Plum Market

0:00Welcome 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.

0:44I'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 podcast is brought to you by Hummingbirds. Hummingbirds is the go-to platform built for creator-powered retail activations. They're connecting everyday creators with CPG brands to generate shelf-level awareness, drive in-store momentum, and generate authentic content in markets that matter the most. Go to hummingbirds.com for all the details and let them know I sent you.

1:30Now, 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 the co-founder of Plum Market, Mark Jonah, here. Hearing about an emerging brand from a retailer's perspective, and this isn't just any retailer. Mark is third generation. This is literally in his DNA. And Mark, I'm so excited to nerd out with you about all things grocery today. Thanks, Kelly. I really appreciate it. Love your podcast and love what you're doing. Thank you so much. So let's kick things off with your background. I know, like I said, third generation running grocery businesses.

2:17You also have a very cool segue of how you got into Plum Market now. I would love if you could give us the overview of your career background. Sure. That's great. I'll try to make this quick. So as a kid growing up, third generation, loved the business. My mom and dad were in the business. And when I was 14, I started going to the stores and working with my parents in the business. And my parents took a trip to Italy, and they fell in love with the wine business and the gourmet food side of it. So they ended up opening a store in 1976 called the merchant of vino because of italy vino and uh i was a kid i was there helping remodel the store and work the floor after school and a couple times my parents had a european mentality i would try the wines and cheeses and i love wine so when i was 15 i was selling wine on the floor it was really funny people walk in and see this little kid selling wine and like how does he know so much about wine and my dad and mom were great they'd send me to Europe or California, all the different regions of food and wine around the world as a young teenager.

3:22What a cool way to grow up. Just give a shout out to your parents. That's amazing. Yeah, I loved it. So it really gave me appreciation and the passion that I have today. And then so from there, I was going to go to college. I actually made wine first at a winery in Burgundy, France. And when I came back, went to college, was doing really well. First time not working so I was studying more and my dad got really sick he ended up being okay but he had to have me come back from college take over merchant of you know for him and he had a four stores at the time and I did really well for a few months and then he came back put me back in my lower position I was a little bummed and after a few months one day I had my dad come into his office really early and had all his boxes painted and packed up and he thought what are you painting My officer said, no, they have two ways it's going to go.

4:12One is you're going to trust me to be the next merchant and you can be my mentor. Or I need to go back to college and figure out what I want to do. And he hugged me really tight and he handed me the keys and said, you're the next merchant. And I said, wow, it took you four months. And he said, why didn't you give it to me before? And he said something. This is what I want CBG brands to learn. He said, life is hard. Life is tough. And when you took it from me, I was down. Now you took it from me. I'm healthy. You're ready because you're going to have a lot of challenges in life. You have to be strong.

4:38And I always tell CPG brands when they're starting, it's like it starts off really great and awesome. And then when you start to try to build your brand and get into like major retailers, there's a lot of hurdles there. And if you have a great brand, don't give up, is what I would say. So then from there, went to Whole Foods in 1998. They bought our company. So bummer. Wow. Got to find a job at Whole Foods. Love wine. So John Mackey said, you know, you know, the operation business, but in wine, you would dominate. We stink in wine and we're selling less than one percent of wine. So took over the national wine buyer, helped increase their sales over seven percent, which was insane for him.

5:19And then got into the national leadership team, which is the decision making body with all the CEOs and CFOs and became a key player in the developing over 100 stores with Whole Foods. And then when my non-compete ended, my brother and I started Plum Market in 2006 because I had my family's vision from Richard Lovino, had the public side from John Mackey and Walter Robb and those guys. And now I had a new vision with my brother to create Plum Market. That's where we are today in 2006. What an origin story. I mean, going from sweeping the floors to getting into wine at 15 years old, traveling around the world, to getting acquired by Whole Foods, working to really rev up that business, to opening up 100 stores, building their wine program, to then waiting.

6:14How long did you have to wait with your non-compete? So I had a five-year non-compete and ended up staying with Hope Foods about seven years. Incredible. And then what made you want to take the leap with your brother to start Plum Market? What was that motivation behind that? So when you're a publicly traded company, your vision and your mission is great before. But when you go publicly traded, they eventually, when you're not growing, want you to start to really figure out how to get more profit. and Whole Foods had to go in a different direction, unfortunately. And they were losing that ability to really be who they wanted to be.

