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Charlotte Apps: Good morning, everyone, and welcome to our session on how insurgent brands are defining the next era of consumer growth. We have an exciting, panel of panelists, as you know, and I know you're all excited to, to hear from them. But wanted to set the stage a little bit with some of the work that we've been doing at Bain & Company on the topic of insurgent brands.
By way of introductions, I'm Charlotte Apps, I'm the EVP of the Consumer Products Practice at Bain & Company. We are a global management consulting firm, and we spend a lot of our time advising large strategics, private equities, and portfolio companies on a number of different topics related to kind of value creation at large, but particularly around top line growth.
And so this topic of insurgent brands has been one that has been particularly near and dear to my heart. We started looking at insurgent brands 10 years ago and are excited about this year's list because it's our 10th anniversary of doing this research and thought it was appropriate to share with you.
A couple of different things to set the stage then for the discussion we're going to have with us Jen Zeszut and John Forker and Eric Ryan on how insurgents grow and how the changing environment is going to impact that playbook. We started looking at insurgent brands 10 years ago.
Not just because they were small, exciting brands that were disrupting the market but because they were doing that in fundamentally different ways, they weren't just taking share. They were reshaping entire categories. They were redefining consumer expectations, and they were really starting to kind of point to where future growth was going to come from.
And so that was really exciting for us. And what we wanted to do was understand what is the playbook that's allowing these brands to take out size, share of growth as an indication to then how are they going to do that in this next era of growth. So to set the stage for this discussion we're going to run through a couple of things.
First, I'm going to take a look back at the last 10 years, and what we've learned. Looking at insurgent brands over the last 10 years and the impact they've had, then we're going to reveal this year's list of insurgents, and talk a little bit about some of find the themes that we've seen from this year's list.
And then we're going to look forward and say, what are some of the big shifts that we're seeing in the consumer products sector that it's might maybe going to impact how these brands grow. Yes. 10 years ago when we started, when we kind of coined the term insurgent brands, as I said, we really were looking to study not just kind of any brand.
There was a lot of noise out there. We were looking to study the winners, the brands that were going to actually break through and drive sustained long-term growth. And so we set two key criteria to identify those brands, and they were independent brands that were growing at least 10 times their category.
And they had reached at least $25 million in conventional grocery or mass retail. We specifically and conscientiously decided to look at brands that had met this threshold, because we wanted to look at brands that had already crossed the chasm from alternative niche channels into the mass, mass retail space in order to understand what their playbook was.
This, you know, you'll recognize many of the brands on this list. To date, I think this might be my favorite list over the last 10 years. These brands not only have gone on to redefine their categories, but they've become household pantry names. Of this list, 10 have become billion dollar brands.
More than half, almost three quarters, are owned by large CPGs. Five have become public companies, and in fact, four of them are still meeting the insurgent brand criteria today. Kodiak and EOS are on our list again this year. Achieving 10 times category growth in one of the categories they play in. Rao’s and e.l.f. have kind of graduated out of our list because they're too big. They're billion dollar brands now, but otherwise would've made our list this year.
So just a tremendous cohort of brands that have really shaped growth over the last 10 years. I would point out to Eric Ryan, who's on our panel today, that he's the founder of two of those brands, Method and Olly, that you see on that page. So it's just truly a tremendous set of brands.
Maybe what's most exciting is every year for the last 10 years, we have continued to track these brands. The impact that these, you know, 400 or so brands that we've tracked over the last decade has been tremendous. In aggregate, they have accounted for 60 billion of incremental growth in sales. That's one and a half times or 50% more than the top three CPGs combined. And that has translated again into real scale. 15 of these have become billion dollar brands. One in four or $250 million or more. One in eight are top five category players in their categories. And 25% are owned by large CPGs.
So you start to see kind of a repeatable pattern that we've seen over the last kind of 10 years play out. These brands are really kind of forming the growth engine and then the deal flow for the consumer product sector, and being able to have our eyes on this set of brands, year over year, is tremendously powerful.
For investors that are in the room, this means that there are identifiable paths to scale and, and true exit models that exist. For large CPGs or incumbents, these brands are not noise. They are, if anything, they are kind of the growth that could help reposition portfolios to category tailwinds. And for emerging brands, you know, this is a proof point that the model can scale if it's executed properly.
Fast forward to today and we are tremendously excited to announce this list of 2026 insurgent brands.
These 113 brands have met our criteria this year. I would flag that we've adjusted one of our criteria. We've increased the size threshold for these brands. We've increased it to $35 million in IQ track channels to reflect the inflation that we've seen over the last 10 years.
A couple things to flag. I would say, you know, partially because we've increased the threshold, but also because of the state of the current market. The number of new brands that are new to the list is a little bit lower than them prior years. There 30% of the list is new, and, interestingly enough, many of those are actually in the food space. As you can see from the brands on the top right corner in food, we're really seeing brands continue to spike on some of the consumer trends that we've picked up over the last couple years. Protein continues to be big. Better for you indulgence, elevated flavors, convenience, those are all things that consumers are looking for in these brands are tapping into in some of these other categories.
I would actually, you know, start to pause that perhaps, particularly given the environment we're in, some of the brands that we've seen, you know, really expand over the last couple of years, particularly in functional beverage, enhanced waters non-alc, these brands have started to really solidify their positions and perhaps consolidate a little bit of the demand that's in the market and explain some of why there's maybe fewer new brands breaking out in those categories.
What's particularly exciting about the set of brands is the impact that they're having. Despite accounting for only 2% of overall market share, these brands have captured 36% of incremental growth. A real increase over the prior years. That impact is just tremendous. And when you start double clicking into the categories in which these brands play in, you really start to see the impact that they're having.
And meat snacks, for example. Insurgents as a whole, particularly when you look at brands like Chomps, are really punching over their weight. Insurgents account for 13% of market share. They're capturing almost 80% of the growth that exists in what is a highly growing space.
