How Bumpin' Blends has successfully scaled within the aisles of Walmart and Costco

0:04Welcome to the Modern Retail Podcast.

0:30your soon-to-be favorites too. For this week, Anna, first, let me get your temperature on the topic at hand. How do you feel about smoothies? It's definitely one of my go-to breakfast foods that I rotate in and out depending on what I'm in the mood for. Oh, okay. So you're an aficionado. Now, break down for me your smoothie prep. How do you make your smoothies? I wish it was actually a bit more streamlined, which I'm sure there are solutions out there because I put a bunch of crap in my smoothie. I put chia seeds. I put flax seeds. I put fruit. I put milk. I put yogurt. So it's a lot of things I have to like dig out of the refrigerator, which in the grand scheme of things, of course, it's not that much work, but there are some mornings when I just don't want to do it.

1:24I feel that in my bones. And I also know the weird, almost pleasure that you get out of using things that could go bad into your smoothie. I'm a big, like, oh my God, there's five strawberries left. Let's make a smoothie. Oh my gosh, this banana is going to go bad. Let's make a smoothie. I'm a big kitchen sink smoothie maker. Yeah, no, I can relate to that. Well, when we're looking for something more convenient, This is where our guest comes in. Lisa Mastella is a registered dietitian who founded a company called Bump and Blends. She bootstrapped this direct-to-consumer subscription business. And what it is is a frozen smoothie cube.

2:03There's everything you need for your smoothie that you can drop into your blender and mix with your milk or dairy-free milk of choice to make an instant smoothie. And it's a category that is extremely competitive, not just the smoothie category overall. but specifically frozen. You know, there's very limited frozen aisle space in a lot of retailers these days. So to be a new brand, edging your way in is no easy feat. And Lisa and Bump and Blends have managed to scale to about 3 ,200 stores in a very short amount of time. So I spoke to Lisa about the sort of challenges in going from a DTC subscription business to an omni-channel brand, and we really got into it.

2:48We talk about what didn't work when she first put her packaging. Spoiler alert, everyone thought it was coffee, which is funny. And then we got into how you sort of message something to make sure that people are going to understand what you're selling in that split second that they're walking through the aisle. We also got into budgeting and what is important to a brand as you're starting to scale, whether you're advertising online or trying to get folks in store. And we talked a little bit about the wild world of licensing. Bump and Blends has a deal with Mattel where they have a Barbie licensed smoothie.

3:24And Lisa has a really fun story about how she accessed that deal. Okay. Yeah. You covered a lot then. I'm excited to listen to it. I mean, I just have a few thoughts. I think one, the frozen category is such a hard category logistically. And the nugget you shared about people thinking that her packaging was initially for a product that sold coffee. I think that's so funny. One thing I've heard from a lot of startups when they get into retail is they realize they need to redo their packaging because what stands out on a website is not the same as what stands out on a store shelf. And you also need people to realize very quickly who you are and what you sell.

4:11It's such a difficult balance to find because you're trying to pack in a lot of information at the same time too, right? So people understand what you're about and what's in the product. But if it's too overwhelming and cluttered, no one's going to register that mentally and visually. Yeah, absolutely. Well, I'm excited to listen to the episode. Thank you so much. I'm excited for you all to hear it. So let's get into it with Lisa Mestella from Bump and Blends.

4:44Thank you for taking the time to speak with us. Lisa, how's your week going so far? You know, it's Monday at 930 in the morning, so it's really going great so far. Great. Let's keep up the vibes. Right. I'm super excited to talk with you about Bump and Blends today. We've spoken before about your brand and I've been following your journey as you've scaled from a subscription-based company to a real omni-channel player in the frozen food aisle. So introduce us to Bump and Blends. Tell us about your brand. Yeah, we make frozen functional smoothie cubes. So smoothies essentially for energy, mood, sleep, stress, hydration skin, you name it, we have a smoothie for it.

5:28And the cubes are so easy and versatile. You really just put the cubes in your blender, add some milk or water, and you've got a perfect smoothie at home in seconds. And so the brand has, yeah, it's grown from being just a subscription online direct to consumer to being in 3 ,200 stores this year, which has been really, really fun to go from that D2C to omni-channel space. Yes. Well, let's get into it. Before we talk about scaling, I do just want to touch on the product itself. You know, you're in this category that I think can be quite competitive. There's a lot of people looking. Yeah, there's a lot of people looking for for smoothies and better for you beverages.