6:55And so I said to my brother, you know, it's time for us to probably start something because a few years later or so, Amazon bought them. So the writing was on the wall. And, you know, Amazon's culture is great, but it's different than Whole Foods. It's opposites. So for like a CPG brand, when we were Whole Foods, we could get local brands in like a speedboat. And then when it became Amazon, it became a steamship. It's been really slow and tough to get into them. So they're a little bit different than the Whole Foods mentality. So we thought Palm Market, we wanted to be a brand champion. We didn't want to be a private label company.

7:32And when I left Whole Foods, they wanted like 30 or 35 % private label concentration. Right. They went into the 365 private label. Okay. And so I was like, you know, there's all these great brands. They've spent so much time and passion and they got a human connection to them and they need somebody to sell their product like it was their extension of their own store. So when a brand comes into Plum Market, we say thank you first for creating something so special. And two is how can we sell it in our store that it sticks out and gives you what you want to get to the consumer so they know it's there?

8:09because when you have 40 or 50 ,000 products, how do you stick out? So we talk about brands about that all the time. Like we want to help you do that and show you. So even in Plum Market, if you saw some of our pictures and design, very sophisticated yet minimal design. We use natural elements like wood and stainless steel and really bright lights, but we don't have a lot of clutter in our stores. So when a brand comes in, it really pops. And we really wanted that feeling. So the brand's label or their packaging or their name or their signage, it wasn't fighting my brand. So we really made our brand clean and minimal so that their brands could stick out.

8:48That's a really interesting perspective from a retailer that they wanted to create a space where a brand could really, a brand coming in could really stand out versus the brand of the retailer, which is a unique take I think and what makes Plum Market stand out to me when I was learning more about you all I was like oh I like that take I hadn't really heard a retailer come from that perspective so could you walk us through how you bring brands onto the floor of your stores what you're really looking for what is that moment that makes you pause because i'm sure you're getting pitched all the time of new brands what's making you pause and say oh wait this brand this brand could i i would take a chance on and putting this brand on our shelf yeah i think the easiest brands to get in are local so if they're in florida okay it's easy to get to us if you're making your product in the state yeah the logistics are easy so i would say when something's produced in california for example and you got to get to the midwest or to florida how's the logistics going to get us to our stores because that's the thing you can't always use like a delivery service like fedex or ups and especially like i was looking at this really great organic um oat milk from koji that i love and my that is a great milk.

10:19Oh, it's amazing. Jacob's got a great story. Maria, my daughter in New York, found it and sent me samples. And now we're trying to help him because it's heavy. So you can't ship, you know, to like stores this, it's too expensive. We're trying to find him local, smaller distributors that can get to our stores and more efficiently. So we're not paying that much cost. And we also know that like Unify and Kehi, who are the biggest in the natural organic sector, They're very expensive to get into and very hard and slow. So we like these brands. They're going direct to certain smaller, like he was going to coffee shops first, and he's in Erwan.

10:56And we're like, God, it'd be great to get into Palm Market, not only because we love your brand, but we want to test it and show you, should you be in the refrigerated section? Should you be in the grocery section because it's shelf stable? Where should you put it in our store? How should your merchandising boxes look? and how to do your demos in our stores and how to market to our guests so they know that your oat milk is very different than most. And it's incredible. But, you know, using the fermented rice is something that no one's ever done before. And it's one of his secret sauces to his organic oat milk.

11:28So, you know, we give people like guidance like that all the time. Sometimes it works. We get into the store and sometimes it doesn't work short term, but eventually we figure it out for them. Something that you just touched upon that I think is really important to put on emerging brands' radars and something that I like to put on the radar of my clients because I work with primarily pre-launch CPG food and beverage brands, getting them ready more for that local specialty retail circuit as they're building up data, brand awareness, exposure, refinement of marketing. messaging and positioning to then get to bigger retailers, say like a plum market, right?

12:12It's I think like that next great step. When you talk about distribution to plum market in particular and looking at local distributors, do you have any advice there that a brand isn't ready to go with a bigger distributor? Maybe how to connect those dots or how to know where to look when they want to say, go to, you know, pitch to a plum market, who do they have to be working with in order to actually make that happen? Yeah, we, you know, we have a few small local ones. So like with Jacob, we actually told him there's a company out of fortune out of Chicago, they could hit the Illinois market in the Michigan market, a few other markets.

