No Formula. No Co-Man. No Branding. Nationwide Whole Foods in Three Months.

Speaker A: Today's guest sold her last company to Kraft Heinz for 200 million. She launched this one because she couldn't find a protein drink she actually wanted to carry around. Morgan Zanudi is the founder and CEO of Whey, a fizzy, clear, sparkling protein water built for millennial moms and active women who are trying to hit their protein goals without choking down a chalky gym bro shake. Morgan spent years building Primal Kitchen alongside Mark Sisson, launching mayonnaise salad dressings, collagen bars and bottled avocado oil. Morgan spent years building Primal Kitchen alongside Mark Sisson, launching mayonnaise salad dressing, collagen bars and bottled avocado oil into a paleo community that barely existed. Then Kraft Heinz came knocking in 2019. Whey is her second act. She pitched Whole Foods last April with a silver can, no final formula, no co manufacturer and no branding. They said yes nationwide, and she built the whole brand in three months and shipped in August. This is a conversation about what it actually looks like to launch a beverage brand the second time around, what she'd do the same and what she'd do differently, how she thinks about the clear protein category in the US versus Europe, why she went Whole Foods first before Target, and what she's learned about raising capital on traction versus raising on hopes and dreams. Welcome to in the Money, an exploration where you can still make money in DTC and CPG. We talk to some of the most interesting $5 million to $50 million founders, operators and investors to ultimately answer the question, is D2C and CPG still a good business? Hope you'll enjoy the show. Morgan, I love the way that you've been building way and documenting the journey through TikTok and Instagram. I was talking to an investor earlier today and they said that it's such a competitive market, authenticity is one of the ways to break through. One of the ways to signal authenticity is building in public and sharing the journey along with the followers. How has that experience been for you? Building in public, sharing kind of the journey away commercially? Has it been hard to kind of share the vulnerability and the ups and downs? Would love to hear about that.

Speaker B: Yeah, I mean, I think in this day and age it is kind of just required. Like I feel like people want to and in the end of the day, like we want to buy from people, we don't want to buy from huge conglomerate organizations that we feel super disconnected to. So I will say I have like a little bit of a unique approach. I have no social media on my phone, so there's no Instagram or TikTok or anything on my phone. And we get together in person like once a week. I hired my nanny and she's running marketing for us and she's awesome. So, uh, she's gonna be like a CMO one day. She's so smart. She just graduated college. She wanted to work for way and I was like, if you nanny for me last summer, I'll hire you. And she has a great personality. So we have this kind of like millennial mom, gen Z, recent college grad, like, dynamic going that she's always kind of poking fun at me and I'm always kind of poking fun at her. And it really shows just like the humanness behind the team. Um, but I don't actually do the posting because I think social media is a huge freaking dist life and just in general, so. And I get too addicted. Like, I'm not, like, holier than thou for whoever's listening. I just, like, I'm addicted and if it's on my phone, I'm scrolling mindlessly and I'm not feeling any better about my life or anything, so I refuse to have it. But they post. So. And it's almost better, I think when you're the one posting, you're like, you put, uh, this filter through all your content that's very like, how am I showing up? I need to redo it. It needs to be perfect. But if someone else is posting, like, you don't even ever watch it. Like, it's kind of amazing and you're not on there. You're like, let me know when something needs some comments. Otherwise I'm out.

Speaker A: And, um, is it more kind of, hey, it's just freestyling. Like you said, once a week you're sharing the story. What's going on in the business? Or is it a little bit more scripted? And hey, we're, we're following metrics and we're drafting storylines.

Speaker B: No, it's so not scripted. There is no, like, strategy whatsoever. It's like, we have a bunch of fun people and when we get together in person at my house once a week to work, like, funny stuff happens. So sometimes something, someone will say something funny and we'll be like, wait, say that again. And then someone will film and we'll like, say it again. Um, but most of it's just organic. Like, this is kind of what it looks like to work here. I will say, though, I have run into people lately and they're like, oh, my God, you just, like, make it look so easy. It Seems like you're like crushing it. And I was just like oh geez, I really need to start like, like there's nothing easy about entrepreneurship like full stop. Right. So I feel like you know, we're authentic in that we're always making fun of ourselves. But like you know the 1 to 4am anxiety attacks like aren't showing up on social media and those are real when you're a founder and an entrepreneur. So yeah, yeah.

