PlantChi

0:00Jessica Hamel:Welcome to the Emerging Brands Podcast with Kelly Bennett. This is the podcast to discover stories behind your new favorite CPG brands. Each episode brings you behind the scenes of the brand and founder story, learn what sets them apart in the marketplace, and their strategy going to market. We talk about plans for growth, practical advice for an emerging brand founder, and where to shop products that are making waves in food, beverage, wellness, beauty, and beyond. You'll also hear from industry experts, brand builders, investors, and operators you should absolutely have on your radar if you're building a CPG brand today.

0:44Jessica Hamel:I'm your host, Kelly Bennett, a Brooklyn-based brand strategist with a front row seat of what makes an emerging CPG brand stand out. Whether you're building a brand of your own or love supporting what's next, you're in the right place. This episode was made possible by our sponsor, Hummingbirds. Hummingbirds is a platform that connects everyday small creators with brands that drive user-generated content, build buzz at specific retailers, and captures competitive market share. It's a tool that I recommend to all of my clients that you should absolutely check out. Head to hummingbirds.com for all the details.

1:27Jessica Hamel:Now, let's dive into the new episode. Hi, everyone. Welcome back to a new episode of Emerging Brands Podcast with Kelly Bennett. Today, I have a founder of a really cool product, one that I've been putting in my smoothies and sprinkling on top of my salads. Jessica Hamill is here. She is the founder of Plant G. And Jessica, I'm so happy to have you on the show today. So excited. I've been following you for a while. Got to meet in New York recently and so excited to connect like this. That means a lot. I love those full circle moments. So before we dive so much into your background, because I love hearing the backstory of how someone became a CPG founder, because it's not easy and you really have to be passionate about something to make the leap.

2:16Jessica Hamel:I would first love to dive into what is Plant Chi? So plant sheet is a seasoning with benefits. I take super seeds and I blend them with craveable ingredients to make a fun, effortless way to get a nutrient boost throughout the day with all of your meals. And so some of those craveable ingredients, seaweed, spirulina, cinnamon, cardamom, nutritional yeast and garlic. So, yeah, just a fun way to sprinkle on extra nutrients. So cool. Could you go through the different SKUs? Because I want people to understand the use case of this product. And when you were explaining the flavors, it's definitely a range.

3:06Jessica Hamel:And so I would love if you could break those down just so someone better understands how and when to put on planchy on their food. So planchy is a great way to be inspired to eat seeds throughout the day. And so I've created different SKUs to pair with different meals. For breakfast, a lot of people are used to eating their seeds with their smoothies. I kind of like to think about it, uh, planchey as for people who think outside the blender, who live outside the blender. Um, so the breakfast one, that sweet ritual, it has cinnamon and cardamom. Of course it has hemp hearts, flax seeds, um, and that pairs amazing with yogurt, granola, oatmeal, even after a run, I'll just cut up a banana and just sprinkle a little bit on the banana.

3:57Jessica Hamel:Ooh, I like that. Okay. Yeah. If you're more of a savory breakfast breakfast person, then you'll really love our cheese teas, which has nutritional yeast and garlic. It has puffed amaranth in there, which is kind of like microscopic popcorn. But it is it is a protein and adds protein to the blend. So obviously, that's great on eggs, but also on your kale salad, roasted veggies, match made in heaven with avocado toast. and then for people who are more familiar with furikake it's a Japanese spice blend you might really like the umami wave that has seaweed and spirulina are very hot ingredients right now yes has the puffed amaranth in there as well that's amazing I've been really enjoying it on roasted potatoes lately, as well as rice bowls, again, roasted veggies.

4:54Plant she is vegan, but we say that good food transcends labels. And so people will put umami wave on things like salmon.

5:05Jessica Hamel:Okay, I'll have to try that next because I'm always experimenting. I'm pescatarian. um so I'm always experimenting and so okay I love to hear that so something that you've touched upon talking about the development of planchi was that a doctor told you to put hemp hearts on everything so could you tell us what inspired this idea um so I have been on and off vegetarian and since the age of 11, I am pretty flexed right now with a mostly vegan diet. Do I enjoy some sushi every once in a while? Yes. But being a plant-based athlete, you know, I've run 100 miles, I've sailed 100 miles. I'm an endurance athlete.

