Notes

Starbucks has quietly become a CPG growth accelerator.

It started around 2009 when KIND got into their grab-and-go case, one of the first better-for-you snack brands to crack that channel. Daniel Lubetzky talks about how this placement helped change the trajectory of the company. That's it. followed, making it through Starbucks' rigorous vetting process and coming out the other side with distribution that accelerated the brand's growth.

Those placements are never just placements. They build trust. When a customer sees a brand sitting in the Starbucks case as they order their fave morning coffee, they think: "If Starbucks carries it, it must be good." What's incredible is how that trust carries into everrrry other channel they encounter the brand.

MUSH is the latest. Their Chocolate Peanut Butter Protein Overnight Oats are now in the refrigerated grab-and-go case at most US locations, alongside coming expansions into 7-Eleven and Target.

If you don't know the MUSH story:

Founder/CEO Ashley Thompson grew up soaking oatmeal and milk in her cereal, and her dad would ask "what's in your mush this morning?" Years later, working at Goldman Sachs and hunting for a real breakfast, that memory turned into a business.

She quit in 2015, started selling overnight oats at a San Diego farmers market, landed in Whole Foods, went on Shark Tank, and got a deal with Mark Cuban. Today MUSH is in 36,000+ retail doors and crossed $100M in retail sales last year.

Barrel started working with MUSH during another exciting time in their journey, re-launching their site to debut protein bars. It's been fun to be along and watch them grow. More on that here if you're curious.

Congrats to Ashley, Lucy, and the rest of the team.

Would we have TikTok Shop without QVC?

I grew up spending summers in Brigantine, NJ. Our neighbor there would always talk about her nephew (if I remember correctly) Aaron and what he was doing with an innovative sponge.

We later learned that sponge was Scrub Daddy, Inc., born just miles from my hometown.

Loved listening to Guy Raz's conversation with founder Aaron Krause on How I Built This with Guy Raz. Scrub Daddy's success was basically a 2012 version of what's happening for so many brands on TikTok Shop.

Before Shark Tank, before QVC, before Scrub Daddy was stocked at every major retailer in the country, Aaron pitched the sponge to a friend who owned a local grocery chain. The friend told him it wouldn't sell. Aaron convinced him to stock it anyway. He paced that aisle for hours at a time waiting for someone to pick one up.

Nobody did.

His friend: no one is coming to the grocery store for sponge innovation. They're coming for eggs and milk.

He encouraged Aaron to instead, set up a booth, demo, and flag down anyone willing to watch.

Aaron gave it a go. Every person who stopped bought one or two.

The magic of Scrub Daddy is completely invisible in packaging. You have to see it go soft in warm water, firm up in cold, and scrape a burnt pan clean to understand why you'd pay $4 for it next to a $1 sponge your grandma has been using forever.

Shelf space doesn't change that.

In 2011, Aaron managed to get The Philadelphia Inquirer to run a front-page business story with his smiling face and sponge under the headline "He's the Daddy of the Scrub Daddy."

A QVC broker saw it and called. His first show bombed. Aaron sold just 40% of the inventory, but got a second shot anyway.

By his fourth appearance he was directing the cameraman on which angles to catch the texture change. QVC led to Shark Tank. That led to a million dollars in sales the night the episode aired.

Strip away the cable box and QVC is a live commerce channel. Hosts demoing products in real time, viewers buying without leaving the screen.

TikTok Shop is the same, just with creators instead of hosts and the algorithm instead of a program guide.

Scrub Daddy is all over it. QVC still did $10 billion in revenue last year. Both are thriving because they're solving the same problem.

Shelf distribution was never going to solve a demonstration problem. QVC figured that out in 1986. TikTok Shop is running the same play for a new generation. The need hasn’t changed, the format just keeps evolving.

+

Fun fact: Aaron didn't start with a kitchen sponge. He invented Scrub Daddy years earlier as a hand scrubber for auto mechanics, couldn't sell it, and shelved the prototypes in a box labeled scrap. When he sold his first business to 3M, they left Scrub Daddy out of the deal. It wasn't until he pulled the box out to clean his lawn furniture a few years later that he realized what it actually was.

The full story is worth a listen. Link.

Seems like every other week lately there's a new CPG headline about a brand cashing in on what they've built.

I'm always interested in the story behind the story.

Last week it was Grüns. In case you missed it: Unilever acquired them for $1.2 billion. The brand is less than 3 years old.