Speaker A: I saw in my LinkedIn feed that you recently raised a pre seed round. Congrats. You're a successful repeat kind of founder, operator, executive. I imagine you could have raised from a lot of people. You chose an investor specifically. Talk a little bit about kind of fundraising markets where they are today. Is there a lot of enthusiasm? Is there skepticism? How did your process go?

Speaker B: So I actually raised kind of a more like last summer. Um, but we just kind of announced now. But I met a woman named Kate from Bakunst on TikTok. I reached out to her, she was kind of like doing creator content speaking this is all comes full circle but she was doing creator content on like the female VC side. So she has 100 million fund and she just seemed rad. So I reached out to her. We're. I'm like selling protein to women. My brand's called Whey. I'm selling fizzy protein to women. I'm a female. We're a female owned business. A female founder, female led, female CEO. Right. And my uh, board is all women and really everyone who works for us is just like the target demographic which is similar to how it was in my previous company Primal Kitchen. But so for me, Kate, she has, she's like a, you know, prominent VC investor, done mostly tech early in a few CPG companies and consumer and we just kind of developed this relationship over like six to eight months. And yeah, she was just an easy for me, someone I wanted to go on this journey with and she's been amazing. Like I think intuitively I knew I had a good partner and she's like become a super close friend and is such an awesome investor advisor.

Speaker A: Love her for Obviously most of the folks listening don't have a nine figure exit under their belt and so can't replicate this exactly. But talk to me about the like, hey, we just want to build a relationship with one or a few investors organically get to know each other over a period of time versus the hey, we've got kind of full deck data room, full outreach list. We're in market.

Speaker B: Yeah, just the difference of the Raise. So I'm actually raising again this summer um, as you do in beverage. But, but I um, I'm. And now I'm in the kind of like data room deck, you know, getting like intros from my network. But like it's much more, it's much less like organic if you will. And I was talking about this with Kate recently. Like they always say like raise earlier than you think you need to and more than you think you need. And I think that is like ultimately true. Right? In a certain sense. But I, I do think it's just a fundamentally different conversation when you're raising on hopes and dreams than when you're raising on like uh, in market company, right? Then you have like analytics to analyze and data and a P and L and all those things. When you're like hey, I know what I'm doing, I know CPG and I have a kick ass super innovative idea that nobody's done yet. It's just like a different conversation and it's a different subset of investors who wants to get in at those different phases. So yeah, Kate always said sometimes it's easier to raise on hopes and dreams than it is to raise once you're kind of like on the way. So we'll see if that holds true.

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Speaker B: Yeah, I mean, we're. I think. I think, like, a lot of successful CPG companies have gone hard into, like, a very niche consumer. So, like, Zico Coconut Water put refrigerators, uh, in every Bikram yoga studio in New York. Kavita targeted the yoga community. Peter Rahal took RX Bar, like, door to door at CrossFit gyms. Uh, we went into this just like, Paleo, kind of like. But we launched Primal around the time Instagram was kind of taking off. There was no TikTok yet. There was no such thing as an influencer. It's 2015, but we. Instagram was, at that point in time just people's food. Food photo shoot. Like, it was just people's meals. Like, that was pretty much Instagram, if you remember this blip on the radar. And so we kind of, like, leaned in heavy in that community of just, like, Paleo food bloggers, I would say, for whey, we're like, we're just here to, like, help the millennial mom get her a hundred grams of protein a day and, like, let's make it fun and fizzy and not be, like, having to eat these, like, gym bro Targeted, disgusting, choke it down, 30 grams protein products. Um, so really we're after, like, Poppy Ollipop girls and Millennial moms. Like, if you're weightlifting or wanting to weightlift more, but you maybe haven't started yet, if you're wearing a weighted vest or you've thought about buying a weighted vest, or if you, you know, just graduated college and you're kind of into your macros and your health, but you want something fun. I think beverage is interesting because we walk around with it. Like, nobody walks around with their jar of mayonnaise, right? Like, it looks cute in your pantry and that's great and all, but, like, you grab a beverage on the go, you have, like, your purse and your beverage. Like, you know, what do you think catapulted Stanley's rise to success? It was like, women are carrying that shit around. So I think your beverage kind of has to speak to, like, the. The identity of it and the look and feel of it. Has to speak to kind of like the audience that you want carrying it around. So that was kind of our positioning.

