Benjamin Witte

A year ago, AI in CPG felt experimental. Today, it’s mainstream and the numbers prove it: 71% of CPG leaders now say they use AI in at least one part of their business. 69% of CPG/retail companies report it’s already lifting revenue. The AI in CPG market is forecasted to grow from $2.5B in 2023 to $86B+ by 2033. And this isn’t theory, big players are already putting it to work: 👉 Mondelēz International is using AI to design new snacks and cut R&D time by 80%. 👉 The Clorox Company (Hidden Valley Ranch) is testing generative AI to speed up campaign ideas. 👉 Unilever & General Mills are using AI to sharpen supply chains and reduce waste. 👉 Beauty leaders like The Estée Lauder Companies Inc. (via Perfect Corp.) are turning AI into personalized digital try-ons. The lesson: AI isn’t replacing the human side of CPG, it’s making our decisions sharper and faster. Founders who combine instinct with AI-driven foresight will run ahead of the pack. #trevorhague #cpg #artificialintelligence #AI #foodandbeverage

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Scaling from zero to $XXXM in CPG is the dream for many. It can’t happen without a world-class ops strategy and ops leader. That’s where Tara Foster comes in. Tara was part of the founding team (and COO) at nutpods where she helped grow the company into the #2 plant-based creamer brand. Today she is the COO at Evergreen Waffles, a really cool better-for-you waffle brand. Tara joined Shelf Help: The Tactical CPG Podcast to break down all things ops. From evaluating partners and negotiating coman agreements to scaling production without losing control, she unpacks what most brands get wrong about COGS, how to manage risk through supplier redundancy, how ops teams evolve as brands scale, what she learned from bumpier moments like warehouse moves and formulation changes, and why continuous improvement is key. Episode Highlights: 🥥 Scaling nutpods to a nine-figure brand 🏭 What to look for in a great co-manufacturer ⚠️ “Take or pay” clauses and how to avoid them 🚚 Hidden costs that destroy your margin 📦 Packaging decisions that drive retail success 📉 Redundancy and de-risking the supply chain 📊 Forecasting COGS with real-world benchmarks 🚀 When it does make sense to vertically integrate 👥 Hiring your first ops lead vs. building a full team 🧇 Evergreen’s mission to clean up frozen breakfast The link to the full episode is in the comments. Make sure to follow on Apple, Spotify and Youtube to be the first to know when a new episode drops. Keep an eye out for clips of all the key highlights.

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Runway extension if eCommerce scales. The eCommerce rollout plugs high consideration direct to consumer (DTC) products into AppLovin's uniquely high attention mobile gaming inventory (30-60s video), a format that is better suited than social feeds for educating and persuading consumers on differentiated products (health & wellness, apparel/beauty, home & garden). In our October deep dive, we modeled $2.7bn CY26 eCommerce net revenue on ~$6.7bn ad spend, grounded in site level inspection of ~400 merchants and category fit analysis. That new S curve sits atop a mobile gaming ads engine that continues to execute, thereby materially extending APP's growth runway.

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The Five Hidden Superpowers Of a Celebrity Co-Founder A pre-revenue brand just landed a $50M valuation and premium Target shelf space in 90 days. Not because of their product. Not because of their team. Because their celebrity co-founder made three phone calls. After analyzing 1,000+ celebrity-founded brands at HotStart VC, I discovered something that changes everything: The average celebrity co-founder delivers 12x more value through their network than through their social media. Yet 90% of founders still pitch celebrities like they're hiring influencers. The smartest brands understand that celebrity co-founders aren't just marketing channels. They're strategic partners who can: - Get you into major retail in months instead of years - Negotiate supplier terms that save millions - Generate media coverage without PR spend - Create investor FOMO that multiplies valuations - Broker partnerships that would take years to orchestrate One phone call from the right celebrity can be worth more than 100 million impressions. Because in a world where anyone can run Facebook ads and everyone has the same Shopify access, competitive advantages come from what money can't buy: Relationships. Trust. Access to parallel business universes that operate by different rules. The celebrity co-founders who understand this aren't just the faces of brands anymore. They're the architects of unfair advantages. In this week's newsletter, I break down the 5 hidden superpowers of celebrity co-founders and show you exactly how to unlock their $100M network value. https://lnkd.in/eSuw3qE8

