Betting BIG on... blueberries?

0:00Welcome back to another episode of The Curious Consumer. I'm Nate. I'm Jenna. And today we're going to start off with our first ever sponsor for the podcast, our friends at Glimpse. So exciting. I think the first thing when we started talking to Glimpse and we've been buddies with them for a little, for me, I knew they were a retail deduction management platform. And I knew those buzzwords. And I was like, what the heck does that mean? Basically, brands are often owed money by retailers in some way. And it kind of is just this really messy process where brands have to track down all of these deductions in order to get paid back.

0:41And end up spending like so many hours doing so and losing money in the process. So this is where Glimpse comes in. Glimpse uses AI to just completely eliminate the manual headache of deduction management. so it turns what was this huge time suck into profit and we love profit so it makes it it makes it so much easier for brands especially when you're like a brand that is emerging enough that you are in some of these like bigger retailers but you don't yet have the resources to have people on your team that are tracking all this down so brands like kin euphorix brahmi cure hydration are already working with glimpse and they're winning back two to three percent of their top line revenue without adding headcount.

1:24So we're really excited because Glymps is actually offering 30 days free, 30 days free for brands who want to try it for the first time and see what this looks like for them. Plus a 12 month look back. So you can see over the past year where you could have saved money. Sounds a little scary, but also important data. And it's so easy to get started with them, it takes 15 minutes and you don't even need a credit card. You can just get started. So we'll have a link in our show notes and yeah, we're so excited to work with Glymph. Yeah. And if you find them some other way, tell them we sent you. That'd be cool.

2:04That'd be cool. Yeah. But no, we love them. They're an amazing team. They are so savvy. They host awesome events and are just like a beloved company in CPG. So So pretty cool to work with them. And that's our sponsor. Amazing. Should we get into our first story from last week? I would love to. It's a fun one. I love this one. I think it's so funny. I got a text after we posted the newsletter from my friend Kate Ferguson. She is the founder of a plant food brand called Flourish. But she called me out of the blue like a year ago talking about branded fruits and how this is the next big thing. And she texted me this after we posted our story about Fruitist, which is a jumbo blueberry company that just raised$150 million.

2:54Mind you, this is blueberries. Blueberries. And it's sort of riding this wave of branded produce beyond just what you'd pick yourself. Pick yourself. Because we're all picking produce ourselves. They actually started in 2012. now have a$1 billion valuation, by the way, because after that$150 million raise by JP Morgan and Ray Dalio's family office, their valuation was boosted to$1 billion, which is just nutty. Like that is crazy because yeah, they are mostly known as a jumbo blueberry company. And I am a blueberry fiend myself. I love them. So like, this is unsurprising to me. But to the layperson who is not obsessed with blueberries, I think just like even the concept of thinking about fruit or produce as a brand or like as CPG is a little jarring.

3:55And it's weird to put a valuation behind like Mother Nature's gift to the earth. So we had to do some digging to understand what branded fruit and this company Fruitist like actually meant. I've always sort of known that there's like IP around fruit and who owns seeds and all this stuff. But it's like it kind of goes a lot deeper. And a lot of the products you buy, even Kumato tomatoes, which we're sort of making the rounds, that is a brand. That is a specific varietal that is owned by this company, Synergia. Sumo oranges, that is a brand. Cuties. Even Cosmic Crisp, Pink Lady, those apples, those are brands.

4:36There's marketing and IP behind them. Chiquita Bananas. Like all of this. Driscoll's, the world's largest berry company. They have a brand. They own specific varietals. When you're buying produce in a grocery store, most likely you're not just buying some like random thing. This is that they're brands just like Cheerios or Coca-Cola or Apple. like the same things go into those brands that they do to these fruits which is wild apple because okay pun in pun unintended but intended apple not the literal one but also the literal one yeah and that differentiation between varietal versus brand is actually pretty confusing because there is some crossover um but something like cotton candy grapes which i feel like blew up a few years ago.

