Ep. 19 - Be More You with Morgan Zanotti | Gross To Net

Morgan Zanotti co-founded Primal Kitchen, bootstrapped it to $50M in revenue, and sold it to Kraft Heinz for $200M when she was 35. Then she did the thing almost nobody does — she stayed for five years, quadrupled the business from the inside, and kept her entire founding team in place the whole time. She eventually ran M&A strategy for Kraft's health and wellness portfolio, where she flagged the GLP-1 wave as a freight train before anyone at the company was paying attention. They told her it was a rich-person thing. They were wrong, and she knew it.

Now she's back at zero. Her new company, Waay, is a sparkling protein water — 10g protein, zero sugar, 45 calories — that launched nationwide at Whole Foods in October 2025 and has since picked up Sprouts and Target. We talked about what it's like to start over after a massive exit, why she tried to talk herself out of this for 18 months, how she ended up telling her therapist she should have just bought a car wash, and why she thinks CPG has become almost a billionaire's game. We also got into the stuff that makes the industry simultaneously maddening and worth fighting for — the antiquated systems, the mafia-like distribution networks, and the fact that at the end of the day, everybody still has to eat.

You can find Morgan on LinkedIn, on TikTok and Instagram @morganzanotti and @drinkwaay, and you can try Waay at drinkwaay.com or pick it up at Whole Foods, Sprouts, or Target.

Transcript

unknown 0:00

The effective that we have to do.

SPEAKER_01 0:22

Hello, everybody, and welcome to Gross to Nut, the podcast where I talk to entrepreneurs, artists, writers, and thinkers about what they optimize for in their businesses and lives. I'm your host and the co-founder of Yellowbird Foods, George Milton. Everybody, strap in tight for this intro, because it's a beefy one. Our guest today was supposed to be an accountant. Instead, she surfed South America, taught yoga in Hawaii, talked her way into a job-running marketing for a PepsiCo brand before she really knew what marketing was, and then after meeting a blogger at a party she wasn't even supposed to be at, she co-founded a bootstrapped condiment company that hit 50 million in revenue in three years and sold to Kraft Heinz for $200 million while she was only 35. Most founders might leave after the earnout. She stayed for five years, quadrupled the business inside of Fortune 500, ran MA strategy for health and wellness, and she called the GLP 1 wave a freight train before the industry caught up. Now she's back at zero. She didn't have to, but she founded another company. She's building a protein soda in a category that doesn't technically exist yet, saying no to retailers on purpose and explicitly building the anti-diet culture brand that every other operator in her shoes would be too scared to do. She co-founded Primal Kitchen. She's the founder and CEO of Way. And just like the tagline for her sparkling protein drinks, she is absolutely a fizzy little overachiever. Please welcome Morgan Zanati. Welcome, Morgan.

SPEAKER_02 1:50

Thank you. Gosh, that was a great intro.

SPEAKER_01 1:56

I need like a I need a cold glass of water after that. By the way, that could that that uh that can crack that you guys just heard on the audio version, that's a that's a cold uh whey protein sparkling drink.

SPEAKER_02 2:12

Breakfast of champions, a string cheese in a whey this morning. I just got home from drop-off like three minutes ago.

SPEAKER_01 2:18

So many kids how many kids are you dropping off these days?

SPEAKER_02 2:22

Uh I drop off one, but there's three that go to school before 9 a.m. My husband takes two to preschool. I take the older one to first grade.

SPEAKER_01 2:29

Alright, so you guys have a you guys have a busy morning routine.

SPEAKER_02 2:33

Yeah. Routine is like definitely not part of the morning, more just like a busy morning explosion, you know?

SPEAKER_01 2:40

A busy morning explosion. I love it. Well, you sent you very kindly sent me some of the some of your uh uh sparkling protein drinks, and I like that you're not calling them sodas.

SPEAKER_02 2:50

Yeah, I'm not so sure on that. It feels a little gimmicky to me, you know what I mean?

SPEAKER_01 2:54

Yeah, I think I mean I kind of feel like we're I kind of feel like we're coming out of the everybody's everybody's crazy about sodas thing. Yeah. Um that's fair. But but uh I I will say that like you kind of have uh a history of of calling it. Like uh I I mean I think you were you were everything's got avocado oil in it now, but like that wasn't true when Primal Kitchen launched.

SPEAKER_02 3:21

Like, yeah, we were the first we were the first condiment that had avocado oil in it. We were early on that for sure.

SPEAKER_01 3:27

But I mean it wasn't even I I couldn't I couldn't even buy anything with avocado oil. Like I didn't even know avocado oil was a thing that you could get.

SPEAKER_02 3:35

No, there was no chips, there was no popcorn with avocado oil, there was no anything. Jackson's honest was frying chips in coconut oil like in 2015. So there were people using coconut oil, it was really big, if you remember.

SPEAKER_01 3:48

It was so big.

SPEAKER_02 3:49

What happened to coconut oil?

SPEAKER_01 3:50

I don't know. I I was literally having that conversation last week. Like, what happened? Because when I was I've been in like not in the industry, but like a health and wellness shopper for like a really long time. And like cook coconut oil, coconut oil was like the big thing. It was like the future. Like we were trying to we were trying to figure out how to make coconut oil condiments back in like 2014, and it's like the you know, you have all these weird stability issues with coconut oil because it's like I think solid, uh, you know, under 75 degrees or something like that.

SPEAKER_02 4:22

Yeah. Uh but anyway, it's also like super flavorful. Like it's really hard to like like I don't know. I remember if you've ever like cooked scrambled eggs and coconut oil, if you saw like a movement in 2015, like that shit's gross. Like it just doesn't taste good.

SPEAKER_01 4:36

Well, it's it's like an acquired taste. Like you could cook, uh I liked cooking rice with coconut oil. Like there's some things that you could yeah, or you could like sauteing stuff with coconut oil, it definitely adds a flavor to it, but like avocado oil um is incredibly neutral. I think I feel like olive oil's coming back again. I feel like Graz is I don't think olive oil ever left.

SPEAKER_02 4:58

I feel like it's always been there, you know?

SPEAKER_01 4:59

Like I feel like I mean olive oil's always been there, but it was like we we were putting olive oil in sauces, you know, seven years ago, and the industry wasn't wasn't like hot on olive oil. It it's never gone anywhere, but like I re I feel like Grazia did a thing and then you know Ithaca just made a big announcement that they switched all their stuff to olive oil, and it's like everybody really cares about it today. For sure.

SPEAKER_02 5:24

For sure.

SPEAKER_01 5:25

But avocado oil. Like what like what were you thinking about? What what year did you what year was that that you met Mark and his wife? I know you've told that story before about driving them home from a party and for sure.

SPEAKER_02 5:38

Yeah, I met Mark in 2013. So I was running marketing for a brand called Cavita, was like a they were sub-10 million in revenue. They went on to sell to PepsiCo, but at the time I was there, they hadn't exited yet. And we sponsored an event. Mark used to do this event called PrimalCon in Oxnard, and Cavita sponsored the event. I didn't need to go, but I followed Mark and like wanted to meet him. So I went to the event, ended up hitting it off with he and his wife, Carrie. And then they at the end of the night, they were like, Can you you're leaving? Can you drive us home to our hotel? And then we kind of went our separate ways. And a few months later, Mark was like, Hey, I've been like thinking about launching a food company. Do you think you could help? And I had I quit Cavita and started consulting with Mark on Primal Kitchen. So that's kind of the story.

