Hello, thank you so much for joining us. I am Melissa Travers, Director of Community here at BevNET and Nosh, and I am pleased to welcome you to the Nombase Podcast.
Don't forget to check out nombase.com, BevNET's platform built for the CPG community. It's where you can find episodes of this podcast and so much more.
Today, we are diving into what it really takes for emerging brands to land on shelf and succeed at Wegmans, a retailer with a loyal shopper base and a strong track record of helping brands build awareness and velocity.
Joining us are Isabel Washington of Laurel's Coffee and Alexander Harik of Zesty Z Peeta Chips.
They will share their stories and the journeys that brought them to Wegmans, along with Josh Cannon of Cultivate CPG, an expert who's partnered closely with the retailer for years.
Together we'll explore everything from how to pitch and what buyers prioritize to category dynamics, distribution pathways, and marketing strategies, plus thoughts on timing, trade spend, and what it really takes to drive velocity once you're on the
shelf. Thank you all so much for joining me in this conversation. It's so great to have you all here. This is a topic that our community has asked for time and time again.
Wegmans is one of the retailers that I think is on almost every brand's radar, but they're notoriously difficult to get on a show like this to explain.
So I'm so thrilled to have this group of folks kind of digging in to pull back the curtain and explain what it's like to do business with Wegmans. Thank you all so much for joining. Let's start off with hearing a little bit from the brands.
Isabel, please tell us about Laurel's Coffee. You are the founder of Laurel's Coffee. It's a fast growing, ready to drink latte, and it's built around an ingredient that's making big waves in CPG.
So please tell us all about the brand.
Of course, and thanks for having me on the show. So I started working on Laurel's last January of last year, and the brand launched into retail in August into Arowan and Bristol Farms. I'm based here in LA.
So as much as that might be kind of the CPG playbook, it also made a lot of sense for us to do that as our first steps.
We quickly saw traction there, and to kind of take a step back, Laurel's is made with A2 dairy, that ingredient that you talked about.
It's very trending and booming right now in the marketplace as people kind of move back towards real sources of meat and dairy.
But it's important that they remember why they might have left dairy specifically in the first place, and it's because they were experiencing very real symptoms, bubble guts and digestion, all of those things that people kind of think about when they
have dairy. So A2 allows people, most people anyway, to consume dairy without those symptoms, and it's allowed people to introduce dairy back into their lives, myself included. So we are the only ones that are putting it in a canned coffee form.
We have three flavors, Classic, Matcha, and Dirty Chai. As I said, they're distributed mostly in retail.
So of course Wegmans, which is why we're here, but across both coasts, Central Market, Foxtrot down in Chicago and Dallas, we're in Northern and Southern California, and then we're also in the process of launching Whole Foods.
So it's been a crazy journey. I think it kind of speaks to how on trend the brand is in a lot of ways, and it's been a great journey, but Wegmans is definitely a very unique retailer.
Did you know before you launched, the A2 was going to be so hot in demand?
I definitely did not think that it would be what it is. And I've gotten kind of hints that other brands, it's at least in like the coffee or RTD space or launching A2 products, there's an A2 creamer brand that's launching soon that I know about.
So there's kind of a lot of other products coming around. And definitely believe in that all what's saying rising tides lift all boats because there is an education component as well.
But it's been great to kind of see the traction and excitement that people have, or just dairy in general. There's plenty of conversations we have in retail where people are glad that it's not made with an alternative milk. It's been great.
Kind of the positive reception has gotten.
Me included. I'm a big dairy fan. Well, thank you so much for that.
And please tell us a little bit about what your Wegmans process was like, what the pitch was like, how soon you were accepted. I mean, you're a fast growing brand, and this was no exception to that.
Our Wegmans training was kind of unique. We got approached by River Valley, one of the distributors they work with kind of outside UNFI.
And I mean, if you're an owner of a brand, you probably get pitched on a variety of things all day, especially distributors. You know, I never heard of River Valley, and they were like, you know what, we want to sell you into Wegmans.
And again, you probably get pitched on a thousand people in your inbox every day who are trying to sell you into Wegmans. So I had ignored it a few times, and then the buyer's name at River Valley, Ms.
Penny, she's no longer there, but she had emailed like three times in the span of one week. So I was like, okay, you know what? I'm just gonna call her.
She had her phone number and her signature and see what she's going on about. And she had told me that they had just launched another brand a month or two earlier into Wegmans. And it's seen a ton of traction.
Their customers were super excited about it. And they were trying to like throw as many brands that had A2 as they could, onto shelves as quickly as they could. It was a pretty quick turnaround process.
I actually work with Cultivate. So I looped Josh in pretty quickly. He actually knew Penny.
So that was really helpful to kind of bridge the gap. And it was, I think our first conversation was like 10 days before Expo. So kind of the timing all makes sense.
The buyer came by our booth and we were exhibiting and she hadn't even tried the product, but we kind of already knew that we were going to be in based on conversations that we had. And then we were on shelf not even like two months later.