5:31But they, that varietal is owned by a brand called Great Brain. It took them 12 years to develop. So basically these companies are specifically like crossbreeding and growing these special varietals. They have IP around them now and they can turn, like there's one thing for it to be like a gala apple is not a brand. That's just like a tree that grows those apples. But when And they specifically develop these varietals and then put IP behind them and then package them in a certain way, especially. I think that's where Fruitus gets a little bit more interesting and nuanced. Yeah. They are CPG. They are a packaged good.

6:13Right. And the Fruitus is just, like, crushing it. I mean, I think something that they've done really well is, like, very clearly branded. and have their name much more front and center. And I'd be very curious to go shopping with people to see if they're saying, oh, I'm going to go buy the fruitist, the jumbo blueberries. Yeah. Or if they're just like, I'm getting blueberries and just picking this one up. Yeah. So I feel like there are a few pieces that go into why someone would choose this brand over something else. And it's the same logic that we use to choose any CPG brand over something else.

6:57So one is like the actual package. Does it look nice? And they do a great job of that. Form factor. They introduced something called snack cups, which are snack sized versions of blueberries, which for me is actually just a pint. Right. It's so easy to eat so many blueberries in one sitting. I eat a pint in one sitting. As you should. You need the fiber. The antioxidants. But I guess a snack cup is a more appropriate serving. So they introduced a foreign factor. They introduced like a perception around premiumization, I would say. Something that in a lot of articles I read about this raise, the CEO talks about what he calls berry roulette, which is when you go to pick up berries, there's oftentimes you get your little clamshell and you don't know what you're going to get.

7:50Like you're going to get someone that has a little bit of mold on it. You're going to get some that are a little too tart, whatever. There's just, you don't know. It's roulette. This brand is trying to guarantee a certain level of quality, which again, like quality is one of the things that we look for just in any CPG product that we choose over. And consistency. Quality. Exactly. Exactly. So these things are all being used by consumers to make decisions. It only makes sense to apply them to produce. The other thing that we talked about a lot yesterday, just on a call with each other without actually having, we didn't end up putting this in the newsletter.

8:31We just talked so much about this, is that it's not just a brand. It's the first marketing platform for, not Fruitist isn't the first marketing platform, but any packaged version of produce, as opposed to just like the random apple thrown in a bin, is now a marketing platform. It's like advertising space that didn't exist before. It's a lot more deliberate from like a consumer perception than the ones that came before. Because there are plenty of other fruit and produce marketing platforms and companies and brands, but they became so genericized where this is much more of like, I am buying the fruitist because I know what I'm getting.

9:13It's a very specific thing where it's this thing with the roulette comment too. It's like you go into a grocery store, you kind of just, you kind of just get the tomato that looks good. That's there. Like recently over the past few years, there have been specific, like, um, there's this specific tomato I can't remember the name right now but it's like a specific like cherry tomato with a specific name cherry bombs they're called cherry bombs they're so good and like that is specific where I feel like a lot of produce and the way consumers buy them is not necessarily based off of brand it's just like oh I'm just getting this like gala apple honey crisp they don't associate it with anything more than just like the name of that type of apple which I think fruit is doing very differently yeah and we as consumers this is also what I mean by marketing platform like you and I know that blueberries have antioxidants because I feel like this has just been like ingrained into my brain for years and so when yeah they put on their packaging like and we have antioxidants I'm like yeah every blueberry has antioxidants however other blueberry companies haven't had a platform to say that on pack like Like there's something really different about – and brands that are really strong in retail versus strong like on D2C know this.

10:37You're not there standing next to your product being able to say all the things that are great about it. You have to rely on the packaging when you're at retail to explain the benefits. And while there are educated consumers who will go into a grocery store and know that they want blueberries for antioxidants, there are also people who are not educated on that. and will look at a brand like Fruitist and be like, oh, this is the one that has antioxidants simply because it has the branding to say it on pack, not because it has more antioxidants necessarily than other blueberries. So there's a lot of power in having a platform via brand that makes you successful in retail.

