Growing Food Brands with CPG and DTC Strategies

Most brands are playing the wrong game. They’re moving the Queen. They should be moving all of the pieces on the board. Let me explain. Marketing-led growth gets all the attention. It’s sexy. It’s visible. Founders obsess over it. But marketing is just one piece. A powerful piece — but still one. Business engineering? It moves all the pieces in symphonic coherence, And wins the game. When I advise better-for-you CPG brands, this is the shift I push for. Most teams pour everything into: – ad creatives – influencer UGC – CRO – new channels Good tactics. But they’ll only take you so far. Here’s what separates the breakout brands: They engineer growth at the business level. They move: – pricing – packaging – cash flow – operations – channel strategy – product architecture They see the full P&L → and use it. Let’s get specific. Example 1️⃣ → Gateway SKU Engineering: A Clean supplements brand. $60/month subscription = Hero SKU. Too much friction. First purchase wasn’t converting. The team launched a $15 trial SKU. Low-risk. Easy buy-in. Result? Trial → subscription conversion jumped 4x. CAC down 35%. LTV up. No ad change required. Business lever. Example 2️⃣ → Cash Conversion Engineering Frozen functional food brand. Growing fast, but cash-strapped. They restructured terms with co-packers. Negotiated faster pay from wholesalers. Cash cycle dropped: 120 → 45 days. Millions unlocked. That cash funded more growth. No new ad creatives needed. Business lever. Example 3️⃣ → Operational Engineering Gut health beverage brand. Local retail only. Wanted national. Cold chain shipping was blocking DTC. Their team reformulated + repackaged → shelf-stable. Suddenly: – DTC viable – National retail opened – Margins improved Game changed. Business lever. ____________ This is why I believe: Business-engineered growth > marketing-led growth. ♛ Marketing moves the Queen. ♗♖♕♔♘♙ Business engineering moves all of the pieces on the board. If you want to build a moat → If you want to scale with durability → You need to think beyond ads and creatives. ☑️ You need to think like a business engineer. Curious → are you moving just the Queen? Or are you moving all of the pieces on the board? ___________________________________________ 🔰 Better-for-you brands = better health, longer lives. 👉 Follow me, Kunle Campbell, and let’s scale impact together.

Bulletproof used to be the butter-in-your-coffee biohacking brand. It was a category creator — Dave Asprey built an entire movement around "optimized" coffee. But the brand spent years declining. Now, under new ownership and a new CEO, Bulletproof just did something a lot of DTC brands are trying to figure out: they simplified the brand, expanded retail distribution, and came back to growth. Here's what changed: → Dave Asprey is out. Bia Foods acquired the company in 2024 and brought in Harry Lewis as CEO. → They split the lineup into two tiers: Artisan (taste-focused, black packaging) and Enhanced (functional blends — energy, focus, gut health, white packaging). → New product revenue went from 0.5% of net revenue in 2024 to 5% in 2025. Target for 2026: 9.5%. → Distribution: Amazon, Whole Foods, Sprouts, and now a Target exclusive for their creatine coffee launching May 2026. The rebrand isn't just a packaging refresh. They dropped the "biohacking" identity entirely. The new positioning is functional coffee for a mainstream audience — not a subculture. What makes this interesting for brand operators: Bulletproof's original DTC-first, community-driven model worked for building a category. But it hit a ceiling. The biohacking niche was too narrow for the retail distribution they needed to scale. The playbook they're running now is one I see working across categories: Simplify the brand story (from niche identity to broad benefit) Segment the product line (one tier for taste shoppers, one for function seekers) Expand retail — Amazon for search-driven discovery, Whole Foods and Sprouts for credibility, Target for scale Use exclusive product launches (creatine coffee at Target) to earn premium shelf placement This is a useful case study for any brand sitting in a niche that works for DTC but limits retail growth. The question every DTC brand eventually faces: do you stay in the niche that built you, or do you simplify the story to unlock the next tier of distribution? Bulletproof chose door two. And so far, the numbers say it's working.

If I were launching a CPG brand today, here's exactly how I'd do it... the scrappy way: Most founders start with an idea. I'd start at the store. Here's my step-by-step playbook 👇 1. Find the white space BEFORE the product idea. I'm doing full shelf audits to spot categories ripe for disruption, then I’m conducting category and competitor audits for that category. 2. Build the brand world first. I’d be able to answer: Who desperately needs this? Why NOW? This becomes your north star for every decision—from recipe to packaging to pricing. 3. Sample, sample, sample. I'd rather iterate 5 times based on real data than launch something that flops because I fell in love with my own idea. A great way to do this? Product & Prosper® Sampling Program, which reaches 400+ industry vets. 4. Amazon first (not retail). It’s the fastest path to real customer feedback and reviews. Plus, you can test ad spend without a broker breathing down your neck. 5. Prove DTC works with actual data. With real reviews, proven conversion rates, and understanding of CAC from Amazon, you’re prepped to launch DTC. 6. Independent retail via Faire. This builds what we call The Retail Resume®—Credibility, Capability, Cash—before you pitch the big guys. 7. Build industry street cred in parallel. Pitch to industry media, join founder communities like Startup CPG and Naturally Network, post on LinkedIn and engage with other CPG folks on the platform. Buyers notice brands that other people are talking about. Notice what's NOT in this playbook: ❌ Immediately hiring a broker ❌ Cold-emailing buyers ❌ Rushing to trade shows without validation The brands that succeed today build proof of concept before distribution. They validate with real customers before buyers. Each step becomes the foundation for the next—not a sprint to the finish line. I dive deeper into each of these steps in today's Product & Prosper Newsletter. Link in the comments 👇