5:54I have gone iron deficient, you know, have struggles getting enough protein, struggled with B12. And so I really appreciated this doctor just being like, throw hemp seed. Like she didn't try to make me change my diet. Just like I don't try to make people change their diet. She just said, throw hemp seeds on everything. See how that feels. And I did that for a while, loved it. And then I thought, wow, there's other very nutrient dense ingredients that I could blend together to make these easy sprinkles that I just effortlessly add to anything I'm eating throughout the day. And I did just get my blood work done and have no nutritional deficiencies.

6:36So amazing.

6:36Jessica Hamel:We love to hear that. That's a win for me. That's a huge win. And I think no matter what someone's diet is just living in the world that we do, it's very easy to have struggles like that. So I love how you took something that was a genuine pain point for you and got creative to create, you got creative to create a product that just brings more ease into people's lives. So it doesn't have to feel so complicated to get that nutrients into their daily intake. And, you know, these words that you're bringing up, ease and complicated, it's really important for me to help people break up with complicated wellness.

7:19There's all this messaging that you have to do, you know, you have to be perfect and you have to make this smoothie in the morning and take all these supplements. And when you put all of these steps to people nourishing themselves, then they either don't do it or they just get stressed out. And so, and that's not, that's not wellness, right? Wellness is really feeling good about nourishing yourself and not being stressed out doing it.

7:49Jessica Hamel:Yes. I've been in this stressed out wellness mode before many a times. And it's something that I'm personally working on now of bringing in more of that ease, bringing in simplicity. What are small things I could do? And that's why I really like your product. I genuinely have been using it because I love something simple and I know it checks the boxes and I'm moving on and it tastes good. And I'm able to just know that there's a little something extra in there. So I would love to hear now, what was your career prior to this? I know that you mentioned being an endurance athlete, which is so impressive and incredible, but what was your, what else was happening in the background before you took the leap to become a CPG founder?

8:40And let's set the record straight. I was never a sponsored athlete. I was always just a passion athlete. Okay. Still counts to me. Definitely. Definitely. Still absolutely counts. I always knew I would have my own business since I was a little kid. I actually went to a high school that was Future Business Leaders of America. I used to go to grocery stores as a kid and just look at brands and think about, oh, what, why did they create this? Who's their mark? Like as a little kid thinking about why are they shaping this product and putting it out there in the way that they are. Right.

9:23And I have, I think maybe worked for myself more than I've worked for people throughout my life. 10 years ago, I had a frosting company. It was called Frosted. It was coconut oil based. that was my first foray into CPG and it was very it was very casual I it did get end up in Whole Foods in some stores in Colorado it was an Erewhon OG I mean I walked into Erewhon and just said would you like my frosting and they picked it up so different world right but I was really proud of those steps that it achieved. I also had a marketing company. So again, I've worked myself a lot randomly. And then my last company, you know, where I worked corporate, it was a not-for-profit that made government data easier to understand for the everyday American.

10:22So kind of on the other spectrum, but there I did a lot of performance marketing, right? And so I interacted with a lot of influencers. I ran a multimillion dollar paid ad budget. So that experience is not helping me in the moment because of the size of my brand, but it will help me when obviously in the future, Clanchy has a little bit more fun.

10:54Jessica Hamel:Absolutely. And just because it doesn't apply in this moment, the fact that you have that knowledge, you won't be scared of that growth, right? Some founders that I talked to are genuinely nervous about the growth, because they haven't been anywhere close to it. But the fact that you've had that exposure and you feel confident in that space, that's a huge advantage. So I love hearing people's backstory again to how they became a CPG founder and just hearing those little moments of experience and then seeing over the years how they came into play, even though it may have felt random at the moment.

11:39I personally love things like that. I have to say that after my frosting company, I sort of said, I will never do CPG again.

11:49Jessica Hamel:Really? Okay. I was making the frosting by myself with coconut oil, which is very temperature sensitive. So I'd be in the kitchen, it would be frozen hard. It was hard, right? I mean, every CPG founder knows it, no, no matter what you do, it is hard. Right. Um, and so when I started playing around with this product, plant, she developing the, the, the recipes, I just, it, it was something I was so passionate about because it was something I was using every single day and everything I eat. Um, and it was really from the heart. Uh, and I knew it was some bringing something good in the world. I wasn't just trying to, you know, cheat the system and make money.

12:35I was actually trying to merge my community. And I do put a lot of emphasis on what I'm bringing into the world. And so it felt right. It felt like I had to do it.