11:12And I think that's a huge piece of what these investors are betting on with Fruitist. Right. Yeah. No, I think that's a great point. A lot of other products were sort of just like, hey, this orange tastes better than this one or whatever it is. And now there's so much more depth to the product. And you're right. It's so much more aligned with the rest of the grocery store, really, where there's product call-outs, ingredient call-outs. Ingredient call-outs. It's a blueberry. The ingredient is blueberry. But the different call-outs, the different levels to it. Nutritional call-outs, yeah. Exactly, yeah.

11:48It's really cool to see. It's really cool. It is. Yeah. The other thing that we were talking about with this is that every article we read about this raise was crediting the GLP-1 medication usage as the reason that blueberries are doing well. And that, I'm sure, is part of it. But I know we've had some takes on that. Yeah, like, sure, you can say that. And I'm sure GLP-1 will increase fruit spending or whatever. But it's also just like, you're saying that because GLP-1s are popular right now. Right. Like, there's other things that are making this happen. Yeah, and we listed a few in the newsletter.

12:29One is that Americans are just snacking more than ever before instead of eating structured meals. Another is that consumers are looking for shorter ingredient lists. I can't think of a shorter one than just an ingredient. And the last is convenience culture, which we've been talking about forever. People want grab-and-go options, and a brand like Fruits is offering that. But also, yeah, it's the whole foods movement that has been in existence now for years and years. there are so many factors coming into play that would make people look to a fruit brand that have nothing to do with GLP-1 medication.

13:07Right. Even if there is absolutely a correlation. Causation, not there for me. Not there for me. Yeah, yeah. All of these factors are coming into play here. They've been around since 2012 and have grown to over$400 million in annual revenue and the billion-dollar valuation. there's other shit happening here. Yeah, there tends to be. I do have jumbo blueberries in my fridge right now that are not fruitist brand. Oof, RIP. RIP, because this is on being an educated consumer, unfortunately, I was able to take a bet that other jumbo blueberries are also good. They also have antioxidants. Yeah, that's fair.

13:47Yeah, and they are. That's fair. One last thing on this is that I'm very excited for the branded fridges. yes i think that's so cool so for context in the same way that like red bull or celsius sometimes have brand poppy or poppy have branded refrigerators to merchandise their beverages and retailers fruitist has branded refrigerators just for fruitist produce which also we should mention they've expanded beyond blueberries at this point yeah raspberries i think is the other when I saw blackberries. I just hope, you know what they should do? This is how they're going to win. They need to figure out a way to make a blue raspberry real.

14:34I actually love that take. Because blue raspberry is not a real thing. Like the fact that candy brands, I don't know. We'll have to do that research. But the fact that it's just like blatantly not a fruit, it's so funny to me. if they can make a sour blue raspberry raspberry berry winners winners fruitist that's that's our that's our ask make a blue raspberry real happened here first nate gets credit i just i just want a case i don't want any money i just want i just want to try that thing i think that's gonna be great that is so brilliant actually i think that might have been the smartest thing that's ever coming in your mouth and that's i i agree i agree i would pay for that in two seconds but yeah it was really fun to explore the side of cpg because again i was like i don't even i literally googled is branded fruit cpg because i was like yeah and it is yeah and it is and it is but we got we got plenty of other news this past week cob foods which is a sorghum based popcorn replacement so corn free they just announced that novak djokovic is joining as a co-founder of the brand and led their five million dollar seed round pretty huge um pretty huge and if you don't know him he's a tennis legend and it would it's crazy if you don't know him but he hits the balls he he hits them well.

16:05He hits them really, really well. He also already does have his own brand called Scylla? Scylla? I don't know how to pronounce it. It's a performance brand. It's like supplement hydration. And this is certainly a departure from that. And not hydration. It does have salt. It does have salt. It does have salt. And it is, however, in perhaps the only other category that is so saturated by celebrities other than supplements, which is randomly popcorn. I don't know why there are so many celebrity popcorn brands. It's sessionable. It's addictive. It's easy. Yeah. Okay. Also, fun fact about celebrity popcorn.

