John Craven

NextFoods, Inc. ,Parents of GoodBelly+ Cheribundi just raised $10M led by ECP Growth If you build in functional CPG, this is a great mini case study in how growth actually gets funded and what operators should pay attention to. 1) Doors matter… but turns are the business They’re reportedly sitting at 24,000+ points of distribution nationwide and grew footprint about 10% in the last two months. That’s solid. But here’s the real lesson: door growth only works if velocity shows up. 2) A brand refresh can be a revenue lever (when it creates clarity) GoodBelly’s recent packaging/brand refresh was tied to a reported 40%+ lift in retail velocities. “Brand” isn’t colors and fonts it’s speed of understanding at shelf. If a shopper gets it faster, conversion goes up. Period. 3) The shot category is crowded so specificity wins GoodBelly reformulated its 2oz Wellness Shots and launched them nationally at Whole Foods. The formula callout that jumped out to me: 3g of prebiotic fiber. The lesson: in crowded formats, you can’t be “general wellness.” You need to own a job (gut, sleep, recovery) and build your product + messaging around that single outcome. 4) Innovation + retail expansion is the 1–2 punch They’re aiming that capital at innovation across gut health, recovery, and sleep, while also pushing deeper into national retail. And there’s more in the pipeline: they’ve previewed a quart-sized GoodBelly item with 11g plant-based protein targeted for Q1 2026. My founder takeaway: capital doesn’t fix a business it amplifies it. If your positioning is crisp and your product delivers, funding helps you scale faster. If not, it just helps you burn faster. If you were deploying $10M in functional CPG heading into 2026, what’s first: velocity, innovation, or sharper positioning? #CPG #FunctionalBeverages #Wellness #TrevorHague

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The Open Food Company is bolstering its leadership bench as it kicks off a $3 million seed round to scale its “radically transparent” CPG platform. 💼📈 The open-source holding company has appointed former CAVA Group CFO Jonathan Clark as fractional CFO and tapped creative veteran Matthew Langille as strategic advisor. Clark, who previously guided Honest Tea through its acquisition by Coca-Cola, will steer financial strategy and fundraising as the company eyes omnichannel expansion and new brand launches beyond its debut product, Harry’s Famous Sauce. Founded in 2024 by Renée Guilbault and actor Harry Hamlin, the company positions transparency as a competitive advantage—publishing detailed testing and nutrition data alongside its retail rollout at Gelson’s. With plans to expand into marinades, dressings, spices and more, the next chapter is already taking shape. 🌿🥫 Link to the full story in the first comment below 👇 #CPG #FoodIndustry #StartupFunding #Leadership #FoodTransparency #BetterForYou #RetailExpansion

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Important discussion shared by PeakBridge on ultra-processed foods and the clean-label movement that is growing louder. But one surprising reality is rarely discussed: Most “vanilla flavor” used in food products is not real vanilla. Not because companies don’t want to use it — but because natural vanilla supply has historically been too fragile, volatile, and limited to support global demand. For decades, the industry filled this gap with synthetic flavor systems. If the food industry is truly moving toward cleaner labels and real ingredients, then the ingredient supply chains behind them must evolve as well. At Vanilla Vida, our mission is to help enable that shift by building a scalable and reliable natural vanilla supply chain — combining controlled farming and industrial curing to bring stability to a historically unpredictable crop. #TheVanillaParadox