Similarly, in nutrition bars, you see, insurgents such as Barebells, Aloha, Built tapping into the protein trend and again, capturing 64% of market share despite accounting for only 15%. Sorry, 64% of growth. Despite accounting for only 14% of or 15% of market share.
This is a true testament to kind of the growth model that these brands have, and how they grow. It's not by chance they're capturing this kind of growth. It's because they are so deeply ingrained in understanding consumer needs and tapping into these needs that they're playing in the parts of the market where there is true growth. We often say it's not about the category that these brands play in, but the model that they use that underpins their success.
And we'll see it with our panelists today. Method did that with cleaning products. Once Upon a Farm has done it in baby food. GOODLES has done it in mac and cheese. What matters is how you activate that playbook.
We talk about it at Bain in kind of relatively simple terms and there's kind of three big ideas that I'm going to focus on. At the core of the Insurgent brand playbook is this idea of a value proposition that is really centered around consumer needs. These brands are founded to address an unmet consumer need or a consumer need that's not well met today. A need that the founder themselves often has or has experienced and creates a really deep understanding that consumer and that pre permeates throughout their organization, it informs their marketing, informs their innovation.
Behind that is this second idea around how do these brands activate. The growth model that these brands have is one of driving velocity itself ahead of expanding distribution, and they do that in a number of ways. Because they're addressing consumer proposition - propositions in compelling ways - they're actually driving incremental growth in the category. This isn't about taking share from their larger incumbents, that they cannot compete with dollar to dollar. This is about expanding the category. It's about bringing new consumers into the category or elevating the category and creating premium propositions that consumers are willing to pay for.
Alongside that, because they understand they're a consumer, they can target that consumer. They can tailor the messaging to that consumer. They can communicate to that consumer on the relevant channels and create truly engaged communities that they themselves, you know, participate in the growth of the brand.
And then finally there, in terms of availability and distribution, they focus on alternative channels first. That is where their core consumer is to start with. They can target their core consumer. They can test and learn in smaller pockets, adjust some of their offering, and really create the proof points that their product can develop, the deliver, the kind of velocity that more scale retailers are going to be looking for.
All of that is underpinned by an operating model that is, you know, really founded on what we call founder's mentality. They have an insurgent mindset. They have a true belief that they can win and disrupt in the marketplace. They have a lean operating system that allows them to be very agile and quick in decision making. And as a result, these brands are able to come to market four times faster than their larger incumbents.
As we start looking ahead, I think the big question we have is, as the environment around these insurgent brands starts to shift, what does that do to the playbook? Does the playbook remain relevant? For sure. You know, from a consumer trends perspective, we see, you know, consumer awareness, expectations, understanding of health and wellness - really increasing. The expectations they have out of brands is only increasing, and it's not just in their attitudes, it's also in their behaviors and how they're spending their dollars. We see that with GLP one users. We see that with increased awareness around ultra processed foods. All of that is really impacting how consumers are spending their dollars.
If we think back to kind of the growth model, insurgents are actually very well placed because they're at the front forefront of consumer needs. They can adapt to these redefinitions of health and wellness and continue to really cater to where consumer needs are.
Alongside that, we're seeing kind of a rapid digitalization of consumer journeys, and we like to say, you know, it's not just about winning with consumers. Now it's winning with agents as well. Agents are becoming the new influencers in an age of agentic commerce, and we've seen over the last five years a rapid rise of online grocery spend. We’ve seen new platforms such as TikTok Shop really accelerating that social commerce. We're now seeing agents that are becoming the intermediary and actually making decisions on behalf of consumers in terms of the brands that they're acquiring. That has real implications in terms of disintermediating brands from their consumers and their ability of brands to control that consumer decision.
What they need to do is control the agents, control the decisions agents are making. Agents are educating themselves based on what they see in the public and how consumers are behaving. As a result, as I try to activate this you know, they're looking at, they're looking at what they can find online in terms of understanding, you know, how well a brand meets a consumer's intent or a consumer's need that they're shopping for.
And that's where brands that have really deep consumer engagement, really great feedback that agents can learn from and really clear value propositions that make it very, very clear, what the brand is for, what use case is for, and what occasion would the brand would be most relevant for that positions insurgents incredibly well to actually win in this age of agenda commerce.
The third piece that we're seeing is, you know, retail is changing. For many years retail has been challenged from a growth perspective, and we've seen them invest in retail media networks and invest in private label. They're also reinvesting in their stores. They're needing to bring excitement back to the shelf, needing to bring foot back, foot traffic back.
And the way they're going to do that and the way they, the way we're already seeing Target and Walmart and Costco is reshaping how they are merchandising in store. They’re you know, moving away from their traditional merchandising, actually recreating categories, whether it's functional, you know, shelves that are focused around functional beverages, focused around non-alcohol, focused around health and wellbeing, and really changing the way shoppers shop and bringing new excitement to the shelf.
Again, if you think about the insurgent brands value propositions, because they are tapping into these core category tailwinds, they become the ideal partners for retailers that are looking to rejuvenate their physical assets. And then finally, you know, we all know this. We are living in a world where tech is only accelerating.
AI is not only transforming how we do our work. It's transforming who is doing that work. It is frightening for many, but it's also creating a tremendous opportunity to leapfrog those who are slower, a adapt adopting some of those technologies. The good news is for insurgents, insurgents are built for agility and for experimentation.
These are the brands that are going to, you know, if they so choose, take the leap and adopt some of these technologies that will help them leapfrog some of their larger counterparts and participate in shorter innovation cycles, tighter manufacturing cycles, and be able to get to market even faster.
So from our perspective, the insurgent plan playbook remains highly relevant. Will the levers and the platforms and how they activate change? Absolutely. And they will continue to adapt. But the playbook itself remains really relevant and puts these brands in a fantastic position to continue winning as we look forward. We believe that, you know, in the next five years or so, insurgent brands are well positioned to capture up to 50% of the incremental growth that will exist in the market, representing about 80 or $90 billion of sales growth.
