256. How to Turn Affiliate and Ambassador Programs Into a Real Growth Channel

 In this episode, I sat down with Mac Villarreal, founder of I Eat My Greens, to talk about how he is bringing fresh, flavorful refrigerated soups to a category that has felt stale for years. We also get into the challenge of not just getting on shelf, but selling off the shelf, and Mateusz Drela from Retail Media IQ joins the conversation to share how digital retail media can help brands drive retail velocity and smarter growth. Startup to Scale is a podcast by Foodbevy, an online community to connect emerging food, beverage, and CPG founders to great resources and partners to grow their business. Visit us at Foodbevy.com to learn about becoming a member or an industry partner today.

Big CPG brands don’t win just because they have bigger budgets.They win because they understand how shoppers actually make decisions in-store.In this episode, I sit down with Kevin Smith from SmashBrand to break down what large CPG companies know about shelf performance that most emerging brands completely miss.We talk about:Why most packaging fails before a shopper even reads itThe science behind shopper behavior and visual attentionWhat big brands test before going to retailHow founders can apply enterprise-level methods without enterprise-level budgetsIf you're launching into retail or trying to increase velocity this episode is your playbook for competing smarter, not louder.Startup to Scale is a podcast by Foodbevy, an online community to connect emerging food, beverage, and CPG founders to great resources and partners to grow their business. Visit us at Foodbevy.com to learn about becoming a member or an industry partner today.

In this episode of the Startup to Scale Podcast, I sit down with Smári Ásmundsson, founder of NØRSE CØDE and the former founder of Smári Organics.Smári spent more than 10 years building Smári Organics into a nationally distributed yogurt brand carried by retailers like Whole Foods Market, Target, and Walmart, reaching $5M in annual sales. But when COVID hit, the business collapsed.Instead of walking away from CPG, Smári started again.Today he’s building NØRSE CØDE, a plant-based protein powder brand with a proprietary formulation, strong repeat purchase rates, and a focus on building a profitable, durable business from the ground up.In this conversation, we talk about the emotional reality of losing a company, the lessons that only come from scaling to national distribution, and how Smári is applying 15 years of hard-earned experience to build his next brand the right way.Startup to Scale is a podcast by Foodbevy, an online community to connect emerging food, beverage, and CPG founders to great resources and partners to grow their business. Visit us at Foodbevy.com to learn about becoming a member or an industry partner today.

Hiring a CPG broker can unlock retail growth or become an expensive distraction.In this episode, I break down the real role brokers play in scaling a food and beverage brand with Lisa from Run the Numbers. From understanding retailer relationships and review cycles to structuring compensation and setting performance expectations, this is a tactical guide for founders navigating wholesale growth.We cover:What brokers actually do (and what they don’t)When it makes sense to hire one and when it doesn’tHow brokers get paid and what that means for your marginsThe differences between brokers, in-house sales, and fractional sales supportHow to evaluate, manage, and measure broker performanceIf you’re thinking about retail expansion or already working with a broker, this episode will help you make smarter decisions and avoid costly mistakes.Read our Ultimate Guide to CPG Brokers Here: https://www.foodbevy.com/the-ultimate-guide-to-cpg-brokers/Startup to Scale is a podcast by Foodbevy, an online community to connect emerging food, beverage, and CPG founders to great resources and partners to grow their business. Visit us at Foodbevy.com to learn about becoming a member or an industry partner today.

In this episode, I sit down with Kun Yang, CEO and co-founder of Pricklee, to talk about the brand’s shift from cactus water to natural hydration. We break down what sparked the rebrand, how the team tackled consumer education barriers, and why simplifying the message became key to scaling in a crowded beverage category.This conversation also covers packaging strategy, retail rollout decisions, product-market fit, and the role clear positioning plays in driving trial and repeat purchase. A great listen for founders thinking about rebranding or refining how their product shows up on shelf.Startup to Scale is a podcast by Foodbevy, an online community to connect emerging food, beverage, and CPG founders to great resources and partners to grow their business. Visit us at Foodbevy.com to learn about becoming a member or an industry partner today.