6:07You know, what's your sort of value prop with bump and blends? And I believe your background as a registered dietitian kind of helps inform the formula here. Exactly. So my background, I do not come from business or retail or CPG in any form. I come from science and nutrition. So my master's is in public health nutrition. I'm a registered dietitian. So I worked with patients one-on-one to really personalize their nutrition for years before starting Bump and Blends. And that was actually what really inspired the company. So what sets us apart on shelf is that we do come from like that scientific evidence-based background.

6:44Like these smoothies are designed by dietitians to really work. And another thing that sort of sets them apart is that in this functionality, we're not using, you know, anything that is questionable in any way. So for instance, our smoothies for mood have like bananas, oats, dark chocolate. These are things that are natural mood enhancers without anything that's like, hmm, what is that? How do I pronounce that? That's some new fad. And so we're able to really stick with what the science says truly works, which makes the smoothies really, really effective. And that combined with our flavor profile being really interesting and fun versus just your standard strawberry banana smoothie is what sets us apart on the frozen shelf, which you're right.

7:34It is a very competitive space to be in. There's only so many freezer doors that exist. And in those doors are giants that have been there forever, as well as a ton of private label that, you know, retailers are really invested in and very minimal opportunities for fun marketing plays for emerging brands. So it's, it's a very interesting space to be in very challenging, but I think our product really does stand out, which has been great to see. Very cool. Yeah. You're calling my name with this, a watermelon prickly pear here. I'm a, I'm a tart girly. That sounds really fantastic. Yes. And that's like what I wanted.

8:13Like I didn't want any of our smoothies to seem boring in any way or standard in any way. You know, if we're going to, for instance, like we do have one like strawberry smoothie on our website and it's like, it's strawberries. Yes. But it's like fig, lemon, cinnamon, chickpeas with the strawberry. And so all of our smoothies have this really rich, complex flavor. That's so fun. It's really, it's really fun to drink. It doesn't get boring. So bring me to the moment that, you know, you're a DTC subscription-based brand and you're looking to make that next move. What was your first entry into a retail shelf?

8:53So our first shelf was Costco. And that was actually very, very strategic. There's a playbook that a lot of emerging brands use when they go into stores. And I sort of studied that playbook for almost a year and really looked into like how they do it that way, why they do it that way. And I decided I had no interest in doing it that way. I was going to move in the opposite direction, specifically because we're completely bootstrapped. So especially at the time of going into retail from D to C, we, I mean, I built this in my garage on my maternity leave. Like I used a bit of my own savings and don't have any fancy investors or big loans or lines of credit even.

9:34Like I really had a strong in the black business that spent what it made. And to do that and to go into retail stores in the direction that a lot of emerging brands do, where they go small specialty natural, 20 stores, 50 stores, 70 stores, 100 stores, you know, eventually working their way up. In looking at that and looking at slotting fees and marketing fees, And I was like, there's no path forward for me as a bootstrapped business to do it this way. I need to figure out how we can go into retail, be successful in retail, but do it in a way that will actually lead to immediate profitability.

10:15And that's something that's super, super rare, but it was important to me. And so we launched in Costco first. And that was because Costco gave us, one, the ability to have a single one and done PO. So the way that Costco sometimes works with emerging brands is you'll have one region and they'll never surpass 20 % of your existing revenue in that first PO. And they'll say, let's order, we're going to order 36 ,000 units and we're going to start picking them up on this day. And when they sell out, they sell out and then we'll reassess. And that gave me the ability to say like, okay, I need X amount of dollars for X amount of units versus when you have a contract with other retailers.

10:59you're on a year-long contract. So you need to be just producing product to stay in stock and you need to be managing inventory and velocity and all these things. Costco gave us the ability to kind of be in big retail at a big scale and make a lot of money without having to like hire an entire logistics team or have systems in place for that for like a constant velocity for a year, which was perfect for us. It taught us so much. Yeah. Well, let's get into it. Once it was on the freezer shelves in Costco, what did you learn? How did you... Oh, so much. What did you see happening? I recall us chatting about you being in Costco's trying to figure out what was happening with your product.