16:49Lesser Evil, which is one of the largest popcorn brands in the States, sold to Hershey's recently. Do you know that that celebrity found it as well? No. Do you want to know who the two celebrity founders are of that brand? i'm never gonna guess you gotta give it to me it's uh gene hackman and jim kramer wait i didn't know i could love lesser evil more why aren't they blasting that because it like sold or something gene hackman who played lex luther in superman and jim kramer who is the crazy finance guy i have no idea well on top of apparently lesser evil there's also Rob's Backstage Popcorn, which was founded by the Jonas Brothers.

17:31Joe Bros. Love them. Cloud Protein Popcorn by Khloe Kardashian. Hell yeah. And Boldly Grown Popcorn by Luke Bryan. So lots of celeb popcorn. Oh, wait. Wait, there's another one. Don't the D 'Amelios have a popcorn? Nothing would shock me at this point. Fair. But celebrity popcorn and popcorn adjacent seems to be a big thing. Seems to be a big thing. And this, so Cobb, as Nate mentioned, is, despite calling it popcorn, because that's the only way that we know how to call it. Popcorn adjacent. Yes. Yes. This popcorn adjacent product is not corn. It's made out of sorghum, which is a 10 ,000-year-old grain that I am really excited about because it's actually a very sustainable crop.

18:23i don't think this went into his decision making i think he is woman-free and a health nut famously has gotten into some stuff for being a health nut famously so again novak is the perfect person for this but beyond sorghum so this product is puffed sorghum that's what makes it like popcorn beyond sorghum being a healthier to some alternative to corn um sorghum is drought tolerant and heat resistant so it just doesn't require much yeah it doesn't require much water to grow it's adaptable to changing climates and i know all of this because of another brand that's been doing pop sorghum for a while now called chase and dreams farm um they have they call sorghum puffs Sydney is the founder she is wonderful and so passionate about sorghum and that's why I'm like now preaching the gospel of sorghum so I'm hoping that a rising tide here of sorghum puffs with a very famous tennis pro behind them will rise the ship of sorghum in other areas like Chase and Dreams I love it and I love that they have Cacio e Pepe which is one of the best flavors they do have a Cacio e Pepe flavor it's yeah cob looks like a really awesome brand and we should add um so cob was founded by a mom who was trying to think of healthier options for her kid um and she reached out to novak i'm like still trying to find out how they there's got to some connect there and he apparently tried the product and the second he tried the product was like i want to be a co-founder so that's amazing Shoot your shot, ladies and gentlemen.

20:16Shoot your shot, founders. Come on. Next up, we have another kind of celebrity-adjacent story. Nara Smith. I called her in one of my TikToks, the Internet's Favorite It Girl. She's sort of leading this trad wife movement, even though it's not explicit. But Nara Smith, very famous influencer, has like 20 million-plus followers across all of her channels. she collaborated with algae cooking club to launch a algae garlic oil which i do have it's up behind me right now it smells incredible i've used it uh with some rice and a dish that i made it's very good and i i think it's really a really good creator and talent collab there's like a couple levels to it that make it so good.

21:10Algae Cooking Club, it's a new olive oil replacement brand using algae for cooking oil. And it's a new ingredient. It's a new type of product for consumers. And they've been doing well. They've raised some money, like they're in retail. But to reach a broader audience and get more people into the fold and understanding this product, it really helps to have someone like Nara Smith, who has a huge audience, who does cooking, who makes her own garlic oil. She has made this type, this roasted garlic oil herself before. It gives such validation and exposure to this new product that would be very hard to get on their own.

