Mason Arnold

Once the Baby’s Asleep: A CPG Founder’s Note 🌙 My mind has been completely taken over by COGs today! The cost of goods for creating a CPG product is one of the most important factors in creating a profitable product, yet it’s also so important to use good quality ingredients and create a product that actually tastes amazing. I’ve been having a really difficult time getting my COGs down, mainly for my Fudgy Brownie Baking Mix. How do you create a product that is made with good quality ingredients, no filler ingredients (using really good cocoa for example) but still can be priced competitive on the shelf at retail stores? This is my job as a business owner to figure out, or to at least have a solid plan for the future to reduce the COGS. This is likely the big question that many founders rack their brains over during their first few months or years of operating. The conclusions I have drawn that help me move forward - 1) Eventually when our production increases and we can meet higher MOQs, then we can reduce our cost of goods, and then have a lower price on shelf. 2) Use DTC as a way to supplement/fund the rest of the business early on. In order to have a strong DTC sales channel without a ton of marketing money, we will need to drive sales through organic social media content (our own and influencer)— so this is a channel that must be prioritized for months during prelaunch (which we are doing). 3) This is the reason why many early stage brands NEED to take on additional funding from investors early on, just to keep the business plan on track so that they can afford to operate until COGs get lower and create improved margins. 4) Having a SKU with lower COGs can potentially help fund the SKU with higher COGs and even things out in the beginning. If you are an early stage founder and have another solution or approach to beginning with high COGs, please share!

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I’ve built 2 resources for CPG founders scaling into national retail that can help you grow without breaking your supply chain or cash flow. $100M+ in ingredient procurement managed. 400+ SKUs supported across national retailers. Brands sold into Costco, Whole Foods, Target, Walmart, and Trader Joe’s. Let’s put that experience to work for you. Here they are: 𝗧𝗵𝗲 𝗡𝗮𝘁𝗶𝗼𝗻𝗮𝗹 𝗥𝗼𝗹𝗹𝗼𝘂𝘁 𝗖𝗵𝗲𝗰𝗸𝗹𝗶𝘀𝘁 Read this before you say yes to national retail. It shows you: → How to pressure-test supplier capacity before scaling into Costco, Whole Foods, or Target. → What needs to be true across OTIF, compliance, and forecasting before volume increases 10×. → The operational infrastructure required so growth doesn’t turn into constant firefighting. 𝗧𝗵𝗲 𝗪𝗼𝗿𝗸𝗶𝗻𝗴 𝗖𝗮𝗽𝗶𝘁𝗮𝗹 𝗧𝗿𝗮𝗽 Read this before your next major PO. It shows you: → Why fast-growing brands fund inventory 60–90 days before revenue arrives and how to plan around it. → How experienced operators structure sourcing and production so growth stays financially stable. → The inventory and supplier coordination strategies smart founders build early to support scale. Both resources are at no cost. Comment 𝗬𝗘𝗦 below and I’ll send them your way.

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Most restaurant brands don’t fail because of product. They fail because of structure. Over the past decade working across R&D, central kitchens, and multi-unit operations, I’ve seen the same pattern repeat: Creativity attracts attention. Systems create scale. The real work happens before expansion: • Cost architecture • Menu engineering • Production flow • Supplier alignment • SOP discipline Opening a second location doesn’t test your marketing. It tests your operational integrity. Opening a third exposes every weakness. In F&B, growth isn’t about adding branches. It’s about building repeatability. That’s where real value is created.

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There is little you can do more self defeating than abandoning your allies because you *think* that you can get a carveout for yourself. I'm allied with alcohol companies; I'm also allied with other hemp formats. Politics is about addition. Publicly saying you're divorcing the rest of the hemp industry increases the likelihood of hemp being saved at all zero percentage points. If beverages had abandoned our allies in NJ in 2024, we wouldn't have the beverage forward law there we have today. We'd have a total ban.