As companies grow, something subtle often happens: the business starts to change the founder. Decisions get filtered through investors, advisors, benchmarks, and expectations and slowly, the company can stop feeling like an extension of the person who started it.Today I want to talk about identity drift what it looks like, why it happens, and how founders can reconnect with the voice and values that shaped their business in the first place.I’ve invited on Veronica Lehman with JPG Resources to explore how founders lose (and rediscover) their intuition as they scale, how to stay aligned while bringing in outside voices, and the quiet warning signs that the business might be running you instead of the other way around.Startup to Scale is a podcast by Foodbevy, an online community to connect emerging food, beverage, and CPG founders to great resources and partners to grow their business. Visit us at Foodbevy.com to learn about becoming a member or an industry partner today.

Affiliate marketing can be a strong growth lever for CPG brands when it’s approached with the right strategy. In this episode, I talk with David Abbey, co-founder of Endlss, about how brands can turn affiliate and ambassador programs into a real growth channel instead of treating them like one-off campaigns.We talk about what makes these programs work, how to find the right partners, and how to build a system that drives sales over time.If you’re looking for a place to start, we also included a link to Getting Started with Affiliate Marketing here: https://getendlss.com/resources/the-ambassador-program-playbook.Startup to Scale is a podcast by Foodbevy, an online community to connect emerging food, beverage, and CPG founders to great resources and partners to grow their business. Visit us at Foodbevy.com to learn about becoming a member or an industry partner today.

What happens when collaboration becomes the growth strategy?In this episode, we sit down with the founding team behind TUYYO Foods to unpack the decision to merge Nemi Snacks, Todo Verde, and TUYYO Foods into one unified cultural CPG brand.This conversation goes beyond press-release headlines. We talk about the realities of building independently, the behind-the-scenes conversations that led to alignment, and why they believed growing together was the more powerful long-term move. From shared values and cultural integrity to operations, leadership, and representation, this is a rare look at what intentional scale can really look like in CPG.Startup to Scale is a podcast by Foodbevy, an online community to connect emerging food, beverage, and CPG founders to great resources and partners to grow their business. Visit us at Foodbevy.com to learn about becoming a member or an industry partner today.

Gen Z is not shopping the way Millennials did and they are definitely not responding to the same packaging playbook.In this episode, I sits down with Sanders, founder of Nuex Creative, to unpack how Gen Z discovers new food and beverage brands, what signals authenticity and what feels forced, and why traditional front of pack claims have stopped doing the heavy lifting.They explore the visual languages Gen Z actually responds to, where bold design helps or hurts trust, and how founders with limited budgets can make high impact packaging decisions without a full redesign.If you are building a brand for the next generation of consumers or wondering why your packaging looks great but is not converting, this episode will help you rethink what matters now.Startup to Scale is a podcast by Foodbevy, an online community to connect emerging food, beverage, and CPG founders to great resources and partners to grow their business. Visit us at Foodbevy.com to learn about becoming a member or an industry partner today.

Scaling a CPG brand doesn’t always mean hiring fast or hiring locally. In this episode, I sits down with Luke Anthony, founder of Morning Made, to break down how he used global, VA-style talent to grow the brand without overextending cash or complexity.Luke shares how international support helped him move faster across marketing, operations, and day-to-day execution, the lessons he learned managing remote talent as a founder, and the systems that made it all work. That hands-on experience eventually led to the creation of Plus Forty, an agency designed to help other founders do this the right way.This episode is for founders who know they need help, but want to scale intentionally, not recklessly.Startup to Scale is a podcast by Foodbevy, an online community to connect emerging food, beverage, and CPG founders to great resources and partners to grow their business. Visit us at Foodbevy.com to learn about becoming a member or an industry partner today.