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Manufacturing empathy as competitive advantage. Emily Cole Groden did something most CPG founders skip. She self-produced Evergreen Waffles for a full year before outsourcing. That resulted in a deep empathy for how hard manufacturing actually is. "I pride myself in having really strong relationships with our manufacturers because I did it for a year. I recognize it's the hardest part of the business." This isn't just feel-good relationship stuff. When you understand the physical reality of making your product, you can innovate in ways that are "appropriately tethered to reality." You ask better questions. You riff on formulations without breaking physics. You build partnerships that actually last. If you're iterating on product but you've never made it yourself, you're missing a layer of knowledge that could unlock everything. Full conversation: https://lnkd.in/gbS_tnck

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You can have customers saying nice things and still not have product market fit. Andy Greenfield, partner at TIA Ventures, spent decades doing qualitative research for major CPG brands. He pioneered a methodology to separate polite responses from visceral pain. Getting different audiences together in panels to understand if products were solving real problems. When they'd do these panels, they'd try to get to one specific question: "If this product were taken away tomorrow, would your life be okay or couldn't you live without it?" That's a very different question than "do you like this product?" Jesse Caesar from First Round Capital explains the difference: "If you want to know what your target is doing or how much, go for quantitative research. But if you want to know why they're doing it, or why they believe what they believe, qualitative research gets you that depth of perspective." Most founders confuse customers being polite with customers who actually care. It’s much easier to do that vs facing hard truths sometimes. You ask someone about your product and they'll say "Yeah, this is super useful." But when you dig deeper with the right questions, you realize they don't actually care that much. I can’t overstate the value of qualitative user research whether investing or building a product myself. Talking to 10 customers with very specific questions to gauge how important the problem really is.  It’s also very helpful to cross reference this with quantitative metrics with tools like PostHog or Mixpanel. “Trust but verify”. The real magic is when you do both of these things in concert. For example, a client you interview may say “I really love using your feature that lets me do XYZ” and they may be very specific about the value it delivers…so it may seem like a totally credible piece of feedback, but then when you look in PostHog or any user analytics platform, you see that they’ve only used the feature once. So this begs the question “if you find feature XYZ so valuable, why have you only used it once in the past month?”  This gap is often the difference between a company that scales and one that plateaus.

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Huxley’s only 1-star review on Amazon says: “I like Celsius better.” No product complaint. No quality issue. Just a preference. That’s the best competitive problem a young CPG brand can have. here’s how they earned it in 24 months: In March 2024, Simon launches an energy drink into 3 Twin Cities co-ops. 8 months later, Target Minnesota picks up all 3 SKUs. Most better for you brands chase mass retail for 3+ years. Simon Solis-Cohen did it in under one but kept it local. But the real story is Simon's unique background... Simon trained at the Culinary Institute of America. Cooked in Michelin-starred kitchens in NY + Napa. He built a digital agency that served wine industry, a category where taste IS the product. Then he stood in front of the energy drink shelf + saw the gap nobody was filling. Energy drinks are one of the only beverage categories where is seems like taste isn’t the leading factor in R&D His thesis was simple. Build something delicious. Lead with the sip, not the stimulant. Keep it clean label. So he formulated Huxley around cascara. The dried husk of the coffee cherry. The part most coffee processors throw out as waste. 90mg caffeine. 5g added organic cane sugar. Real fruit juice. Zero artificial sweeteners. Then he took it to Costco roadshows. Sample tables. A $3 can sitting on a market trained to grab the $2.49 Celsius next to it. His line about what happens at the table: “Their eyes widen a little bit, + they’re like, ’That actually tastes good.’” That reaction is what they're aiming to scale. A few more receipts from the last 24 months: → Won the UNFI Vegas Pitch Slam. → Full rebrand with Bex Brands after retailers said the original can was underselling the functional benefits. → CA, AZ + TX expansion teed up for 2026. → Partnered with Basemakers to drive retail sales velocity + execution → Stated goal on record: build the next billion-dollar energy drink brand. The energy aisle is the most violent shelf in CPG. >250 new energy launches in the last 12 months alone (NIQ). Most lead with stimulation. A handful lead with sugar-free. Few lead with: taste it first, then we’ll talk like Simon. Excited to watch the continued evolution of Huxley!