SPEAKER_01 6:17

That's that's beautiful. I I I know that I've also geeked out a little bit because I was like, me and Aaron were following, you know, Mark's blog back in the day as well. All the you know, like we're like, oh, it's just it's this dude who's like, you know, eating like meat and oils and running around, you know, barefoot on the beach and stuff. And we were like, we're we were fans of Mark's Daily Apple. So it was like, you know, when when I met you and met Mark and stuff, I felt like I was I mean, I was literally meeting you know, like health and wellness, like royalty.

SPEAKER_02 6:49

I I know Mark has that effect on people for sure. Well, he's like 72 now, still has a six-pack at the time. Like, I remember we were doing a lot of like events at his house and stuff. He has a slack line in the backyard. He's like really good on the slack line. Like he's just you know, he's an extra triathlon. Yeah, he coached the Olympic triathlon team. He placed fourth at Hawaii Iron Man. You know, he's a recovered endurance athlete who kind of you know parlayed, I would say, his experience and training differently for that into just like what lifestyle looks like. So we love him. He's the best.

SPEAKER_01 7:25

Yeah, I can't I honestly didn't know he was 72 to hear you say that and to know that like because I saw I saw him, I guess, at Expo or something somewhere recently, maybe a week so yeah, but yeah, it doesn't look 72. Good for him.

SPEAKER_02 7:40

No, he's in good shape for sure.

SPEAKER_01 7:43

Yeah, a lot of the a lot of those recovering endurance athletes, like f when they find balance, they're they become like very dangerous.

SPEAKER_02 7:52

Like yeah. There's a lot in CPG, like I don't know, yeah. You got a lot of like athletes who got into consumer. I don't know, Brendan Brazier from what is he, like Vega or something. Isn't he like a big ultra marathon runner or something like that? I don't know. I feel like there's a lot of overlap. But it's like a lot of people who are really optimizing their health because like, you know, they had to for whatever sport they were competing in, so they end up doing all the crazy stuff first because they're extra motivated versus just like the average Joe.

SPEAKER_01 8:22

Yeah, well, I would I wouldn't say you're the average Joe. So like you you got let's go way, way back because I want to talk about your life and times a little bit. You got a degree in accounting, right?

SPEAKER_02 8:34

Yes, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 8:35

And then you decided you didn't want to do accounting. Yeah, yeah. Tell me about your experience in the professional world of accounting.

SPEAKER_02 8:42

I mean, so I went to University of Colorado Boulder. I was in the business school. I went in as a psych major. I like love psychology. I probably should have stayed a psych major, but I looked at how much science classes I had to take and I was like, oh, this is gonna be so hard. Forget it. Like I'm I'm partying too much to deal with this. And then I went into the business school, and you could declare like finance, management, accounting, and everyone was like, accounting's the hardest. And I was like, oh, math was always easy. So I just picked accounting and then worked when I graduated. I moved to Denver. I got two job offers in the same day. One was to be a recruiter and one was to be the staff accountant at the small firm in Denver. I took the recruiting job, got because it came with a Blackberry, because I'm 22 and I'm an idiot, and the Blackberries are still a thing then. So I take this job because I'm like, oh, this is so cool. I can't get to like have a Blackberry. And then I'm like cold calling people for one day, and I'm like, no, this isn't it for me. And I quit, called the accounting firm back, and I was like, did you guys find someone? And they were like, no. And I was like, can I actually I actually want to take the job? And they're like, great. So I take the job, I do that for like a year, and I was just like really bored, you know, as you can imagine. Like, I don't think anyone who would meet me or look at my history would be like, I think you're gonna thrive in this like very black and white, very process-driven environment. Um, but it was fine.

SPEAKER_01 10:00

Maybe take this personality and put you in front of a spreadsheet all day long.

SPEAKER_02 10:05

It was like audit, tax returns. Like, so what ended up happening is you could, I was doing a lot of tax returns and during tax season, then doing some audit stuff, but I remember during tax season, you could see in the back of every client's folder how long the staff accountant had taken to do that return the year before because it's a billable hours job, right? So I would look and be like, okay, they did the Smith's return in six hours. I'm gonna do it in five, and then I'm gonna actually I'm gonna say I did it in five, but I'm really gonna do it in three, and then I'm gonna spend the extra hours I have at work planning this trip to South America. So that was kind of my whole tax season. So I had studied abroad in Australia. I went to camp for eight weeks when I was eight years old. So I was just always very kind of like seeking adventure and independence and travel and new environments. Um, my cousin studied abroad in Buenos Aires and I really wanted to go to Argentina. So I convinced Anna, who was actually my first hire at Primal Kitchen and is still to this day running marketing. I'm sure you know Anna. She's amazing. She I convinced her to move to South America with me. So she graduated a year after me. We both waitressed at my aunt and uncle's resort that summer. And then we did like uh what was supposed to be a six-month trip to South America, but I ended up staying. She flew home. We met these girls from Ireland, they were doing a whole gap year. I had like 30 grand saved because I waitressed and saved all this money and I saved all this money as an accountant. And then I got this job doing research for a political author. So I was like reading Tim Ferris's four-hour work week in Argentina. And I was like, what am I reading this book for? I'm like living this life. Like I was living off of eight grand a year, but making 12 grand a year remote. The books were number one New York Times bestsellers. I'm like the first name in the acknowledgments. And I just kept doing these books with this guy. And then I had this money saved from waitressing and accounting. So I was, you know, it was just an amazing time of life. So I started in Buenos Aires, but we went, we were in Chile, Ecuador. I learned how to surf in Peru. And then that kind of like changed the whole trajectory of really almost like my life in a sense. But then all I wanted to do was surf. So then I was just hopping from Latin surf town to Latin surf town, like a lot of time in Mancore, Peru, a lot of time in Montanita, Ecuador. I surfed in the Galapagos. I lived in Saulita, Mexico, in Costa Rica for a while. It was a great time of year. I bought the domain name surfyogaecuador.com, and I was gonna like move to Ecuador at 25 and like start like a surf yoga camp. I went to Hawaii, got my yoga certification on the North Shore of Kauai, and then I was like, oh, I suck at teaching yoga. And I had like my health epiphany in that whole time. So that's a lot. But that that was kind of the journey to that point.

SPEAKER_01 12:41

Yeah, that's I I don't think I would have looked at that life and been like, yeah, she's gonna be uh CEO at uh at a Kraft Heinz brand in a few years.

SPEAKER_00 12:52

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 12:53

But yeah, I just uh while you were saying that, I visited Surf Yoga Ecuador. It it's available. There's no site there.

SPEAKER_02 13:00

It lapsed. Yeah, I don't want it anymore. Someone can buy it, someone should buy it.

SPEAKER_01 13:04

Somebody buys surf Surf Yoga Ecuador. Okay, so so you you can I mean the what one of the things that I've said a lot is I really love kind of like a non-sequitur resume, and this is like what you've got in spades. Um so we we've got you, you know, we've got you surfing, and then you come back and you at what point do you start working at Cavita? Because that's kind of your entree into CPG, right?

SPEAKER_02 13:35

Well, actually, so before Cavita, my entry into C so I came back and had a total meltdown. Okay, so I've been gone for two and a half years. I'm living off eight grainier. I come home, my friends are buying hundred dollar seven seven for all mankind jeans, and I'm like, whoa, this is crazy. Like, I don't want this life, but I felt like I didn't really belong in Ecuador, and I didn't really belong in downtown Chicago, and I was just like, what am I doing? I don't what now I have to figure out what I'm I'm behind. I really like got in my dad was like, you need to go see my therapist, who I still see who married us. I I really had like a meltdown, okay? Like I was just like, what am I doing with my life?

SPEAKER_01 14:11

So your dad, your dad's therapist married you and your husband?