I think the end of May, we were on shelf chain wide in all of their stores. So it moved pretty quickly. I mean, as fast as it was our first retail, our first large retail launch.
So we moved as quickly as we could on the production side and shipping things from Southern California took like 10 days to do so. So that kind of pushed things back. But it was a pretty quick process, especially kind of what I hear.
The buyer was pretty much like we want this on shelf ASAP. It was outside of the reset. So it was a pretty unique opportunity.
The fact that they approached so many times and with such insistence really does say so much about the product and the brand.
Did you find that the launch process with Wegmans, especially considering your short timeline, was that pretty smooth? Were there bumps in the road trying to get voids filled in certain stores? What did that look like?
I think it was pretty smooth.
I can't say good enough things about the River Valley team. They, at the end of the day, distributor wants to sell product as much as you do. That's the only way they make money.
So I think that they truly believe that in their core and are sure to execute.
And I think maybe like two or three weeks later, I was actually in Maryland on the East Coast and popped into a random Wegmans and like saw the product there, and merchandise, you know, beautifully.
And it was a pretty cool experience to kind of see execution so quickly. So that was great. I'm not sure that that would be the same for a UNIFI of sorts, but River Valley has been great.
Excellent story.
Thanks for sharing that. Alexander Harik, you're the founder of Zesty Z. It's so great to have you here.
We've been in communication for so long, and it's so great to have you on the show. You have built this brand around a family recipe, and you've worked through a number of innovations since the brand has been in existence.
Please tell us a little bit about Zesty Z and what your evolution has looked like over the years.
Well, thank you for having me, and it's always nice to see you and happy to share more. The Zesty Z story is a story of, I'd like to say, family and persistence and pivots.
Our product that we're selling right now that launched a year ago, in July of 2024, is a Better For You Pita Chip. It's high fiber, it's lower carbs, and it's twice big from an authentic Lebanese style pita bread.
Our goal is to shake things up and challenge the brand that shall not be named. And that's the market leader that owns really a significant over 80% of the category. So that's what we're up to now.
Some of the folks tuning in may be familiar with the name Zesty Z for some other products. And that's oddly enough how I came across PASS with Josh and the other folks at BevNET. We launched the brand.
My mom is my co-founder. Shout out. Hey, mom.
Zesty Z originally started as the first premium Zatar seasoning brand in the United States. And we launched it in Brooklyn and quickly scaled up into All Whole Foods, several thousand doors, including Costco regions.
However, COVID killed that business and I needed to pivot. And I took a lot of the lessons that I learned, as part of the Zatar experience, which is educating your customer, number one, is really hard and expensive.
And two, you really want to be in a higher velocity category. So those were two really important lessons I took with me.
We pivoted for a brief period where I crossed paths with Josh and we were making a globally inspired Mediterranean popcorn line, you know, flavors like a honey sea salt, a Zatar feta cheese one, and quickly shut that down after we launched, because
the key lessons, you know, learning there, where some categories have just so competitive, it's almost impossible to really break free. And that's where I think about timing a lot. And that's a really important factor.
It's hard work, yes, but timing also needs to be on your side.
And the other piece, which is the awareness for us was, I don't think, and this might be a hot take, but I don't think consumers care that much about global flavors that much, at least as far as snacking.
I think they prefer more down the middle, and they care more about ingredients. And so for my experience, we took all four of those lessons and launched the Perfect Pita Chip last year.
And primarily that launch happened in the Midwest on purpose strategically going to there, and I'm happy to share more why about that. But then in the middle of July, we launched in Wegmans.
So we're still very, very new, but my Wegmans journey is long. I've pitched them on several products and even Pita Chips took over a year to get in.
Great story. So what was it like reaching out to Wegmans for the other two products? Did you reach out to River Valley, UNFI, Wegmans themselves?
How did that work?
A mix of both. We had some interactions with Wegmans on prior products, meeting them at shows, and I don't think they're any really different than some other retailers that you're cold pitching. It's a challenge.
I mean, they're super busy. They see thousands of products a day. So I wouldn't say it was, you know, anything different than any other retailer in cold pitching.
You know, sometimes those Hail Mary passes work. And for the Meyer accounts were in all the Myers in the Midwest, it worked there. So it can work.
But I quickly realized we needed a different in there. And then that's when I had originally reached out to Josh when he was at UNFI.
And then subsequently after that had reached out via River Valley, the distributor and worked very closely with them as the liaison until we got the go ahead. And now I interact with the buyer.
Well, certainly congratulations on getting it into Wegmans. When was the product accepted and have you launched it yet?
Product is on shelves. So shout out, right? If you go down, you know, the snack set right next to Stacey's, you'll see our beautiful color bags and you can grab it at $4.99, which is an incredible price.
I'll throw that out there. We got the decision. We had pitched several times through the year and, you know, buyer was on a calendar and was looking at things.
And then I got the word in May and then River Valley picked up from us shortly thereafter in July. They wanted a quick turnaround.
And what I found out over the pitches this year for this product, it was a new buyer, they were interested and they were interested. So they said, come back, come back. So it was never a hard no.