So a tremendous opportunity and exciting one for insurgent brands, and one that we are excited and ready to continue to study. With that, it's a bit of a backdrop, I think even more exciting is bringing it to life with real stories of founders who have launched and scaled and sold insurgent brands and have them talk a little bit about what their experience has been, and how they are actually seeing some of the changes impacting their growth model. So it is my great pleasure and honor to welcome three incredible individuals to the stage. We have. Jen, the CEO and co-founder of Goodles.
We have Eric Ryan, founder of not one, not two, but three brands, two of which he is, and then got like two of which Eric has sold to strategics. And then we have of course, John Forker, who, CEO of two IPOs. John just recently took Once Upon a Farm, previously at Annie's, also took Annie's public and sold it to General Mills.
Honestly, just a fantastic of individuals to have on the stage and excited to have you guys share your stories. I might just start off by asking you guys to briefly get into a little bit or share the why the brand started, particularly in the light of this playbook that we've talked about, which is driving incrementality in the market.
John Foraker: Okay, so when I was running Annie's in 2003 is when I started running it formally, but in the early 00s, we were doing a lot of consumer research and we were talking to consumers that were forming households or whatever, and the subject of baby food would come up and we'd ask questions about it.
And a 40 to 50% of consumers at that time were telling us they were making their own. And then you'd ask, well, you're making your own. Why is that? And they'd say nothing in the category. I met my standards. I was like, whoa, that's crazy in CPG land. And so I had been interested in the baby food category for many years, actually, since that time.
And then in, 2015/14 or so after General Mills bought Annie's, I was like, I'm going to go find somebody who's doing this. And. There were almost nobody doing it. There were a couple, and then I finally ran into Arian Cassandra who just had, just started the company. And it's just really understanding the consumer and tightly filling a need that they have that no one's filled yet.
It's just an obvious total white space. And I'm sure we'll talk later about how hard it's been and all that stuff. It's easy sometimes recognize the white space, it's hard to execute against that, but like the white space was just glaringly obvious and it still is like it's still there. It's huge. So fantastic.
Eric Ryan: Yeah, so for me, I mean there's always the cliche of entrepreneurs like solving problems. That is not me. I don't like to clean. I don't take vitamins, I rarely bleed. But what I try to do is like find a personal passion into the category. And what I'm trying to do is like reframe the experience of categories.
So the case of Method, I realize I was, I love why I hate cleaning. My wife wishes I'd bring my work home with me more often. I love home decor and design. And so my insight was like, well, you look at a dish soap more than you actually use it. And thought about it. It's like, well, this is part of like personal expression of your home.
And then we figured out, well, you pollute, you clean, you poison, and make your home healthier. And back in 2002, we launched the only place you could buy a natural cleaner was in a natural store. And so for me it's about reframing categories in ways that personally make it kind of interesting to myself, but then reframe the experience back to the consumer. And that's kind of the model that I've used with each of our startups.
Charlotte Apps: And I think you've, you've talked about just bringing joy back into a category. And I think that's a tremendous way to, you know, for parents to be joyfully feeding their kids for, you know, people to be joyfully, you know, cleaning their houses or whatever it might be.
And I think that's a fantastic expression of what's in the DNA of insert brands.
Eric Ryan: You're sure to create healthy habits and like there has to be joy in the habits. Have you have to look forward to taking the vitamin. It has to be beautiful enough, it stays out on the counter. You remember to take it so very much is like a joy is a core ingredient.
Charlotte Apps: And I think core to some of what Jen, you believe in as well. Little bit of joy in the GOODLES spirit today, you think?
Jen Zeszut: Yeah, not the idea of incrementality kind of had to be there from the very first day when we started this company because, you know, we have some amazing brands that have already done a great job in this category.
I mean, Kraft and General Mills are some of the biggest companies on the planet and they have lots of money and we don't. And you know, they, we just can't rent cuter kids than they can rent for their commercials. We can't afford a commercial, like, let's just be honest here. So we really had to look for incrementality. Because the, the insight was from the very beginning was I don't wanna go up to a retailer and be like, Hey, we're going to take down your Kraft and Annie's, we're going to steal that Kraft and Annie's revenue. Because they're like, I'm kind of partial to that revenue. So we knew we had to skate to a white space that didn't, that there didn't exist.
And you know, both of our esteemed competitors kind of think, thought of mac and cheese as for kids so, you know, push the money stale to open the box and noodle art to do with your 3-year-old. That was the insight for us, that there's a bunch of young adults out there who maybe ate it when they were a kid, maybe ate it at the dorms. But now they're trying to not to eat it, and it's a guilty pleasure. And if we could lure those young adults back to that Mac aisle, we could be some serious incrementality and they could keep their Kraft and Annie's revenue, that's totally fine. And so we are 80, 90% of the growth in the category. Woo hoo.
You know, but it means a product that is designed for that. A brand that's designed for that marketing language. Like, like you really have to go all in. In order to pull it off and but yeah.
Charlotte Apps: One thing that you've talked to me about, Jen, that I absolutely love and is very much linked to this idea of kind of, you took the young adults and you gave them something that they could actually be joyful about as they were thinking about mac and cheese.
Elevating the flavors but really also engaging that community in entirely new ways. And I think the words you said is we measure success by love letters and tattoos, which I absolutely love. So true. Can you talk a little bit about, you know, what does that engagement look like? What were some of the things that you've been doing and that you've been really thoughtful about to engage that community?
Jen Zeszut: Yeah. I mean, if you don't have, you can't outspend them and you can't out coupon on them and you can't out any of those things, you have to out something else them. So for us, we just decided to be more authentic, more weird, more beloved and really organically genuine. And so we, you know, don't spend money on go to Google, Facebook ads and those sorts of things.
We instead invest in our community themselves. So we're really listening to our fans. We often say that the most unscalable things is what is helping us set scale. We write handwritten notes. We invite some of our fans 'cause we, it's really hard work to work the booth. And we're like, guys, please tell me, is there someone in LA who wants to come work the booth with us?