12:55So there'd be a good, they come Michigan six days a week. So, you know, we just look at what fits that one, which, which supplier can actually sell their product to the right consumers in the right retailers coffee shops so it depends on each item that we do like um i love jennifer fisher salts and if you've ever had her salts yes yes so walked into the kitchen one day my wife was using it loved the packaging loved the universal salad it was like it's amazing it was like we should sell this to plum so we called jennifer fisher and her husband answered and we we talked to her she goes well no one's really called me I'd just be kind of doing it you know mail order but that'd be great and then I said do you have a merchandising piece to put in the store she goes no I said do you know where you want to sell it she goes I don't know in the grocery aisle with the spices and salts I go no I want to create a merchandising piece to put on top of my meat counter like a drawer I said she goes really I go yeah we'll create the marketing for that we created a three-tier system with a plexiglass rack with her background and branding on it and telling each salt that she had three at the time.

14:04And it just took off. So sometimes, you know, if it's a lighter product, like I said, she could ship it through UPS or FedEx and it was easy for us to do. So sometimes we do stuff like that too. But I think the CPG brands have to think about what would it look like in the store and where do they want to sell it? Another success story is Daily Crunch. I don't know if you've ever had Daily Crunch. She was on the podcast. My brother's on the board of Daily Crunch. He's one of the early investors and his daughter works with them. And my nephew said, you know, it's getting lost in a nut aisle. Let's put it in produce because we sell palm pistachios and produce.

14:47So we started putting our fixture in our produce section of Daily Crunch and the sales just took off. So sometimes as a retailer, we'll come up with ideas and say, you shouldn't be in the normal spot. Maybe you should be in this other spot. And then you get more exposure and more sales. And it's a unique product, so there's not a lot of competition on it yet that does what they do. So we thought it was a good opportunity to put them there and test it. So that's why I think these CPG brands have to go into the store and figure out where you would want it. And also finding the right retail partner who's open to that, right?

15:23100%. Not everyone is open to exactly what you're sharing. And again, I think that speaks to your background and your passion and that this isn't cookie cutter corporate, so to speak. That this feels like a genuine passion that runs in your family of connecting those dots. and being open to switching it up and trying something new, which is also really exciting, an opportunity for an emerging CPG brand to have that at bat and have that opportunity when they're just getting started to figure out what works best. We think of ourselves as like one of those fashion stores, the luxury fashion stores.

16:13People always want to know what's the new style, what's in the cheer, what's different. You know, so we're looking at the trends, too. We want to be the incubator for these new trends. So we really like that. So when celery juice became really popular, we have our own cold press program. We started putting it into our produce departments. And everybody was looking for celery juice because everybody was reading about that's the new thing you should be taking. Right. A few years back, kale. Remember, kale became huge. Nobody would sell kale. It was the new spinach. So it's just, you know, every year there's something that's been around forever.

16:47And all of a sudden it's like the new thing that everybody's got to start doing. So we like to create new trends. We like to be ahead of the curve. But we're picky. It's got to be a great product, too. It's got to be something that really stands out. There's a lot of products that really are not that interesting, I'll be honest. And we'll tell them like, you know, if you don't stick out and you don't have that human connection and that reason that people should be buying your product over things already in our store, it's hard to get in. But there's so many, like the pickle category. I think there's, I'm trying to blank on their name.

17:20I just got samples of my girlfriend. What is it? I don't know what the names I just have down here. Good Girl Snacks or Good Girl Pickles, right? Yes. Hot Girl Pickles. They were on the podcast too. They're great. So I got samples of that. They're in my refrigerator right now. And I was thinking about, God, where would I put those in the store to sell them? And usually it goes in the grocery aisle with all the rest of the pickles refrigerated. But I was thinking about maybe putting it into my nutritional cheese department. And that is the only pickle that I would recommend because it's so different the way they do it.