And what we started to share more was a little bit about how much fiber is actually in demand. We were featured recently in a Spins report on the state of snacking about nutrient dense snacking being really in.
And that's what customers are looking for. And we were featured in that. And it showed that fiber was up 29% year over year, and protein is at 33%.
So it's pretty much on par. And more reports have come out about that. So the buyer finally started, similar to Isabel's story on A2 dairy and certain things, they were looking for ingredients.
And so that was just generally trending. And so we shared that data with them.
And then we also shared anecdotal evidence with them that folks who are on GLP-1 drugs or concerned about blood sugar or diabetic snackers, fiber does help to moderate that spike. So they don't have to take insulin or as much insulin.
And so once we shared that as well, and they acknowledge like, yeah, this makes a ton of sense. That was the final piece to push us over. It was like, hey, this is an ingredient that people are actually looking for.
Let's get it done.
How do brands know that they are ready to pitch and launch at Wegmans? And what do they need to have in place to be set up for success?
To be successful, you really need to understand where your pricing is going to be and what you can really afford to do because it's an EDLP retailer.
If you're new in the game and you haven't scaled up your cogs and other things like that, and you're way more expensive than some of the other brands, it's probably not for you because, as Isabel mentioned so accurately, it's a blend of a
conventional retailer and natural. Price really, this customer is looking at that. The buyers are looking at that. So I think really being buttoned up and knowing what you can afford in terms of discounts and pricing.
So I think that's the big factor that I would recommend. And I also think just the persistence. It can be very difficult.
I mean, it took me, if you look at the totality of Zesty Z, it's taken me almost three to four years. Various product lines, this one was less than a year, but you have to really be patient and just be persistent.
They are very selective because they have such a big private label line and make wonderful products as well and have such brand loyalty.
So you really need to make sure if the juice is worth the squeeze of you putting that effort into it and seeing if that's even a fit for the show. So those are the things that I would recommend.
Isabel?
I think for us, I mean, we're only a year into existing as a brand. And a lot of what we've done prior to Wegmans was, you know, demos. I think we launched to Erewan.
We did 50 demos in the first like two months we were on shelf.
We focused a lot on how we can like activate in store, whether it's, I mean, I probably know every Erewan staff member and they all have t-shirts and merch and like really focused on brand building, kind of the way that people talk about online, like
very grassroots. But I live in LA, Wegmans has 150 stores up and down the East Coast, like that's not necessarily feasible. So we had to kind of get, Noor was doing demos like we mentioned.
So we had to kind of think of what go to market strategy could work, knowing that nothing that we'd done previously was going to be able to happen at scale at Wegmans. So we've talked with great marketers.
We talked with other brands who've seen a lot of success at Wegmans, and it was really important to kind of take their knowledge and their learnings into what would be critical for us to have a great launch there.
So, but that took a lot of resources. It took fundraising. It took a lot of trial and error on Instacart.
I think when we first launched, we had like a 0.3 ROAS. That's not super sustainable long term. So it takes a ton of learning and lessons.
And unfortunately, that can take a lot of money. I mean, I think our opening PO was for like 30 or $40,000. It's a lot of inventory.
So it was our largest production run that we've done to date at that point. So it's a lot of things kind of firing at once.
So if you're not ready to do those things, and again, like Alexander had a year, if not, you know, three or four, depending on what kind of skill you want to go by to kind of grow and learn and fundraise or bootstrap or finance or kind of however
you're going to get your inventory. But if you're having conversations and you're not ready to do those things, then it might not make a ton of sense because if you say yes or the buyer says yes, you kind of have that one shot and then you can't pull
things together for whatever reason, like that kind of might have been it. So I think timing is super critical, even kind of back to A2 and being on trend. It might have not worked two years ago.
Like we might have not had this opportunity two years ago when oat milk and alternative milks were still a thing. And we might have not had the opportunity in three years when there's going to be endless A2 dairy lattes on the market.
So I think that timing, which is never what anyone wants to hear, but unfortunately it can play a pretty big role in how these things come together.
I just want to jump in on that timing piece. And I think just for context too, I think it's something that we also have studied and call it luck, call it hard work, call it timing.
Sometimes for a brand, you know, to give this advice, sometimes it is just timing and some things you can't control.
I mean, if I tried doing fiber two, three years ago, and we're the only salty snack really out there that I know of that's high fiber, certainly in our category. So we have some runway now. So brands and founders don't love hearing this.
But no matter how much hard work you put in, some things are really out of your control and you need the collective zeitgeist, the effervescence or whatever of that ingredient to build around you.
And sometimes it's probably best to wait till you have that to then reach out if that's what you're leaning in on. Sorry to jump in, but I thought the timing was good. And I use zeitgeist in a podcast, so I get a point from that too.
I see Melissa nodding over there. Yes, he did. And effervescence.
So anyways.
Just a super specific point on timing. There wasn't actually, and I never tell anyone this, so maybe I shouldn't say on the podcast, but there was an A2 dairy coffee company that actually shut down maybe 18 months before we launched.