11:46Yeah. Yeah. I really... I mean, I'm so glad we did it that way because we learned so much. We learned everything we needed to change about our packaging. Everything that a consumer thinks when they look at our product on shelf, why they buy it, why they don't. I was literally, yeah, like I said, like in Costco stores, just harassing people who touched our product and put it down or picked it up and bought it or walked by it. I was just like, why'd you walk by that? You didn't notice that? Was that packaging not cute enough for you? Like, why'd you put that back? Are you allergic to peanut butter?

12:18You know, I learned a lot about what consumers think when they look at the product. And I just got to talk to people in the store. And I think that was truly invaluable for us. We redesigned the packaging. We adjusted things with the flavoring. We adjusted our marketing strategies. We just learned, learned, learned, learned, learned. And that got us ready for the following year, 2024. So we launched in Costco in August of 2023. And we sold out by October of 2023. And so once that happened, I was like, great, let's get back to the drawing board, make sure we're ready to really do this right. And then I joined the Target Accelerator program, which was also a really wonderful help for big retail in allowing me to meet with people who work at Target to sort of pick their brain about what works, what doesn't work.

13:08And at this point, I didn't even know what merchandising meant. Like I was learning retail as a complete novice, learning all the new phrases, the new how everything works, what a deduction is, like everything. And so that allowed us to launch into 3 ,200 mass retail stores with four SKUs on shelf, including a Barbie licensed SKU in June 2024. Yes. Learning and iterating. That is the name of the game. Yes. I'm a bit of a packaging nerd, as fans of modern retail will tell you. What were some of the things that you changed after Costco? What was it about the visual and copy that you updated? I want to, I mean, I have the Costco bag here.

13:54Oh, nice. So on the Costco bag, we had like this phrase on the front that our direct-to-consumer customers really understand. And like internally, it's just a phrase, hey, just pop them and blend. Pop and blend. because indirect to consumer, the cubes come in these trays and you have to like physically pop them out. And so just pop and blend is like our way of saying like, look, it's like ready in seconds. But when you take yourself away from something that you've been so deeply engrossed in for years and you're just a stranger and you hear pop and blend, it means nothing. What am I popping? Yeah.

14:30Yeah. It's so confusing and so strange. And I think about how many iterations of this bag we went through and not one person was like, wait, that doesn't make any sense. Oh, wow. So we had to like just really look at the bag as if you've never seen this product before. And then additionally, like a lot of people assumed it was coffee. And I'm like, wait, how? What? Like there's nothing on the bag that says coffee. There's no picture of coffee. So we tweaked some of the like photography on the bag to like really push that like this is not coffee. Like made more of the ingredients more prevalent on the front of the bag.

15:06People could really see more about what was in it. And then additionally, one of the biggest things was that the Costco bag had a picture of like a smoothie bowl from overhead on it. And this I think was like really confusing people because it's not entirely clear what it is, even though it says in huge bold font smoothie cubes on it. So we switched it to a sort of front facing cup with a smoothie in it with a straw. And so we were hoping that that maybe helped people really see that this was a smoothie. Yeah. And then we, I mean, we just little legal things on the bag. We want to make sure we're perfect and, and just more, more clarity and more handholding at the same time, like just making it crystal clear that anyone in any capacity could understand what this product is and how to make it in a split second.

16:02And so that was also a big part of it and making like the font bigger and the flavor name in a different color, you know, just really trying to make it because really, especially in the frozen section, they have a door in front of the bag. It might even be foggy. They have to see your bag immediately be like, whoa, what's that? And be convinced to buy it in that split second. And so to do that requires like a ton of clarity, but also a ton of information. It sort of feels like a catch 22 because you want it to be beautiful and succinct and simple, but also give them everything they need to know.