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Three hard-earned, non-traditional lessons from scaling a CPG brand: 1/ Stop bragging about how many stores you’re in Store count is a vanity metric. Velocity is the scoreboard. If you’re in 1,000 stores doing 1 unit per week, you don’t have a distribution win. You have a slow death. Early on, I chased doors. It cost us. Focus on winning one store at a time. Crush velocity. Make buyers reorder because they have to — not because you pitched them well. Distribution follows performance. 2/ This industry is smaller than you think That person you trashed at a tradeshow? Two years later they might be the buyer reviewing your line sheet. This business is tight. Word travels. Take the high road. Always. Your reputation compounds — for you or against you. 3/ There’s a fine line between genius and insanity When we launched in a pouch, veterans told me it would never work. Now people call it brilliant. The difference? We figured out how to manufacture it at scale. If your “innovation” only works in a commercial kitchen but collapses in real production… that’s not genius. That’s a hobby. Ignore the noise. But pressure-test your idea against scale early. Can it run on real equipment? Can it hit margin? Can it survive 100,000 units a day? Are you reliant on only 1 co-packer? If not, fix that before you fall in love with it. #cpg #smallbusiness #entrepreneurship

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Launching a CPG brand in NYC? Buckle upppppppppp!!!!!!!! There are few markets in the country that give you the kind of instant feedback loop this city does. It’s fast. It’s expensive. And it can be one hell of a brand-building city if you do it right. Here’s the reality: Independent retailers and bodegas are a blessing and a curse. If you’ve got a grab-and-go product (think beverage, snack, RTD, ice cream novelties), these doors can give you serious velocity and local awareness. But if your product requires storytelling, education, or long shelf life, it’s not going to work. Bodegas need an active street team to sell through. No sell-through, no reorder. Core retailers in NYC give you something most cities don’t: • No rigid category resets. • Ability to demo frequently. • Real-time feedback loops. • Speed. Some strong NYC retailers: • Morton Williams • Westside Market • Key Food • Citarella • Foragers • Fairway • Brooklyn Fare • Gourmet Garage • Union Market • Erewhon (coming soon) Butttttttttt— the city is expensive DSD costs. Sampling costs. Demo costs. So if you’re launching here: • Have a tight plan. • Lock in your operating budget. • And know exactly what “success” looks like for your test. NYC can build your brand faster than almost anywhere else… or burn cash just as fast if you don’t have a strategy. What are your favorite NYC doors to launch in? Best plan? Best players to work with?

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Early-stage CPG is awkward: - Nobody knows who you are - You're too small to matter to distributors - Retailers want data you don’t have - Investors want traction when there's no track record So you do the stuff that doesn't screenshot very well: - haul a folding table + heavy coolers on the subway - sample for 15 people, hearing “I hate pickle juice” twice - send cold emails into the void - rework the formula after production headaches - obsess over margin math No matter how anyone makes it look online, early-stage CPG isn't glamorous. It's mostly a grind. That said, it’s pretty wild to hold a Rally shot and know it exists because you just kept going. #cpg #foodandbeverage #entrepreneurship