The name comes from the German word for green. Founder Chad Janis chose the umlaut specifically because the ü looks like a smiley face. He wanted the brand to feel fun. That detail tells you a lot about how intentional he was from the very beginning.

Before he started Grüns, Janis was a venture investor at Summit Partners. He sat on the boards of Chubbies, Brooklinen, Dr. Squatch, Thuma. He'd watched DTC brands get built from the inside for years.

Then in the summer of 2022, he's at Stanford for his MBA, two days into trying a powdered greens supplement, and decides there's no way he's keeping this habit past 30 days.

His words: "the weird frothy sediment at the bottom, the chalky taste." People don't skip their vitamins because they don't care. The ritual was the problem.

He spent the next year testing formulations, talking to 20 manufacturers, and using his MBA classmates as guinea pigs. Over 25% of his Stanford class tried the product before it ever went to market. He raised $400K from friends and classmates for the first inventory run.

August 2023: Grüns goes live on DTC.
Within weeks, $5,000 revenue days.
December 2023: Amazon.
July 2024: Kids' line.
August 2024: Profitability. Fourteen months in.
December 2024: Sprouts. First retail door.
February 2025: Target.
April 2025: 1,900 Walmart stores.
August 2025: $300M annualized run rate. Twenty-four months after launch.
March 2026: Costco.
April 2026: Unilever.

Janis described what he was after from the beginning: "a category-defining business by addressing real consumer needs with products people genuinely love." The gummy bear wasn't the gimmick. It was the answer to a problem he couldn't unsee.

Whether it was the form factor, the taste, the GLP-1 tailwind, or just exceptional execution (probably all of it), something connected. Jostein Solheim, CEO of Unilever's Wellbeing division, noted that "people genuinely enjoy, trust, and consistently use" the product. In a category where habit is everything, that's huge.

Worth noting what this says about Unilever. They already own Nutrafol, Liquid I.V., and OLLY PBC. The acquisition follows the announcement of a merger of their food business with McCormick & Company. And now this. They're moving away from food and putting serious money into wellness brands with loyal, habitual customers. Grüns fits that portfolio exactly.

From a font character that looked like a smile to a $1.2 billion sale. 3 years to build it. A decade to be ready to.

Danone is set to acquire Huel for ~€1 billion. And it all started with a failure called Bodyhack.

Julian Hearn left school at 16 with almost no qualifications. Spent a couple years doing manual labor before working his way up the marketing ladder at Tesco, Waitrose, Starbucks. In 2008 he started his first company (an affiliate marketing business) from zero and sold it in 2011.

After the sale, he got obsessed with fitness and built a site called Bodyhack where he used himself as a guinea pig - strict diet, minimal exercise - and got himself into the best shape of his life. The problem was the diet plan was so precise and time consuming that nobody else could follow it. Customers wanted the results but not the work.

So he went one level deeper. What if the nutrition was just in the product itself?

He found a nutritionist named James Collier, put in £220,000 of his own money, built the store on Shopify. He was still in good enough shape from the experiment that he posed for his own product photos. Every dollar counts. He'd already lost £80,000 on Bodyhack but believe in what he could create. Huel went live in 2015.

The space is crowded now and was growing then. Soylent was already there. What Huel did differently was refuse to be a supplement. Whole-food ingredients, complete nutrition, built for people who cared what they put in their body. The community they built called themselves Hueligans.

When James McMaster came on as CEO in 2017, the goal was to build an internationally recognized brand doing over £100 million in revenue. They reported £214 million for 2024.

For Danone, this is a bet on where food is going. A $6 billion category growing fast, and a brand that already owns a loyal corner of it with DTC infrastructure they'd never build from scratch.

Julian Hearn is selling his entire stake. Roughly £400 million.

CPG is full of brands chasing trends, even if that's not how they began. Huel was built around a problem, and just kept finding better ways to solve it.

+

For more on what it takes to build in CPG, check out my podcast The Long Aisle, where I go deep with founders and operators, exploring how they think, how they live, and what keeps them going. Heres the Link.

One of my favorite conversations at Expo West this year was with Justin Gold, the founder of Justin's.

Justin has been on my radar since Newtopia Now last year, where I got talking with the folks at Rudi's Bakery and tried their Sandos for the first time. A portable PB&J made with Justin's peanut butter. Only way I can describe it is the most delicious nostalgic bite in a long time.

And then I learned that Justin was serving as their Chief Innovation Officer after leaving his own brand.

Turns out that's not all he's been up to.