The Circana 2025 US CPG Growth Leaders brand rankings answer what most CPG brands keep thinking about: How do you keep growing when your core product is mature? Red Bull sits at number one in the $8B+ tier with 53.8% household penetration and 63% buyer retention. Most brands at that scale plateau. Their original silver can has been losing volume for four years straight. So how are they growing? Flavor Editions, Pink, Spring, Zero with monk fruit. kept 21% of units moving through the display. They are rotating editions seasonally and culturally to give consumers a reason to look again. Unilever, at number two, is betting hard on creator-led commerce. The Dove x Crumbl collab pulled $25M in its launch year. Sounds random until you realize that's how you reach younger shoppers now. You meet them where they already are. Chobani leading the $2.5-8B tier makes sense when you realize their high-protein and low-sugar SKUs drove 47% and 30% of yogurt growth, respectively. They are engineering their assortment around macro consumer shifts and pricing it accessibly. CELSIUS, right behind them, acquired Alani Nu and immediately saw 33% of sales and 87% of growth come from that addition. Buying your way into new shelf space works when the brand you acquire already has velocity. Ornua topping the $1-2.5B tier with Kerrygold proves sourcing transparency still justifies a premium in a deflationary environment. Five different answers to the same growth question: line extensions, cultural collabs, trend stacking, acquisition, and sourcing integrity. You know what I think gets underweighted in these conversations? If you are managing digital shelf and not mapping how these distribution gains translate to search placement, content share, availability, and CSAT scoring online, you are only seeing half the picture. Let that be the guiding principle for your brand strategy for rest of 2026. 

In 2022, a guy from New Jersey was diagnosed with ulcerative colitis. He still wanted to eat pizza. So he started messing with a recipe TikTok wouldn’t stop showing him: Greek yogurt + flour. That’s it. Four years later, that idea is in nearly 2,000 Target stores. This is the Yough! story. One of the cleaner CPG case studies right now. Here’s what many miss: Frozen pizza is a $7.4B category. It’s basically flat. Nestlé entire frozen pizza portfolio, including DiGiorno, was down 3.5%. Caulipower frozen crusts/dough line, down ~8.7%. But inside that frozen aisle, better-for-you pizza velocities were up +9%. That’s the pocket Yough entered. The genius isn’t the yogurt. It’s the refusal. The first generation of “healthy” frozen pizza taught consumers to compromise: -Swap the carb. -Swap the gluten. -Swap the crust. Eat something that almost feels like pizza. Yough refused. It’s still wheat. Still bready. Still has real mozzarella. It just happens to deliver over 20g of protein on a 4-ingredient crust: Yogurt. Wheat. Yeast. Salt. Fewer ingredients than many protein bars. Then came the execution: 2022: founded by three childhood friends from New Jersey. 2023: DTC launch with frozen pizzas + dough. 2024: specialty credibility, including Erewhon. 2026: nationwide Target rollout + strategic investment from Founders Row. Roughly 32 months from “website with three pizzas” to national mass retail. That doesn’t happen by accident. It worked because the pieces fit: A founder solving a real problem. A TikTok recipe people already understood. A flat category with a hidden growth pocket. A product simple enough to explain in one sentence. Frozen pizza looked sleepy. Then Yough made it interesting again. The boring categories aren’t dead. They’re waiting for someone who us craving to eat the product. Keep you eyes on this brand!

So, you want to start a CPG brand. Here is the single most important piece of advice I can offer. Start with a product that you can initially sell online first. So it's probably shelf stable, or in selective cases, a long shelf-life fresh product. This advice is critical because it will reduce the amount of capital you need to raise to grow your brand. It will also give you the chance to build a profitable, successful business before you go into your first retailer. The first CPG F&B company I ever heard of reaching $50 million before going into stores was Nutpods, about 7-8 years ago. Now, we probably see 2-3 of these per month – sizeable, profitable ecommerce brands interested in moving into retail. We love to partner with them, because Manna Tree has a strong track record of helping brands grow in retail. Why is this advice so critically important? When a brand is sold on the shelves of US grocery stores, they are usually distributed through either UNFI or Kehe. Each point in the supply chain needs to mark-up the product to earn a profit margin. The net effect of all these profit levels means that the price on shelf is going to be much higher than your cost. The general rule of thumb is the price on shelf is going to be about 4X your cost. Depending on the category competitiveness, this will limit your own profit margins while you build brand awareness. But the costs don't end there for selling in grocery.  To get on shelf with most retailers in the US, you will pay a “free fill” fee. This is typically a one-time fee the retailer charges for their shelf space and is about one case of your product. Next, you will need to promote your product to encourage consumers to try it. During the early years that will average 20% to 30% of your gross revenue. Over time will decrease to a more normal 15% of revenue, but not until you have built decent brand awareness. The net effect of all these costs is that the typical CPG company selling in stores does not hit profitability until they reach the $40 million to $50 million range. And that assumes you have at least 40% gross margins. For lower margins, it will take even longer. During those unprofitable years, you will need to raise equity capital every 12-24 months to finance your growth and losses. Conversely, if you sell from your website there will is no middleman. You can invest more into marketing to drive traffic and sales. Most DTC brands will spend 30% to 60% of revenues to drive more sales. That will fall over time but rarely drops below 25% as DTC requires more marketing. Amazon is more expensive but a critical ecommerce channel because so many Americans are Prime members. There you will have a bit lower gross margin (to account for Amazon fees), and similar marketing costs. So, your contribution margins will be lower than DTC, but still better than selling in stores. My advice - build a great ecommerce brand first, then go into stores on your terms. #cpg #brands #startups