And they were like, they have a brick and mortar location up in San Francisco, and they kind of launched like these lattes as an extension of their brick and mortar. And they just didn't see traction in retail.
And I bought the product actually right as it was being discontinued, and I thought it was a great product. It was in glass bottles, which is a little bit different than cans. It had a ton of caffeine.
Like maybe there were product issues or supply chains. Again, it's really expensive.
But again, on timing, like they're probably looking at me so angry because had they been like two years later, it could have had, I mean, not to say that it blew up as a brand, but they could have seen so much more traction and success.
So obviously, there is the piece that everyone sees externally, like, wow, you know, this brand is only a year old and they launched into Wegmans. That's great and all.
But it is super important to have the context behind those that came before you and why it's possible that we do that now.
Such a great point. I mean, certainly, I think about good culture in that same vein that timing is so much a piece of success. So thanks so much for focusing on that.
Yeah, now that brand, you can't even buy it anywhere because it's out of stock.
It's always sold out.
They've been around for like 11 or 12 years or something like crazy like that.
Yeah, an 11 year overnight success.
Yeah, I think the time and piece that was just covered is super important.
So understanding that things might take time and being persistent and understanding what's trending and what's not. So the time will come hopefully. But the other big piece of it too is just being a transparent and trustworthy partner.
That's really one of the biggest pieces that's going to help either make or break your relationship with Wegmans and the category manager there.
So if there are fundamental changes to your business, whether it's pricing strategy, pack changes, new flavors, discontinuing flavors, whatever that situation you might be in, get ahead of it.
Don't be afraid to reach out to your category manager and let them know that the biggest hurdle and obstacle I've seen at my time at UNFI and even still today is things try to happen last minute and the buyer is not aware and now they're scrambling
and their day or week or month is now getting redirected to try to solve this problem. So the more trust that you can build with them and the more open you can be about the state of your business and what you can and can't do and what's possible and
what isn't, goes a really long way. So yeah, some of those conversations can be scary.
If you have a 10, 20 percent cost increase, you don't want to get discontinued, you want to make sure that you're still staying whole as a business and making money that you need to make to be successful long term.
But it's conversations that need to happen. So it's always better to get in front of it, whether it's through the category manager directly or through your distributor reps. Open lines of communication will take you really, really far.
How much fiber is in a serving of pita chips?
Six grams.
That's insane.
Yeah.
And I'll tell you what, if I did a blind taste test with folks, you probably wouldn't be able to tell because we do make it from real pita. The pita is actually baked, it puffs up, it cuts down.
And in my image background, you can see, or in the front of the bag, there's flame grill marks, there's curved edges, there's double layer chips. So it's something that we're just really proud of.
I think, you know, an advisor early on in the business, when I switched from finance to CPG said, you can have all the branding and all the money in the world, but you got to have a great product. And if you don't have that, you don't have anything.
So we're really, really proud of that. And of course the extra fiber in there as well.
Well, congratulations on all of that success. Josh Cannon, it's so great to have you here as our resident Wegmans expert. You have a long history working with Wegmans through UNFI, and now you guide brands on how to work with Wegmans themselves.
What are some of the biggest lessons you learned from your distributor days that you find apply to brands now?
Yeah, I think the biggest one is just patience. It can take a lot of time. Obviously, that's not always the case.
Isabel and Laurel's is a great example, but and even Zesty Z to a degree as well.
I know that journey took a long time, but if you can get a product that has on-trend ingredients, it's really growing in the rest of market or something that Wegmans is specifically looking for, which isn't always obvious either.
You might have to do some digging and talk to a lot of folks to understand what is this buyer looking for in this category. But that's a fast track or can be a fast track in a way as well.
If you're specifically targeting something they want in their stores for their customers. But most of the time, I would say it does take a lot of time. I've worked with a lot of brands.
It's been several years of kind of trying and trying again and talking to different folks, buyer changes, you name it. And then eventually it works out, right?
So if it's meant to be like, just keep persistence and kind of believe in your product and understand that there is gonna be opportunity there, but it may not be immediate. And that doesn't mean it's never gonna happen. It just takes time.
The Wegmans team has their own list of priorities and goals that aren't known to even UNFI folks, right?
Like, you know, they're running a business and need to make sure that their category expectations are being met for themselves and for their leadership team. So that can be challenging too, right?
Like, it might not always be your turn to take a shot at a category review or, you know, a lot of their changes happen on the fly, you know, not necessarily a formal review, but open review cut-ins and things like that.
So it can be tricky from a timing standpoint, but if you have the right connections and know who to talk to, hopefully, it's just a matter of time. But obviously, it's a very competitive store. It could be challenging, all the same.
And what are some of the things that make Wegmans unique as a retailer?
So, you know, let's say you're working with a new brand and you're kind of explaining how Wegmans works. What are some of those key factors that are important for brands to understand?
The big one for them is, well, I guess a couple of big ones for them. So they are an everyday low price retailer. So most of the time or all of the time, right, they're going to want your best cost that you can provide on an ongoing basis.