17:58I have to taste it, but I've heard great things about them. I genuinely love their pickles. Oh, good, good. I really do. I'm excited to taste them then. Yeah, and their new SKU, the bread and butter, it's slightly sweetened with dates. Yeah. Which is different. I haven't heard about that, yes. I get my fridge right now. And it's a chip. Yeah. So, yeah, I'm really stoked that you're tasting them. They were on the podcast. They've done a great job, too, of creating buzz and awareness. I love listening to them. Their story is amazing. Fabulous. Yeah. So if the product matches their enthusiasm, which I'm sure it will.

18:36And it's a different product, so it's not like another pickle. There's their story there, like you just said. And a unique point of view. Yep. And also their food scientist was on the podcast, Evolve Foods Consulting. Yes. We're very full circle here. We love having all the different perspectives. I've watched a few years. I've got to watch that one. I'm going to go back and watch that one. Yeah, she's great. Esther, she's really cool. And she was breaking down more from like how they came to their flavors and bringing that product to market. So for you, anything else that you're looking for from an emerging brand or maybe how a brand is pitching you?

19:14Right. We love demo support. They have to program because, again, how do you tell the consumer in the store about your product? Taste. Right. Basically, you can sell it. So you and I can talk about a product and we get you 50 % there. But the other 50 % is when you try it. Wow. And then once you try it, it really gets going really well. So we love demos. So we like stuff like that. We like certain, it has to hit certain price points too. Some people create a great product, but it's a little too expensive. Or, you know, so we'll explain and say, you know, you got to keep it under$10 for this product and this is why.

19:53so sometimes their packaging might be too expensive and say you should look before you launch your product there's another product called Hume it's a natural deodorant it's a great phenomenal Jeremy did help create Hume it's what I use and the problem is it's it's a it's a it's a circular roll-on it's more expensive packaging so when they want to launch it to larger companies like bigger chains, they looked at the margins and the cost of the packaging. It was too high. So he had to change now his packaging to a more cost efficient. So great deodorant, but he picked too fancy of a package. And this is something that has a consumer price point that people, even in a natural category, they won't go over.

20:38So, so, you know, you learn that way. So be careful on your packaging because you can get cute really early on. That's a really great point. It might be too expensive. And as long as the product's in the bottle, you're fine. And your labels are great. But if you get too fancy on the packaging cost, it could hurt you long term. That's a really great point. Anything else that stands out when you're getting pitched a new brand that you're looking for? Maybe the things that land really well or even some red flags that an emerging brand founder could be mindful of? No, I think I touched on, you know, making sure you have a great product first incredible story uh making sure you've done your job pre-promoting your product create that that buzz before you can get to us because that's what's great about today's world is like you can create awareness of your product before it gets to me and then all of a sudden like when you're pitching me i'm almost like god i hope i hope she sells it to me or he sells it to me i play products so sometimes they're like well i actually fight for products You know, Courtney Cox came out with Home Court.

21:44Have you ever seen Home? Yes, I've had their, it's a really great soap. I have her hand soap. Hand soap, detergent. She did it during COVID. She wanted more environmentally. She has like these perfume experts to create the different scents and custom scents. And it's an incredible story. And the packaging there is really cool. She went a little more premium, but she can charge because that category will allow it. Right. And so we're like, we want to sell it plum. them she's they're like no how are we going to get to you so after a few calls and meetings we're like you don't even display it right we're going to do these billboards and back end caps and we're going to this and that and so they brought it in so we have home court in our stores and we're selling it really well um and we're helping them again in retail they didn't have upcs and they have certain packaging for retail like we showed them like before you launch the retail you got to fix this stuff.

22:38So think about that stuff. I would say find a retail partner early on, or a restaurateur or food service, whoever you're going to go after, and get somebody that's in that industry to give you advice. Because if you can get those problems done early, then it'll save a lot of money and time when you have to reformulate. That's a really great point. I really could talk to you for hours. I love your perspective. And I love how you're connecting the dots and really supporting and championing, being a champion for emerging brands. How can a brand get on your radar? You know, just, you know, they can email us directly, like my email is out there, or they could go to our website.

23:21We have a vendor portal that they can submit. But I think, you know, personally, when they send an email to someone like myself, at least it gets to my desk quicker because there's so many products coming in. So I think that's probably the two best ways, either to go through our vendor portal on our website or, you know, just email me. I have no problem, you know, looking at emails quickly and saying yes or no to products. But, you know, I love to see what's out there. And like I said, if I find a product even before they're ready to come to us, we actually go to them sometimes. So I have a lot of success stories that we've done that with.