Speaker A: You mentioned earlier that beverage is, it's a one of the hottest CPG categories early on in terms of capital intensity, the way the coman complexity, freight costs, especially if there's any kind of chilled component. What have been some of the learnings in um, the last year?

Speaker B: Um, let's see. Gosh, I mean I feel like the first year of business is always just about like who are you partnering with? And it's like very quick kind of, I don't know, like trial and error. So like we started with a co man that was in Vermont and then we moved already in month like four. We moved into a new co man in Michigan. Helped our freight out. We needed someone who had more flexibility as we like scale up the business. And then you know, it's like what broker partner are you going to have? Who, what does your team look like? So I just think it's just kind of a lot of that I think. Yeah, I mean year one learnings weren't maybe as obvious to me as they were in primal because I kind of went in with like eyes wide open, you know what I mean? Like I've. Yeah, it's almost worse being a second time founder. Though I will say like being a first time founder is amazing. Like you don't know anything. You're like ignorantly blissful. The second time you're like psycho on all these metrics and you're like looking at the data like a hawk and it's like this product launched four weeks ago, like no one even knows it's there. Slow your roll. So it's just like it's such a different, it's a different journey for sure the second time around.

Speaker A: Uh, speaking of partners, you went into Whole Foods as your kind of first retail door. It's a very deliberate choice given your full. Yeah. What's the logic behind kind of premium first, what does Whole Foods give you kind of beyond distribution as a launch partner?

Speaker B: Yeah, I mean I think people kind of like don't talk enough about this and underestimate like if you're going to have. Getting distribution is easy. So like getting your product on the shelf is actually fairly easy. Um, but getting the product from m the shelf into the shopping cart and out the front door, that's like where the challenge comes in. So for me I think Whole Foods offers an amazing opportunity. You can like go in store and do demos. You can sell your product in at the store level and to get it into the cooler if it's shelf stable. Like, there's a lot you can do at the store level to kind of like drive, trial and repeat that you just like don't have the opportunity to do at uh, like a Target. Or if you are at a Target, it's. The scale is so much grander and you could be in 1800 stores. They don't have good like in store execution. Like it's, it's much more challenging to be able to kind of like work it so you can make sure that you're getting your product out the door.

Speaker A: For someone that's been going into retail, going to Whole Foods maybe for the first time, I'd love for you just to go a little bit deeper on how to be a really productive brand at, uh, Whole Foods.

Speaker B: I mean, I think it starts at like the relationship level. Like if you're, you know, you have good partnership with like leadership there and you're working with your buyer and you're making sure you're like funding enough promotions, so you're driving trial, you're making sure you're doing demos. So you're either hiring your own brand ambassadors all over the country or you're hiring, working with a demo team. And then the digital shopper is like kind of new ish, but something that like a lot of the buyers have put a ton of emphasis on. So Whole Foods on Amazon delivery, like buyers want roughly right now they want like 30. They all have a target and they want like 30% of their category sales to come from that Whole Foods on Amazon or that Target.com or the Digital shopper, if you will. So, um, you know, and that is like you're doing traditional kind of paid media. Like you're buying ad spend and getting creative there. So, you know, there's a lot of different ways to kind of execute. You need like, you can have a merchandising team that's going in as a third party and they're like making sure your, your shelf looks, uh, good. They're facing product, they're pulling product from the back, helping like Whole Foods kind of keep the product in stock and looking good. They can be placing hang tags to capture attention. There's just like so many things you can do kind of at the store level in that way. You can go in, you can give samples to the store staff. So like, the staff knows about you and they've tried it and they're more motivated to keep your product, I don't know, faced and in stock.