21:52Absolutely. And that's what got me so excited about it too. I mean, the product itself, as you said, is just a great product. It was also developed by a Michelin star chef, the 11 Madison Park chef. I know. I just discovered this too. That's cool. It's a very culinary oil, which again, fits Nora's content. Yeah. Fits Nora's content really well. She is like a culinary queen and makes all of these really elaborate recipes that no one can possibly recreate very well at home. So this is a good option to not have to do it yourself. But yeah, I think especially something called algae oil, algae is not like something you associate with the kitchen.

22:35If anything, algae is like maybe going to give you like a little bit of ick factor. And I think it requires so much education, as you said, that they kind of need a celeb and someone whose taste buds are already trusted to be the person that's promoting it because it it already fits her really well like algae oil is a lot lower in saturated fat and has much lower omega-6s than other oils so like for people who are nervous about inflammation tied to seed oil like this is a good option for them um and obviously seed oils have been like a really contentious and loud topic lately. Yeah. So it makes sense that she would partner with them for that reason.

23:23And it also has a really, really high smoke point. So it's great for cooking. It has a higher smoke point than avocado oil. So it's great for cooking, which again, makes it a really good fit for her. And then people might just want to go for it because of like those two attributes and might not realize that. And here comes my like sustainability spiel again. I like the earth Crazy. Wow. But algae oil is so good for the environment. It is like the most sustainable oil that you can choose. It actually emits half the amount of carbon as other plant-based oils. And it uses like almost no land or water to make.

24:03So it's a great sustainable option. And what I love about this is NAR is going to be promoting it for like these other reasons. people will buy it for those other reasons and then they'll accidentally do something really good for the planet yay the best the best that is the best way to do it because most like most people being explicitly environmentally friendly is arguably a little bit hard and like so hard yeah it it's it's been muddied so much with so many products that have made big claims the product's not been that good whatever it is so like it kind of has to be just either like uh like a basic attribute of the product that's sort of secondary but it's like right it's table stakes at this point too i think when you're launching a new product it's good to be sustainable but i'm excited for it i'm excited to use it some more because it's damn good i'm sorry i haven't actually packed mine open yet oh other thing that i feel like is worth mentioning just like there's so many thoughtful touches on this the actual hardware of the olive oils like the spout is gold which usually that is silver because nara only wears gold jewelry Like, it's little things like that in a collaboration that make it feel so authentic and thoughtful.

25:14Yeah. And the fact that, like, Algae doesn't use glass in any of their products, but Nara was like, I want glass. It's more premium, whatever it is. And they're like, okay, we'll do it. Like, it's a very earnest collaboration, which I think is so cool to see. next up we got a merging of two very big trends right now the gummification of all these products that's a crazy word gummies and fiber yeah the gummification is a crazy word but accurate i don't think i should i don't think i should be saying that word honestly it sounds bad but belly welly a fiber company a trendy and pink and cute fiber company just launched a daily fiber gummy and it has more than just fiber in it kind of like it's other products it also has probiotics and collagen so it's one of these like multi supplement gummies but the focus is still on fiber and yeah as you said like everything is a gummy right now.

26:28Mm-hmm. Groons has been crushing it. Bloom has their gummies now. Moon Brew, which is like a magnesium supplement, they're launching a gummy. Lemmy, obviously, is like mostly gummies, except they're lollipops. People want convenience. People want plant people. They just launched in Target. They have a ton of different gummy SKUs. People want convenience. People want a little sweet treat. and I think the gummy format is nice. I think people are over powdered. No, I think there's a lot of people who just don't want powders. They don't want to drink everything. They don't want to mix. They just want like pop it in.

27:09That's it. I think beyond the convenience of it because you could argue then why is it not just a pill? It's fun. Yeah, a pill is not fun. Also, I've learned that there are adults who can't swallow pills properly. grow up. I know. To be fair, it does suck. It does suck to them. Sure. But gummies are so fun. Gummies are so much fun. In my routine, how I kind of think of it is when everything else is better for you and I'm trying not to have sweets as much, I'm almost like my supplement gummy has become my little sweet treat. Don't get me wrong. I still have dessert. But it's my breakfast dessert.

