The Startup CPG Podcast · 22 Sept 2020 · 26m · Episode 10
Mariam Elghani, founder of Garlic Goodness, explains how she scaled her family’s Lebanese garlic dip recipe from a Silicon Valley restaurant to retail shelves in California. She details the strategic decision to remove egg whites to make the product plant-based, a change that expanded her market while maintaining the original flavor profile through extensive kitchen trials. Elghani also discusses her collaboration with FoodRise Marketing for a rebrand that differentiated her SKUs by color and secured her first major retail win at Erewhon.
early-stage companies
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S'well founder Sarah Kauss joins Guy Raz to advise three early-stage founders on positioning and growth. She helps Chiara Moonzi of Chigi navigate grocery placement for a chickpea-based hot cereal, Jesús Rualcaba of Paper Tacos expand his Latino-inspired greeting cards beyond specialty stores, and Adam Barker of Bolt Skin and Shave determine his growth strategy for a razor brand targeting men who shave their legs.
Ben Goodwin, co-founder of the prebiotic soda brand Olipop, joins Guy Raz to answer calls from early-stage founders. Goodwin advises Darren Alpert of Gheelish on how to market ghee-based snacks by prioritizing taste over ingredient education, and helps Sarah Godfrey of Sarah's Gluten Free Goods navigate the scaling challenges of fresh, allergen-safe baked goods. He also counsels John Groner of the Bexley Natural Foods co-op on revitalizing sales through community engagement and curation rather than e-commerce.
Nima and Salma Fotovat, along with their sister Saba, recount how they rebuilt their business after losing their family's co-packing company, Taste of Nature, in a 2012 buyout. They launched MadeGood, an allergen-free organic snack brand, by financing a $2 million factory with personal assets and bank loans. The episode details their early struggles, including manually reworking 200,000 mislabeled bars with alcohol wipes, and their strategy of saying 'yes' to difficult retailer requests to gain traction in Whole Foods and Costco.
Scott Norton and Mark Ramadan, co-founders of Sir Kensington's, explain how they used a fictional British aristocrat backstory to differentiate their gourmet ketchup from Heinz. After struggling to gain traction with ketchup alone, they launched a premium mayonnaise line that became the company's primary revenue driver, enabling them to scale and eventually sell to Unilever for $140 million. The episode details their early prototyping, distribution challenges, and the co-founder tensions that arose during scaling.
Guy Raz interviews Becca Millstein of Fishwife, Brian Rudolph of Banza, and Caue Suplicy of Barnana about the early stages of building their food businesses. Millstein explains how she leveraged social media and distinctive packaging to launch Fishwife as a direct-to-consumer brand during the pandemic. Rudolph details Banza’s journey from a kitchen prototype to securing a major retail deal with Meijer, despite catastrophic manufacturing failures with chickpea pasta. Suplicy describes bootstrapping Barnana by sourcing co-packers and initially rejecting large orders from retailers like Wegmans due to capacity constraints.
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