Sure enough, our fans are out. They're, we're like, get them, get 'em dressed up, get 'em a scarf, get 'em out there. And our fans are just like part of our extended team. So Love letters.
That's where it starts. We, exactly the legendary business results follow the, the fan love and the tattoos. That's where it all begins.
Charlotte Apps: Are you seeing that change in this environment where we are seeing, you know, AI, we are seeing, you know, TikTok create tremendous platforms for influencer. We are seeing fake influencers as well.
Like what are some of the things that you're doing to retain some of the authenticity but also tap into some of these new tools where your consumers, you know, visibly are.
Jen Zeszut: Yeah, yeah. I mean, no one was talking about AI in 2020 when we started this company. So that like authenticity in that, you know, genuine investment in organic growth.
And we have our community manager out here, her title is big fan. She's a big fan. Like we invest in those sorts of things. So we haven't really been chasing anything. We've been writing handwritten notes and we've been pen paling with our customers for five years now, four and a half. 'cause we, we, we launched, took us a year to launch.
But, we've been doing that for a really long time. But I think what, what the AI tools allow us to do now is to just do a lot of more like rapid iterations. So we're just doing more organic at scale now. It hasn't really changed much in terms of you know, even we, I think we were talking about it, you know, paid influencer was so one year ago, we are not doing any of that. People can see right through it. We're not making those kinds of investments anymore. If there is a fan in a little tiny town who hosts a GOODLES block party, how adorable is that? We just send them gifts and tell 'em thank you, and it's so much more powerful when they tell all of their friends that GOODLES is amazing.
We don't need to say we're amazing. We just need to let them do what they do best. So hasn't really shifted much. If anything, we're kind of pulling away from a lot of that paid stuff and we're doing more and more experiences and more and more genuine connection with our customers.
Charlotte Apps: Doing great. Yeah. And seeing the results off the back of it, which is tremendous.
The other, the other portion too, consumer engagement is retaining that relevance, and continuing to stay at the forefront of trend. Continue to innovate in a way that speaks to consumers. And John, you know, I've talked a little bit about, you know, some of the lessons that you learned at Annie's actually around, you know, how do you, how do you continue to innovate? How do you continue to keep your, your offering relevant without overly proliferating? And I think that's a partly, you know, challenge that many of our brands.
John Foraker: Yeah. I mean, I've made lots and lots of mistakes in this area, like, especially at Annie's. Like we had a brand, consumers loved retailers, loved. We would walk into the same set of retailers that many people want to build their brand across multiple categories with. And they'd say, you should do this, you should do this, you should do this. And we were like, yeah, let's do a lot of that stuff. And you know, we innovated into many, many different categories way too early before the platform had really been established.
If I could do it over again, I would've focused on core mac and cheese and core cheddar bunnies, probably for another five to seven years. Those businesses probably would've been twice the size, twice as profitable, a lot more household pen. And then when we innovated, the innovation would've been way bigger.
And you guys, Bain has done some research on this about size of the core. So when we came over here to Once Upon a Farm, we did really nothing for about seven years other than just pound that core. Just like turned this like fresh snacking pouch into a really big business. And then when we innovated, all those things that your research says happen, happen. Yeah. The brand got it. The innovation was way bigger. It got to scale way faster.
And so I think that is the core lesson. It's a very difficult thing as an entrepreneur to like say no to some of those opportunities though. And so I don't want to discount the how hard that, how hard it is to do that.
Your investors have to support it. There's a lot of pressure to grow, you know, all these things in the space.
Charlotte Apps: Was there a telling sign that you were ready, that the core was ready to sustain and enable kind of growth in other parts of the business? What were you, what would, what gave you that confidence?
John Foraker: It was the consumer insight. So like we, we, and I'm sure these guys are the same from the same camp, like closeness, empathy, understanding of your consumer is like the most important thing. And we just had consumers begging us to do certain things and we heard it over and over and over again at scale.
And then we had, the business just got to a place where capabilities wise, we felt like we could execute it well. And so that, that was really it. And it was a bet. And like you extend, like we went from fresh to ambient. You know, you can assume that's going to work, but until it doesn't, it's, you gotta prove it.
Right. And so it was really that we just felt like we were ready and consumers were saying the same things over and over again, and we just finally listened.
Charlotte Apps: Yeah. Eric in, in, I think maybe at Method, you've said before, kind of the worst, you know, when no one stars from over complexity, that it's actually what kills them. Any thoughts from kind of the, the experience?
Eric Ryan: Yeah. And more, I always think like more companies die from indigestion versus starvation of taking too many things out, and I am so guilty of this. Yeah. I remember in the early days of, Method, I walked into a Target to see our Japanese label on the shelf in the US I was like, okay, we might be trying to grow a little too fast.
I love product. And so of course, like you want to keep using that muscle of creating product. What I just try to do is put discipline in place of like a third, a third, a third. Like we should always be doing a third of improving our core product. A third of simple line extensions, and then a third of true innovation.
And there's really, I think, no right or wrong about how fast you grow, but I have seen this evolution, like, you know, the original mass media brands that were built off the 32nd spot, so think like Tide for Tide. And then we saw this evolution to, I think really what Annie's, Method, like, these more mission based, value driven brands that were about serving an audience.
And then once you connected with that audience, you could serve all their needs. But that was really born in like the, you know, late nineties, early two thousands when social media, you had these longer formats. So you could tell bigger stories. Now we're down to like five second stories. Yeah, and so I think we're seeing back to the reward of hyper-focused brands around single categories are the ones that are really, I think you saw today too.
And those insurgents are like the ones that are really doing well.
John Foraker: It really helps. It really drives memorability too. Like one of, like if you extended too many categories too small. When the brand's, too small consumers have a hard time slotting in their head, what is this thing and what is this brand for memorability that's big?