If you don't know the Justin's story: in 2004, a guy starts making nut butter in his Boulder apartment. Sells jars at the farmers market. Invents the squeeze pack on a mountain bike ride. Builds a full lineup, including those chocolate PB cups everyone loves, and sells the whole thing to Hormel Foods in 2016 for ~$286 million.

But not every story's end is... the end.

In December, Justin's became a standalone company again. Forward Consumer Partners took a majority stake, Hormel stayed in as a minority owner, and Justin came back to help lead the next chapter. And when the deal closed, much of the original leadership team came back too.

People who didn't have to come back. That tells you everything about the kind of leader Justin is and the vision he's put forward for this brand.

Talking to him at Expo West, you could feel it. He's fired up and full of gratitude. I left our conversation feeding off the good energy.

The booth had the same vibes. Nina Ungers, Director of Marketing, wasn't just handing out samples. She was interacting with every single person who tried something and asking for real feedback. Clearly a team that knows what they're building and is serious about doing it right.

Looking forward to watching this next chapter unfold. It's not a story you see every day in CPG.

+

Didn't think to snap a photo with Justin. So here's a shot from a YT video I found from 2014 with his alma mater, Dickinson College.

I watched Ratatouille with my sick toddler this weekend and much to my surprise, couldn't stop thinking about CPG 👨‍🍳 🐭 🥘

He's been sick all week and a movie is the only way to get this kid to slow down. This was only his second, so I picked carefully.

If you're like me and haven't watched it in a while, here's a quick refresher:

Remy is a rat with a gift for taste and smell, and his idol is the late Chef Gusteau, whose famous Parisian restaurant once held 5 stars. After a brutal review from critic Anton Ego cost the restaurant a star, Gusteau died of a broken heart, dropping it to 3. His sous chef Skinner inherited the place and immediately set about exploiting Gusteau's name and likeness to sell a line of frozen burritos, pizzas, and other cheap packaged foods. Full on CPG. The movie treats it as the ultimate betrayal of craft.

Funny how things have changed...

Today, some of the most respected restaurants and chefs in the world aren't just making food for the dining room. They're building CPG brands. And doing it really well.

Rao's started as a tiny, impossible-to-get-into restaurant in East Harlem. Now it's a CPG powerhouse. The Campbell's Company acquired the parent company Sovos Brands for $2.7 billion. That's billion with a B. For pasta sauce.

Carbone went from being one of the hardest reservations in New York to selling over 2 million jars of sauce across 10,000+ grocery stores nationwide. You can grab a jar at Whole Foods Market or Walmart.

Momofuku built an entire grocery brand around chili crunch, seasoned salts, soy sauce, and noodles. David Chang took what he perfected in his restaurants and turned it into a pantry staple.

Christina Tosi took Milk Bar from a tiny East Village bakery to 10,000+ retail locations. Her cookies and ice cream now sit on shelves at Whole Foods, Target, and Kroger. What started as a cult dessert spot became a legit CPG brand.

The list keeps growing. And the line between restaurant and retail has never been blurrier.

What Skinner got wrong wasn't the idea of turning a restaurant into a brand. It was the intent behind it. He wanted to exploit a name.

Chefs and founders today are extending an experience. They spent years, sometimes decades, building something people love in person. And now they're finding ways to bring a piece of that into people's homes.

That's not selling out. That's building for longevity.

The best restaurant-to-CPG brands aren't cashing in on a logo. They're scaling taste. And to me, it's one of the most exciting things happening in our industry right now.

I can’t shop like a normal person anymore 😑

When I hand my son a Perfect Bar right out of the box at Costco (we don’t wait for the checkout), I don’t see a snack.

I see a family of 13 kids who turned their dad’s homemade recipe into a business to keep their family afloat after he got sick. They convinced their mom to sell the family bed and breakfast to buy a packaging machine. The oldest slept in his car for a month demoing bars at a single Whole Foods Market.

By 2019, they were doing $70 million in revenue, going on to sell a majority stake to Mondelēz International. Today they’re in over 50,000 stores.

Because behind every product on a shelf, there’s people navigating a lot more than most consumers will ever see:

Private label is eating into their categories and they’re trying to figure out how to make the brand matter more, not less. How do you justify the premium when the store brand is “good enough”?

Retail is still the engine. They’re expanding doors, pitching new chains, trying to win over buyers who have 200 other brands asking for the same shelf space. One meeting with a buyer at Target or Costco Wholesale can change the trajectory of a year.