Speaker A: All of these elements, promo and Trade span, online ppc, third party merchandisers. How important is it to be showing, uh, channel profitability? You're going out to market for a raise, you know, is the feedback from investors. What are they expecting in the first one to two years in uh, a new channel?

Speaker B: I don't think in beverage anyone's expecting profitability in the first one to two years, but I think they're expecting like a three to five year path to profitability. Um, it takes a bit, right, to get it kind of going. So. And it's different by category. Like every category has different margin profile and margin expectations. Like if you're in. I think that's why there's so much money in like beauty and supplements right now. Like you can, you're running like a much higher margin business than just traditional food and beverage. Uh, beverage gets really expensive just on the distribution, right? Like you're shipping, you know, like liquid, right? Heavy liquid that you can only sell for a certain dollar threshold.

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Speaker B: like, I think, I think there's this, like, general sense that, like, you gotta go, you gotta run like you're. Someone's gonna win this category and it's gonna be whoever's fastest. And I've kind of like, I. That's how I used to feel maybe in the fall. And I've like, taken a bit of a step back from that. And I'm like, look at freaking coconut water. Like, I don't know if you saw Valde Coco's recent earnings, but like, coconut water is on fire and still growing. Like, that's a category I wrote off. Like, I don't buy it anymore. I bought Harmless Har when It was like $10 a bottle and I was running marketing for Kavita 12 years ago. I don't, uh, but that category is still just continued to grow and grow and grow and mature. And there's room for, like, there's always room for disruptors. Um, but I do think, you know, there, the first mover advantage is real. Unless it's not and you're too early and then there's no awareness. You don't have the money to educate everyone and it doesn't get off the ground and the thing launches five years later because a bunch of brands put a ton of marketing behind it. I don't know. I. I'm not sure that there's like one solid answer there. I think, I think if you're gonna approach a category like the way we approached Primal, where we were just cleaning up a category, like, we were like, okay, mayonnaise has sugar and canola oil in it. Let's like make mayonnaise without sugar and canola oil, right? Like, and that's your differentiation. There might be a little bit of a rush, but I don't know that in a category that's like, like I. When we presented to Whole Foods last year, last April, there was no other clear prote to Whole Foods. We were the only one. So, I mean, we're still. I think, I think to your point, it has taken off in Europe and I think awareness in the US is probably. What do you think, like 5%? I mean, it's low, so there's a lot of room to grow here. But, like, you don't want to be too far ahead of the consumer.

Speaker A: Speaking of Primal, you had Mark as the founder with a big built in audience who'd built a lot of trust with the Paleo movement. Have you thought about, when you were founding Way, did you think about kind of partnering with an influencer or someone With a, uh, large built in audience and. Yeah, how do you kind of accelerate the credibility and trust without, uh, that built in audience?

Speaker B: Yeah, um, I definitely did, but I think the truth is, like, it all just happened so fast for me. So last April, I presented to Whole Foods and I was still like, should I do this or should I not? Like, this is going to be a lot. And then they were like, we'll take you nationwide. And I pulled the whole brand together in three months. So I took a silver can with an inferior formulation that I have now to Whole Foods. No branding, no co man, no final formula in April, and then launched the whole brand, basically. Like, I had to ship in the end of August, so I didn't even have time to, like, it was like, so fast and furious. I'm still talking to folks right now. Like, I think people join now. Like, you can, you know, people will join at later stage. It doesn't have to be like, such an influencer led thing. I do think there's major power in the influencer led strategy. I also think there is risks. So, like, how many brands have we seen that get a celebrity behind it and then that celebrity's canceled, like, you know, three to three months later? Right. And then the brand's kind of like, womp, womp. I don't know. So, yeah, I think there's a lot of buzz around these, like, celebrity influencer led brands. And then a lot of them don't work out. Like, they. They still don't. You know, the celebrity doesn't do anything. The whatever. I think having an influencer founder is really impactful. Yeah. So if any influencers are listening, they want to come be my co founder and sell some whey. Let me know.