And then geometric complexity. Larry is out here somewhere. Larry built our supply chain at Annie's. We had 17 manufacturing facilities when we were around a hundred million dollar business before we took Annie's public. That is way too much complexity. Like, and so that's an, that's another part that goes to your thought like, doing too much is way worse than doing less stuff.
Charlotte Apps: And Jen, you've, you've just taken that first step from you've, you've been innovating around flavors, but have just taken a step into kind of a new occasion, a new product, a new format.
Jen Zeszut: Yeah. You know, flavor innovation for us was always from the very beginning, we launched with a cacio pepe Mac and Cheese, where we just needed to signal to the world like, oh, something is different here. This is not just, Mac is not just for little kids anymore. But yeah, thrilled cheese, mac and cheese, dreamy, creamy like we've been doing, shaped black truffle hatch chilies, like all kinds of things. That's all been part of the core promise.
But cups is a really big, it's, it's really different. It's a totally different supply chain. It's different manufacturers, and then of course there's the whole world in mac and cheese, they basically use plastic, plastic cups and, I'm not going to feed my kids in plastic cups.
So,we're like, no, we have to do something different there too. And there's really no one who does that. And they're, you know, and of course it's like, it'd be so much cheaper if we would just do plastic and we're like, no, we're not going to. So if you're going to do it, you have to do it the GOODLES way, I believe firmly that a brand is a promise, and when you make that promise, you cannot break those promises.
So we can't be Goodles if we just stick it in the cheapest, you know, cup that's available. So, you know, it takes longer, it takes a bigger team, it takes bigger operations. It's so hard to do, but. Like you said, John, like we had so much conviction from so much data, even from before launch. We were told by our consumers that no, no, no. And it's totally incremental. Like, no, I would, I need to buy cups and I need to buy boxes. We're like, are you sure? They were sure. So yeah, it took a while to make that decision, but the discipline to say no to so many things, 'cause yeah, our amazing retailers are making suggestions constantly. You guys should do Goodles rice. Oh, okay. Great. That's a good suggestion. Thank you so much. We're not going to be doing rice any day soon. Yes. You stick your inning.
Charlotte Apps: Did you do, you know, you give this tremendous story how quickly you came to market with that idea and that product, which I think blew even your own team blew their minds. Is there anything that you did differently launching this microwaveable cup that maybe three years ago you wouldn't have done either because the environment was different? Either because of how you, you know, the tools you have to better understand consumers or just that the environment that, you know, we are in today, having kind of maybe change some of that.
Jen Zeszut: Yeah, we did really, really, really rush that one. We were planning on having that be a 2026 fall innovation and we were like, couldn't that be like a fall 2025? And then we're like, guys launching in fall and how like to miss back to school would be such a shame. Like, couldn't we just do it in July?
And we're like, okay, well Costco would like it in June. So anyway, we launched it like 18 months before we thought we were going to do. So I'm my team. I love you. I don't regret that. Sorry, team, and we're going to keep pushing that hard because we have to, but the one thing from a launch perspective that we did differently, because we had, we were so confident in the core platform of the core product.
I think we were launching SKUs in the early days. We would give exclusives. We'd be like, you can have it, you know, exclusive for six months and you can have it exclusive for six months. But all that does is it limits your sale. On this one, we had the confidence to say it's going live. Whoever wants it first, first come, first serve. Like you better find a way to cut it in. I don't know how you're going to cut it in, but if you need to cut it in, you cut it in. And we did not have that boldness three years ago at all. But once you have that base and you know what the sales are going to be, then you can make those kind of bold moves. Now you hope they cut it in and you never know until they actually do.
But we launched it very differently once we had that certainty from the core product.
Charlotte Apps: On that topic of, you know, partnering with retail to, to get products out there and John you started alluding to it. it's one thing to have a great idea, it's another to get it on shelf and get retails to buy into it.
I think particularly Eric and, and, and Jen and John, I'm assuming the same is true, but you've, you've partnered with, with, with retailers such as Target, who have been tremendous proponents of, of insurgent brands. Can you talk a little bit about kind of what is that entry path into retail? We talk about, you know, starting with alternative channels, really focusing initially and then expanding over time once you kind of have earned that, right, because you have the proof points that your, your brand works, your consumers are, you've got the consumer pull.
Does that resonate with, you know, your experience in the early days? Is that actually changing? You know, we’ve certainly seen Walmart become much more amenable to, you know smaller set of stores, smaller distribution. We've seen, you know, others play around with a number of different, types of retail flight paths, I would say.
Would love your thoughts on, on what you've seen.
Eric Ryan: Yeah, I think for me a couple grounding principles. One, with the growth of digital and e-commerce, I'm a fundamental believer that we are social sensory creatures and we're always going to want to be out shopping physically. But what shifted is you have to have a reason to go.
I think with any category when it diverges between either you win on convenience and price, which online does really well, of course, or you win on experience. And so I think physical retail has just continued to evolve that delivers a great experience. It can still be on price. I mean, look at Trader Joe's, it's like one of the most joyful places to shop. And it's also great low price pricing. And I think you saw in Michael's you know, new strategy for Target of like getting back to like really winning in that store experience. And then what Kara Sylvester doubled down on yesterday as a new chief merchant is like, we are going to be the best place to launch and discover emerging brands and getting back to that discovery. And that is the joy of going to physical retail.
On the other side, I think two other things that are shifting. One really landing product market fit online I think has become more important. And being, you know, you're seeing this playbook over and over of like really building that traction online and then bringing that in store, and I think that has flipped or that is more important to drive.
Third to that as well within physical retail, it's never been easier to launch a brand as we're walking around today, right? And like a lot of these brands won't be here next year. Barriers to entry, it's never been easier to launch a brand, but it's never been harder to scale a brand. And I think that's the role that physical retail and that end cap at Target really plays such an important role, not only to drive volume and efficiency into your business for that next stage, but really to signal back to the consumer that confidence.
