In this Insurgent Q&A, Bain’s EVP of Consumer Products, Charlotte Apps, speaks with Jen Zeszut, cofounder and CEO of GOODLES, about how the brand has reimagined boxed mac and cheese into a nutrient-dense, design-forward offering for a new generation of consumers—sparking a fan-fueled flywheel of joyful “weird energy” and driving some of the fastest growth in the category.

Q: You led three companies before launching GOODLES. What was it about mac and cheese that made you take on a fourth?

Zeszut: I truly thought I was done. But I met Paul Earle, a serial entrepreneur who couldn’t shake the idea that mac and cheese deserved a nutritional and branding overhaul.  We spoke for 15 minutes, and that’s all it took. We called it a “cherry‑cherry‑cherry” moment—like a Vegas slot machine, where everything aligned toward the making of a winning opportunity that I couldn’t walk away from.

Mac and cheese was a multi-billion, stagnant category where no nutritional evolution had happened for decades and branding felt stale. Everyone was treating it like kids’ food. So we asked: What if we could lure young adults back to mac? The winning product would need a nutritional overhaul, a branding overhaul, a flavor overhaul, and a new tone of voice to signal this childhood staple is not just for little kids anymore. That became the foundation of GOODLES.

Q: Launching a brand takes conviction and an insurgent mindset. What hurdles did you overcome early on?

Zeszut: To start with, we launched at the height of the pandemic, so we couldn’t sample on the streets. Instead, we self-funded a nationwide tasting program, shipping small bags of noodles to thousands of people and building our initial “Do-Gooder” community of 3,000 people. 

It took over a thousand versions to nail our proprietary GOODLES noodle. Every round we asked the same questions on texture, color, and taste—and then the big one: At a price roughly two to three times Kraft, what’s the likelihood you’d switch? When we finally hit a 92% switch rate, we knew we were ready to rock.

The other challenge was funding. We must have knocked on at least 100 VC doors, and they all said the same thing: This was a niche “health” product play that couldn’t win against the deep pockets of world-class marketers who would outspend us on slotting fees and compete on pricing. We disagreed. This was a mass proposition that offered a solution to how every family wants to eat—cleaner, better, but joyful and still delicious. We didn’t give up—or change our vision!  We eventually found partners who believed what we believed.

Q: What was the unlock to go from having a concept to getting product on shelf?

Zeszut: Our goal from the start was to be nutritionally head-and-shoulders above the rest and design-forward in our branding and then find the right partner to help us scale on shelf. We launched direct-to-consumer first to get product into households early on, but the real unlock was Target. Target rarely introduces pre-revenue companies on shelf, but we hustled to get five minutes with a buyer and, miraculously, they committed early. Given the bet they were taking on such a young brand, it took “selling” the idea of stocking GOODLES to the highest levels of the organization. And their response was game-changing, awarding us full national rollout across 1,900 doors and endcap space.

Q: How have you measured success as the brand has scaled?

Zeszut: Getting on shelf is one thing; flying off shelf is what matters, and that starts with winning with our consumers. We were intentional about not getting ahead of ourselves—we wanted awareness and fan love to always precede availability on shelf. And that brand love has been wild—tattoos, Halloween costumes, themed parties, Shakespearean sonnets, dances, choreography. The many hand-written love letters that we’ve received at the HQ office are some of our most special treasures.

We’re now driving more than 80% of the category growth and leading Kraft and Annie’s in both dollars per store per week and units per store per week. But with retailers, we have never positioned ourselves as replacing the big incumbents—retailers are partial to that revenue. Instead, we were about growing the pie and creating incremental demand by bringing young adults and families back to the mac aisle.

At one national mass retailer, 78% of GOODLES shoppers had never purchased mac and cheese in that store before, and we’ve seen the same sort of metric across other retailers and at club. We’re bringing in entirely new customers—higher-income shoppers and young adults returning to a category many abandoned after their dorm-room days. That’s a major win-win with retailers.

Q: What has it taken to break through at scale in such a competitive category? 