16:40Right. Which is tough. Yeah. I think that's a great case study in visual merchandising. You have a lot that you want to communicate and you have a lot that you're trying to express and yet you're also not wanting to overwhelm a customer that they just walk right by it. Yeah, exactly. And we also did a lot of consumer data on, like we used Mintel and Spins to do a lot of consumer data on, you know, there are other smoothie kit and smoothie cube products on shelves that had kind of paved the way before us. And we did a lot of research on what consumers are saying about those. And that helped inform our packaging decision quite a bit as well.

17:19Yeah, you got to see what's working and what's not in the general scheme of things and use that to inform. Yeah. So let's jump ahead to what you were touching on earlier with your Walmart launch, which was the next big step for you all at Bump and Blends. You mentioned there was a Barbie skew involved in that. Yeah. I believe you have quite a story around how you got a Mattel license as a bootstrap startup. Yes. So we had actually secured the Walmart and the Target and the Sprouts deals before getting the Barbie licensing deal. So we had gotten into those doors. We knew we had four flavors going into 3 ,200 doors and we knew it was coming.

18:02It was already like we were already starting to manufacture actually and start to order ingredients and all of that. And it was February of 2024. And we knew our first launch was going to be June. Actually, at the time, we thought our first launch was going to be September because we had not quite secured Sprouts yet. But Sprouts was secured right before Barbie. But February, I was on my way to Walmart. And my biggest problem that I was kind of trying to mull on was we're this tiny emerging bootstrap brand. Nobody's heard of us. Well, people had heard of us, but we have a very small base compared to, you know, we're going to be on the shelf next to Dole.

18:41I was just thinking to myself, like, what are we going to do as a brand in a scrappy way to build that trust with these customers, to get them to buy something different instead of what they always buy? And I was really struggling with like, how do we build that trust? What is that going to look like? And I was trying to think about that a lot. And I had a flight to Walmart to do some onboarding stuff. And our flight was delayed for three hours. And everyone's at the gate. So like we found out the flight was delayed like right before boarding was supposed to start. So everyone's at the gate and the Walmart flight, the LAX to Bentonville, Arkansas flight, I call it like the Walmart flight because who else is going from LAX to Bentonville if you're not going to Walmart, right?

19:31Or another big food, you know, another big company like Walmart. And so it's like a CPG networking dream, that flight. You look around, like everyone's on laptops. Everyone is doing something important in CPG. And I was like, okay, well, I have three hours here. Everyone is working on a laptop. There are big teams of people clearly from the same companies talking together. And I was like, what a fantastic networking opportunity. I am going to like just kind of eavesdrop here and there to see where I can insert myself into some of these people's conversations. And I kept like, kind of like sitting there and I'd be like, okay, you're another small emerging brand with nothing to do with our space.

20:11Okay. I'm going to go like get a bottle of water and then come back and go somewhere else. And I literally like moved around where I was sitting at the gate. And I was sitting next to this group of girls who work for Hot Wheels, who was next to another group of girls who work for Barbie and they're all coming from Mattel's office to go to Walmart. And I'm like, wait a second. Barbie was, you know, the Barbie movie had just come out like a few months prior. Barbie was having a big moment on shelf. And I was like, oh my gosh, that would be really interesting. And so I'm like trying to listen. And one of them was talking about, I kind of like positioned myself close to who kind of looked like the boss.

20:49I'm like, which one of these women is like, people are a little bit more put together next to her. And so I sat next to her and she was having a conversation about her three-year-old son, like sleeping, you know, it was like her two or three-year-old son, toddler son was like having trouble sleeping. And I'm like, Oh, that I know a lot about. I am a mother of two. I have a toddler son myself. My kids do not sleep well. I can get in on this conversation. So I start chatting with her. We're exchanging sleep tips. We're going back and forth. And then she's like, what do you do for Mattel? I'm like, well, actually, I run a smoothie cube company, like a small smoothie cube company.

21:24What do you do? And she's like, well, I'm like the VP of global partnerships for Barbie. Mic drop. Yeah. And I'm like, wow. I was like, oh, my gosh, you've had a really great year. If you're ever looking for some hot pink smoothie cubes, I'm your gal. And we have just had this like lovely conversation together. And it came out so organically. She was like, absolutely. Here's my card. let's connect. And before the flight landed in Bentonville, we already had a meeting on the books for the next day. And by the end of the week, it was solidified. I swapped out one of our four SKUs that we were going to launch in stores for the Barbie SKU.