So they don't want to see major pricing fluctuations, especially when you're a new brand on shelf. You know, you want to try your best to keep that consistent for, let's say, a minimum of a year. Ideally, you're not adjusting price at all.
If you're bringing it down, great. Like everything's great. Everything's going to be good.
But any price increases can be a bit challenging because they are expecting a consistent everyday lower cost for their customers. Another huge one, and I'm very biased towards Wegmans, they're like my favorite retailer. They're awesome.
So they don't have any slotting fees or free fill requirements either for brands. So I would say they're particularly uniquely positioned for new and emerging brands to get on shelf.
And not only on shelf at any retailer, but one that has a really good customer base, that has some money to spend and is looking for innovation and cool ingredients and on-trend ingredients. So I think those two things really set them out.
They really just want to be a good partner to you and the brand just as much as you want to be to them. So I think it's, yeah, it's an awesome thing when it does work out. And I'm so happy for Isabel and for Alexander that they got on shelf.
Some takes longer than others, but especially when you're newer with a brand or a product line and being able to kind of make a relationship like that work is just incredible.
And in layman's terms, could you explain what EDLP means? And someone who just doesn't know anything about it?
So Every Day Low Price Retailer. So it works pretty similarly for UNFI or River Valley, depending on which distributor you go through. There's not really a right or wrong answer necessarily.
I would say as a smaller brand, it can be easier to work with River Valley at times because the cost of setup and starting up and slotting in their warehouse is much lower than it would be at UNFI.
But on the other hand, UNFI has obviously distribution centers across the country. So if you're looking to scale up quickly, that's a phenomenal option too.
I work closely with both teams and they're all great people and they all want to do what's right by the brand. For the EDLP piece, UNFI does not share their net pricing to brands. They keep that all internal.
It's confidential information between Wegmans and themselves. But really all they're looking for is what case discount can you provide on an ongoing basis that would be built back at the end of each billing cycle, at the end of each month with UNFI.
That's how I typically explain it to folks is just think of a dollar amount that you would be comfortable with. They don't like to promote a lot in store depending on the category like protein bars.
For example, you'll see a lot of promotion tags up on the shelf. But for most other categories, they're really just looking for that best offer ongoing throughout the entire year.
Instead of formulating a trade spend plan that's going to be focused on promotions or end caps or displays or slotting fees or whatever else that might be, bundle that up, take it off of your case discount for Wegmans. River Valley works similarly.
They are a little bit more transparent with pricing, which is nice as well. They have different pricing structures.
I don't want to say anything that I'm not supposed to on their markups and stuff like that, but River Valley is a little bit more transparent on that front too, which can be helpful when you're building your plan out. But so that's the basics of it.
I would also say that the Wegmans folks don't tend to love a lot of back and forth negotiation. Like, of course, they'll work with you if you come to them with a price point that is not really meeting their category expectations or margin needs.
But if you kind of keep going back and forth again and again, it can become really cumbersome to the conversation and launch of the product.
So having a really firm idea of what you can and can't do going into the conversation and to the pitch or the review is extremely helpful.
Laurel, I'm curious, when you were initially setting up the line at Wegmans, was it an easy process, difficult process settling on what your price would be for Wegmans, understanding that they're EDLP, whereas other retailers you're in, like for
We're super intentional about COGS, so it's not so much a matter of are we going to lose dollars on each case, if we need to be super aggressive on pricing.
In May, when we were, I guess smaller than we are now, we were still shipping and fulfilling all orders from Southern California.
So really the big hurdle for us was like, okay, now we fulfill bi-costally, but then are we really going to be losing a ton of money on freight, shipping everything from Southern California to Syracuse, which was sustainable for the amount of time
that we did it, but would not have been sustainable if we had no plans to start manufacturing bi-costally or doing bi-costal fulfillment. So there wasn't so much.
I think Josh was super helpful and I was very grateful to have him throughout this entire process and do the math of what, you know, getting like super tactical about what pricing would need to be in order to reach Wegman's goals for where we need to
be at on shelf. But there is still room to do. We're a dollar more than everything else on shelf, which is like a pretty difficult place to be as a new brand, which is why we really focus on how we can drive trial.
But and even then, like we're $3.99, it's like we're like $6 or something. Like again, it is just an EDLP retailer. So prices are generally lower than like say the $4.49 that we are at Whole Foods.
But that was kind of the process in helping think through. But it wasn't where we offer our standard kind of wholesale pricing wasn't leaps and bounds from where they needed to be. So it really wasn't, it was cents, not dollars.
So it was entirely feasible.
And your ability to run promos, which certainly is one of the first tools that a brand would use when they're new to a retailer and trying to increase exposure and velocities.
That tends to be not as common at Wegmans because they're EDLP, is that right?
Exactly. To bring up Whole Foods, like we have a 16 week promo plan with them, 15 to 25 percent off for X amount of weeks. And that gets to be pretty significant on top of the free fill that they require.
That's not so much a lever you can pull at Wegmans for better or for worse. So we have focused on the more external ways to drive trial. Instacart and I'll have been super helpful for us and really leading into that.
Can you lean into that a little bit more with us?
