The CPG industry has no shortage of advice. Everyone has a take on your packaging, your retail strategy, your raise. The problem isn't access to opinions. It's that most of it comes from observers, not operators.
Jordan Buckner is the latter. He founded a brand, scaled it, shut it down, then built Foodbevy as the resource he wished existed when he was starting out. Today, he hosts the Startup to Scale podcast and curates a quarterly Insider Box.
Few people see the full system. We ask him what it looks like from every seat at the table.
* Note: Text answers have been edited for length and clarity. Full answers are in video. (We highly recommend watching!)
As a CPG expert
My name is Jordan Buckner, I’m the founder of Foodbevy, a community of food and beverage founders helping go from start to scale. I’m a previous CPG founder myself and just on a mission to help everyone with a CPG brand build a successful business.
1. Where are founders wasting their time and energy?
Trade shows can be helpful, but you have to be clear on what you want to get out of them. Distributor and regional shows might actually be better for getting real sales orders. Larger shows can be helpful if you want to just get in front of as many people as possible. Know that you have control over your destiny and you need to take that control instead of just letting things happen to you.
2. What "best practice" in CPG is overrated?
Doing everything yourself. As a founder in the industry, work with your competitors. I've heard of products that might seem like competitors, but the founders actually talk and share best practices because if they’re building in a new category, they need to build it category together. They can both be successful from doing that.
As a CPG founder
I started my energy bar company, TeaSquares, at the end of 2015. CPG is especially challenging because you have physical products that expire and because it’s food, everyone has an opinion because everyone eats.
3. What's the biggest mistake you made building your own brand?
Trying to make something that was so different and so unique in the market. We were trying to create a moat around our competitors, but ended up creating a moat around our customers too. They couldn't understand what our product did. We were caffeinated energy bars, but we changed so much about form, function, texture, and taste that new people couldn't envision it in their lives.
The lesson is to find an existing problem, iterate on it, find one key differentiator, and sell that point hard. With TeaSquares, I should have positioned it as a protein bar plus tea; not some weird energy tea bar nobody was looking for
4. If you had to launch a brand tomorrow, what category would you go into?
There’s a ton of opportunity in what I call “permissible indulgence.” Better-for-you sodas, chocolates, desserts… categories that have been villainized by sugar, where founders are adding low-sugar alternatives or functionality. Think the Poppis and Olipops of the world. Any category where you can bring permissible indulgence is really, really big right now.
As a Foodbevy community builder
One of my biggest challenges running a brand was not knowing what was coming next. We'd land Whole Foods and think, “How do we even service this retailer?” I felt constantly behind. Foodbevy evolved to be the resource that fixes that. We started with founder-to-founder connection, but now it's become how-to information.
5. What questions do you hear over and over?
Definitely the two biggest ones are how do I find money to grow my business? Everyone's constantly seeking investment. And the second is working with distributors, particularly KeHE and UNFI, on how to navigate the challenges and build a successful business. Because they really are the gatekeepers to a lot of the natural channel retailers.
6. What's the biggest debate in CPG right now?
It's really around how to approach going to market. That balance between e-commerce and retail business. Small regional stores or large national? Building the brand and building the business.
A lot of people say don't go too fast because you're going to make a lot of mistakes early on. But then, I've heard others say that you want to get into national retail early so that you can tell if your product is actually solving a problem.
As a podcast host
The Startup to Scale podcast started as a way to share inspiring founder stories. We're over 250 episodes now and have talked about every topic in CPG. But we still keep finding new stories to tell.
7. Who's a guest episode all founders should listen to?
Luke Abbott of Vdriven. He ran a distribution business that was sold to KeHE, now does consulting heavily focused on Sprouts and their innovation set. He knows exactly what he's talking about and shares everything openly.
8. What's something you've learned that significantly changed how you see CPG?
There's no set path. Manufacturing, distribution, retail, e-commerce… There's a lot of decisions to be made and it's not straightforward. it's really important to forge your own path as a founder. Are you great at one-on-one relationships? Go talk to investors. Great at building community? Try crowdfunding. Lean into the avenue that your personality, especially as a founder, fits best in because that's what's going to come naturally to you.
As an Insider Box curator
The Insider Box is a quarterly discovery box — the hottest new food and beverage products, delivered to your door. I built it because I was talking to founders all day and never actually trying their products. Now I do, and some I love, some aren't for me — but that's the point.
We search for brands winning local awards and pitch competitions, taste everything with the team, pick products around a theme, and ship them to insiders across the country.
9. Any surprising feedback from the boxes so far?
Some people call it a trade show in a box. Teams buy it for remote employees and do quarterly tastings together, talking anout which ones they like or think are going to be the next big thing.
One of the things I always say about with our Insider Boxes is it allows you to get your products into the rooms where decisions are made. A lot of our recipients are the ones judging pitch competitions or on the board for selection committees. You want them to be your fans.
10. What patterns are you seeing in new products?
Protein is obviously one of the big areas. But I’m also seeing what I call '“the diversification of cultural American foods,” where it’s beyond the ethnic aisle. Second and third generation Americans bringing Asian, Latin, African flavors into familiar form factors. For example, Keya’s does Indian flavors on a potato chip. These aren't ethnic foods anymore. They're just American foods.
Jordan Buckner has built, scaled, and shut down a CPG brand. Now, he helps others do it better. He’s the founder of Foodbevy, host of the Startup to Scale podcast, and curator of Insider Box, giving him a front-row seat to what’s actually working in modern CPG.