SPEAKER_02 14:14

My dad's therapist is my therapist. So my dad had this therapist when he was in his like 20s, David Roadhouse, he's amazing. I started working with him when I came home from South America. Then we're just super close. He's like 86 or something now. But when Adam and I got married, we were like, Can you officiate our wedding? So he's great.

SPEAKER_01 14:31

Can you write a book? Can you write a book called My Dad's Therapist Is My Therapist?

SPEAKER_02 14:35

Yeah. Well, I feel like it's really efficient. Like, you don't need to explain a lot of the family baggage if your therapist like intimately knows your family, right? Like, so I think it's like, what do I want to pay to get someone up to speed on like whatever my problems are? Like this guy knows.

SPEAKER_01 14:52

I can't talk about it. Confidentiality, but well, you know what?

SPEAKER_02 14:54

My dad, so he was my dad's therapist when my dad was in his 20s and 30s, and my dad doesn't see him, hadn't seen him in a long time. Like, so it he probably didn't know about me from my dad, aside from maybe 30 years ago when I was a baby or something. But um, yeah, he kind of just passed the baton to me. So, so that was that. So I come home, I land in Chicago, I'm living at home, I'm 20, maybe five at this point. I meet a boy at my lake house. I decide to move to Milwaukee, Wisconsin, and I go to work for an advertising agency called Culver Brand Design, and I manage the Frito Lay portfolio. So my kind of foray into CPG was like in Columbia, I had met this girl from California. She was like, my friend had cancer, and her doctor always has her do this standard process cleanse. Standard process is a really cool herbal supplement company in Wisconsin. They grow all their own herbs that go into the supplements. So when I came home from South America, I get a job in managing the Free Delay account, and I did my first like cleanse. And so what happened is I had had like kind of low-grade health stuff. And I realized like, oh wow, when I change how I eat, I makes a difference in how I feel. So I like was on Allegra D. I had, I don't know, allergy stuff, like, you know, just general like female constipation stuff that kind of like runs in the family, all sorts of stuff like that. So I changed my diet and I start feeling better for this cleanse. And I'm like, I'm just gonna continue eating like this. And then I was on this just personal quest for like what should we all be eating? Um, like what is the right diet, which is actually maybe a little bit less confusing now, but like 15 years ago was like a really hard question to answer. Like I remember feeling like, oh, okay, I can't eat meat because you know, I have vegan move the vegan movement's like raging. Um, the fish is tainted with mercury. The vegetables, even some of the vegetables have like whatever Dr. Gundry is telling us we can't eat the beans and the legumes because of what the whatever it is.

SPEAKER_01 16:54

Like anti-nutrients or whatever.

SPEAKER_02 16:56

Yeah, whatever it was. Yeah, whatever that anti-nutrient is that I can't even remember. And it was like these the vegan and paleo wars were raging. So, like if you cared about health and wellness or like diet, you kind of fell into one of these camps. You were kind of like extreme on either end. And in the end of the day, they were all arguing over like 10% of the Venn diagram when like 90% of it, it's like not that hard, right? Like, just eat real food. Like, yeah, pretty simple. Um, so I feel like I was personally on this journey and then professionally start working at Frito Late. And I had, I wanted to launch a sunscreen company. I had like entrepreneurial pursuits, but I had no idea what I was doing. So I'm like, should I be a sex therapist? Should I be a nurse? Should I get my natural I applied to naturopathic medical school? I just was really like in this exploratory late 20s phase of life. I surf Lake Michigan in the winter. And then I visit California for the first time ever when I'm like 28. And I surf in Manhattan Beach. I come back and I'm like, oh wow, I can live in like a US version with a career of a Latin surf town and like surf and have a fun life and be have all this access to LA, but live in this very walkable small community in Los Angeles. Like, so I moved two months later. Then I get a job at Cavita. So I parlayed my like free-dole lay experience at the advertising agency into this director of marketing role at Cavita. And then I met Mark there, and then I left Covita and I came on, consulted for Mark, and then I eventually joined him full-time right before we launched Primal Kitchen. So that was kind of the journey.

SPEAKER_01 18:29

Yeah. That's wild. And I think that there's uh like you're right about this like 15 years ago timeline. And I wasn't really in the industry yet at that point, but I was like, I think you have a lot of people who are now like, you know, executives or like seasoned kind of operators in the industry who 15 years ago were like trying to figure out how to eat, like what are we supposed to be eating?

SPEAKER_02 18:56

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 18:57

Um and I would I would argue that like it for for most Americans that probably hasn't been resolved. That like people still don't know what to eat. Even if you know what to eat or I know what to eat, like I don't feel like people know what to eat. There's this I had Robbie on uh Robbie Sansom on from Force of Nature Meats, and we were just talking about the cost of various things, how like, you know, this like ancestral like you know, grass, like pasture-raised, you know, meats are really like cheaper than fast food in a lot of ways, but it's like why why are people still making the choices that they're making? I mean, was that was that some of what um was that some of what got you into like CPG and hell? I mean, I know that you followed Mark and kind of like that was seems like that was a really like um I don't know. I think you've talked about networking as a superpower. So I I think that I mean you're obviously very good at that.

SPEAKER_02 19:56

I think I'm good at like quitting stuff when it's not serving me, even if I don't have anything lined up. I think I'm good at like I don't know, I kind of threw the like traditional path out the window. And I think you can do different things based off what your values are, but like I'm good at like putting myself in uncomfortable situations that I like don't belong in and figuring it out, which uh it causes a lot of anxiety and stress. But, you know, I think a lot of people would maybe be like, I'm not qualified for that. And I was like, I'm not qualified for this. Like hopefully someone can teach me on the side how to get up to speed here. But I think it's also like a recognition that like nobody knows what they're doing. Like we all think everybody else like has it all figured out. Like I remember, so we saw Primal to Craft, and I remember my boss there. I remember telling him, like, I think I like I don't know how to do a PowerPoint deck. Like, I can't, like, I'm not an analyst. Like, I don't know how to like interpret like sales data that well. Like, I can do the basic stuff. And I was like, he was like, what do you think you need to work on? This is what he asked me in our first review, and I was telling him, like, I need to be better at this. And he was like, no. He's like, no, no, no. Like, that's what you have an analyst for. Like, I think you need to make sure you because I was like, I could be more professional, I could stop like swearing in business meetings, I could maybe stop hugging everyone. Like, and he was like, no, no, no, no, no. I think you know exactly what you're doing when you swear in business meetings and when you hug everyone, and you need to like make sure you be more you and like nobody knows what they're doing. So like you don't have to pretend like you have an MBA. Like everybody here with an MBA still doesn't know what they're doing. We're all just like making it till we make it and like putting a thesis out and hoping it sticks, and sometimes it does, and sometimes it doesn't. So that was like, I don't know, I've been super fortunate to be surrounded by just like a lot of very like encouraging folks in my career. And I think there were some toxic people, and I I pricked that up pretty quick and like get the hell out, you know? So I think I don't know, I I don't know, and a lot of luck and a lot of trial and error.

SPEAKER_01 22:00

Yeah, there's a lot of there is a lot of luck involved, but I do think that there's you know, talking about the like entrepreneurship kind of angle, it it's really interesting to me like what entrepreneurship is. So we don't necessarily have to define it, but I do think the ability to like um so like something about the ability to get out there and be uncomfortable and keep doing that. Because I I think that you know, I mentioned this in the intro, but like you don't have to start a company from scratch, like you like financially or whatever, like you probably don't have to do that. Like you uh, you know, you're a what an ex executive in residence at Summit Partners, which is something like a $10 billion fund. You know, you sold the company that you're that you know your CEO and co-founder of to Kraft Tines for 200 million dollars. Like you don't have to start a company from scratch, but like you're doing it, and that's like that's just very Morgan of you, I think, to do it.