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RNDC just handed over $6 billion in distribution to Reyes Beverage Group, and Southern Glazer's is acquiring everything else in sight. Here's what it means: RNDC, the second largest wine and spirits distributor in the US, has lost Brown-Forman and Tito's, exited California entirely last summer (~$2 billion in annual revenue), and is now selling 11 states to Reyes Beverage Group in a deal worth approximately $6 billion in revenue. More than 50% of their total business, gone by the end of May. At the same time, Southern Glazer's just acquired Clare Rose, the dominant distributor on Long Island serving 4,500+ accounts, months after absorbing Anheuser-Busch's entire NYC distribution operation. They're already in 47 markets doing roughly $26 billion a year, and they're STILL buying. So we’re seeing the two largest wine and spirits distributors in the country moving in completely opposite directions. One is consolidating aggressively, the other dismantling, and the brands caught in the middle are paying for it. Everyone in the industry felt the shockwave when RNDC pulled out of California last summer. But what most people still haven't drawn is a clear conclusion from what separated the brands that were picked up immediately from those that were left behind. If you look closely, the deciding factor was clearly brands with strong per-store, per-week velocity across all their doors. Because when your distribution infrastructure disappears overnight, velocity is your only leverage, and these larger distributors added 1000s of stale, slow-moving brands over the last decade that they should have released long ago. That’s why we underwrite velocity at Top Shelf before anything else. A brand doing $100+ per store per week across 500+ doors will always find a distributor, while any brand without that data is one bad quarterly review away from getting dropped with no good options.

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I run growth for five CPG clients and have quietly taken them from 0 to 100M+ views. This is my 4-step playbook that anyone could copy: The method is simple - but every step matters and most founders skip the parts that actually drive the results. Step 1/ Seed dozens of small creators. Not influencers. Not anyone with a following you'd recognize. Small TikTok accounts, often new ones, often creators who've never worked with a brand before. The goal isn't borrowed audience. It's volume of native content from people who feel like real users. Step 2/ Pay them per video and bonus them for volume. A flat fee per post sets a floor. The real lift comes from posting bonuses - extra cash if they hit 100K+ views in a month. You want creators making content constantly, testing angles, finding the hooks that land. Step 3/ Pull every video into your paid channels. This is the part most founders miss. The creator content isn't just for organic. You're solving your creative bottleneck and unlocking infinite ad angles in one move. Every video becomes a paid test. Step 4/ Scale spend on what's working - and keep paying creators on conversions. The creators whose videos drive sales should keep earning when those videos run as ads. Tie them to the upside. They'll keep producing. That's the whole playbook. But here's why most founders running it get nothing back: They pick creators based on follower count or rate card. They don't think about whether the creator's existing content feels like a natural home for the product. When the fit is right, the videos don't feel like ads. They feel like a creator discovering something new. The FYP rewards that and customers trust it. The brand actually compounds. When the fit is wrong, you're paying 50 people to make 50 obvious sponsorships. The algorithm punishes them. The budget evaporates. The method is the easy part. The taste it takes to cast the right creators, write the right briefs, and kill the videos that aren't working before they eat your spend - that's the part you can't shortcut. That's why this works for five of my CPG clients and falls apart for most agencies running the same steps.

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Last week I wrote that the way forward for Beyond Meat (and honestly, for many struggling CPG brands) isn’t more SKUs, more flavors, or louder marketing. It’s one clean SKU. This week, Beyond Meat enters the beverage space. That’s not random. That’s strategy. When a category gets crowded, margins compress, and consumers get confused, the winning move isn’t expansion, it’s simplification. One product. Clear use case. Clean label. Easy adoption. Repeat purchase. Food to beverage is a smart pivot: • Lower friction than center-of-plate replacements • Higher frequency consumption • Easier integration into daily routines • Stronger pathway to functional positioning Beverages are where ingredients win. Where brand trust compounds. Where you can scale distribution without fighting the dinner table. This is the same pattern we’ve seen before: Brands don’t die because they lack innovation. They die because they overcomplicate before they earn the right to expand. One SKU done right can rebuild relevance, margins, and narrative. Then, and only then, you build the platform. Good move. Now execution matters. Chess, not checkers. Congratulations team Beyond Meat. I applaud the move!