Supply chain is a headache. Ingredient sourcing, co-packer capacity, lead times that make it nearly impossible to move fast. And every time costs go up, the margin conversation starts all over again.

They’re investing more in retail media and marketing but struggling to measure what’s actually working. The dollars are going up but clarity isn’t getting any sharper.

Amazon is important but complicated. It’s a discovery engine, a sales channel, and a brand risk all at once. Pricing parity, unauthorized sellers, content that needs to be aligned with other channels but not 1 to 1.

Speaking of DTC, most brands know it’s not going to be their biggest channel. But it’s the only place they fully own the brand experience, the data, and the customer relationship. So they’re trying to figure out what role it plays without under or overinvesting.

New SKUs, limited editions, collabs. There’s constant pressure to innovate just to hold shelf space and stay relevant. Brands that can move faster on product development have an edge. DTC can be a great place for that.

Everyone wants to build community but few have figured out what that looks like beyond a loyalty program and a referral code.

Regulatory and compliance requirements keep getting more complex. Claims on packaging, FDA guidelines, state-by-state rules. It’s important but slows everything down.

And underneath all of it? This tension: grow fast enough to keep investors or leadership happy, but don’t dilute the brand in the process :)

I always appreciate talking to the brands who see all of this as a long game. Much like the Keith family did. No single channel, no single campaign, no single retailer makes or breaks them. They just keep showing up, solving the next problem, and compounding.

That’s how brands, and good things, are built.

For years, the Barrel leadership team has read books together. When I moved into the CEO role, I continued the practice.

As I was selecting books in Q4, I asked myself: why isolate this to leadership?

So I created a couple of book clubs across the agency. Yesterday was our first session reflecting on "Getting Naked" by Patrick Lencioni, the book I chose for our client services and growth team.

I first read this years ago. Revisiting it, I realized how much it shaped how I show up today. On client calls, in tough conversations, in how I think about trust. That's what I love about books. You take what you need in the moment and sometimes don't realize the impact until much later. The more you read, the more ideas compound. And reading as a team compounds even further. It creates a shared language people can reference and build on together.

I chose this book because so much of agency work comes down to trust. Lencioni frames trust-building in a way that challenges the instincts most service professionals develop over time. The instinct to protect, to posture, to always have the answer.

Insights from our conversation:

Ask the questions no one wants to ask. When a client says they need X, the real issue is often something else. Our best outcomes come from slowing down and asking "why" before jumping to solutions.

Don't pretend to know more than you do. When you nod along to something you don't understand, it catches up with you. The vulnerability of saying "can you explain that?" builds more trust than faking expertise ever will.

Enter the danger zone. When there's tension on a call, the instinct is to get quiet. The better move is to name it. Calling it out moves things forward faster than letting it fester.

Consult, don't sell. Clients don't choose partners because of a polished pitch. They choose partners who seem more interested in understanding their problems than closing the deal.

Tell the kind truth. Being naked doesn't mean being reckless. It means having the courage to say what needs to be said with genuine care. Push back when a direction isn't right. Own mistakes openly. Always from a place of wanting the best outcome, not proving you're right.

Bad clients are worse than no clients. One nightmare client can wipe out the margins and energy of nine great ones. Learning when to walk away is just as important as learning how to win.

It's never easy to carve 90 minutes out of a busy team's schedule. But there's real power in zooming out and thinking together about how we want to show up. The energy yesterday made it clear this was time well spent.

Looking forward to many more of these.

ABSOLUT TABASCO 🌶️

The unlikely duo we didn't see coming just dropped a spicy vodka together.

Vodka and hot sauce. An odd combo at first.

But CPG folks, there's something to learn here beyond two big brands making a splash. When you dig in, the partnership makes a lot of sense.

Both brands were founded in the 1860s-80s. Both built their stories around three simple ingredients. Their bottles even have a similar silhouette.

And... they've committed to a 3-year partnership. This isn't a limited drop designed to grab headlines and disappear. They're building something together.

Craig Max van Niekerk, Global VP of Marketing for The Absolut Company, said it pretty plainly: "Vodka is perceived as a one-dimensional category in a four-dimensional world."

That's the real play: using a collab to make the category interesting again. The structure is worth paying attention to, too.

Here's how it works:

Absolut licenses Tabasco's pepper mash and pays for the brand association. No need to spend resources trying to develop a new flavor from scratch. There's built-in trust and audience ready to take a sip. They're already talking about RTD extensions like Bloody Mary and Spicy Lemonade. The growth path was part of the deal from day one.