SPEAKER_02 23:04

It's very I I've there's been a lot of just self-judgment, I gotta say. Like, why did I do this?

SPEAKER_01 23:10

Like it's Yeah, you didn't have to.

SPEAKER_02 23:12

I didn't have to. No, I didn't, yeah, for sure. But I felt almost like the universe, like you're I can tell you could get like woo-woo with me. Like, I could feel woo-woo. I couldn't not do it. Like, I came up with the idea two years ago, and I was like, I had looked at doing so much stuff. Like, you know, talent agents were like, Will you CEO a company for Giselle? Can we introduce a Ryan Steacrest? Will you run a couple? Will you do whatever? Some it's like, hey, can we find something for you to be the CEO of? And ultimately, like, I just felt like if I was gonna bust my ass in a CEO role, I wasn't gonna do it to report into private equity or to report, I mean, which ultimately when you raise money, you're gonna do anyway. So it's all ironic there. But like, I think I don't know. I just wanted it to be something I was passionate about. But when I came up with this idea, I was kind of like, oh, I have to do this. Like it just felt like the universe was kept delivering mess. I tried to talk myself out of it for 18 months. So let's just be clear about that. I took a shitty tasting version of my product in a silver can to Whole Foods last year. And they were like, well, take it nationwide. You need to ship in August. This is April. I had to do, I had a registered trademark on the name way and a shitty formulation. So I like reformulated, found a com-and, did the branding, and did our first production run in like three months. It was like a whirlwind.

SPEAKER_01 24:26

Um You're doing that startup shit.

SPEAKER_02 24:29

Yeah, but I like that part. Like I've I have spent the last two years thinking, like, am I crazy? Like, I'm crazy. Why am I doing this? Like, this is really hard, you know, like all this stuff. But then I've met in the in recent months, I've met enough like exited second-time founders to know, like, oh, we have a disease.

SPEAKER_00 24:48

Like, yeah.

SPEAKER_02 24:49

Like this is just kind of in your ethos if it's in your ethos. You're not like I said to the same therapist, David, I was like, why didn't I just buy a car wash? I could have just bought a car wash. He's like, oh, he was like cracking up. He thought that was like the funniest thing ever. He's like, sweetheart, I don't think that was ever gonna do it for you. Like, it just wasn't gonna work.

SPEAKER_01 25:09

So just franchised a car a tunnel car wash.

SPEAKER_02 25:12

Yeah, right. I there's still time for me.

SPEAKER_01 25:15

There's still time to do a car wash. You're younger than me, so we we could both still do car washes.

SPEAKER_02 25:20

Yeah, we could. There's time for us.

SPEAKER_01 25:22

Uh yeah. No, but I but I mean, I think that there's something exciting because like I'm I'm already like I already have the itch to like that, like what would I do, what would I do now if I started, right? With all the knowledge of like you know, just like the shit that uh and you guys, yeah, like Primal Kitchen, you guys moved way faster than than than we did at my company. So like, but even even then, like all the stuff that you know about building a brand, about dealing with retailers, about you like dealing with investors and all of the things that like you don't you wouldn't have to trip over your second time. You know, I do think that there's something uh a lot of founders who are exited or have had a big successful thing and then go on and do another thing are are often thinking some version of like, yes, we have a disease where we can't do, you know, we can't go do some easy thing um even if it's presented. But also the val like what's the value of all that uh of all the all those lessons you learned, right? Like not wanting to lose, uh not wanting to lose that. Because when you're like, hey, what like value do I bring uh if you're asking yourself that question, or if I'm asking myself that question um in therapy or just like as I lay awake at night staring at the ceiling, like what like what value do I bring? It's kind like it's kind of like all of the things that I know and have done and can like shortcut, like I don't have to learn this lesson all over again.

SPEAKER_00 26:55

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 26:57

Uh but but I do think I anyway, I up I applaud your your ability to get into uncomfortable situations. Like I just kind of like hearing it from from you, it sounds like you've done that and done that and done that. Do you like have you figured out uh on your own or in therapy, or have you figured out why you do that or why you're because I would I would say that you're probably uh above average for like, hey, let me jump into this situation. Do you know where that comes from?

SPEAKER_02 27:27

I don't know. I mean, I'm five feet tall, so I've been like underestimated my whole life. So maybe there's a little like, you know, oh, you think I'm small, like watch how big I can be or something. I don't know. But I um yeah, I don't know. I think like I think a lot comes back to like personal values and like experience, like like for me, I'm I know like I really value like adventure and freedom. Like those are two like big things for me. Like adventure, freedom, and like connection, I would say, right? Like, so you know, I think though I have friends who grew up and maybe like their parents had money issues, so they value like security and like you know, stability. Like I had a lot of security and stability. Like I've always had a lot of security and stability. I think I've I just like tend to be a personality that values like freedom and adventure more. And I think when you value freedom and adventure, you are ripe for entrepreneurship because you know, it is I don't know, freedom's an elusive goal, but it's certainly an adventure.

SPEAKER_01 28:30

Yeah, freedom is an elusive goal. Um, I mean, what do you what does that mean? Like, what does that mean to you? Not like um, not like American capital F freedom, but just like freedom the way that you're talking about.

SPEAKER_02 28:40

People could think like I use this example all the time. I'm like, if you think your boss is stressing you out and you so you want to be an entrepreneur, like you're just trading stress from nine to five for stress from one to four a.m. Because that's what being an entrepreneur is. An entrepreneur is like one to four a.m. stress. It's like waking up in the middle of the night with like anxiety because there's just so much on your shoulders. So, you know, yeah, I think you could think you're getting freedom and really you're just kind of in another box. Like it's I don't know where true freedom exists, I guess.

SPEAKER_00 29:14

Yeah.

unknown 29:14

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 29:15

Maybe it exists at 24 in South America when you're making 12 grand a year and living off eight grand a year and you just have like nothing and no responsibility. So there was just a lot of freedom in that phase of life.

SPEAKER_01 29:26

Yeah, but you probably don't appreciate it then as much as you do now. Where you're like, oh, that was that was uh that was it.

SPEAKER_02 29:33

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 29:34

That was it.

SPEAKER_02 29:35

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 29:35

Um okay, well, hey, we're gonna take a quick break. Uh, we're gonna come back, and then I want to talk about uh how you developed and you know thought about positioning for Way with all of the experience that you've got and with your kind of like premonition abilities that let you keep seeing, you know, ten years into the future. So we'll be right back. Uh sponsored by Way.

unknown 30:40

I love it.

SPEAKER_01 30:42

I should just do I should just have whoever the whoever the um just do that. Yeah, just record an ad for whoever's with an affiliate code for you or something at least. Yeah, yeah. I think we just unlocked it.

SPEAKER_02 30:55

I'm done.

SPEAKER_01 30:56

Welcome back to Gross To Net. We're talking with Morgan. Uh and Morgan, I want to uh first of all, I don't know if I thanked you for being on today. Thank you for making time for this. I appreciate it.

SPEAKER_02 31:07

It's so fun to talk to an old friend. I'm happy to be here.

SPEAKER_01 31:10

Yeah. Um, I I want to talk a little bit about because I think there are a lot of people out there who are um who are dealing with this for the first time. You're kind of dealing with this for, you know, I would say even before primal kitchen, you were thinking about positioning and marketing for CPG products. Um, and then you spent a lot of time doing it at Primal before craft and then after craft, which um you stayed there for five years, which is like, I mean, is that right? Is that the timeline?