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We Built Cymbiotika on One Belief: That What You Put in Your Body Actually Matters. When we started Cymbiotika, we weren’t chasing trends. We were obsessed with one question: why do most supplements fail people? The answer kept coming back to the same thing: bioavailability. Most formulas never actually reach your cells. That obsession became our entire company. No outside funding. No shortcuts. Just years of research, reformulation, and an unrelenting commitment to liposomal delivery technology that actually works. So when we crossed paths with Gary Brecka, we knew immediately it wasn’t a coincidence. Gary isn’t an influencer with a supplement line. He’s a human biologist who spent over two decades in the life insurance industry predicting with chilling precision when people would die. That kind of work changes you. It changed him. He walked away from counting down people’s years to helping them add more. Today he’s one of the most trusted voices in longevity, biohacking, and peak human performance. CEOs, pro athletes, and world champions seek him out. He doesn’t guess. He measures. He’s built his entire reputation on the idea that you can’t optimize what you don’t understand at the cellular level. That’s exactly where Cymbiotika lives. When Gary looked at what we’ve built, our formulations, our delivery systems, our science, it was clear we were aligned on something deeper than business. Two missions pointed at the same truth. That means something to us. Not because of his following. Because of his standards. We didn’t build this company to be the biggest supplement brand. We built it to be the one you can actually trust. Finding a partner who thinks the same way, who will only put his name on something he’d give his own family, tells you everything about where Cymbiotika stands. The science was always there. Now the world is catching up. Cymbiotika Gary Brecka

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What business are you actually in? This is the question Jeff Cantalupo of Listen Ventures asks the founders he works with. In drinks, companies tend to define themselves by category: We’re a tequila. We’re an NA beer. We’re a THC seltzer. Obviously there are reasons for that. Retailers organize products into categories, distributors sell against those categories, and much of the industry’s data is structured that way. But -- importantly -- consumers often are not making decisions along those lines. “I think it’s really about what emotional or headspace you want to own for the consumer,” Jeff says. That distinction is increasingly important as beverage occasions become more fragmented. A NA beer, a THC beverage, and a glass of wine may sit in entirely different categories. But from the consumer’s perspective, they may all be competing for the same occasion: Something to drink at the end of the day, something social, something to share with friends. In that context, defining the business too narrowly by product type can obscure what the brand is actually competing against -- and what it has the potential to own. Jeff points to Nike as the classic example. Nike sells shoes, but its longtime slogan, “Just Do It,” puts the brand in much broader territory. As he notes, Nike is “in the motivation business.” For drinks founders, it’s important to look beyond the liquid and ask: What need, occasion, or emotional territory are we really trying to own? Jeff and I get into this topic, along with consumer research and the rise of “vice wellness” on the latest Business of Drinks. Listen to the clip 👇 #drinksbusiness #venturecapital Business of Drinks Scott Rosenbaum

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🌱💲Affordability is a turning point. New data from ProVeg shows that a plant-based grocery basket is now about 5% cheaper than one with meat, dairy, or seafood across 7 of Germany’s 8 largest grocers — flipping last year’s price premium. That’s a major signal for mainstream adoption. Price signals + better product experiences compound over time. We expect more retailers to sharpen private label strategy, improve availability, and use pricing levers to grow share of plant-forward baskets. #altprotein #consumertrends #foodsystems #grocery Great reporting by Green Queen Media 🔗 https://lnkd.in/eTY9c9Tc

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The FDA just resolved a massive contradiction in food claims. For years, clean-label founders have been forced to treat plant-based colors like a compliance risk rather than a selling point. If you used organic beet juice or turmeric to color your product, you still couldn't technically say "No Artificial Colors" without it being a major compliance risk. In the eyes of the FDA, if it was added for color, it was "artificial" to that food, even if it came from a plant. That changed on February 5th. As part of the federal push to phase out synthetic dyes by the end of 2026, the FDA issued a food industry letter that finally provides a bridge for clean-label brands. The shift is huge: 1) The "Petroleum" Distinction: You can now use the "No Artificial Colors" claim as long as your product is free of petroleum-based (FD&C certified) dyes like Red 40 or Yellow 5. 2) Natural is no longer a barrier: Naturally derived colors (exempt from certification) are no longer a disqualifier for this claim. 3) Expanded Options: The FDA has officially approved Beetroot Red and expanded Spirulina extract use to help with reformulations ahead of the December 31, 2026 phase-out deadline. The "Fine Print" Warning: This flexibility comes with a catch. The FDA has simultaneously tightened purity specs for heavy metals (Lead, Arsenic, Mercury) in these natural additives. "Exempt from certification" does not mean unregulated. 💥 This update allows brands to trade vague "all-natural" buzzwords for the "No Artificial" status consumers actually look for. 🔔 Follow to learn more about navigating food compliance, industry trends, and growing a successful food business. #ArtificialColors #FoodIndustry #FDA #CleanLabel #FoodLabeling #FoodTrends

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