Steps to Take Before Launching a CPG Food & Beverage Brand in 2026

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, welcome back to a new episode of Emerging Brands Podcast with Kelly Bennett. And this is another solo episode.

1:30So if you are launching a CPG food or beverage brand in 2026, this episode is for you. First, I would just want to say, I'm so proud of you. It's not easy to launch a new product. CPG is not an easy space, though it's so damn rewarding. And I definitely understand and talk to founders every single day who have so much on their plate while trying to figure out all the components it takes to actually launch a product. So here are my steps that I share with founders before their products even hit shelves. And after 15 years of building brands and this past year working with close to 20 pre-launch CPG food and beverage founders, I've really drilled down a checklist that I want to put on the radar for every early stage founder.

2:39So that you are saving time. You know the steps to be thinking about. And also understanding how everything influences the next. So if you are building a brand this year. And you want to do things correctly. Meaning having a really solid foundation to launch. This episode is specifically for you. So take a moment. Get out your pen and paper. because this one is going to have lots of notes. So if you're ready to turn your product into a product that will be on retail shelves, the first step is brand strategy. And why I say brand strategy is that it is your pre-launch roadmap. In brand strategy, that's where we flush out all of the consumer touch points of your brand.

3:36meaning what makes your brand different? How is it going to stand out? What's the story behind it? Who are you for? What are the selling points? What are the claims that you want your packaging to be able to say? How are people going to find you? Why are they going to shop? How are you going to build buzz? How are you going to build content, activations? What are the early retail partners that you want to go after? All of that is what we work on in Brand Strategy. And essentially, this comes before even naming your brand, design, even manufacturing, choosing your flavors. You need to have the roadmap first because this informs all those next steps.

4:30And you'll literally see how brand strategy then works to everything I'm going to lay out moving forward. So I just wanted to start there first of just emphasizing how this is the foundation. And so you're not hitting a wall on chat trying to figure it all out. You need to have the right people around you to make this happen. Again, this is not an easy industry. It's not something that you can totally do by yourself. You need the right people around you. So just really emphasizing how this is the first step. And that's where I come in. So if you're super, super new, you don't have a product yet, you don't have a name yet, you are in the super early stages, but you have a really great product idea, you have the passion to make it happen this year, definitely I am your person.

5:30So definitely send me a message. The second step that I'm going to put on your radar that I'm going to very much emphasize the importance of is two, step two is trademark. So there's two parts to a trademark that I want you to understand because they're distinctly different, but you need both. The first step is having a trademark lawyer run a trademark search because that's going to give you an understanding of the likelihood of approval. So essentially anyone can submit a name to the trademark office, but that doesn't mean that you have a likelihood of actually getting it. So working with a good trademark attorney that you trust is vital because you want to know sooner than later the likelihood of getting approved.

6:29Because the last thing you want to do is spend money on packaging, ordering packaging, design, getting onto retail shelves just to learn months down the line that you can't use the name. So that's why we run the trademark search first. We have an understanding of the likelihood of approval. Then if we think that there's a good likelihood of approval, moving ahead to file the trademark. And again, having a lawyer do that, who you trust, because there's going to be many steps of the trademark process that you want someone to help you with down the line to make sure that you get that final trademark approval.

7:19It's not obviously guaranteed, but you want to have your best chances and having the right lawyer helping you do that. So I personally recommend my lawyer, Nicole Schwartz. She founded Sprout Law, and then her and I collaborated last year to launch Bread and Butter, which is a trademark law firm for CPG food and beverage brands. And this is something that I will not ever advise someone skipping because they don't want you wasting money in the long run. Another important thing to think about is that if you're starting to create content and you're putting your name out there but you don't have a trademark filed yet, the trademark office doesn't care.

8:06They don't look who posted on TikTok first. They're going to look at who filed first. And it's something incredibly important, especially in this space, because the last thing you want to do is be on shelf and then be told you can't use this name, get a cease and desist, and now you have to pull product off of shelves, costing you thousands of dollars and potentially hurting relationships with retailers because you didn't have your trademark trademark filed properly. So I've seen it. It sucks and I don't want that happening to you. So definitely make sure your trademark is properly set up. The next step, number three, is formulation and manufacturing.

8:54This is incredibly critical to find the right formulator, the right co-man partner because they are the ones who are making sure you have a commercial viable product and that it's safe to consume and that you trust their standards of production and that they understand what you're going for and they want to help partner in making it happen. And that's not an easy process. So I always recommend clients connecting with Danielle of It's All Happening to help with that search. She's fantastic. I trust her. And she is someone that could work with you to help with that command and formulator search.

9:45and I definitely recommend bringing in Danielle for that when you're starting to work on first brand strategy, then finding the formulator, manufacturer and Danielle and I have many shared clients and what's really great is when the client, myself, Danielle and the formulator can all talk to get on the same page for producing a product. there is something that is so impactful so early on when you have all of us at the table to make sure that the product and what you're asking for from a formulator is aligned with what you wanna bring to market. And there's so many pieces of this puzzle, but what's really great about brand strategy is essentially everything you're gonna need to hand over to a formulator to say, hey, this is the product I want, you're going to have that flushed out in brand strategy.