SPEAKER_02 31:38

You were you were I ran it day to day for five years. I'm actually still on the board, so I'm still like an M I'm a consultant still for Primal Kitchen. So yeah, we're seven years post-acquisition and have another like two-year contract.

SPEAKER_01 31:49

So it's very fun. That's good. That's cool. I mean, it's it's not like I I remember when you guys uh first got acquired. I think we were talking and you and you were talking about how they were letting you do your thing, which feels pretty unique.

SPEAKER_02 32:06

They really like I always tell them I don't think they've done a good enough job of like explaining how well they handled our acquisition. Like they were pretty late to the like buy a smaller, better for you company CPG game. And so I think they got to sit back and watch like Kellogg mess up Kashi and you know, disaster left and right, and they were very, very um upfront with us and very it was like such a priority to maintain kind of like the specialness the brand had post-acquisition, and they like put their money where their mouth was and motivated my team to stay. Like a lot of my team is still there, seven years post-acquisition, super rare. Mark and I are still involved, so they've been like wonderful. I know I couldn't really ask for more out of like a MA partner, and it was amazing.

SPEAKER_01 32:49

Let me ask you this because it because that just kind of brings up, I do want to talk about Way, but that kind of brings up a like what what do you think it is that that MA, that like strategic MA gets wrong when when they buy these brands? Do you like do you think that they understand what it is they're buying a lot of times?

SPEAKER_02 33:06

Yeah, I do. I think they understand what it is they're buying. I think it's just like the way a corporation moves that has like 20 billion in revenue and 20,000 employees is so different than the way a you know, a founder-led organization runs. So I think the real where like it gets tricky is just corporate Americas run a lot by like bonuses and everyone's just motivated to like hit their bonuses. So if you give like a small brand to a Kraft Heinz sales team, which we never did, they're not gonna prioritize us. Like we don't, we're like a blip, we're like a drop in the bucket, right? Like we're not gonna help meet any like it's like it's just like incentives aren't aligned across the board. And then I think there's just a general slowing down of things after an acquisition that like crushes a lot of brands that have been acquired.

SPEAKER_01 33:57

Yeah. Yeah, it's it's uh and a lot of the people don't really the people who like to work at startups and small businesses don't necessarily like the the corporate overhead.

SPEAKER_02 34:09

Well, yeah, and but I think corporate America also like fires a lot of teams, to be honest. I think they acquire the brand and they're like, all right, we're good, like we're gonna integrate, you know. They didn't even talk to us about synergies or integration for like three years. There wasn't like a single we maybe had a maybe once we had a layoff that was tied to like craft company performance, and like they got rid of like a few employees, one of which was an employee who came from Kraft Heinz over to help us on QA. You know, like maybe three people max. So like they never came in and like slashed primal and were like, we know how to do this better than you. Like, we're dropping in our team. They did give us resources that like were able to help communicate between Kraft Corporate and Primal Kitchen, and that was super helpful. But really, they just took everything off my plate that sucked. Like HR financing, so I didn't have to deal with the bank anymore. They became the bank, we had an intercompany loan, I would just sign documents and money was moved. Um QA and legal. Those are all the parts that for me just aren't that fun of running a business, right? Like so did not even see the like, I mean, you know, there's so many like nuisance suits in consumer uh like you know, just companies who literally like cocoa powder comes from the ground, it's hiring lead, they'll like just go after every cocoa powder protein. Every like three years, all these like protein powders get tested, and these lawyers send these nuisance suits. It's all just like a bunch of bullshit, to be honest. But like to not even like when you get those when you're an entrepreneur, you're like, Yeah, you're having an anxiety attack. But then at Kraft, like I didn't even see them. They just went to Kraft and they made a recommendation and dealt with stuff like that. So it was super helpful to just have them. They were a great partner, still are, love them.

SPEAKER_01 35:56

That's amazing. Um let's let's talk about Way a little bit because I think that you've you know made some calls in your career that were um that were ahead of the mainstream by a few years. Um I'd say avocado oil and condiments ahead of the mainstream by a few years. And you guys uh you guys were not so far ahead that you got penalized. I think some things are like so far ahead that they're discounted. Yeah, you miss it. You think you're finally you miss it like on the not you're not too you could be too late, but you can also be like way too early.

SPEAKER_02 36:33

The market's not ready.

SPEAKER_01 36:34

And and I think that you were like within craft, you were you were making some statements about like GLP one's like this is the this is a freight train.

SPEAKER_02 36:43

Yeah, early, like two years, yeah. I remember telling the my boss who's a president of North America, I was like, are you guys paying attention to this GLP one thing? And he was like, that's for like rich people. It was like you remember early GLP one days, like Kim Kardashian took it to fit into some like Maryland and road dress or something, and so it became this like you only were on it if you had like a ton of money and you were paying cash out of pocket to take it. Like, and I was like, no, this is gonna be like, this is gonna be a game changer. And then I was at a leadership meeting with Kraft Leadership, like, I don't know, a year later. And I was telling the CFO, like, you paying attention to this GLP one thing, and they were like, Yeah, yeah. And then the next day the Walmart buyer came out and said, we've seen a decline in food sales and we're attributing it to GLP one. This is like a while ago, right? And I and then they were all calling me, like, tell us more, like we need to pay attention to this GLP one thing. And I was like, Yeah, you you do, you know, like whatever. But no, it's interesting just to see the impact on so many areas of I mean, it's crazy. Like, I saw something that was like uh airline tickets are or airline profits are projected to increase because it costs more money to fill a seat with someone who's overweight than it does to fill a seat with someone who's like at regular weight because you need more fuel to fly more weight around. So they think because every like if you have this mass amount of the population that's like getting thinner, thinner, your air your air your flight's more economic and efficient for the airline because they don't have to the it doesn't burn as much fuel to fly the people from point A to point B.

SPEAKER_01 38:21

I mean that makes sense, but that's like a third order thing that I just would have never.

SPEAKER_02 38:25

Yeah, it's there's so many things with GLP1 that are like that that you're just like, whoa, never would have thought about that. So it's interesting.

SPEAKER_01 38:31

Yeah, making our society like skin like a like a little skinnier. Not I think skinny is maybe the wrong thing, but not over less overweight.

SPEAKER_02 38:38

Yeah, less obese, maybe. It's I was also talking to someone who's a nurse in bariatric surgery, and I was like, oh, it's interesting. Like, are you seeing just like so much less surgery now? And she's like, Oh, no, no, we're actually seeing a ton more because there's a lot of people who qualify for bariatric surgery, but are too overweight to have the surgery. Like, there's too many complications. So they'll tell those people, like, you need to lose 50 pounds and we need to get your you know, blood work here, and then you qualify for the surgeries. She's like, We've never been busier because the people go on the GLP one to get healthy enough to have the surgery. I mean, I don't think you can be on GLP one when you're under anesthesia and stuff. So that whatever, but it was just fascinating. Like you would think the opposite. You would think all the bariatric surgery folks are just on GLP one, and it turns out there was a lot of folks who still want the permanent surgery and not the like long-term medication that are now qualifying. It's it's fascinating.

SPEAKER_01 39:29

Dude, that I I I'm I love that like third order, fourth order stuff where you're like where you're you're just like, oh, because everybody started taking GLP one, like the cost of college education went down. You're like, what the the fuck are you talking about?

SPEAKER_02 39:42

I know, would have thought it's fascinating.

SPEAKER_01 39:44

Um but so so how it pertains to Whey?

SPEAKER_02 39:48

Do you want me to tie it all together for you?