So what are some of those marketing strategies that you are able to use, understanding that not only promos aren't necessarily on the table, but also demos aren't on the table post-COVID with Wegmans as well?
The biggest one, and we actually had this set up like the second we went live, is that we do an IEL promo. So if you're not familiar with IEL, the website, I think, is just go to IEL.
It's a digital adention coupon, and a lot of brands use it to get consumers to drive trial. There's anything from like a BOGO. You can give away a free can.
If you get a more expensive item like Alexander, you might get like a dollar off or something like that. So it's super helpful to just get velocity, if that's what you're after.
And then we've also leaned in to Instacart a time, which has been super helpful. Some people who do business with Wegmans much longer than we have, have told me that it's a big kind of online ordering store. So we've leaned into Instacart.
We spend thousands of dollars a month probably on Instacart, I would say. It's a little difficult because they don't give you like an actual retailer breakdown.
Like you can't see like, okay, you know, this many sales went to Wegmans, this many went to Bristol Farms, et cetera. But I do think that we have been moving like a significant amount of volume through Wegmans, which has been another way.
And you can also do promos on Instacart as well.
So even if you can't do like an on-shelf promo on Instacart, or sorry, an on-shelf promo at Wegmans, you can go into Instacart itself and you know, if someone's buying from Wegmans on their phone, they can get a promo that way.
So there are kind of ways to get creative and get around it.
Alexander, can you tell us a little bit about what your pricing strategy has been? You know, was it difficult to land on the price that Wegmans wanted?
And then also, what have you been using as marketing strategies to get consumers to see that you're on the shelf?
So for us, pricing was pretty buttoned up early on. You know, I had some past experience with Wegmans understanding pricing. I'm kind of a hawk when it comes to my cogs and build out models for everybody and things like that.
So I had various scenarios already built out based on prior data and products that I had pitched. The River Valley team was also super helpful too.
You know, I also went to some several stores and I saw, you know, what their private label was selling at, what, you know, the other brand in the black bag was selling at. And just got like a general sense.
You know, I think for us, our strategy is to be affordable but approachable with our innovation. So no matter where we are, we're usually around a 10% premium.
And that falls in line with the better for you brands when you go up against, you know, big CPG. You know, think Olipop, Coca-Cola first time around, you know, things like that. And there's dozens of other examples.
So we're always, you know, if the other brand is $4.49, we're $4.99. So that's generally been baked into kind of our strategy and it aligned pretty well with what Wegmans wanted to do.
In terms of, you know, just getting units off the shelf and marketing it, I actually kind of like the challenge, you know, of Wegmans and the creativity it forces brands to do. Of course, we've started investing in Instacart.
IELTS is something we've heard about and are going to look into that as well. But I just generally think whether it's, you know, top of the funnel brand awareness, either paid media, influencers, IRL, you know, events in cities.
I just think it forces brands to be creative and not just lazy and rely on it. And I shouldn't say lazy. It's just, you know, this is the typical thing and hoping it happens.
So I love the creativity piece of it. We've got an awesome marketing team internally. That's where we talk to other brands and other founders, but how do you just drive that top level awareness?
I don't know, it's still early, so check back in, in like six months, I'll let you know on creative things that we've done. But that's how we're thinking about it.
We're gonna think about some creative things, you know, in real life to kind of drive that trial as well, not just digital.
Josh, do you have any hot tips up your sleeve on how brands can do marketing at Wegmans, understanding some of the limitations?
We certainly heard some great strategies here, but are there any, you know, kind of specific tips or tricks that you tend to share with brands?
Yeah, so every category manager is going to want to run things slightly differently to a degree.
Like obviously those kind of core templates that we discussed already, like limited promotions, focused on EDLP, like those are still going to be the case the majority of the time, but it's really good to get in close contact and have a lot of good
communication either with the buyer directly, if that's something they prefer. Other folks like to work and kind of keep all the communication streamlined through their distributor partner, whether that be River Valley Rep or UNFI Rep, in any case,
it's really good to stay close to them and understand, what are my promotional opportunities in store? Does this category merchant prefer to run promos? Are they comfortable with promotions? If so, let's put some money into that for sure.
That's going to be a huge tool in your tool belt and always going to help with product flying off the shelf a little bit more quickly, directly in store when you're running those promotions. Outside of that, there aren't too many options.
They're starting to run some digital coupons with brands, which will be featured on their site and other options like that. Still fairly new to that process, but something that they're exploring as well with branded product.
Then externally, just anything you can do from a social media standpoint to help drive traffic to Wegmans stores, not focused on just your brand.
I think another big component of the relationship with Wegmans is, what can I do to get customers in their doors? Obviously, I would love for them to buy my product, but they're a great partner.
Let's get more feet on the ground and people shopping in their location. That's the big piece as well, is let's get really focused on any social media campaigns we can run. Let's really push that hard.
Then Isabel and Alexander brought up great points as well. Like Instacart, you have a little bit more free rein there to do what you feel is going to be best for the brand from a promotional standpoint, or visibility standpoint, same with Aisle.