22:08And we actually had that from like concept in the end of February to in stores in June, which was insane. Yeah, really insane to do that fast. But especially when working with Mattel, which requires a lot of approval processes and those sorts of things for packaging. So to do something like that so quickly was wild, just like a crash course in things. And it was really fun. It's such a fun story. I love it. I know, it's fun. It's unique too, because I think there's a lot of folks out there who try to playbook some of this stuff, right? If you're scaling a brand, here's your playbook to getting a licensing deal, your playbook to getting a retail deal.

22:52And sometimes it's really just about the moment and being able to see that moment and take advantage of it. Yeah. And I will say, and people are always asking me about like, how do you land a licensing deal? How do you get that? How do you get a licensing deal? And my experience having launched with Barbie, I can't get licensing deals out of my inbox. I like have to just ignore huge licensing deals. I have to say no to because I have too many to like, I will say to any brands like really wanting to get into licensing, like once you have one licensing deal, don't worry, the rest will follow. Like they'll be in your LinkedIn.

23:31They'll be in your email inbox, like things like that, things like Barbie or things like TV shows and movies, they want to partner with you, they only benefit from it. It's like a win-win for them. And you're the one doing all the work and spending all the money on it. So it's something that I think like it's not that daunting once you're able to just sort of find the right people for it. Right, right. And it also sounds like too, you want to make sure that you're not taking on too much because what if all of the sudden you're trying to do another deal and you have another formula to develop while you're also, So, hey, our Target launches in two months.

24:08So let's make sure that's still going right too. Bring me back a little bit to what happened when you hit Walmart. What was the experience? What are your top sellers? What's happened on the shelf? What was the experience like? I mean, big, huge. We launched at Walmart and Target within the same month. So we went from doing five figures a month to doing six figures a month and seven figures a quarter. Like it was very huge immediately, which was very cool, but also a huge learning because when you're a brand like this, and especially when you're bootstrapped and you're trying to do this bootstrapped, we did get one angel investor who was a customer of ours when this was all happening at the same time, but it was still pretty much like spending what we make.

24:56managing the money of it when you go from managing a certain level of money to managing a completely different level of money and working on just an entirely different scale in terms of like how much you owe your manufacturer, your ingredients, your 3PL, your this, your that. Like you're managing these books in an entirely different way. I think there are a lot of learnings there because it's so like you get kind of like, oh, well, there's in marketing and retail gets so expensive so quickly. It's like really sneaks up on you. So I think there's a lot to be said about like sort of mentally staying really small in your head with what your budget is for stuff and ignoring the fact that your bank account is huge, which I think is really hard to do.

25:41But it's so, so, so important to stay afloat because it can get out of hand very quickly in terms of spending. Like if you feel like you need to be doing merchandising, which everyone tells you need to do merchandising all the time in every store, that adds up quickly. If you need to be paying for reviews, that adds up quickly. If you're paying for Instacart ads and Walmart.com ads and Target.com ads and Meta and Google, and that all adds up before you realize it. So being really mindful about spending when you grow that fast, I think is like the best advice ever. Yeah, absolutely. That makes a lot of sense.

26:21And I think it's one of those things where you really want to pay attention to what's working for you and your spending too, right? You know, as you were trying to introduce bump and blends to a mass audience, were there certain channels that were more effective for you? Like how did you connect with your customer and get them to get your product off shelf? That's a good question. We're still learning what are the best channels for us, but there's a lot to learn about every channel. I think there are benefits in every channel. So for instance, you know, we noticed like with meta ad, we were running meta ads to an aisle coupon that you scan the QR code, text us, and we'll give you 50 % off your second bag or something like that.

27:03And we were running meta ads to, to this, but I mean, it's much like any other ads where it's like, you really have to study the funnel and see where the person is at and how you're targeting them, where, you know, know, we're targeting these people and we got so many people scanning that QR code, just like insane. It was costing us nothing to get people to scan that code, to get their free bag or their 50 % off bag or something. But like less than 10 % of those people were actually going to stores. And so it's like, you then have to think about like, you're now taking someone from purchasing online with a couple clicks to try something new, to getting them to go into a retail store.