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Once Upon a Farm filing for IPO is great news for the CPG ecosystem A few quick takes after reading the S-1: - Growth beyond pouches: 22% of revenue and 50% of growth coming from relatively new products (including Tractor Wheels - my daughter’s all-time fav) is impressive. If you asked me 5y ago for O’Farm’s biggest risks, being stuck in pouches and the fridge would have been top of the list - Valuable consumer: their customer base accounted for $78 billion in aggregate LTM retail sales — with only 4.4% household penetration, this speaks to O’Farm resonating with a consumer very willing to premiumize the set for the right brand / product attributes - Brand feels bigger than the business: $200m of LTM sales is no joke — esp since they were at $8m just 6.5y ago — but it’s less than I expected. Part of this is the national advertising campaigns that result from Jen Garner’s platform. Still, my gut says this business has room to run (definitely door count, also SKUs) - Cash burn: Growing this fast off a large base is not cheap — it requires a big team and a lot of marketing $ (top of funnel and in store). Still, I expect this to be the biggest push that O’Farm will get: when will the operating leverage show up? At $200m in sales, I would have expected them to be breakeven… - Scarcity of public emerging CPG: O’Farm will be the first pure play health & wellness food stock. There are very few ways for investors to play the biggest megatrend in consumer: healthier, emerging brands taking share from large CPG. In the public markets, you have energy drinks (Monster, Celsius), plant-based (Oatly, Beyond Meat). Above all else (incl a CEO with public co experience and a currency for M&A) I think this is the case for O’Farm going public rather than selling to big food Congrats to John Foraker, Jen Garner, Cassandra Curtis, Ari Raz & the O’Farm team / Jared Jacobs & the CAVU team

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💥 The biggest drinks acquisition story of the year isn’t a bourbon brand or a celebrity tequila. It’s a boxed party punch that started as a business-school project — and is now on the verge of being acquired by Anheuser-Busch for $700 million, based on a report from the Wall Street Journal. BeatBox Beverages is a case study in how cultural relevance, distribution strategy, and community building can turn a niche idea into a generational brand. Here’s why ABI wants it — and what every drinks founder should take away: 🔶 𝗧𝗵𝗲𝘆 𝗯𝘂𝗶𝗹𝘁 𝘁𝗵𝗲 𝗽𝗿𝗼𝗱𝘂𝗰𝘁 𝗮𝗿𝗼𝘂𝗻𝗱 𝗼𝗰𝗰𝗮𝘀𝗶𝗼𝗻𝘀, 𝗻𝗼𝘁 𝗳𝗼𝗿𝗺𝗮𝘁𝘀. BeatBox didn’t try to win the wine category. They didn’t chase “better-for-you” or premium cues. They chased fun — music festivals, tailgates, nightlife, sporting events. On Shark Tank, Mark Cuban understood this a decade ago: “You don’t sell wine, you sell fun.” 🔶 𝗧𝗵𝗲𝘆 𝘁𝗮𝗽𝗽𝗲𝗱 𝗶𝗻𝘁𝗼 𝗚𝗲𝗻 𝗭’𝘀 𝗱𝗲𝘀𝗶𝗿𝗲 𝗳𝗼𝗿 𝗳𝗹𝗮𝘃𝗼𝗿, 𝘃𝗮𝗹𝘂𝗲, 𝗮𝗻𝗱 𝘀𝗵𝗮𝗿𝗲𝗮𝗯𝗶𝗹𝗶𝘁𝘆. The 500ml Tetra Pak wasn’t a packaging trick — it was the unlock. At about $4–$5 per unit and 11.1% ABV, it gives younger legal-age drinkers what they want: Flavor exploration, value, and something you can pass around with friends. 🔶 𝗧𝗵𝗲𝘆 𝗯𝘂𝗶𝗹𝘁 𝗮 𝗹𝗶𝗳𝗲𝘀𝘁𝘆𝗹𝗲 𝗯𝗿𝗮𝗻𝗱, 𝗻𝗼𝘁 𝗷𝘂𝘀𝘁 𝗮𝗻 𝗥𝗧𝗗. BeatBox over-indexes with millennial and Gen Z drinkers, Hispanic and African American consumers, and the festival-going audience — but half their customers are over 40. Their Discord community has thousands of superfans coordinating real-world meetups (!!), which is unheard of in beverage alcohol. 🔶 𝗧𝗵𝗲𝘆 𝘂𝗻𝗱𝗲𝗿𝘀𝘁𝗼𝗼𝗱 𝘁𝗵𝗲 𝗿𝗲𝗮𝗹 𝗰𝘂𝘀𝘁𝗼𝗺𝗲𝗿: 𝗗𝗶𝘀𝘁𝗿𝗶𝗯𝘂𝘁𝗼𝗿𝘀. Most brands talk about consumer pull. BeatBox rebuilt its entire distribution architecture from scratch, leaving wine and spirits distributors for beer houses that could service convenience stores. That was the turning point that unlocked real velocity and national scale. 🔶 𝗔𝗻𝗱 𝘁𝗵𝗲𝘆 𝘀𝗰𝗮𝗹𝗲𝗱 𝘁𝗵𝗲 𝗵𝗮𝗿𝗱 𝘄𝗮𝘆 — 𝘄𝗶𝘁𝗵𝗼𝘂𝘁 𝗲𝘅𝗰𝗲𝘀𝘀𝗶𝘃𝗲 𝗰𝗮𝗽𝗶𝘁𝗮𝗹. BeatBox raised about $24 million total, far less than many fast-growth RTD brands — yet still built a 12-million-case, $100-million-plus business with triple-digit annual growth. That discipline makes them an especially attractive target for a strategic buyer. ABI’s reported interest is simple: They need brands that resonate with younger legal-age drinkers. BeatBox has what legacy alcohol desperately wants — cultural relevance, flavor leadership, and community at scale. It’s not just a potential acquisition. It’s a signal. The brands winning the next decade won’t be the most premium. They’ll be the most connected. Listen to the Business of Drinks episode with Beatbox co-founder and CEO Justin Fenchel for the story behind how this brand was built. 👇 #BusinessOfDrinks #RTDs #GenZConsumers #BeverageInnovation Scott Rosenbaum Caroline Lamb