12:49Jessica Hamel:Well, that sounds like an awesome starting point. And I mean, of you as a founder and as a brand, something that you touched upon in your previous experience of walking into Erewhon and saying, hey, do you want to carry my frosting? What was your strategy? Because it's a very different landscape, right? Than when you had your frosting business. What was your strategy this time around going to market? Yeah, great question. So Planchi, it's just me. It's self-funded. My funds are microscopic. I have to be as creative as possible, but I also have to be okay with growing slow. Right. I think there's like that triangle, which is like quality, money and time.

13:35Right. And so it's always a ratio between those three things. And so I'm okay with Clanchy growing a little bit slower before I actually, you know, get more funds into the business. And the slow growth, I mean, it's been five and a half months, right?

13:57Jessica Hamel:But the - Yeah, you're doing well. Five and a half months in, wow. It's really hard to, I'm sure every CPG founder, especially newer ones, have a hard time measuring like, is this good? Am I doing okay? It's a different landscape, especially with social, you're seeing everyone holding and you're seeing, you have a lot more awareness of what everyone else is doing versus even a decade ago. I can empathize with that too. And so I, I wanted, you know, this time to really learn about, um, what people like about this product, how they're going to be using it, how they're going to be thinking about it and shaping the messaging.

14:43So my, you know, farmers markets have been essential in that. I really, if you think your product would do, could fit into any farmers market, I think it is amazing market research, right? Are you going to make tons of money from it? No, it's hard work, but it is. It's great market research. The market research, it's really helped me shape my messaging, right? So that was an important part of the go-to-market plan. A while back, I read some research on people really liking the feeling of discovering a brand. And so I've been trying to go after smaller to medium independent stores where the consumer feels like they're discovering plan sheet.

15:31It's not being pushed at them. they're going in and it's like this secret treasure that they they just found that they can share with their friends and so that you know obviously that takes time right right and so I have been really lucky to be connected with some amazing retail outlets and then you know eventually in the future there will be the bigger box retailers and distributors but that's really scary and daunting to me especially because you hear all these horror stories so how much can I put that off but it does seem like it's going to be you know coming sooner than rather than later and so yeah just that's kind of been my my go to market.

16:25Social media, I see all of these amazing, you know, and DTC, I see amazing brands. Like we all know the brands that are just hitting it off on social media. And I really admire them. I do tend to think they're, they're Gen Z. I'm not, I'm millennial.

16:44Jessica Hamel:Same, same. And I'm, I'm trying to reach a 35 plus market, which is, you know, everyone's focused on this Gen Z and younger crowd. And I love what they're doing. It doesn't feel very authentic to me. And I think I've been like vulnerable founder moment. I've been struggling with that a little bit, like trying to figure out like, what is the right content for me to put out there? Right. So, you know, DTC is definitely another aspect that I would like to build up. But it is figuring out that social media kind of voice. And it takes time. It really does. I've been building consumer brands and primarily using social media as a main vehicle to do so because I've worked primarily with startups for 15 years.

17:37Jessica Hamel:And so I've seen the trends of every trend, the highs and the lows over the years. And my biggest piece of advice to founders is always going back to telling the story, telling the use cases, showing the product in people's hands, showing people getting creative with your product and just consuming it. Right. And it could be so simple. I think in the year 2025, because we have so much content shown to us every single day, almost every single moment, it could feel overcomplicated, but going back to the basics, I still see as the tried and true. And from 15 years ago, getting my first client on Twitter at the time was like a big deal.

18:22Jessica Hamel:Amazing. Yeah. I mean, that was 2009. Yeah. It's revolutionary that a brand was on Twitter to today. And so I think your personality shows on social. So I think you're doing a great job. And as someone who's an elder millennial myself, I also come through ebbs and flows of content, right? Because you want to stay true to who you are, but you also have to be aware of what's working. And I think it's something in the middle, right? Of that intersection of what's working and also what feels right to you. So I'm excited for you to find that groove and feel good about that because it is part of the game now in 2025.

19:07Jessica Hamel:but I think that people really love just seeing your product in action. Yeah. Yeah. And people love seeing the founder these days. They love founder content. And so it's just, I mean, that's something that CPG founders should know that people are going to want to see you and they're going to want to see your personality and hear from you. And that's just the way the game is these days especially if you're working with a startup budget it is a way to help cut through the noise and oh yeah I think what it comes back down to and something I'm really um passionate about is brand point of view I think that's like the intersection of founders as well of what is your perspective what's your point of view why are you this.