27:53100%. That's why I like groom so much in the morning. They're fun. They're easy. It feels like candy in the morning, which I'm a big fan of. Big fan of candy. Socially acceptable candy in the morning is what. Socially acceptable candy. So good. I love that. It's a good name for a brand. You're right. Socially acceptable candy is kind of baller. Yeah, keep that. Yeah, I would keep that. Anybody who's listening, that's mine. I call fives on that. You don't call me a raspberry, but you do. Yeah, exactly. You do call that.

28:31Another functional brand that I kind of want to talk about that I think is really interesting, Recess. They just raised a$30 million Series B funding round led by Kabu Ventures, Midnight Ventures, Torch Capital, shout out Grace, Dollar Ventures, and a bunch of others. And I feel like this is one of those brands that was really early to this and honestly kind of established this wave of functional and aesthetically pleasing products. So Rhesus is a functional beverage brand. Currently, they have a mood line, which is their most successful line right now. Now, they have an alcohol alternative mocktail line and they have some powders.

29:20But they launched in 2018 with CBD-infused waters, which in 2018, 2019 was the big thing. CBD was freaking everywhere, man. But they also launched with this very pastel and moody modern branding that really kicked off a whole wave of that aesthetic. Very quickly, brands started to honestly copy what Recess was doing. Recess was really one of the first. And they've basically maintained that branding since 2018. And it hasn't looked out of place, really. No. Which is really impressive. Very impressive. Very impressive. I've got to be honest. I was looking at this brand pessimistically. I did not think that they would make it.

30:18And so when I saw this headline, I was a little bit surprised, admittedly, because I felt like they were on the adaptogen train almost. I mean, I don't even want to say too early. I feel like they just, I think in general, adaptogens, yeah, too long. Like adaptogens as like the main call out has kind of been phased out. I not to say that people aren't looking for functional beverages because let's just look at the entire modern soda category. Like clearly. I literally have a creatine beverage right here. There you go. So clearly Functional is still of interest, but I think there were a lot of adaptogen beverage brands that have kind of died out, and I just assumed this would be clumped in with the rest of those.

31:05And it seems that it has clawed its way out. It's worth noting that Kavu also invested in Poppy. So, like, they in general are, like, really betting big on this soda category, but also I would assume are not really pitting recess as a competitor against poppy. Complimentary. They're complementary products. It broadens that space of, like, functional and new beverages that can replace the traditional sugar-laden ones that have been on the market forever. Mm-hmm. and there's just a lot more like ready to drink mocktail or like non-alc brands and i think this kind of shifted positioning to more of a mocktail as opposed to just like a it's yeah more about what it doesn't have than what it does so it's not as much about like we have adaptogens it's more like we don't have alcohol and that seems to be doing better right now although i would say that ebbs and flows.

32:07Yeah, they've, they brought in their scope, which I think was, was really good. Like the CBD thing was, it was big and then it very much wasn't because I don't think many people felt any real benefits or anything from it. And I think it was for a very small audience overall. I also think with recess, like they were in the limelight sort of when they launched those first few years, they've raised some money, they, you know, expanded their product line. And then with like all of these other products coming in these fast followers looking the same sounding the same it kind of muddled recesses voice a little bit where i don't think people were as aware of it it wasn't in the discussion at least from an industry lens and it kind of allowed them to like operate a little bit in the shadows and and work their magic and just maintain themselves and sustain themselves and not really fall into too many trends.

33:05Like they launched on a trend, but they've sort of maintained into like what consumers are actually buying and actually wanting. And I think that's why they've just raised$30 million and are still around. But I think they've done a very good job of just being a sustainable business too. Yeah. I love that point of like, you can launch on a trend, ride the wave of a trend and still be a sustainable business by thoughtfully pivoting when you need to. And it seems like that's what they've done. Yeah. And now they're in 15 ,000 stores nationwide. And I bet they'll be acquired within the next year or two.