Christian Brown, 6th generation family member at the McIlhenny Company (makers of Tabasco), called it a natural fit, two brands with long histories that understand authenticity.

For founders thinking about collabs: the headline-grabbing move and the long-game move don't have to be separate things.

Find a partner that actually makes sense. Commit to it. Build from there.

+
Image Source: The Absolut Group

Everyone celebrates the “We’re in Costco!” announcement.

And they should!

But there’s a whole other reality behind-the-scenes that rarely makes it to these posts.

Some things many don’t realize about getting into Costco Wholesale:

The curation is intense. Costco carries around 3,700 SKUs per warehouse. The average grocery store? Over 30,000. Their buyers aren’t just selective. They’re looking for reasons to say no.

You might not even sell your “real” product there. Many brands create entirely new SKUs just for Costco. Oats Overnight sells bags instead of their standard cups. MUSH launched protein bar minis. Magic Spoon made a double-sized 14oz box (their standard is 7oz) that I always keep in stock. That's it. made an 18-count Crunchables variety bag just for club stores. Chances are, what you see on the shelf might only exist there.

The packaging specs are also no joke. There’s reportedly a 40-page document covering everything from pallet dimensions to how products need to survive 500+ mile transit. Miss the specs and you risk chargebacks or getting pulled.

Speed to scale is maybe the most surprising. Brands often talk about getting accepted in stores and having just weeks to prepare. Bill Shufelt from Athletic Brewing has talked about doubling their production capacity and outgrowing it again in three months. They deliberately held off on major retailers until they knew they could fulfill the orders. Going from nobody returning your calls to not being able to keep up with demand is a good problem, but not if you’re not ready.

The samples we all love are proof of concept. Trü Frü passed out over a million free samples before their Costco expansion. This isn’t just marketing; it’s showing buyers that demand already exists.

Getting into Costco isn’t just a distribution win. It’s an operations test.

The brands that last there aren’t just great products. They’re supply chain machines.​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​

What’s your Costco story?

The Nathan's Famous, Inc. acquisition is an amazing case study in the power of brand.

While 110 year old Nathan’s was already iconic, Smithfield Foods has been manufacturing and distributing Nathan’s hot dogs since 2014. They ran the operations. They handled the distribution. They marketed the brand.

But they didn’t own it.

Their license was set to expire in 2032, which meant eventually renegotiating from a position of dependency or… watching a competitor take over a brand they’d spent a decade building.

So they bought it.

$450M to own it forever instead of effectively “renting” it until 2032.

For CPG founders, this is a good reminder: your brand is an asset. Manufacturing can be contracted. Distribution can be partnered. But the brand - the name consumers trust, the shelf space you’ve earned, the identity you’ve built - that’s what gets acquired.

That doesn’t mean the quality of your product isn’t important, but your brand can be what makes a customer say yes to you, and no to competitors.

Nathan’s posted ~$150M revenue and $24M profit last year. They’re not being bought for their hot dog recipe. They’re being bought because “Nathan’s Famous” means something to consumers that Smithfield can’t replicate.

And… special kudos to ChatGPT for bringing my hot dog vision to life.

A protein bar company valued at $725M in under a year. Here's the David protein breakdown.

A couple months after launch, Dana surprised me with a box of David Protein. She'd heard me going on about the hype and how impressed I was with the label. 28g protein, 150 calories, zero sugar. I didn't even know that was possible in a bar format.

Well, of course, I wasn't the only one paying attention.

Today: 3,000+ retail locations. $85M raised. $725M valuation.

What made them explosive:

The team and backers. Founded by Peter Rahal, who previously built and sold RXBAR for $600M. Peter Attia MD serves as Chief Science Officer. Andrew Huberman and Arnold Schwarzenegger are investors and public supporters. That lineup gave them instant credibility in the health and fitness world.

The timing. GLP-1 drugs have millions of Americans eating less but needing more protein to prevent muscle loss. David entered the market right as that demand curve started climbing.

The go-to-market. Waitlist pre-launch, 20,000 free samples, aggressive TikTok and influencer seeding, and eye popping minimal metallic packaging. They built demand before chasing shelf space, then used that leverage to scale into retail fast.

The controversy: They acquired Epogee, the sole producer of EPG (the modified fat that makes their macro profile possible), and allegedly stopped supplying other brands. A lawsuit followed. David's position: competitors should have locked in long-term contracts. The case is ongoing.