19:58Jessica Hamel:And so people love seeing that and understanding how this brand integrates with their own lifestyle. If there was a piece of advice, I feel like this is probably touching on it, but if there was a piece of advice you would share with an emerging brand founder who's in maybe the early stages of formulating something in their kitchen or thinking, oh, wait, this could be a product or this is something I found really helpful. I want to see if I can make this into something. What would you share with that emerging founder? So I have, I have two pieces of advice. One is build from the heart. I just, I really believe that we as founders have responsibilities to do good in the world and add good to the world.

20:53So really, you have to be passionate about what you're building. So know why you're putting together a product and putting it out there and live and breathe that. The other one, I heard this piece of advice lately that I have just been repeating over and over. Um, it's, uh, I think it was, uh, Serena Williams tennis coach. He was being interviewed on a podcast and he said he, he tells his tennis players to think like a goldfish. Um, okay. What does that mean? Goldfish. They have really short memories. Okay. When you're building a CPG brand, you're going to get a lot of rejections. You are, everything is going to go wrong.

21:40it's just there will be you just from from day one things will be delayed things will yeah go wrong and you just have to like sit with it see if there's a lesson to learn and then move on and just forget it and keep going because if you really sit in all of that rejection and all of the the hardness of everything you it will it will be really hard to continue um you know going back to my my running roots so in a hundred mile race there are ups and downs right you sometimes you're like this is this is the most amazing feeling ever and then 15 minutes later you're just like why am I, why am I doing this?

22:34Right. Uh, and you'll have pain, but then miraculously the pain goes away in 10 minutes and then you're feeling amazing again. And so, um, yeah, it's just, it's just know that there's going to be pain, right? There's, there's going to be upsets and there's going to be rejections, but just keep going. Um, that's a great piece of advice. Now I get the connection with the goldfish at first.

22:58Jessica Hamel:I'm like, where is this going? It's true. I think that's just a great lesson also for entrepreneurship. It's a wild, wild ride. And the more that you could just, yes, take a moment, pause, see what you could learn, but then also keep it moving and just building up that muscle. I think that's a great piece of advice. Okay. I know I have to let you go. It's been such a nice conversation and I appreciate you sharing all of your insights of building a brand with us. But last question, where could people shop Plant Chi? Oh, very exciting. Well, obviously online at plantchi.life. But I just added two new stores this weekend.

23:43Jessica Hamel:Congrats. Yeah. Leavers Locavore in Denver, which is an amazing independent grocery store. Orchard Grocer, which is a vegan shop in Manhattan. Cool. Grocer, Lori's in Rochester, New York. We have a full list of stockists at plantchi.life, but just some exciting highlights. That's incredible. Happier Grocery is one of my favorites in New York City, so I'll definitely be restocking there. Isn't their curation of good? It's gorgeous. Amazing. And their chia pudding? Delicious. Really good. Really good. Well, Jessica, congratulations on all your success. Five and a half months in, you're doing amazing.

24:31Jessica Hamel:And we'll definitely have to do a part two next year to just see how far the brand has come. And thank you again for sharing all of your insights. Thank you. You're so welcome. Absolutely. Thanks everyone for listening and I'll see you on the next episode. this episode of the emerging brands podcast was made possible by our sponsor hummingbirds hummingbirds is a platform that connects everyday small creators with brands to drive user-generated content build buzz at specific retailers and capture competitive market share it's a tool that i recommend to all of my clients and one you should absolutely check out Head to hummingbirds.com for all the details.

25:18Jessica Hamel:If you're new here, hi, I'm Kelly Bennett, a Brooklyn-based brand strategist working with first-time CPG food and beverage founders. I have a front row seat of what makes an emerging CPG brand stand out because you're not just building a product, you are building a brand. And you want to make sure that is one that consumers love and retailers remember. That's where I come in. I've recently advised brands like Frankly Good Coffee, She's the Sauce, a new non-alcoholic cocktail line that's coming to market soon, and a hormone-conscious deodorant because food-adjacent brands count too. If you are bringing a new product to market, please reach out at withkellybennett.com.

26:05Jessica Hamel:Thank you so much for listening and sharing. You can follow me on Instagram at withkellybennett, and you can follow the show at Emerging Brands Podcast. Thank you again and I'll see you on the next episode.