So, I think we're starting to land in this, the right spot between the role of, of online and physical.
Jen Zeszut: I mean, when we launched. So no one wanted to back this company. They didn't think GOODLES was a good idea. They thought our packaging didn't look very healthy. It was too cute and too pretty. They also thought that we couldn't compete against the big dollars, which they were kind of right. But again, they kind of forgot that, you just, if you can't win at the game, you change the game. So we did that.
And the other one was they didn't like our launch plan. And our launch plan was, we're going to go national at Target. Nope, we had never met anyone. Nope, they've never returned our calls, but that's what we wanted to do. And they're like, no, no, no - this is like Boulder, Austin, a few little, you know, natural food stores. Just start small and then grow from there. And we're like, guys, no. Like we believed fundamentally from the very beginning, this is not for the, you know, ultra marathoners in Austin. This is from mass proposition. Everybody wants to eat clean ingredients. Everybody deserves good protein, nutrition, prebiotics, super, you know, 21 nutrients from super foods. Like this is a mass proposition, and we're going Target or we're not, you know, or we're not going anywhere.
Luckily, it's a long story. I found a way to sneak in. Someone had to return my call. I got 10 minutes and the rest is history. But we just knew from the very beginning like we wanted to be a mass brand. It was essential to us to signal to the world. And the packaging looks like this because you want your mac and cheese to look delicious.
First, if you love algae, you're going to find it on the side and you're going to be like, ow, cool. They have chlorella. That is not a mass proposition. The, the, the fitness freaks will find you and they'll get all excited about your mushrooms and stuff like that. That's not going on the front of the box if you wanna build a mass brand.
So we made that decision really early on and you know, no regrets. Of course it all worked out, so no regrets, but it's a choice.
John Foraker: No, I agree with, like, I think retail is massively important. I agree with Eric's characterization of it. I think digital. Digital first capabilities and the ability to connect with consumers in a very modern way is also massively important.
Yeah. And I'd also like put a layer over the top of that, the way that retailers are showing up digitally and showing up in that universe for click and collect and everything is massively important. And if you talk to any single retailer in the us, top three, strategic priority to them is increasing digital engagement with their consumers.
It's either one, two, or three. And so like, I think just bringing the best out of that world into a physical space where there's excitement and curation and new fun ideas. People love to shop. They do, and they'll do it online and in store.
Eric Ryan: I remember when you took Annie's public, you were telling me how you overlay the IPO marketing story with end caps in, in store execution.
Did you do the same again?
John Foraker: We did talk about it when we could, you know. But there is, there's an awareness. There's absolutely an awareness hit that you get when you take a company public, and it's very significant in terms of like equivalent media spend and it, it can really drive awareness.
A lot of awareness. Yeah. Tell so, yeah, we certainly took advantage of it.
Charlotte Apps: Tell us a little bit, you know, I think there's lots and lots of people in this room are keen to hear kind of the path, the decision path that brought you to taking Once Upon a Farm public, it's one that you had gone through with Annie's and certainly, you know, you were, as a result, knew what you were getting into.
But the IPO isn't necessarily the kind of end all be all for, for all brands. And so what led you down to that path?
John Foraker: Yeah, most people are probably assuming something that didn't happen here, and most people assume that we wanted to sell it to somebody and we couldn't find a buyer, so we took it public. It's absolutely not true. There's been a lot of strategic interest in this business, but we didn't talk to. We didn't have a second track. We weren't talking to anybody else. I haven't talked to strategic for probably two and a half years now.
We were on the track to take this company public for a really simple reason. Our mission and what's baked into our articles in corporations is to drive systemic change and childhood nutrition for happier, healthier, more equitable world. That has been like what has driven every single decision in this business since September of 2017. And we came to the conclusion that like if you look out there at the space of acquisitions that have happened. Let, let's just be fair and say like it's very mixed, right? Some have been very successful, they've been integrated well. They've grown like crazy after maybe even faster. Many of them have, not many of 'em, you know, in the worst cases, the brands have basically vaporized been destroyed and are irrelevant now.
But if so, you can't assume that if you are, for a company like us that has a mission like that, we want to drive impact that's so much bigger than we are today. We felt like the best way to do that was just to keep doing it ourselves. And an IPO was a path that allowed us to maintain that independence with more resources, more awareness, and drive it.
And so that's what we're doing. We came back, when I took Annie’s public in 2012, I remember walking from the train station in Berkeley to our little office on Cedar in Berkeley and walking. I remember explicitly just going, what the hell am I going to do today? Like, you know what I mean? I sounds so crazy to say that now.
But when I came back here, like the first day back when I flipped my computer on, I was like we're doing exactly what we did yesterday. The company's exactly the same. We've been operating as a public company from a discipline standpoint, a capabilities, systems, processes, accounting, et cetera like that for years. So there's no change. It's just like keep doing the same thing. So that's, that's what's very different, but I think it's a little misunderstood.
I, well say one last thing just about going public, I get questions about this a lot. Like there's this perception and bankers sometimes will say this like you can run two tracks and like if the M&A and a track doesn't work well, you can just like slap the puck into the IPO net and you can get public. And I think if you look back in ‘21 and whatever, like lots of companies got public, a lot of 'em didn't as shouldn't have been public.
They didn't have the systems, they didn't have the forward visibility, they didn't have PA, they didn't have a system, blah, blah, blah. And so to be public, I think if you're really committed to that path. You have to take it really serious and you have to take it really serious years before you do it. Like you know, you have to decide to pay your auditor a million dollars a year instead of 200,000 and like three or four years before you do it.
That's a hard decision to make for a board, you know, raising capital and saying, Hey, here's going to be a use of my proceeds. So, but I would just say that like, if you go, it's, if you go public, you, that's an event. Being public is way harder than going public. And to be public in a good company, you have to, you have to execute at a very high level for a long time.
Yeah. Or don't do it, you know, that's what I'd say.
