Meet Joe Rotondo and Drew DiSpirito, co-founders of Smearcase, a first-of-its-kind frozen cottage cheese with 40 grams of protein per container.
Joe was training for a marathon and craving ice cream after long runs. Everything in the freezer aisle tasted good, but was nutritionally useless. So he madeh his own with cottage cheese. High protein. Clean ingredients. And actually tasted like ice cream. He brought it to his friend Drew, and a few months later, they had a company.
They kept the formula simple: no powders, no additives, just frozen cottage cheese. They call it FroCo. A month after launch, Whole Foods reached out. More retailers followed. Now Sprouts is taking them national.
11 months: Smearcase went from kitchen to retail rollout in under a year
2,200 doors they said no to: They focused on proving velocity before jumping to retail expansion
$100K prize: California Milk Advisory Board competition against eight dairy brands
Timing isnât luck. Itâs acting at the right moment. Cottage cheese was everywhere: Recipes on feeds. Protein in headlines. Most saw it as entertainment, but Joe saw it as signal. âIf youâre too early, your failure rate goes up. If youâre too late, failure rate goes up. But if youâre right on time, the success odds are definitely in your favor.â
Donât hide your differentiator. Early versions tried to mask the cottage cheese with date sugar and monk fruit. It wasnât working. âWe asked ourselves: what does this product want to be versus what do we want it to be?â Cottage cheese became the selling point, not the secret.
Trade shows are expensive bets. Know what youâre buying. Right after their first production run, Smearcase signed up for a table at Summer Fancy Food Show. Thirty days later, Whole Foods called. âOur goal was 100% retail, so getting in front of buyers was crucial,â Joe says. âBut if you have no reason being there, donât go.â Youâre either buying distribution, investor conversations, or press. If you canât name one, youâre just spending cash.
Retail requires four yeses: Customers, buyers, distributors, investors. Customers want taste and value. Buyers want differentiation and velocity. Distributors want reliable partners. Investors want unit economics. Most founders optimize for customers only. But retail success needs all four.
Doors get you in. Velocity keeps you there. Smearcase turned down 2,200 doors in 2024. âPeople were like, âAre you crazy?ââ Drew says. âWe realized door count is kind of a farce. You donât want to chase doors without first knowing your velocity is strong.â Expansion amplifies whateverâs already happening. If velocityâs strong, it scales. If itâs weak, youâre spreading the problem.
Market insight â High protein used to be the headline. Now it's the baseline. But the edge isn't adding it. It's building around it.
Revenge of the curds
The 4 audiences frameworks
Most founders build for customers and hope the rest falls into place. It doesn't. Retail is managed by four audiences, and you need all of them:
1. The customer: Does it solve a problem and actually taste good? Is it worth buying again?
2. The retail buyer: Do they see differentiation and a reason to give you shelf space?
3. The distributor: Are you reliable, or are you going to be a pain to work with?
4. The investor (optional): Do the economics work and is there a path to scale?