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Let's dispel the myth of the overnight success in CPG. I often hear people say that company just came out of nowhere and now they are having this huge exit. The reality is the founder, team and investors have toiled away in obscurity for many years before that huge exit. I think the reason think they are an overnight success is because of the frequency illusion. Once you notice something or are focused on that thing, you will see it a lot more. In the last few years before an exit, it feels like the brand is everywhere because they have finally hit strong brand awareness and we notice them more. Let's not belittle all the blood, sweat and tears that the founder and team put into building the company by calling them an overnight success. There are no overnight successes in CPG Here are some examples of the time from founding to exit for many of the larger exits over the past year: Bachan's (12 years) Beatbox Bev (14 years) Daily Harvest (10 years) Dr. Squatch (12 years) Good Culture (10 years) Good Crisp (10 years) Once Upon a Farm (10 years) Poppi (10 years) Siete (11 years) Simple Mills (12 years)

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There’s a major shakeup happening in alcohol distribution. Here's what you need to know and why it matters 👇 Last week, Brown-Forman announced it was ending its long-time partnership with RNDC. This comes right after Tito’s switched its California distribution from RNDC to Reyes, a beer distributor. Earlier this year, Sazerac made a similar move. These changes are a big deal. Distributor relationships in this business are deep, complex, and worth billions. Changing partners means overhauling logistics, sales ops, compliance, and more. So, why now? Alcohol companies are finally going on offense. For decades, the industry enjoyed steady, predictable growth. The same playbooks worked year after year, and few felt pressure to shake things up. But COVID and the post-COVID reset changed all that. The old strategies aren't working anymore. Suppliers will continue to get more aggressive in refining their route to market and adjusting their portfolios through M&A. Distributors are being scrutinized. Some are stepping up to become better partners. Others are falling behind. This is a pivotal moment. Expect bold, strategic moves to be rewarded. Expect stagnation to be punished. More major moves are coming. The next generation of winners will be the ones that adapt fastest and execute with clarity. The alcohol business remains one of the most lucrative and resilient categories out there. The real question is who has the guts and vision to seize the moment. I’ll be watching closely. This is where it gets interesting 👀 CC Top Shelf Ventures

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