Charlotte Apps: Super helpful, super interesting learnings for, for maybe some of us in the room. Eric, you, you did take, you know, the other path and, and John you did too actually when you ended up.
But Eric, you have, you know, I'd love to, you know, the, the path of a strategic sale is an important, you know, really important decision, particularly for founders. You know, it's, it comes with a, a host of implications. Can you talk a little bit about some of the lessons learned?
Like Bain, we talk a lot about what, what it takes to set up a, an integration or what it takes to kind of manage brands once they've been acquired in the context of a scale, you know, a set of scale brands that, that are used to operating in certain ways that are used to a certain playbook. What was it like for you?
How did you kind of a decide on the strategic that you and you ended up partnering with? How did you decide how long to stay the role that you would play, and then what made some of those transactions successful in your mind?
Eric Ryan: Yeah, so obviously when you take outside capital, you have to provide a liquidity.
So you've, once you've raised capital, like you've put yourself on that destiny. And a couple key principles that I've always thought about. I mean, one, it's a cliche of like, companies get bought, not sold, and then my experience, that has been absolutely true. And with each one, we are very careful to set the company up for long-term success.
So even the way I like, I'm a very simple operator. For me it's all about culture. And the products are really a souvenir of that culture. And if I can get the culture right, which is really the people and talent and get the products right, chances are the company is set up well for success. And I talked about before of I really try to anchor these brands in the major macro trends.
So Olly was all about the first vitamin that was really about how millennials viewed health and wellness as a lifestyle pursuit. Let's reimagine the vitamin as a lifestyle product. Method was really about high design and deep sustainability. And so they're anchored to these major macro trends and in the sale process it's looking for a partner and really they choose you as much as like you run across.
Like they do choose you, and it's about putting it together for obviously a great return for your investors, but for me it was so important that this thing is going to be successful that. I'm not embarrassed by it one day. My kids or my grandchildren aren't embarrassed by it. And so to do that again, it’s kind of goes back to the right partner.
And one of my favorite M&A stories, Walter Rob and I were reminiscing about this last night. He puts together these great dinner parties. And so years ago we were at his house for a dinner party, and Paul Polman, the current CEO at that time of Unilever was sitting across the table from me. Joe Montana was sitting next to me and Paul asked Joe, he is like, so what do you do? And Joe very like, humble was like, well, I used to play, American football for a local club. And I was like, hold on. He's like, you are underselling yourself. And I left that dinner and I called my wife on the way home and I was like, we're selling to Unilever someday when we sell. And she's like, you fell in love with Paul. I was like, I totally fell in love with Paul. And they ended up buying, Olly and then ultimately Welly and then SC Johnson owns Method today. And so really is going through that process. It really came down to like the, that key partnership and it's like, and I built those partnerships over years of getting to know them.
When I went to go with Olly very early on, I would just reach out to CEOs and say, let's have dinner, and I want to hear what do you like about what we're doing and what don't you like about what we're doing? It was kind of like getting answers to the test, but when you go into situations like an M&A trying to improve yourself versus prove yourself to them, every puts their guard down, guard down.
You start talking about what a partnership could look like and then organically, it just kind of often will happen that way.
Charlotte Apps: How long did those processes take? Like how early before a sale were you actually engaged in those conversations?
Eric Ryan: I started probably three years out just getting to know you dinners, and it was very clear like we're not for sale, obviously we took outside capital, so we will be someday and I'd just love to get to know you.
We didn't do it with Method and we were so unique that I found a flat here as the banker, that we'd sit across these CEOs kind of cold because we were so unique what we're doing and we had not built that relationship. And so the second time around. I saw the value in, in really creating that. And then after acquisition, I would say it's like three years.
The first year they think you're a genius and they just like listen to you. Second year they start pushing back a little and then the third year they've taken over. And they have like they've, those brands have continued to scale really beautifully, which is what I care about most out.
Charlotte Apps: Anything that you would call out that they did particularly well that, you know, led to the long, you know, once you left, that led to kind of the long-term success? Obviously Unilever now has the kind of their, their beauty and wellbeing portfolio of brands that they're managing somewhat separately, which I think has been, you know, hugely beneficial to brands like Olly, in terms of allowing them to grow in a slightly, you know, separate structure. Any thoughts?
Eric Ryan: Well, I think the big way we pitched it was like, what capability are we bringing to you? So Method was really the beachhead for SC Johnson. They owned Ms. Myers at that point, but it became like this beachhead for setting up this lifestyles division and Sun Bum that we're in it.
For Olly, it was Unilever's first acquisition in the health and wellness space. And so we, part of our pitch to, it's like, I'll help you go build a global health and wellness division, which was really fun then to switch on the other side. So our first acquisition was Liquid IV, bringing into the portfolio and so that was what we were, we had our pitch to them is like, we're joining you to build a new capability and a new division.
And I think that's where you always see the best returns, in the highest multiples when you're bringing something to that acquirer versus just like a bolt on brand. And then I think we did a really great job of like, we had a great pipeline. But again, we are selling them on the culture and the team and the capabilities that we are bringing into, into their enterprise.
Yeah. But after the third year, they've had enough of you.
Charlotte Apps: You mentioned team, and obviously you know, none of these brands and, and none of your brands have kind of been able to achieve the kind of success that you've achieved without a phenomenal team behind it. And John, you and I have talked a little bit about how, as you scaled, how you kind of retained the culture and that kind of founder's mentality that I mentioned earlier, as you've scaled, as you've recruited people and become kind of much more sizable business.
John Foraker: Yeah. Well, the starts with the common language of our mission, which I mentioned earlier, and everybody buys into that and understands that. I think that truly, like great companies are built by great people. Like here, for example, I learned a lot from my experience at Annie's about building teams and investing in people.
We have the same core leadership team that's been here for almost six years now. We've now, we've read Patrick Lencioni's five functions as a team, like three times. We've workshoped it, we've gone through, we've gone through the, like, trust building that is required and, and every day is a work in process on that, even six years later.