10:47Also, for clients who are looking for a manufacturer, maybe they're doing something pretty new and it's not as common, a manufacturer is going to take a bigger risk taking them on. I've had clients use their brand strategy decks to essentially pitch manufacturers to have them take a chance on their product. So it very much is a tool for formulation. And I've seen many situations now where during these meetings and for clients to focus on formulation and find exactly how their product's going to be differentiated in the market, we literally pull up their brand strategy deck to help guide those decisions.

11:32Because there's a million decisions you're going to have to make and you want to make sure they're all moving in the same direction. Number four is go-to-market strategy. So this is thinking about your pricing, your margins, your channel strategies, distribution. So critical. I was talking with a client today and we were talking about her margins and she wasn't really sure and was kind of negotiating with herself on what it should be priced. And I paused her. I was like, oh no, no, no. we're not going to do that because what I don't want to happen is someone chooses a number that they think sounds good and they guess what their margins are going to be and they are now selling at a loss and needing to constantly raise money to stay in business and that's the last thing I want for anyone honestly that sounds like a really hard terrible road and obviously in time margins can improve absolutely and they should but you don't want to just go in with that is your strategy and you'll figure it out as you go because that is a real hard uphill battle so someone I recommend here is again Danielle of it's all happening to help you flush that out on this sales channel strategy side of go-to-market.

13:03I now have Danielle consulting with my clients during the brand strategy process. So she's able to give us insights of what does the sales look like, the sales strategy look like for the brand early on. And then I highly recommend continuing to work with her too once you have your brand strategy to then flesh out pricing, margins, distribution, and all that good stuff. And they work really, really well together. Also, I want to shout out her online course called Launch Lab. And what's really great about Launch Lab is that she takes you through her steps of taking a product to market and really brings you behind the scenes with all different experts to help you understand the industry.

13:54So if already you're like, whoa, this is a lot of steps. I'm not quite sure how to wrap my head around this. The doors are open for Launch Lab. I am teaching brand strategy in Launch Lab, which I'm really excited about. I taught last year, which is twice, and it was such an awesome experience. I definitely, definitely recommend taking that. If you're new to it, take that. And then I also highly recommend working with her one-on-one. for your go-to-market. Step number five is branding and packaging. Now I want to dispel the myth that you start building a brand with your branding and packaging. That's literally further down the list.

14:43And I have seen many, many founders spend a nice chunk of change on beautiful branding, but just to realize that that's not the direction their brand needs to be in or they need to change their name or they don't even know the die lines for their packaging yet and now they have to redo everything. This is a critical step. Packaging is your first salesperson. So you want to make sure it's done correctly the first way, the first time I should say. Now, is your packaging and branding going to evolve over the years and as you grow into bigger retailers? Sure. But you want to give yourself the best jumping off point as possible.

15:35And again, I've been in countless meetings now with designers for clients who are moving from brand strategy to branding and packaging. and literally in those meetings we're pulling up the brand strategy deck because a designer needs to know what makes this product different? What are the use cases? Who are you targeting? What's the voice? What's the personality? What's the vibe you're going for? So you want to make sure that you have all of that set up before you go into branding and packaging. So someone that I also really recommend here is Nicole of Many Thanks Consulting. Also, she just had a solo episode on the Emerging Brands podcast.

16:23She is a retail buyer. She is a consultant. And what's super helpful when you're in the branding and packaging stage is that she also reviews packaging to make sure that it speaks to a retail buyer and consumer. And now also to all of my clients, it's included in your brand strategy, a consultation with her to look at your branding and packaging once we get to that stage because it's that important. I wanted to make sure that all my clients had that done so that we really get an inside look from her perspective of making sure your branding and packaging hits before you go into retail. Number six of this lengthy but I promise important steps of launching your product is financial strategy.

17:22And this is where I want you to think about that plan from your pre-launch to your first million in revenue. And a client of mine, Sarah Delavan of the Good Food CFO, created an incredible software that takes the guesswork out. She has worked so hard to make this as user-friendly as possible so that you're able to do sales forecasting and see what sales channels make sense to you and understanding your margins and how to think about cash flow. She has worked with many food founded small food brands and understands their pain points. and she poured all of her knowledge into this new software. I worked with Sarah behind the scenes of her brand strategy for the Good Food CFO in the shift of launching her software.

18:19And I just got to see a lot of behind the scenes and all the hard work that went into it. And so I highly recommend this software to all of my clients, all food startups so that you have a really great strategy for your finances. Number seven on the list is social media. And why I put it a little further down on the list is that I want you to have a really clear story, a really clear product, a really clear value proposition before you start posting. I am all for building in public. That's been my style of social media for over 10 years. it's how I built a seven figure restaurant business it's how I really built my career in social media back in the day I literally had Facebook at the time which was super cool this was like even before Instagram was as super popular as it is now messaged me and I was on a panel for Facebook small businesses and they were asking me how I was building this restaurant using social media.

