👋 Hey, it’s Jordan!
CPG founders are often praised for pushing through difficult seasons, but resilience without boundaries can eventually work against the business. Sustainable growth requires more than persistence. It requires clear thinking, disciplined systems, and the ability to recognize when the current pace is no longer productive.
This week’s issue looks at how founders can protect their own capacity while building stronger systems across marketing, risk management, retail execution, and growth.
Founder wellbeing is a business issue, not a personal side project.
Better systems reduce both financial risk and unnecessary stress.
Growth becomes sustainable when execution does not depend on constant heroics.
Building a CPG brand takes resilience, but constant exhaustion is not a sustainable strategy. When founders stay in survival mode too long, it can weaken decision-making, leadership, and the health of the business.
This article explores how to recognize burnout, regain clarity, and build a company that does not depend on carrying every problem alone.
Most CPG brands aren’t losing retail media dollars because they lack effort. They’re losing because their campaigns are structured too broadly. Learn the SKU-level framework winning teams use to cut wasted spend, improve ROAS, and turn retail media into a predictable growth engine.
A small labeling mistake can turn into a costly recall. When Costco recalled nearly 80,000 pounds of butter over a missing allergen statement, it showed how even simple oversights can create major financial and reputational risk for food brands. This article breaks down what CPG founders can learn from the recall and how product recall insurance can help protect your brand when something goes wrong.
Getting a Walmart order is a huge win, but fulfilling it without draining your cash is the real test. This article breaks down the operational, timing, and cash flow challenges that come with large retail orders and how CPG brands can prepare to turn the opportunity into long-term growth.
Distributor deductions can quietly drain a CPG brand’s margins, especially when there is no clear process for planning, reviewing, and disputing them. In this episode, I sit down with Yuval Selik, co-founder and CEO of Promomash, to explore how AI is changing deduction and trade spend management.
We discuss where AI can save time, why clean data and proactive planning still matter, and why experienced people must remain involved in every decision. Yuval also shares why relying entirely on AI could lead to inaccurate accruals, incorrect promotional matching, unnecessary disputes, and damaged distributor relationships.
Coco5 started with a simple mission: create a better hydration drink for athletes. What began inside the Chicago Blackhawks organization has evolved into a fast-growing, athlete-owned brand distributed across the country.
In this episode, Marc Doggett, CEO of Coco5, shares the realities of scaling a beverage brand today, from retail strategy and channel expansion to innovation decisions and leadership hiring. We explore why Coco5 is investing beyond grocery, what they learned from Costco roadshows, how they think about product innovation, and the systems required to build a lasting brand in a crowded hydration category.
If you’re building a beverage brand, navigating retail growth, or thinking about your next stage of scale, this episode is packed with actionable lessons.
I’m bringing together operators who are actively building with AI inside their businesses. From custom CRMs to automating workflows to making faster, better decisions across sales, marketing, and operations.
You’ll walk away with practical examples you can implement immediately.
What we’ll cover:
✅ How founders are building internal tools without engineering teams
✅ Where AI is actually saving time across sales, ops, and marketing
✅ Real workflows you can copy for your own business
✅ What’s working today and what’s not worth your time yet
If you’ve been feeling like you’re behind on AI, or unsure where it actually fits into your business, this will give you a clear starting point.
And if you’re already using it, you’ll likely walk away with a few unfair advantages.
Pulp+Wire is a full-service CPG creative agency that helps brands stand out, scale faster, and drive growth through strategic branding, packaging design, website creative, trade show experiences, and more.
Limited-Time Offer: Get a FREE Brand Audit Session. Limited to the first 5 brands that respond this week.
Diagnose your Amazon account and hand you a 90-day roadmap to fix it.
The Amazon Whisperer specializes in helping CPG brands scale profitably on Amazon through strategy, advertising, listing optimization, creative, backend management and much more. Get started with a free Profitability Roadmap where we run an in-depth account diagnostic, identify the issues and opportunities, and deliver a 90-day plan to scale your account profitably.
Harvest Hub CPG gives founders the edge in submitting correctly, to the right person, at the right time, with the right documents, to over 75,000 accounts nationwide. Access category review calendars for 150 key accounts, distribution information, buyer details, promotional requirements, and grow your business with the information major national sales companies use.
📋 Second helps brands capture Fancy Food Show booth conversations in real time. Your team texts in badge scans, business cards, voice memos, sample requests, and quick notes from the floor.
💰 Bridge Marketplace is the official financing partner for Walmart and Sam’s Club suppliers. Bridge offers purchase order financing that funds your production costs at rates competitive with traditional inventory and asset-based loans, without taking a loan against your business.
👩💻 Plus Forty helps CPG and e-commerce brands scale with vetted VAs and offshore talent, from executive assistants to media buyers, sales support, and more. Exclusive for Foodbevy they offering 2 brands the chance to try a Virtual Assistant for free: 5 free VA hours, No upfront costs and CPG and AI-capable support
💻 Peasy is a free, all-in-one operating system for CPG brands, built to replace spreadsheets with one simple dashboard for purchasing, receiving, production, inventory, and sales. Right now, they’re offering completely FREE access to the full platform with no limits, no credit card, no contracts.
E-mail: intro@foodbevy.com to request an introduction to any of the partners above
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