But that's how you build a high performing team. And I've learned that and I've gotten lots of great coaching myself on how to be a better leader. So everyone here should be curious about your leadership style. If you want to grow a great company, connect with great people and build great culture, there's a lot of smart people out there that can help you.
But the other thing I'd say is like the other thing I did differently here versus say Annie's. We really invested in talent and development like we were hiring. We've hired, I think, some of the best, if not the best talent in all of CPG. Everyone here would say that about their teams.
But once we've, once we've hired them and brought them into the culture, we've also invested in them. Like leadership development cohorts that go six months, three day sessions where they're, where we're just centering them on what's important to them and how do they fit the whole, that is so important and you the best talent wants that. They want to be developed. And so that's, that's a muscle that I didn't have at Annie's that we really developed here. That's been fantastic.
Eric Ryan: One thing I just add on that from a culture perspective, and it's how I decided to be fortunate enough to be part of GOODLES was at the show, is it three, four years ago?
And we were talking at the GOODLES booth and they just had it all, like highly differentiated brand. Incredible product really, that our, I call it that intersection of, of altruism and narcissism. Like you bring people in for these very narcissist reasons of like amazing flavor profiles, but then the altruism, it's better for you. And you'll see that a common theme in all of our brands.
But what I, what really I fell in love with was the culture. I was just observing the people, the team, how they were all working. And you could just feel the energy and the magic. And that was like what had me.
And so I've joined Greycroft. We're now, I'm now on the, the venture side of officially, and, and I'm actually, it's fun to be here shopping, looking for investments, any great investments. Please talk to me. There’s an investment that we are looking at, and I went to their booth today and I was like, we're on the fence. And I was like, yep. Wow, it's not there. I can feel like the energy of the team, the culture, you can just feel it's an energy thing and you can just feel it and it's going to be a pass. And that's why I think the beauty of this event is like when I go to booths, I'm paying attention to the people and the energy of the team as much as I am of like how good their product is.
John Foraker: I mean, how are they treating people who come up to their booth who are, who are with a totally different company they know is not a buyer, like. How are they really genuinely engaging with them? You can read so much from that, like how that strength of that culture, the humility, the kindness, the fun, the centering on the mission, like you can totally feel it.
AI will never replace that. Like it's basically all about the human connection, which is so important. That's why the show is so important.
Jen Zeszut: Yeah that, that generosity of spirit and joy, if you haven't gone, I don't know if they're still there, but we have charm bracelets. You can pick up your charm bracelet with some Goodles charms. And then there's a whole bunch of little brands who are, it's their first time at Expo. They are nervous that no one's going to come to their booth, and we're like, oh, we can fix that. So there's a little charm trail to send you on your way to go meet some amazing little brands.
You lift your own brand by lifting others and you know, our mission statement, we are an elite team with arms locked, having fun and doing the best work of our lives in order to create a legendary brand and a legendary business in order to generate legendary business results. And I think that like we, you know, it's not all about just having fun. We love winning. And you know, but that's how we do it. We do it together, we do it arms locked, and we're just having a blast.
Eric Ryan: So, I mean, so much of the success of a startup is just energy and momentum and driving that. It's not PowerPoint slides of strategy like that is the essence of it. I went, one other fun story from last night. I went to the first ever creator gala by TikTok and Twilly, and first of all, I was walking in a black tie to go to it, which is the polar opposite of, and it was the most amazing event.
They brought together all the top creators. And did this black tie gala and most of these people had never met each other, but they're all famous to each other on TikTok and seeing like 500 of 'em in a room dressed up, giving acceptance speeches, I was absolutely blown away by it. And it's, I think a lot of it's the future of CPG marketing, but again, it was back to like that feeling and that energy in that room was nothing I'd ever seen before and was so different than anything from Expo I've seen before.
Charlotte Apps: Amazing. And I think that, you know, going back to the team, that it creates so much authenticity in everything that you could do. And you know, the sense of kind of your purpose and your mission permeating across the entire organization was really what enables you guys to, to, to have the kind of success that you're having.
Jen Zeszut: So, no, and people will say, I taste your food tastes like joy. And you're just like, yeah, well I know where that comes from.
Eric Ryan: So when you go to Booth today, feel the energy. We might not think about this brand, yes or no, based on the energy of the people in their booth.
Charlotte Apps: I know we're coming up a time. And so I want to close panel off with one last question to our three panelists.
If you were to start all over again, what is one thing that you would not do and what is one thing that you would absolutely redo?
Jen Zeszut: If I start another brand, every single person on my team is coming with me. Whether you like it or not, we are doing this together. I'm never leaving your side, so it's team, team, team. So that is, that is the magic. We could do anything together.
Things I probably would do differently. We raised very little money, A because no one wanted to give us any, but B we just stayed really, really scrappy. I think you can do scrappy with a little bit more money than we have. Everyone keeps hearing like our revenues and our team and they're like kind of making me nervous that maybe we're a little outta line. I think I probably would've raised a little bit more.
Eric Ryan: For me, I would always keep the principle, it's about people and products and those are the two things that always get right.
And what I would do different is I'd probably try to go after product market fit a little faster first on TikTok. And find ways to be really scrappy before taking it in a physical retail.
John Foraker: Yeah. I probably wouldn't have gone from about 300 doors to 8,500 doors in about three months in the very beginning. It ended up working, but it, but it was, it was suboptimal in some ways. So I probably wouldn't do that.
I would absolutely just continue to just really focus on the team and talent because I think that's the gift that keeps on giving and the relationships that come about.
Charlotte Apps: Amazing. Well, tremendous insights.
Thank you so much to our panelists.
2026 US Insurgent Brands: Powering the Next Wave of Growth
Bain & Company’s 10th annual review recognizes 113 high-growth US consumer products brands that captured about 36% of market growth in tracked channels across all FMCG categories in 2025 despite accounting for less than 2% of total market share.
First published in Απρίλιος 2026