybe even as short as a decade ago private label was very much like an active trade down choice I spend less money so I get less um and now retailers have kind of said let's flip the script on that I'm spending less money but I'm getting perhaps a dupe like an equivalent product to the branded players and I can do that because I own my supply chain there's no slotting there's no advertising costs all the reasons to be and they've also worked really hard at like removing negative connotation behind a store brand maybe like old target's like Market Basket like that red brand was like something you would like hide in the pantry we used to talk a lot about um when I worked on Cool Whip for example private label is our number one competitor and we would talk about okay Cool Whip is always bigger in the holiday and people that buy private label during the year by cool up during the holiday um because they want to put that one out they want people to see they bought the branded player but throughout the year maybe they trade down to private label and so it's very much like that behavior of like what am I proud to put on my countertop now you have something like a good and gather or better goods and it's no longer relegated to like hidden in the fridge or the pantry you might actually be proud to say like look at this sick new product from good and gather um so very much a change of both mindset and quality that I think consumers have really started to react to yeah yeah I think that's accurate that's kind of what I've seen what does this private label landscape look like say five five years and 10 years from now or you can pick one of those and just more in the context of what brand should be doing to respond to where this is going prepare for it um just in terms of all these changes that are happening and coming up yeah I think brands need to look at private label as a competitive brand not just a copycat um you look at a lot of these retailers they're employing their own good better best strategy within their own brands they're thinking about it as a house of brands but what I think they still haven't figured out quite yet and I'd say give them five or 10 years and maybe they will is market leading innovation so I walked to Walmart recently and there was an end cap of better goods and it was like chili lime flavored gummies and white hazelnut spread which both are intriguing products but are they private label mass scale produce products probably not um so those private labels are still good at copying of adjusting and tweaking but I haven't yet seen them compete on market leading innovation and so being really um brands just have a leg up at at focusing on that how can you change your packaging to be more cutting edge how can you lead with new innovation or formats or patterns how are you thinking about protecting your insights um when I think about newer brands there's an opportunity to play into your niche so a private label brand inherently needs to serve everyone needs to be gen pop which means it kind of stands for nothing on purpose it needs to be an open vessel right there is such an opportunity for brands to own the fact that they do stand for something to have clarity on that and then to win from their niche instead of saying like I'm going to be everything to everyone hope a lot of founders are listening to this piece Audrey last last question for you any um any brands or just trends in general in the CPG space that you're kind of particularly excited about these days or you're tracking closely yeah well I'm super excited I think about just like the general movement towards simpler cleaner ingredient statements end to end small brands big brands I think that's awesome and being a part of that with Primal Kitchen like Rising Tides Journey so um I'll put that to the side one trend that I am keeping my eye on is re invention of commodities through different use cases so yeah Froz is like a big example of that where they took commoditized products they put it in new packaging it's cool it feels special um it feels fun there's another brand that just launched called on or in it's kind of like onion um and it's onion in oil so pre chopped onion in oil which I like can't believe this didn't exist it's like garlic or ginger um so like flavor without the cutting board or I just saw a brand on Instagram literally yesterday they just launched um called Pantry Gems which is teaspoon size tomato paste so you don't have like an entire can of half used tomato paste so you're smart again like another way we're like is private label gonna play there probably not right this is like such an interesting space for consumers and the people that eventually consumers turn to founders say like hey how do I reinvent commodities how do I make cooking more efficient more fun um so repackaging and remodernizing occasions is is super exciting to me yeah that's really interesting yeah Audrey this has been awesome really appreciate the time a lot of really useful insights for uh operators and and founders alike uh what's the best place for people to follow along with you these days and also I guess and all you're doing there as well yeah absolutely um well thank you for having me you can find me on LinkedIn as Audrey Burger burger like the food or at pay setter CPG I also write on substack under pay setter CPG and I lurk mostly on X and Instagram under Audrey's Burgers so my name with an s behind it so possessive and plural um but you can tell like I love the industry I really legitimately want to make it a better place and if you're listening and you need help with your brand or you just want to talk to someone um I certainly would love to be a part of the journey so find find me on one of those platforms perfect yeah I'll definitely link to the substack too and in the notes too cause I think you have some great content on there awesome thank you awesome appreciate the time and you have some pod when you think about what a well rounded what have you found just working with founders at one question that I used to ask people you know a fair amount after this is a little bit further along capture more shelf space in that store I'm kind of curious have you had like strategies you found that worked such a good maybe even 200+ queues um entire podcast on its own is what would you say are like and then also actually hitting your okay two two questions that so I'm gonna try to answer both introducing new products into kind of like the existing into the existing kind of production schedule that makes total sense but um the scanning apps have become super popular in terms of packaging redesigns like yeah yeah poor Tropicana alright totally and now you transitioned over to for leaders at companies not the founders it can create a fair amount of anxiety for some people best place to follow along with pace setters