Zeszut: It had to start with having a great product. We tested, tested again, and then leaned in hard when we knew it was working. To win in the category, GOODLES had to taste amazing and be nutritionally superior—more protein, fiber, and micronutrients than traditional boxed mac—and that combination is what drives intense loyalty. No one wants to choose between “yum” and nutrition! We want both! GOODLES delivers that. In a recent research study, nine in ten GOODLES customers said they won’t switch to a different brand if their favorite GOODLES flavor isn’t on shelf; they’ll choose another GOODLES flavor, go without, or go to another store.

Behind that superior product is a unique and authentic brand. Our vision from the outset was that mac and cheese isn’t just for kids, so we targeted young adults with unexpected flavors like cacio e pepe (“Mover and Shaker”) and truffle (“Here Comes Truffle”). We give our products names that have a fun edge and double entendre that speak to a more flavor-forward consumer. And we support that with unique and authentic branding. We are scrappy marketers, and we don’t mind our marketing looking that way! Our tone, voice, packaging, and campaigns all reflect that same spirit of the unexpected.

Internally, as a team, we don’t strive for consensus; if everyone agrees, it’s probably not bold enough. Flavors, packaging, names, campaigns—we push the edges wherever we can. We do things our esteemed competitors wouldn’t do, and that’s what people love. Our fans meet us with even weirder energy, and it becomes a joyful flywheel. Retailers were hesitant at first about the idea of a wide variety of GOODLES flavors—category leaders sell most of their volume through a single staple SKU—but variety proved the unlock for young adults and for retailers: More flavors mean more buying, more trips, bigger baskets.

Q: You recently launched microwavable cups. What did it take to be successful?

Zeszut: We launched insanely fast—well under six months, when twelve months is typical, even longer for more established brands. The cups market is a full third of the mac and cheese market, so we knew we wanted to play there. And research showed cups were their own (incremental!) usage occasion: on-the-go, at work, after school. This was the perfect opportunity to give our fans a new consumption opportunity.

We had earmarked the launch for 2026, but we saw that there was a huge market opportunity if we could hit back-to-school in September 2025. This meant an almost impossible timeline to get us ready for shipping by July. We knew we needed to get the taste right from the outset. Matching beloved boxed flavors in a new format proved more difficult than launching something brand new because consumer expectations were already set. It wasn’t easy! And we were innovating with a new-to-the-category, paper-based microwavable cup!

As a team, we pushed through every hurdle. We launched our cups online and sold out in 11 hours—we thought we had three months of inventory. Turns at retail are three times what anyone forecasted, and boxed velocities of the same flavors are up at the same time, which seems incredible. But that’s what the consumer research had told us—cups were an incremental usage occasion for our fans. The format opens entirely new distribution—from small format stores to college campuses and hotel lobbies—and in-store placement can range from in-line on shelves to back-to-school displays or even checkout lanes. It’s opened a whole new world of reach and possibilities for us as a brand.

Q: What guiding principles have been most important to you as you’ve led the brand through its remarkable growth?

Zeszut: Staying ruthlessly focused. A clear north star matters, and in my role, I cannot emphasize it enough. Scaling fast means operationally things can get harder—everyone is stretched as it is. So when retailers propose new categories for us to go into or brands reach out to do collabs, we are really thoughtful before making any decisions. We say no to a lot—most things, actually! The art of strategy is deciding what not to do.

The other key for us has been staying one step ahead. Our growth curve is steeper and earlier than anything I’ve seen—when you constantly outdo yourself, you have to anticipate multiple steps ahead. We plan contingencies for our contingencies: What if we exceed plans by 50%, 100%, 200%? In just one year, we’ve already gone from selling one box per second to three boxes per second. Staying focused is what allows us to scale without breaking the model.

The last piece that is so important as we scale is our connection to one another. Our mission statement says that we are “an elite team with arms locked, having fun and doing the best work of our lives … to deliver legendary business outcomes.” That “arms locked” part is so important. It’s not just what we do, but how we do it that matters.

Q: What’s next as you look ahead to the next three to five years?

Zeszut: We’ll keep bending the edges of what mac and cheese is and can be. We will keep launching flavors and formats that no one necessarily asked for, because that’s how you lead a category rather than follow it. But once GOODLES introduces it, it seems obvious and all our competitors will follow. That’s OK. We hope to leave our industry better than we found it. But our focus stays the same: legendary business results delivered through true brand love and community. We measure success in tattoos and love letters on our office walls. It’s the best leading indicator for business success.