Speaker A: It's really interesting to hear that. You got to pitch the concept category and leverage your relationship with Whole Foods before, uh, the formulation is ready and kind of lock down the co man. I'd say most people would do it the other way around. You just talk about kind of, you know, I'm sure that urgency created a lot of opportunity and, um, a lot of energy, but maybe just talk about that sequencing.

Speaker B: Yeah. I mean, I've launched like a hundred products through Primal Kitchen, and I feel like most of our product launches came about kind of this way. This is kind of how I roll. Like, all right, we got this idea. Let's see if anybody wants it, and then let's sprint to make it happen. Like our ketchup. We launched this unsweetened ketchup and we met Whole Foods. We met with Whole Foods at fancy food in 2016. So we're in San Francisco and they were like what can you give us in like ketchup? And we were like how about an unsweetened. And then we commercialized it and it sold in, in July of that year. So it was a similar time FR kind of what happened at whey. It's really nice to commercialize a product when you know it has distribution. You have a timeline to meet. Like it does create this sense of urgency that just like forces a project to get done. I think if you don't have that at least someone like me, I could go on and on forever in rounds of iteration on making the product better and let's taste again and. But have we tried it with this ingredient and yada yada yada and the thing could never end. Like it's nice to have like a, a due date.

Speaker A: Um, yeah.

Speaker B: In order to just kind of force that.

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Speaker B: I mean we have someone in sales, someone in apps and someone in marketing full time and then the rest is just like contract employees. So contract employees on the design side, contract employees on QA contract employees. We have a fractional cfo. So um, yeah it's mostly it's a pretty bare bones team and could be more bare bones but like I have three kids under the age of Seven. And I already did this before, so I can't grind as hard as I did when I was in 2015. I mean, I didn't hire anyone at Primal for a year. So Mark had a team I did everything for. I launched our Mayonnaise. Then I launched two salad dressings, a line of collagen bars, a bottled avocado oil, and maybe our chipotle lime mayonnaise. So I in alone in December. We launched our mayonnaise February 2nd of 2015. And I launched all those other products in December. It was crazy. I would not recommend that. Um, but, yeah, so I think, yeah, it's the whole staggering thing. I raised the money and hired the people. Cause I don't have the energy that I had when I was 28 to go do it all myself. That was crazy making.

Speaker A: But it was a fantastic journey, fantastic outcome. You sold Primal kitchen in 2019 to Kraft Heinz for a reported 200 million. There's. There's a ton of M and A activity in the last two years. Big exits. How do you think kind of FNB, M&A has changed in the last six, seven years since you sold Primal Kitchen?

Speaker B: I mean, I think it's changed a lot. I feel like we work, but I think it's always, like, cyclical. And if you looked like, you know, you get a new CEO in and they want to make changes, and then things kind of like. I'm talking at the strategic level, right? And then things kind of mellow out and then. But we've seen just. Just tremendous change in the last six, seven years. I feel like we were part of a cohort of. Primal was part of a cohort of brands that was like, Vital Proteins launched and sold around the time we did. Um, CTE launched and sold around kind of the same tra. I mean, they sold much later, but they launched the same trajectory. Rxbar was almost on a very similar trajectory. We were. It was like this cohort of Paleo brands. I think 2019 was perhaps kind of like the end of a run of a lot of M and A. And then it cooled off, and it was pretty. Covid was pretty. Just distracting to the M and A environment in general. I think everyone was kind of, like, waiting to see if the world was going to end or not. So there wasn't a lot going on there. Um, we've seen it pick up again. I think it's starting to pick up again now a little bit. Like, there's just been a little bit more action. And then I think there's this, like, interesting relationship where the private equity money is coming from and where it's going. So, like, I feel like the food and beverage CPG guys that have been doing it for a while are starting to get into more, like, tech and AI. And then the tech and AI guys for a little bit were like, rushing into food and beverage. So they kind of, like, have this symbiotic, you know, relationship of where they go. And then now maybe everybody's chasing AI. I don't know what's going on. Um, but we saw that for sure when I was at Kavita 15 years ago. Like, no one, like, Expo west has, like, quadrupled in size in 15 years, right? Like, no, it was a cottage. It felt more cottage industry. Like you had a lot more, like, bootstrapped farmer type entrepreneurs. And now it's a bit more of a billionaires game. I. I, uh, think there's just some truth to that. I'm not playing the billionaires game, but certainly, like, some folks are like, you see people raising on these, like, crazy valuations and, like, hate them, um, if you want, but, like, good on them because then they have the marketing dollars to go, like, support this. It's just an expensive game to play. You know, they have the support there.