23:57And it's just I'm in business to really serve the guests at a high level. and Plum Market really needs great products. And the more great products that I can get into our stores and get people behind, the more successful we're all going to be. So it's a partnership. I think people forget. I hate when somebody says, you're lucky to be selling in my store or you're lucky to be, we're lucky we sell it to you. Just to me, that's not a partnership. A true partnership really helps build brands in the right direction. But you need retailers like ourself that are hitting the right consumer group. If someone really wants a really cheap, artificially made potato chip at a certain price point, don't call me.

24:43That's not who I am. But if someone has a really good, natural potato chip with incredible beef tallow that they made and they really want to go after it like masa chips did, we love stuff like that. That's so expensive and we're selling it like crazy. People love it. Beef tallow, who would have thought? Who would have thought? I know that one really took off. It took off. Everybody, that's all they want now. So for the consumers who are shopping at Plum Market, they're going because they know you have essentially the best of the best. So Plum Market, when we started Plum, I like the word Plum because it means desirable, rewarding choice.

25:25So the most desirable natural, organic, local, and specialty products. So unlike Whole Foods, who has, I call it restrictive standards because I used to work for them. They got a little too crazy on their standards. We will sell the best of any category. So if someone does have a product, let's say an incredible prosciutto department from Italy, we're not going to say no because they have to use a certain avian flu. They have to use a certain antibiotic when they're younger before they get slaughtered. And it's out of their systems. We're just going to sell Iowa prosciutto. Well, that's not the same.

25:59so we wanted to create a unique store that's very clean inviting to really get the best of each category and be able to offer to our guests and let them decide because i think just telling people we only sell certain things like natural organic only it boxes out some of these artisanal brands that really might have one additive that people don't like but it's it's not crazy additive but it takes them off the shelf of somebody else and so we just wanted to be very transparent You can Google in three seconds right now about a product and get traceability and ingredients and understand if the ingredients good or bad.

26:37So those are things that we do different at Plum Market. I try to create it with my brother, Matt. We really try to create a brand champion, like I said, of the best products out there and to create a partnership with everybody so that we're all connected together. I think that's a lost art sometimes for certain retailers even vendors now or producers I really think that if we all work together it works so to my success is that and so the more brands you can bring me Kelly the more successful Plum's going to be and more successful those well don't you worry I have a few already I'm thinking no I love it I love that you're finding them for us because it's hard right so many out there you know you live in a great spot where you see them first.

27:22I do. Yeah. I mean, it's like you're getting products like instantly before anybody sees them, which is great. And you're identifying them quickly, which I love. Thank you so much. Honestly, that's what I love to do. Like that's what I genuinely love to do. So the fact that you value that is just really cool. So thank you for saying that. No, you actually help all of us. So it's good. That's awesome to hear. well you're a foodie I can tell you I am I was a I cut my teeth in food and beverage being a partner of a restaurant oh there you go so I did that for seven years and um dated a chef my girlfriend her background is a trained chef too so I am a foodie and Italian um so I love We got it all.

28:14Exactly. So last question, where can people find a plum market if they're in the Midwest or in Florida? So we have our first one in Florida was in North Miami Beach area called Aventura. Our second one opening early next year is in Palm Beach Gardens. Cool. And then we have four stores in Michigan, large format, two in Ann Arbor, Michigan, near the University of Michigan, and two in Oakland County, Bloomfield Hills, near Oakland Hills Country Club, people like golf. It's famous to have the Ryder Cup and West Bloomfield. Then we have, we're in airports. You'll see us in airports. We're in Dallas, Detroit, soon to be in Dulles, working on Palm Beach Gardens eventually, Orlando.

28:58So we've really done well in airports. That's really cool. We're official chefs for Detroit Pistons. And we do a lot of food services for like offices, like Lear Corporation Magna, the old cafeterias and all plum market kitchens. Because I have great quality ingredients, we have food cooked from scratch in-house. So we've really created a program to do that. So we're really a food and beverage service business. So again, we hit, like I said, sports, schools, offices, airports, and stores, so grocery stores. So we do a little bit of everything on that. So we really we love what we're doing and we really want to create a path for everybody to to really be eating better in this world.