SPEAKER_01 39:49

Well, I'm I I'm not asking you to tie it cleanly, but I do think that like you know, having a low calorie, you know, protein drink. One of the things that I think is interesting about Whey, first of all, there's like there's a couple of things where like the branding is pretty approachable. Um I'm not sure if it is uh I I had written down it that it maybe is a is protein like designed for women, but I don't know if it's specifically marketed at women. Are you are you targeting women more as like okay, so like it it is uh it's like approachable but not pink washed branding. Yeah. Like I feel fine like carrying a can of this around. Like I I don't feel like I'm drinking, I don't know, very like pink. Or like a line new or something. Yeah, yeah. Like it feels um, it feels approachable and modern. I also like the fact that like, because the reason, the whole reason that we are here to get not the reason, but like I had made some comments on LinkedIn about how I had, and we won't name any names, I've tried a couple of the protein soda brands, and it's like, why are you trying to fit like why are you trying to fit so much protein into this 12-ounce can? Like it's it's in in my mind, it's just kind of like a supplemental thing. Like I'm not gonna reach my protein goals with protein powders and and like protein soda and protein bars. Like that should just be like a in my mind, it should just be a thing that like if you need a hundred grams and you're at 95, then I just you know I grab away and I'm there.

SPEAKER_02 41:27

But yeah, so I I think also with a lot of those 30 grams on your initial comment, you were like, wow, this is disgusting. Like they're undrinkable. A lot of them. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 41:38

Well, we had the the one that I had the one that I had in my fridge was like uh I I had gotten some at the store, and we were like, uh, like I mean, I I was like, I want to try this. I always like I'll see a new brand or a new whatever thing. And it's like protein soda is kind of like a new thing. So I was like, I'm gonna try a couple just to know, just I want to know what's happening in the market, and I want to have an opinion on it. And so we were like, we would literally, I put this in the LinkedIn post, but we would literally like I'd have a couple sips and put it back in the fridge, and that was like all I could handle. And like we have a couple of sips and put it back there. We went through a 12 pack, took us like almost three months to go through the floor.

SPEAKER_02 42:17

I'm just impressed you finished it. But then way, you tried way. So he so you post this, and I was like, George, uh I need to send you my product. And you were like, Oh god, I'm getting heat for this.

SPEAKER_01 42:28

I did. I got a lot of I like got a lot of DMs about that particular post.

SPEAKER_02 42:34

From other founders, from other clear protein founders.

SPEAKER_01 42:36

Yeah, so yeah, some of some of those, and then people wanted to know, like, well, what brands have you tried? What what brands? I was like, Oh, I wasn't like I wasn't trying to be as inflammatory, I guess, as it can't, you know. Like, I'm not trying to I appreciated it.

SPEAKER_02 42:49

And then and then you drank all the way, and whey tastes like totally.

SPEAKER_01 42:52

Well, we finished you sent you sent us a box of whey and you sent us three flavors. Um, and I appreciate it. I think that you had made that offer, then we ran into each other at Expo.

SPEAKER_00 43:02

Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 43:03

And you were like, hey, are you gonna take me up on that? And I was like, Oh, yeah. Yeah, I was afraid that I wasn't gonna like it, and then I was gonna have to tell you, like, no, it's like Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_02 43:10

No, I knew you would like it. I knew you would I well I knew you had tried the one that's at Costco, and I knew that it how gross it was, so I felt like there was a good chance it would at least exceed that expectation.

SPEAKER_01 43:23

But I think the pro I mean, I think one of the problems when you put a bunch of protein is that like just plain low calorie protein does not really taste good. So you gotta make it taste some way, you gotta cover up the taste with something, and you gotta deal with the texture and all this sort of stuff. So like drinks and bars have been dealing with this for you know many many years, like a long time.

SPEAKER_02 43:47

Yeah, I would exit the bar category, I feel like, as a result. I mean, I used to be in the bar game, yeah, but we had a bar at Primal Kitchen for two lines of bars for a little while, but yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 43:58

Yeah, tell me about tell me about. About the positioning for whey, like I'm I'm interested in like who it's for and like how you were thinking about going to market knowing that like because I talked to a lot of early stage founders and they haven't done the work of like why and why am I making this?

SPEAKER_02 44:15

Yeah. So I I think for me, I was just like a hundred gram protein-seeking millennial mom with three kids, and like I don't even eat three meals a day. Like, I don't think most moms with three kids under the age of seven are like sitting down to breakfast, let's be honest. Yeah. Uh so I was like, okay, what are we doing? We're like, we've got chomps in our purse. We're like, you know, putting cottage cheese and everything. It's like the new cauliflower. We're, you know, prioritizing protein and vegetables at meals. And I'm drinking four LaCroix a day, and it's basically just expensive pee, and it tastes like dirty socks, and it's not doing anything for me. And I learned that clear protein exists, and I was like, what the hell? Put the clear protein in the LaCroix, like make it taste good, and let's call it a day. Like, I don't want to drink any more like dirty sock tasting sparkling water. Like that leaves like it, it just doesn't do anything for me.

SPEAKER_01 45:09

Um, think about dirty socks every time I drink sparkling water now.

SPEAKER_02 45:14

I mean, just like they're not good. You know what I mean? Like, I don't know, they're not good. Like, sure, I drink them if I'm at someone's house, I don't drink anymore. So, like, if I'm at someone's house and we're entertaining and you know, they're entertaining and that's what they have, I drink it. But it's not like something I like am enjoying. So I started to work on it like two years ago, but basically the premise was like, let's make protein like fun, casual, and approachable and like a supplement to an already kind of like healthy, complete diet, not like a, you know, the gym bro consumer is gonna find their 30 gram of protein whatever.

SPEAKER_00 45:48

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 45:49

You know, they're gonna find that. Like, then that's a different person. I'm like selling protein in a different format to probably more of like the chomps consumer, you know, like a female who's looking up her protein, but like doesn't need to have a workout to feel like she deserves it. Like just which honestly, avocado had a similar halo. Like, we didn't need to do a lot of brand education on avocado oil because people knew avocados were healthy, like generally. They were like trending healthy fats from avocado and other like healthy fat sources was just kind of like a macro trend that we thought would continue on. So we didn't need to tell anyone, like, and I think protein has a similar halo. Like, yeah, I don't see protein going away as a macro trend. I just I don't think there's any more well-studied, efficacious macro or micronutrient on earth. Like the data on protein is pretty conclusive. Like, you know, you need it for recovery, you need it if you're pregnant, you need it if you're aging, there's satiety, there's, you know, just muscle retention, there's just all sorts of things that protein does for us that, you know, it's pretty proven at this point. This isn't like, you know, this isn't like acci-e buried 1990 where someone's trying to, some MLM's trying to tell a story on I don't know.

SPEAKER_01 47:11

Yeah, you don't have to market, you don't have to market protein.

SPEAKER_02 47:15

No, it doesn't require a lot of education. It also works and it's been the basis of every diet in existence. Like even the vegans are somewhat obsessed with protein, right? Like, how often do you hear the vegan community tell you, like, but the rice and the beans together, we have a complete source of protein, right?

SPEAKER_01 47:30

So, like you're like, hey man, I didn't even ask you. Like, what tell me about rice and beans right now?

SPEAKER_02 47:36

Yeah, yeah. So I think I don't think it's going anywhere, and I'm a believer in just the the efficaciousness of it.

SPEAKER_01 47:43

So So you're so you're kind of positioned for like I I mean that's a that's a the the pitch is great, I think, is like hey, you're drinking a couple of LaCroix a day, like why not put 10 grams of protein in there?

SPEAKER_02 47:56

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 47:57

It's not like that's 40 grams of that's 40 grams of protein.

