Expo West Sneak Peek

0:00Welcome to the Emerging Brands Podcast. sharing the stories behind brands you'll want to shop next. I'm your host, Kelly Bennett. I am a New York City-based brand strategist for CPG food and beverage brands. In each episode, I'll take you behind the scenes of founders that are building better-for-you products and bringing them to market. Also, I talk to brand builders, retailers, industry experts, and tastemakers who help bring those cool products to your shopping cart. You will hear stories of real life founders, their launch strategies, and practical advice you could use to grow your own brand or simply discover what's next on shelf.

0:42And the best part is you could shop all the brands featured on the show. This podcast is brought to you by Glimpse. Glimpse is an AI-powered deduction management tool that disputes and recovers invalid deductions, winning brands thousands of dollars and hundreds of hours back to founders so that they can focus on what really matters most. If you're a brand selling in retail, go to tryglimpse.com backslash trial for 30 days free and let them know I sent you. Now let's dive into the new episode. Hi everyone. Welcome to a new episode of Emerging Brands Podcast with Kelly Bennett. Today is a quick solo episode because I have been heads down working on my list of activations for Expo West and I wanted to put a few on your radar.

1:40So like many people who listen to the podcast, Expo West is the premier event, premier trade show in the CPG food and beverage space, especially for Better For You brands. This is where we go to network, meet founders, buyers, operators, investors, and just have this really great sense of community and seeing what's up and coming in food and beverage. I genuinely am so excited about this year. And if you are attending Expo West, there's a few things I want to put on your radar because I know things get super busy. There's so much happening, but I would love to see you IRL because honestly, that's always the best.

2:28So the first thing I wanted to put on your radar is happening on Tuesday. day. So that is the Tuesday of Expo West. They are hosting a very cool event called CPG Innovation. And essentially that whole day is curated around innovation in emerging brands and supporting the growth of emerging brands, which hello, that's literally what I'm obsessed with. So I am really, really looking forward to Tuesday. So if you go on Expo West's website, you're going to see where it says the CPG Innovation Summit Natural Products Expo West Pitch Slam. And you're going to see a familiar face on that list. So I will leave it there.

3:22Definitely excited to share more when I can but I wanted to put that on your radar of something really cool happening at the Pitch Slam competition. Super excited to be a part of it and I'll share more on my social when I have the details but put that on your roster and also definitely check out the whole day. I'm going to be involved in another activation that day too so I'll share that when I have those finalized details but it's definitely one to attend if you are an emerging brand founder and you want to know what's happening in the innovation space around CPG. So that is Tuesday, March 3rd.

4:07The Pitch Slam competition is from 5 to, sorry, between 4 and 5.30 Pacific time and it's going to be so much fun. The next thing I wanted to put on your list, which is already, well, almost at waitlist capacity, is the Ladies' Lounge at Expo West. This is the ultimate women in CPG pizza party, which I am so thrilled to co-host again. Last year, Danielle Calabrese came to me with the idea of co-hosting a ladies' lounge with Women in CPG getting together at the Noon booth, and it was such a huge success. We heard such great feedback from Women in CPG meeting with founders, investors, brand builders, fellow emerging brands, and we needed to come back and do it again.

5:06So this year we're going to be meeting at La Rossi Pizza's booth, hence the pizza party theme. And so La Rossi is this delicious artisanal pizza brand who's been on the podcast. So definitely check them out. And we are going to bring women together across CPG for some really seriously good pizza, Fun drinks by Ghia. It's Sprizio. And we're going to have a pizza topping bar featuring Cotto, who you all probably know from the podcast. She's my client. The whipped cottage cheese dip. And I'm so excited. Also, like I said, show off, which is this beautiful, spicy topping that will be so delicious.

5:59There's also going to be Deserved by Wobble, which is also another client that I'm so excited to talk more about and a few other surprises we have up our sleeves. So definitely come join us for founders, operators, investors, buyers, brand builders. If you're scaling or just getting started or just love being in the mix, we would love to see you there and feel the energy in the room of what's next in food and beverage. so if you are not already RSVP'd definitely do that there's a link in the show notes to grab your spot space is almost at capacity so definitely jump on that and again I would love to see you in real life it's always so cool to meet real life humans who listen to the podcast and it just genuinely means the world to me that you do listen to the podcast and I appreciate all your kind words.

7:00Thank you, thank you, thank you. And I'm really excited to hang out with you and eat pizza and just have the best time ever. So save your spot RSVP in the show notes and I will see you IRL really soon. Bye. This episode was brought to you by Glimpse. As we know, building a brand is not as sexy and glamorous as it looks on social media at times. A lot of those unsexy problems come into play when brands start to scale in retail distribution. Founders are always incredibly excited to see their products on shelves at major retail chains, but they don't realize all the hard work that starts to begin.

7:48Retailers and distributors are known for their processes of deducting amounts from invoices. Most of the time, those are totally valid. Promos, slotting fees, free fills, and all the things that brands agree to to be part of the retail experience. But sometimes those deductions are invalid, costing brands thousands to millions in fees. Actually finding those needles in the haystack though and fighting to win back lost revenue, it's a costly, manual, and time-consuming issue. And that's where Glimpse comes in. Glimpse is an AI-powered deduction management tool that disputes and recovers invalid deductions.

8:36Winning brands thousands of dollars and hundreds of hours back to founders so that they can focus on what really matters most, scaling their businesses. With a team of in-house deduction experts who come from some of the most successful and profitable CPG companies. And custom built AI with 100 % accuracy and precision. you'll recover money that you never should have had leaked in the first place if you're a brand selling in retail go to try glimpse.com backslash trial for 30 days free and let them know i sent you thank you again for listening to this episode of the emerging brands podcast it really means so much to me that you listen to this show share it with your friends and support it if you are a cpg food and beverage founder, and you're ready to launch a brand people want to shop, head to withkellybennett.com for the details.

9:40And as always, thank you so much for listening, shopping the brands featured on the show and following brands I'm working with. It means so much. See you on the next episode.