19:32I'm glad that it's trending now, but I do also see the flip side of it is that people are doing it really, really early on without having clear direction on how to speak to their brand. And it's kind of hard to catch up as you go. And a really great compliment I get from people within the industry is saying that they could tell who my clients are based off of their content of how good of storytellers they are about their product their story use cases ideal consumer because it's a very clear vision from day one so for my clients what I always recommend is saving b-roll of all the things that you're doing behind the scenes and then waiting until we finish brand strategy to start posting because you'll have a really clear direction of what that story is.

20:35Also a really great tip is that you can use your brand strategy deck to create content from with chat. I did that today with a client and it made her life so much easier and it's just such a great way to be able to speak to your brand story your founder story brand differentiators use cases etc using your deck to make it all cohesive so I am all for building in public I'm all for creating early buzz all for sharing your story but I want to make sure that it all still makes sense because you want to come off also professionally that you are selling a product people are going to consume. They're going to digest your product and you don't want to be too DIY in that.

21:25That's my feeling on it. I stand by that. So I'm all for like some fun unhinged content but also at the end of the day you're creating a food or beverage product. You want to make sure that people can trust you in that. So the next step number eight here is photography. I cannot emphasize enough the power of a good product photo more so like lifestyle photos also a founder headshot with your product this will be used so much for media I really when I'm vetting brands that are pitching to me to be on the on this podcast I also really look at their product photography because I just know how important it is to get the attention of an episode with good product photography.

22:18And if a brand doesn't have that, I can't bring them onto the podcast. And so many other podcasts are like that because you need to make sure that it feels like a professional brand too. Something to call out here too when you're pitching media, online in print like you need good photography you're going to need good photography for your website you're going to need good photography for possibly packaging I cannot overemphasize this enough like a good photo goes such a long way next is number nine is a Shopify website you want Shopify try it other platforms it is the best for a product-based business and even when you're first starting out it doesn't have to be all the bells and whistles but think about building at least a wait list an email opt-in for a wait list in the really early days and then having your first products or two built out, making it look on brand, easy to click, easy to shop, as less friction as possible.

23:34And someone who I really enjoy working with, he did a great job on She's the Sauce's website. His name is Kevin and his business is called I'm Off Design. Super great to work with and I highly recommend him to all of my clients. And he did a great job which is the Sauce's website. And she very much leveraged her wait list to sell out her first round of products, which was wild and amazing. So the next step here is activation, sampling, and seeding. So think about hosting tastings, meetup, building that brand community, gathering early feedback. It is so essential to talk to people who aren't your friends and family because your friends and family are going to tell you, sure, this is really good.

24:25But you need real life people who would actually be consumers of your product to give you feedback. This also brings energy. It brings your product offline into people's hands. This is how you also build that buzz with real life people. Content, getting your brand on people's radar, radars within the CPG industry. I cannot emphasize this enough. What's cool about now with my brand strategy is that I'm bringing in Nicole of many things for partnership ideas and activation ideas. She's so great at it. And I love bringing her into client projects now and so this you'll get activations ideas sampling ideas partnership ideas seeding ideas in your brand strategy now so as you get to that point you already have that organized which is really nice and then 11 is those early retailers so I personally love pop-up grocer I I think they're a great retailer for the right products when you're so early on.

25:43Also, you could do sampling there too, which is awesome. But thinking about going to your sales channel strategy that we'll have done, thinking about those early retailers that make sense for where you're located, what is your product, who is it for, where is your consumer shopping. Everyone is a little bit different, but having a good sense of what that's going to look like is so critical. And that's why I also emphasize sharing on social and getting that early buzz because retailers are paying attention. They want to also see who's getting eyeballs and who's driving traffic and who's moving product, right?

26:24So all of this plays into the next step. And then the last thing I'll leave you with is really documenting the build. Yes, on social, but really email of bringing people behind the scenes of how you're building. This is also really great if you start an email list with people who could be potential investors. And then you just get into the habit when you have investors to keep them updated. And it's a really great practice. Again, Nicole of She's the Sauce has been doing this. I love how she's been sending out her emails bringing the community and just again bringing that behind the scenes and documenting the build so if you are building a CPG food and beverage brand I hope this helped I hope this gave some context to all the advice I'm sure you're gathering now and just helped you see the foundational pieces and the steps ahead.

27:27If you need help with that first step of brand strategy, definitely reach out. You could go to my website withkellybennett.com. You could book a call with me. I'm more than happy to answer your questions. And again, I hope this was super helpful. You could check the show notes. I'll put them in the steps in there as well. And I'll tag everyone that I mentioned too. So hope this episode found you well, and I'll see you on the next one. 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.

28:13Founders 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. Retailers 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.

29:02And that's where Glimpse comes in. 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, 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 tryglimpse.com backslash trial for 30 days free and let them know I sent you.

29:56Thank 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. And 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.