Speaker A: The functional beverage shelf seems incredibly crowded. Yeah, each time I walk into a Whole foods, there's just 20 grams, 25 grams, 30 grams, extra hydration. Other claims I appreciate the main differentiator is that it's a clear protein. Maybe someone kind of not as interested in drinking kind of a very milky product. But are, uh, there other ways that you need to stand out on shelf or storytelling and a very crowded shelf space?

Speaker B: I mean, yeah, I think packaging has to, like, speak appropriately to who you're selling to. Like, I know there's another beverage brand I can think of, and I remember they're like, oh, kind of stalled out. And I was like, oh, they're like, targeting kids, right? And someone was like, you think they're targeting kids? And I was like, well, yeah, like, look at the name and look at the packaging. And they were like, oh, they're totally not. They're targeting, like, adult hydration. Right? So it's like, well, that is never gonna work. Cause, like, uh, I'm an adult. I would never buy this product. Like, so I think there's just like, you know, you gotta, like, be able to communicate very quickly through visual, like, cues who you're for and why someone should buy you in, like, three seconds. Like, forget it. Otherwise, like, you've got A mom in the shopping cart with five screaming kids and you're off. Um, but yeah, I think then in the end of the day like most other businesses in the world, like there isn't a large moat. It really comes down to like execution, branding, marketing, relationships. It's not like rocket science. Um, there's no like true like patents or proprietary information in food and beverage. So it's like does your product taste good? Can you get people to try it and will they buy it again? Like it? That's kind of it. It's a very simple game in the end of the day.

Speaker A: Yeah. Morgan, as we head towards a wrap, is there an operational tactic? I know you've already talked about kind of of your speed of operations and execution. Is there a marketing channel? I know you mentioned that kind of.com is a big spillover for retail or even a piece of tech that's working especially well for you right now.

Speaker B: I'm loving this digital shopper. I think just like leaning in on um, the digital shopper has been fun for me. I'm liking that a lot. That's like, I would say that's my big thing right now.

Speaker A: You've mentioned I think in the past that related to this rather that Amazon's been a big driver for you. Is that kind of as a standalone channel kind of related to Whole Foods?

Speaker B: Um, Whole Foods on Amazon and Amazon are different. Right? So Amazon just like anyone buying your product and then you have, we have like single cans of Whole Foods on Amazon delivery. Um, yeah, Amazon took off much faster than I thought. I just kind of like wrote off D2 cuz we're beverage. I was like, ah, but I, someone was telling me a couple years ago, Liquid Death's biggest and most profitable channel. Uh, this is a couple years ago, so this is probably not true today, but was Amazon, they were decent size at that point. And I, I think that we underestimate beverage online. People don't like to carry a 12 pack to their cart, into their car, into their garage, to their fridge. They just like that 12 pack to arrive on the front door and they unload it. So I think there's like a little, you know, I think that we all write, we all us beverage people kind of write off the category. But there's a lot of purchases actually happening online, um, more than maybe you would think for the category. So that's been fun to lean into.

Speaker A: Is there anything that you're looking for from listeners? I know that if there's a um, 10 million plus follower, busy mom that cares about fitness and wants to get involved in, um, selling more away. Ah. As a co founder, but other than that kind of channel, partners, collaborators, maybe investors for the summer that can accelerate your next phase.

Speaker B: Yeah, I mean, I'm definitely on the investor bandwagon right now. Just having lots of conversations with folks to figure out who's going to kind of help me partner and take this to the next level. Um, and then I just need people to go out and try the product in store. I think that's the biggest thing. So we're in Whole Food Sprouts and Target now. Um, yeah.

Speaker A: Awesome. Morgan, thanks so much for coming on. Super exciting times. And, um, look forward to next time.

Speaker B: Yeah. Thank you so much. It was great to chat.