You definitely have more freedom with platforms like that. But just communication is always going to be key. If you're not asking those questions from the buyer or the distributor app, like, what are my opportunities in this category?
You might be stifling your own growth a little bit. So that's probably the biggest piece of advice is like, stay close to it, make sure you're keeping in close contact with the folks that are directly managing the business at Wegmans.
This is a tiny detail, but if you're trying to figure out what the right strategies might be, you mentioned you should stay in close contact with your buyer or the distributor.
Is there a best practice around whether you should reach out to your distributor rep first and then reach out to Wegmans? I mean, buyers are notoriously busy. Is there a way that works or does it not matter that much?
I personally, and maybe this is just the way I look at it from my time being in the building, I do think it's better to at least start with your distributor rep.
They're going to have access to a lot of information about your brand, inventory levels, velocity information, a lot of stuff that they can help you with. You might not want to take right to the buyer right away. They can also help you strategize.
How do we best approach this conversation? Do I have a price increase? How are we going to talk about that?
Philosophies are down. What are my options that we can take to the buyer and be knowledgeable about? Because you could throw a ton of stuff at the wall and send an email with, we'll do demos and we'll do all these things that you can't do.
But if the brand isn't aware of it, then they're just going to come off as potentially uneducated about the Wegmans business specifically. I think working with your distributor actually closely is helpful. I always recommend starting there.
Then some buyers, they welcome that one-on-one communication too. So if you are hitting a wall for whatever reason, no harm in reaching out to the buyer directly as well.
So I don't think you can really go wrong in either case, but working with the folks that are managing the actual physical product and distributing your inventory tend to have a lot of insights into what's going to work and what might not.
All right. So let's say everything you're doing seems to be working and you're seeing an increase in velocities, but certainly you want to make sure that you're getting close to reaching the expectations of the distributor and the retailer.
What can you say about velocity expectations with Wegmans? Do they tend to be the same as other retailers, like Whole Foods, for example? And where do you get that information?
Yeah, so they have an awesome portal that they offer for all of their vendor partners called W Retail.
And it will show you category-specific velocity information and sales information week over week. And you could pull whatever timeframes you'd like and really drill down, but it will be your direct competitors.
Like how is the category manager looking at your category and where do you stack up against competition? So it's really easy to pull that type of information.
There isn't necessarily a firm number that I would say, like you need to be here for this category. It's going to be a lot, but a lot of it's going to be based on category averages and kind of how you're stacking up against that average, right?
So if you're pulling reports week over week and you see yourself kind of dipping down, that might be assigned to reach back out to the buyer or distributor rep and ask what you can do to help reverse that trend.
If you're crushing it and you're like at the top of the list every week, then that's great. You're doing everything right. The brand selling, it's definitely resonating with customers.
Still good to support. Sometimes category merchants will like you to pull that information and send it over to them and say, hey, look how well we're doing. We've been growing week over week, month over month.
Obviously, they have access to that information too, but with how busy their schedules are, it can just show them even more that you're truly invested in their business. Saying here, we're crushing it, we're doing really well.
Here's what else we can do and offer to you to help support the business.
But that's going to be a really important tool for any brand in set, just to understand on a consistent basis where you stack up against the other brands that you're competing with.
Laurel, after being at Wegmans for a little bit, is it safe to assume that you're in that portal all the time looking to see what your velocities are like just for yourself, but also against your competition?
Yeah, what's super interesting about Wegmans is that it is kind of a perfect blend of a natural retailer and conventional retailers.
So there will be like Starbucks, which is selling thousands and thousands of units every day, the La Colombs of the world. And then there's Laurel's Coffee, there's Wegmans, RTD. They have like a kind of private label brands.
You can also kind of see that as well. So you really do see what and what stores you can see. I mean, the only thing that might be better is like the Aeroan dashboard as far as like UX goes, but it is a really great dashboard.
You can kind of flip it any way you want to see. As we think about raising later this year, obviously that's super important to understand how you kind of stack up. So definitely do you spend a lot of time in there as well.
The updates daily, which is always nice. So you can see how many cans we sold yesterday, and tomorrow you'll be able to see how many cans we sold today.
So there's also that kind of component as well, where you can see days that the brand might perform better.
With seasonality, especially on the East Coast, there might be kind of a dip that happens, and the whole category kind of dips together, which is always interesting to see. So it's a great portal for sure.
Is there a cost for the portal?
Yeah, so they charge to all vendors, I believe, and I could double check this, but I believe it's a 0.7% of sales. That varies based on your sales.
So that gets charged back either through River Valley or UNFI, whichever distributor going through, and that's just part of your deduction and invoice that you would receive.
But so it's a slight fee, but that also helps pay for their merchandising team and store to make sure your product's on shelf, slot it where it needs to be and tagged correctly too.
Having that data is so helpful and crucial for sure. I wanted to talk a little bit about the submission process itself.
Isabel, I would assume that because they came after you that perhaps you didn't submit your forms according to a category review calendar, is that correct?
Well, the great thing about working with Cultivate CPG is that Josh got to do all of that instead of me.