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The Foodservice Opportunity: Breaking Free from Retail's Margin Squeeze: For many CPG brands, retail margins are under relentless pressure. Slotting fees, private label competition, and constant promotional demands make profitability elusive. But there's an alternative: FOODSERVICE. According to foodservice expert Ed Zimmerman, founder of The Food Connector, the smart move is building foodservice channels while your retail business is still healthy, not as a last resort. A single foodservice deal—an airline contract, corporate cafeteria, or hotel group—can represent the volume of hundreds of retail stores combined. The real advantage? Those manufacturing efficiencies benefit your entire business, improving margins across all channels. Brands like Kellogg's, Perfect Bar, and Lesser Evil have cracked this code by repurposing existing products in new packaging formats to unlock million-dollar revenue streams while strengthening their retail competitiveness. Three Key Takeaways: 1. Start exploring foodservice before you're in crisis mode. Expanding while your retail business remains healthy gives you stronger negotiating power with foodservice partners. 2. Foodservice volume transforms your entire cost structure. Manufacturing efficiencies from large contracts flow back to improve retail margins, creating a compounding advantage. 3. Work with experienced foodservice guides. The channel operates differently from retail. Experts like Ed Zimmerman can help you avoid costly mistakes and accelerate success. Read the full post at: https://lnkd.in/e7g54caX Ed Zimmerman Hannah Feldman Matt Fry Brooks Nguyen Thaddeus Thorne Sadie Olsen Amy Zitelman Julie Garber (Ozlek) Phillip Oakley Ron Mills Ian Navarro Jeffrey Landsman Mike Schall Brittney Cook Katie Myers Lloyd Oshiro

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One thing I appreciated in my conversation with Paul Weaver was the operator’s lens behind the headline. Paul directly addresses whether Big Alcohol and the 🌿 industry are enemies; and argues that Boston Beer’s participation makes it an ally for regulated access. For founders and beverage teams, the broader lesson is that category growth still has to meet product quality, regulatory durability, and a defendable reason to win.

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The U.S. wine category is shrinking. Bonanza Cabernet keeps growing anyway. That's worth looking at if you're in any business where the category is moving against you. U.S. wine sales fell roughly 6% in 2024 (SipSource). Wine Intelligence (acquired by IWSR) forecasts volume dropping at -2% CAGR through 2027, faster than the -1% pace from 2017 to 2022. Regular wine drinkers aged 21-34 fell from 29% of the base to 23% between 2019 and 2023. The board decks all have the same sad category chart right now. And then a $20 Cabernet from the Caymus Vineyards family just keeps taking share. According to Impact Databank, Bonanza launched at 131,000 cases in the U.S. in 2020 and has added 60,000 to 80,000 cases every year since. Double-digit volume growth. The category was falling the whole time. We dug into how. Four things stood out. 1. They priced against the occasion, not the shelf position. Bonanza lives where a weeknight steak dinner lives. Around $20. The slot was crowded but no one held it with real winemaking credibility behind them. Silicon Valley Bank's 2025 State of the Wine Industry report found the top quartile of premium wineries grew revenue 22% in 2024. The value-with-credibility window is open. Has been for a while. 2. They borrowed trust rather than building it cold. Chuck Wagner's name is on it. Decades of Caymus equity, spent carefully on a value tier without pulling the flagship down with it. That's genuinely hard to do. Heritage brands tend to hoard the halo or blow it. Bonanza did neither. 3. They dropped the rules the buyer never cared about. No vintage on the label. No single appellation. They blend across California lots to hit a consistent taste profile every time. Wine people were unhappy about this. Buyers at Costco Wholesale and Total Wine & More were not. The person grabbing a bottle on a Tuesday just wanted it to taste the same as last time. Bonanza built for that person. The consistency thing is probably the most transferable idea here for anyone building a consumer brand outside wine. 4. Supply structure did the real work. Multi-region sourcing means they buy fruit where the value sits each year. Cost structure moves with the market. A Napa-only brand at that price can't follow. The wine world sells vintage variation as romance. The grocery shopper reads it as inconsistency. Bonanza picked a side and moved on. A declining category and a growing brand at the same time. It's not rare, actually. For any team staring at a flat or shrinking market: the category number is an average. Find the occasion that wasn't priced for. Use trust you already have. Ignore the rules your customer never knew existed. What brand in your category is pulling this off? Drop it below. If this is useful, follow me on LinkedIn. We do this regularly across growth, transformation, and value creation. #WineIndustry #BrandGrowth #MarketStrategy #ConsumerInsights

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