SPEAKER_02 48:00

Or 20, you know, you sub one or two, like you don't need to drink four of them a day, but if you're gonna drink four or something a day, like I just feel like in this day and age of Ozempic and like what we know, like we're all like, I don't know, I I don't really like consuming something that does nothing for me is kind of like out, you know, like I don't need to do that.

SPEAKER_01 48:21

What what would you can what do you consider like something that does nothing for you? Like Doritos. Doritos.

SPEAKER_02 48:27

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 48:28

Okay. You know, but quest chips, like Doritos with protein.

SPEAKER_02 48:34

Well, I'm not a quest chips, I'm not a chip no, I I don't know that.

SPEAKER_01 48:39

I'm just playing. I think that the I think that the like um the like hey let me let me make my food do something for me. Like there I do think that there's like an interesting line where you you want to be kind of like on the right side of the line of like this food is still like people still want the food. Like I remember when uh when Magic Spoon like cereal was first on the scene, it was like important that it tasted like cocoa puffs or whatever. Like that was that was like as important as the fact that it had protein in it, was that like people wanted or you know, people enjoyed consuming it still.

SPEAKER_02 49:18

Fair, yeah, yeah. But I think it's really hard to hit that for well, that was primal too. Like we launched our ranch dressing, and I can't, I used to be like a Hidden Valley girl when I was in you know the 80s, and now like I can't even eat that. I think primal tastes better. That's oh, we like it, it has to taste good, like no matter what it is, it has to taste good for sure.

SPEAKER_01 49:38

Well, I don't say that primal, like uh just to say more nice things about you and stuff you've done, like Primal's made a ton of products, and pretty much everything that I've had from Primal Kitchen was still really good. Like, even like the dipping sauces that you guys launched, and this is like well into the craft in into craft times. Like the ingredients were still good, the products were still good. Um, and I agree, like I also uh was a Hidden Valley girl back in the 90s. Like, I was me and me and Aaron disagree about this because she thought ranch dressing was gross, and like I would like I put ranch dressing, I'm from Alabama, and we put ranch dressing on for dressing.

SPEAKER_02 50:19

I mean, I can't eat pizza without ranch dressing, like less.

SPEAKER_01 50:23

Yeah, yeah, same. Like, and it's funny to me that that's a that they're still like, oh, it's salad dressing. It's like, no, it's like ranch dressing for everything, yeah.

SPEAKER_02 50:31

For carrots, yeah, totally.

SPEAKER_01 50:33

Very few people, like if you looked at if I had like a diagram of like what people put ranch on, I would guess it's like five percent salad. Gotta be gotta be wings and pizza first. Anyway, Whey. Have you raised money for Whey yet?

SPEAKER_02 50:49

I did. Last summer I raised like three uh just under three and a half million.

SPEAKER_01 50:54

Okay. And that's a um that's a that's a decent amount for launch. Um I think that one thing that get one thing that maybe like I want to make sure it gets talked about enough is how expensive it is to participate in retail in CPG retail. Yeah. Um so so maybe we can talk about that just for a few minutes. Like, did you did you start way with like a hey, we wanna re-like we're gonna go. It sounds like you launched first with Whole Foods.

SPEAKER_02 51:23

And you've got Yeah, we launched with Whole Foods, but then Sprouts was a quick follow, and then Target came and was like, can we roll out? So it all happened like way faster than I was expecting to give you an idea way faster. We never sold a dollar through the register at Walmart, Costco, or Target until post-acquisition. So imagine that. Like, so then I was looking at all this just really early, fast distribution. So that's it's been fast. But absolutely, I feel like if anyone calls me and they like want to do a CPG company, I'm always like, don't do it. Like if you don't know anything about it, it's almost a billionaire game at this point, George. I don't know if you would agree with me, but like I look at even me, like I raised three and a half million pre-revenue. I'm gonna go out and do another round like this summer, before hopefully the beginning of this summer, which is basically now. But like I look at like brands that are crushing it. It's like David raised 80 million their first year. Good old's I I think they raised a ton of money on a really high valuation super early. Like some of these brands you're seeing that really take off, they have major horsepower, like tens of millions of dollars of horsepower. I think Groons raised 55 their first year. Um, I mean, it's a lot of money. So it's a lot of money.

SPEAKER_01 52:45

Um yeah, but they're raising that money, they're raising that money. I mean, the infrastructure has changed a lot like in the last 20 years. They're raising that money and then deploying it. I mean, I think that the Groons, you know, news, they did that in three years, right? 1.2 billion. That's crazy. But like they started with a lot of money. They started with a lot of experience. Like they didn't come out, yeah, you know, they didn't come out the gate. I mean, like, the three million that you've raised is is peanuts to that, right? Yeah. So it's like it three million is like that like that's kind of the minimum that you need just to like put put like a bare bones team in place. Yeah, yeah, put a bare bones team in place, get some stuff on the shelf. Like, I I will say that I saw uh I saw a deck, and I'm not gonna name any names, but like I saw a deck a couple of weeks ago from like a first-time CPG entrepreneur, and they were like, and they were like, Yeah, here's my you know, here's my projections, and it was like 15% in trade spin. And I was like, 15% for like your for like your year one, my man, 15%.

SPEAKER_02 53:48

Like it's just not enough to account for all the stuff you're primal's trade spend was 12% when we sold the company at 50 million in random.

SPEAKER_01 53:54

But I'm saying, like, what was your year one trade spend?

SPEAKER_02 53:57

It was probably 12 to 15%.

SPEAKER_01 54:00

Okay, well, I'll back off my standards.

SPEAKER_02 54:04

If you're going to launch like tons in conventional grocery and you're paying like a crap load of slotting, and you're like, you know, then I think it can get crazy early. But that, yeah, it's probably not super realistic, but I don't think that's the biggest problem, probably.

SPEAKER_01 54:18

No, that's probably not the biggest problem. That's probably not the best. So I would ag I would agree with you in general in general that it is like um, you know, like to come in and say, like, hey, I've got this family recipe and we're bootstrapping it, and like you don't have a source of capital, like you can still like you can still get some word of mouth. Like, it's not impossible. It just has become way harder if you don't have the money and you're not launching into like, you know, I think like with Mark, like Mark was launching products on top of like a follower base. Like people knew people knew who Mark was. Yeah. He had a he had a follow. Like when we launched, you know, Yellowbird, we were like maybe the last wave of people who could do a few years of bootstrap. But then we had to raise we eventually had to raise money to participate. Yeah. Um when we were like we want to get distribution, we want to grow, you know, we want to grow faster than 10 per 10% a year, right? Like you have to go get money for that stuff.

SPEAKER_02 55:18

Yeah, we never raise money really at Primal. I mean, we did a friends and family round a year before we exited, but we never raised I say we never raised money, we did, but not in the sense of like we raised money to fund Mark's to find benefit program. We exited the company 12 months later. We didn't do like a traditional like growth round. Yeah, we owned Mark and I owned 95% of the company when we sold. So we Mark had a nine million, I think Mark had a $9 million line of credit that he had a personal guarantee on that we ran the business out of.

SPEAKER_01 55:46

So But not everybody can do that.

SPEAKER_02 55:48

Not everybody can do that. He had negative net worth when we sold the company, like the line of credit was higher than his net worth at the time in which we exited.

SPEAKER_01 55:57

So but a week after that, his net worth had, I think, in a positive way.