So there still is the very formal, I mean, just for the records, you know, pricing and case pack and UPCs and all that stuff that needs to get filled out.
But it definitely was not so much like, let's put together a presentation and get on a call for 30 minutes and that kind of formality to it.
Alexander, how about you? What was your submission process like?
It was through River Valley and pretty smooth. They weren't on a review schedule, but it was kind of a rolling schedule. So it was constantly being brought up.
So from the beginning of the year, they presented us and then they're like, oh, buyer said, come back, you know, he's looking at something else. So there's just that persistence. And then asked for two rounds of samples.
And then we shared that spins data on Fiverr. And then it was like green light, ready to go. So I did, our team, I and our team did most of the internal paperwork, but it was pretty easy.
And then the fine folks at River Valley took care of it from there.
Josh, what do we need to know about Wegman's submission process? Both the submission itself, pitching, and what does the buyer structure look like?
Buyer structure is fairly straightforward. Everybody kind of manages their own set of categories, sub-categories within the store, and that's all accessible.
Once you're in store, on W Retails, you can kind of understand the lay of the land within those sub-categories as you get going and are on shelf with Wegmans. But the structure is pretty straightforward. They're managing their business.
They have either UNFI or River Valley Rep that they work through as well. And a lot of those reps will cover multiple category merchants. So you may be talking to the same distributor rep for three to five category merchants at any given time.
The actual review process, to Alexander's point, for the most part, is going to be on a rolling basis.
So it never hurts to reach out, never hurts to check in with, you know, if you have a direct relationship with the buyer, for whatever reason, great, keep them in the loop.
If you've been working on your submission with UNFI or Valley for several months or a year or whatever it's been, keep them looped in as well.
Like if you're winning a business, if your ingredients are showing as on trend and it's resonating with customers, just keep popping those updates over, because you never know when something might fall off shelf or get discontinued or a brand decides
to cut back on their assortment for whatever reason, and it might be the perfect shot to jump in. So just staying persistent and keeping up with what you guys are doing and focusing on your growth internally and then sharing that with whoever needs
to be at the Wegman side, whatever contact you have, you could easily jump in and strike gold when you're not expecting to. That happens more often than not, I would say. Then there are also certainly formal category reviews that happen as well.
So the Wegman team needs to submit for those and make sure that there's resources and labor allocated to it.
So it's not super common, I would say, that you would see like, hey, we're reviewing all of our bars, all of our coffee, all of our whatever at any given time, but it happens.
So it's also good to stay close to it so you know, if now is not my opportunity on a rolling basis, so to speak, when can I formally get in front of the buyer? And when are they going to be making major changes to their set?
And then I'm going to be in the forefront of that, hopefully, once we're trying to make those decisions. So there's no overview calendar posted, there's no access to get all of the contact information that you need.
So it can be a bit challenging trying to navigate through that and find out who you need to speak with and when they're going to be ready to look at your specific category or brand. But it's definitely possible.
You just kind of need to know where to start. So I'm always happy to help with that too. So if anybody needs help, they can reach out and I'll try to point them in the right direction.
But so it's definitely kind of a moving target, I would say.
Is there any category specific information that would be helpful for our audience to know whether it's frozen might be particularly difficult because they have a lot of private label items in that area or salty snacks tend to turn over quickly.
What are some of the interesting points there?
If you're not close to a Wegmans, best case scenario, you're able to get into a store and kind of check out the set. But the website's awesome, so it's really up to date.
So whatever location you're at, the assortment that you see, if you type in pasta sauce or frozen entrees or whatever it might be, you'll be able to see every product that's sold through that specific location within the past seven days.
So it's a really up to date look at current assortment. Private label is king at Wegmans full stop.
So if you have a brand that is almost identical to a private label item, it's going to be really, really tough to make a case for yourself in that specific category. Some categories have more private label than others for sure.
Frozen is a great example that you brought up. They have a really robust frozen assortment across Italian, international entrees, you name it. They have a lot of their bases covered.
So when you are approaching a category like that, you need to really focus on why am I different? Not necessarily comparing yourself to Wegmans brand. That's not going anywhere.
That's not really, at the end of the day, your competition. You're competing with all of the other branded options on shelf.
So understand the assortment, understand who you're going to be up against, and then you need to really drive home as best you can, like why you need to be on shelf and what incrementality you're going to bring to the category.
And again, I think Isabel and Alexander did a great job with that. They have A2 dairy in their product. They have higher fiber in the product, healthier, better for you.
That's something different that's not on shelf right now. That's why it's working. That's why it's moving forward.
So, yeah, obviously I can't speak for the Wegmans team, but just, you know, that's been the case with my experience with them for sure.
Well, I can't thank you all enough for joining the conversation and giving such great advice. Isabel Washington of Laurel's Coffee, Alexander Harik of Zesty Z Peta Chips, and Josh Cannon of Cultivate CPG.
Thank you so much for joining and sharing so much information. For everybody else out there, thanks so much for listening. Head over to nombase.com for episodes of this podcast and so much more, and we will see you next time.
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