The response to critics: When people called the bars ultra-processed, David launched... frozen cod. Boiled cod pouches at $55 for four fillets. Their billboards read: "Slightly more protein per calorie than our bars." Tongue-in-cheek, but it reinforced their core message while acknowledging the criticism.

Whether you see David as the future of functional food or a cautionary tale, they've built something the industry is watching closely.

And it seems like none of us can stop talking about it.

A few months ago, I walked into Costco Wholesale and was greeted by a huge display of Athletic. This weekend, I passed it on an endcap, this time next to hiyo, a "social tonic" I hadn't seen there before.

First thing that came to mind, "Whoaa, NA has seriously arrived. It's with the masses."

A few years ago, these products lived in specialty stores or required an online order. Now they're sharing shelf space, a few aisles away from the rotisserie chickens.

I don't drink, but I've gotten into NA beer over the past several years. Options like Athletic Brewing Co. have become easy go-tos. They fit into those moments where a beer might fit without feeling like a compromise.

When Athletic launched in 2018, there were only about a dozen NA beer brands in the US. Today, there are hundreds. Athletic has grown into one of the largest craft breweries in America by volume. They make zero alcohol.

Hiyo launched in 2021 and has raised ~$20 million. Constellation Brands, the company who owns the exclusive US rights for Corona and Modelo, took a stake. So did Live Nation Entertainment.

Both brands now have deals to be served at Live Nation venues. My wife Dana and I shared an Athletic tallboy at a concert late last year. Loved that it was even an option.

For anyone building in this category, the window for being early has probably closed. The window for being good is wide open.

When Dunkin starts making protein drinks, it’s pretty clear we’re way beyond protein “being a thing.”

Not that long ago, protein felt like it belonged to a very specific crowd. Shaker bottles, chalky powders, fitness people on a mission.

Now it’s everywhere. Coffee counters, convenience fridges, right next to the register. It went from niche to mainstream fast.

I don’t hate the love for protein at all. If anything, it’s a good thing. I remember when I first started tracking macros and realizing how little I was consuming.

But fwiw sugary drinks are not a great path to hitting daily protein.

Most of it still comes from the basics. Including a clean protein (chicken, tuna, etc) at meals. And subbing in healthy options for our favorite sweets and snacks.

Luckily, there's plenty of those these days. Some good ones: Dave's Killer Bread, Magic Spoon, Khloud, WILDE, Yasso, Inc. or trusty old Greek yogurt and fruit.

Protein feels like a trend right now, but it’s always been important. And sugar drinks or not, it’s cool to see more brands leaning into it, raising awareness and making it more accessible.

I started collecting Snapple bottle caps as a teenager.

I didn’t have a plan. I just thought the little facts were interesting enough to hang on to. It was always fun to see what the next one would be.

Over time, that turned into quite a collection, stored safely inside a shoebox. Eventually, I had an idea to turn them into a project. I built a table out of the caps. I loved the idea of being able to sit there and read all the facts.

That table ended up in my portfolio when I applied to Tyler School of Art and Architecture, Temple University. I’ll never forget trekking it into my interview. It made quite a scene and became something the Dean at the time, Carmina Cianciulli, would mention for years to come :)

Looking back, it’s funny how my perspective has changed.

As a customer, I just thought it was cool. As someone who now works with CPG brands every day, it signals something different.

There was a lot packed into that small moment. The drink was the drink. The extra layer lived in the cap. A tiny delight that extended the experience.

I see the same idea show up in other brands.

Some nostalgic...

Bazooka Candy Brands bubble gum with the comics inside. You opened the wrapper and couldn't wait to see what was inside.

Cereal boxes with games, puzzles, or if you were lucky, a toy inside. I'll never forget my color changing spoon from Kellogg Company.

And more modern examples...

BEAR Fruit Snacks rolls with unique cards tucked into each pack. Kids (or me) start eating and want to see what they got.

La Fermière US and Kalypso yogurt served in a terracotta container that can be reused as a planter after eating.

All of these are small moments that make the experience bigger than what’s inside.

For brands that depend on repeat purchase, this feels like a real opportunity. I’m surprised we don’t see it more often across categories.

And I'd argue it's not just for kids! Adults are just big kids anyway.

Curious what comes to mind for others. Any product packaging experiences that have stayed with you?

+

Shout out to Renee Rogan Reilly for being an awesome neighbor and teaching me about vectors and Adobe Illustrator. I was so pumped to design those tags. And Dr Pepper Snapple Group for the inspo.