SPEAKER_02 56:03

Yeah, for sure. That's for sure. But no, not everybody can do that for sure. It is, it's brutal. I saw some posts on LinkedIn this week that was like get it, join CPG where you can like it just laid out just how brutal and horrible it is. And it was like, I was like, oh, I like really resonate with this. But then I'm kind of like, what's easy, George? You know what I mean? Like, I don't know. Like, Mark always used to say, if it were easy, everybody would be doing it. He always used to say that. That was like a mantra of his, like, when we were running. He's like, ah, if it were easy, everybody would be doing it.

SPEAKER_01 56:35

I don't think he coined that, but it is it's one that I love.

SPEAKER_02 56:38

Yeah, no, it was a good reminder. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 56:41

Well, let's let's talk about some of the things that uh suck about it because I think that that like let's just hit them really quick. What are some of the things that suck about uh what were some of the things from this post or some of the things where you're like, hey, because I also if if somebody says like, hey, I want to get into CPG, I'm like, rethink it.

SPEAKER_02 56:57

Yeah, you're like, don't do it.

SPEAKER_01 56:59

Yeah, or I'm like, at least rethink it, right? Because like I do think that like you can come in and have a really outsized impact. And I also I I also am of the opinion that it is really important for people with a moral compass, you know, to come into this industry that's feeding all of us. Like, I do think that it's an important, like we have an important job, right? We're you know, translating between between farmers and consumers, right? People are not going straight to the farm to get their calories and nutrition for the most part. So like there have there's this layer in the middle where we're helping people have access to these things, right? They're um, you know, retailers and brands and all this sort of stuff. But I do think it's really important, but it is also incredibly hard for a bunch of reasons. So, like, what what do you think are some of the things that you know that you would guide people away from it because of?

SPEAKER_02 57:56

Well, it is so capital intention intensive. Margins are razor thin. So you're like every little thing can be.

SPEAKER_01 58:02

For everybody, yeah.

SPEAKER_02 58:04

I mean, unless you're in like a supplement company or like, I don't know, have you seen that dose for your liver business? That's like no insane. Go look them up on Amazon. I was like doing the math yesterday. I'm like, this company's doing fifty doing 50 million on Amazon alone, and I heard they're crushing it at sprouts, but they sell a supplement for a hundred, it's like 99 for a three-bottle supply, 180 for six. I don't know. Um yeah, yeah, it sounds crazy.

SPEAKER_01 58:30

Supplement's probably the the highest margin in CPG, right?

SPEAKER_02 58:34

Yeah, maybe supplements and beauty, I guess, which is why everyone wants to be there. I think beauty's probably maybe higher. Um, I don't know. I'm not a I'm not in either, but yeah, so I think it's like all those things. And then I think this is one area I'm excited about. Like, I feel like in as AI takes over the world, everybody still has to eat. And also, we operate in some real antiquated systems in CPG. Like, I don't think, I think there's just like so much room for AI improvement. Like, if you've ever run or worked at a CPG company, like just dealing with distributors is a nightmare. A lot of these co-men are like, they're amazing, but they're operating in some real janky systems. Everything is like janky and antiquated. So, like, I think the industry's ripe for like some innovation there that maybe we benefit from AI, but people in the end of the day still need to eat. So, you know, I think, I think there's that. And then it's just, it's a, it's like, I don't know, maybe every industry is like this, but it just seems very like like good old, I don't know, there's just like mafia type like takeovers and areas of the business, like in beverage distribution, or even like, you know, you're so constant, you don't have a lot of options on how you go to markets or you're forced to deal with like the bullshit that is UNFI and Kehy and like the deductions that come in there, and the whole thing is just rough.

SPEAKER_01 1:00:04

Have you run into uh with your new like with your new endeavor, have you run into the uh beverage mafia or any of the DSD mafia yet?

SPEAKER_02 1:00:13

I have I'm not DSD yet, so I haven't I haven't played.

SPEAKER_01 1:00:16

But the DSD but the DSD guys are out there. You're in their you're in their uh you're in their in their space.

SPEAKER_02 1:00:23

Yeah. Yeah. I will run in with them. I will either get in bed with them or run in with them for sure. Um, but not yet. Um yeah. We're kind of like broadliner, distributed broadliner for now.

SPEAKER_01 1:00:36

Okay, well before we leave, before I before I give you back the rest of your day, um, what what are some of the th what are some of the things that you're excited about? Like I I agree with you about like the and and I've I feel like I've written about this a lot about the how how CPG Food and Bev seems to be like the last we're we we seem to be like the last people still ordering from like the Sears robot catalog when everybody else is like on Amazon two-day delivery and we're like totally and we're like oh four to six weeks for delivery, I'll write a paper check and it'll be here later. And you're like, no, that's that's crazy. It's crazy some of the antiquated stuff we're still on. Yeah, even in 2026, where it's like we're still getting notices of like, oh, such and such retailers just now getting on EDI. I'm like, EDI was it's like a 20-year-old innovation, right? We're just now we're now that we now that the world's got AI, we're just now getting on, like we're tra we're trading documents. Hey, this distributor can trade documents electronically. Now I'm like fucking okay, great.

SPEAKER_02 1:01:37

Welcome to 19 like 98.

SPEAKER_01 1:01:40

Yeah, right.

SPEAKER_02 1:01:40

It's like yeah, so I they got their they upgraded their dial up modem. Um, yeah, now it's crazy. So what am what things am I excited about too?

SPEAKER_01 1:01:49

What are you excited about in the industry? Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 1:01:51

You know, I think we're at this like peak uh like phase of kind of just mass awareness around health and wellness. And so I think I'm most excited just about where the industry's going. And like you used to launch some really like clean label, healthy product, and like you'd hope enough people like would want it or know about it. And I think like I I remember watching Food Inc. in the movie theater, and the big takeaway from that was like you're all every time you buy something, you're voting with your dollars for like what you want out in the universe, right? And so like I think it's cool to live in a time where even versus when we launched Primal Kitchen, there's just so many more, such a higher percentage of the population that's like actually paying attention to what they're putting in their body. And so, you know, Gatorade launched like a dye free, artificial colors and flavors-free 75% less sugar version of Gatorade that my kids were excited about. Like, and I I was like, it's it has 11 grams of sugar in the huge thing, right? Like five and half the bottle. And it's got stevia and but like, I don't know. I'm here for it. Like, I don't want my kid, my kids are getting Gatorade at the Little League field. I don't have any control over that shit. So, like, the more and more, I'm not so precious about who needs to sell the better for you products. I think a lot of people in this industry can be like, screw the man. We only want like the little guys to be able to do it right. Like, I'm here for the big guys doing it right too, because like I think that just has just a mass impact on how we're all eating and drinking.

SPEAKER_01 1:03:25

The big guys are gonna buy the little guys anyway, so like Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 1:03:29

Yeah. But I like to see they're paying attention too. So anyway.

SPEAKER_01 1:03:33

Well, what are you what are you, Morgan? What are you doing with the rest of your day today?

SPEAKER_02 1:03:37

I have calls until one, and then I'm gonna there's a book sale at the library, so I'm taking my seven-year-old after school to the book sale. I was excited about that. I found out on the way to school. Um, and my straight backtrack calls after this to one, and then a few hours free. Pick up the kids, do dinner.

SPEAKER_01 1:03:54

Space it. A busy day, a busy day, and you're a busy lady. Uh, thank you so much for making some time for me today. I really appreciate it. I've loved uh getting the chance to talk with you.

SPEAKER_02 1:04:04

Thanks, George. Good to chat with you too.

SPEAKER_01 1:04:07

Um, thank you guys for tuning in uh for this conversation and for all of our conversations. Please keep coming back. Uh, give Gross to Nut uh 18 stars out of five in the podcast app of your choice. And uh tune in. We'll talk to you later, and we love you. Bye.