How Once Upon a Farm is shaking up the baby aisle with coolers

0:09Hello and welcome to the Modern Retail Podcast, our show that covers the ways the retail industry is changing and modernizing. I'm Special Projects Editor Melissa Daniels. If you have kids, you've probably come across Once Upon a Farm products at some point. But if you haven't, you might have seen them in grocery stores anyway. The company is one of a handful that's been able to secure its own coolers in grocery store aisles. The brand is known for organic baby food and snacks and particularly things like refrigerated pouches and frozen meals. Once Upon a Farm ended 2025 with more than 3 ,400 coolers in grocery stores across the U.S.

0:48and has shared plans to add thousands more over the next few years. Why are they doing this? Well, it's really driving business. Overall, the company saw about$73 million in net sales in the first quarter of 2026, and that was a 44 % jump from the prior year. More broadly, the coolers themselves are bringing 61 % incremental growth to the baby food category. For me, this is huge because this is challenging norms in a category that's been long dominated by shelf-stable products, right? The baby food jar. And this is thinking of it in an entirely new way. So my central question for this conversation is how do you convince retailers to shake up an aisle that's been the same for literally decades?

1:31So here to walk me through that process is Katie Marston, the Chief Marketing Officer of Once Upon a Farm. Katie, welcome to the show. Thank you, Melissa. I'm incredibly excited to be here and especially excited to talk about this topic and changing an industry. It is really impressive what you all have been able to accomplish in a relatively short amount of time. So I'm excited to hear the challenges and opportunities that you all have run into. But for the uninitiated, you know, give me the rundown of what Once Upon a Farms retail and grocery presence was like before you got into the cooler game.

2:11You know, you were distributing at retail before you had the coolers, correct? We were. And there's a great few stories that we could even get into. You know, Cassandra Curtis started this company in her kitchen in 2015. you know, you've had John Forker, just a retail industry giant, Jen Garner and Ari Raz was there as well. And they had this belief, you know, they saw the consumer need and thought it would be an easy sell. And so you talk about in a relatively short period of time to us, it seems like ages and eons, especially those that were here in the very, very early years, pre-2020. but there was a quick pivot and we can talk about the early years in a second but there was a quick pivot that then it was okay well if we're not getting into baby aisles with coolers at this time which was the original intent and the story being sold we know that this product is filling in need we know that there are parents that want farm fresh baby food kid snacks that is using cold processing, not heat to retain taste and texture.

3:23So where do we put it? Right. And that's where the retail partners that were forward thinking of that believed in it, but didn't maybe have this set up correctly was like, great, dairy, produce, like where we have existing cold opportunities, refrigeration, then we are going to, even if it's not directly in that space, we weren't dairy, but we're going to put you in dairy. And what we saw was incrementality, the entire category rise, and that over time helped buy in for where we are today. Wow. Yeah. Thank you for diving right in with me on that. So coolers was kind of always the vision, huh? You always sort of had this idea that these products, cold pressed products, they're going to be available in a specific area.

4:11So, you know, when you talk about those early days and seeing some of the success that you had at retail, did that help you build your case for getting the coolers in? You know, talk to me about what some of those early pitches were like and how you sort of started the cooler journey. I have gotten a chance to go back and talk with Cassandra about this, Jen and John, and it's been fun, you know, and prep for this podcast. And they all thought, I think because it just seemed like a no brainer and that they would go in and they would get yeses right away. And there were some yeses. So the first, uh, first place was Lazy Acres and Bristol Farms.

4:57You're talking smaller doors. And then there were 20 to 50 door tests in Target, Walmart, and Kroger that all failed actually more than once. And so it was both a belief and a trial period for the retailers and our brand to get this right. We learned every single time there wasn't one way to do it with every retailer. There wasn't one portfolio that worked perfectly. Everything needed to kind of be fine-tuned to when we finally saw a tipping point was, I would say really 2020, 2021, which is when everything kind of switched and the case studies were there, strong retail partner belief systems, consumer was ready for it and actively asking about it to tip the scales to where we are today.

5:53Oh, that's super interesting. So what were some of the learnings from those early pilots? You know, what wasn't working that you realized you had to iterate on? You know, I think when you do this, you, um, each retail store is set up differently. Right. And that's even within one retailer. So it's their electrical setups. There are merchandising needs. You're talking about product that has shorter shelf lives than shelf stable product. Like we would say, you know, you need to have someone actually servicing this area of the store much more frequently than the company is set up for. So there's investments on both sides.

6:38Who's going to pay for that? And what does that give you as a brand or a retailer, depending on who is paying for it? So there was that side of things. There was also the portfolio to get right. you're looking at the different needs dates for a parent did once upon a farm that time have the right portfolio for what the parent was looking for you know shopping the aisle within refrigeration what would move fast and and what we would need to re relook at from a recipe standpoint and then last was size i think one of the most interesting insights was putting in smaller coolers. That was a much easier buy-in.

7:19And what we found, it's still an investment. And very quickly, the sales were demanding a bigger cooler. And yet you then have a totally new investment. So we went from selling in a smaller cooler to getting them to buy into a bigger cooler and saying, no, we promise you this will work out. When we were first doing that, I joked as in my roll, we had like signage on half of the large cooler to block the bottom. And we were triple, you know, facing a lot of our most successful items before we got to a point today where we're still optimizing the portfolio based on, you know, the need states of babies and toddlers, as well as what parents are looking for to maintain like leadership and innovative thinking.

8:09Totally, totally. So give me the rundown of where the coolers have landed and what that look and feel is like. And if that differs from retailer to retailer, I'd love to hear some of those specifics. But just where do people find these? For the most part, they are in the baby aisle, which is where that original intent was. Sometimes you will see them on end caps, which is great if it's a beacon, you know, towards the aisle, it's always closer towards the end. And because of the incrementality that retailers are seeing and the elevation of farm fresh, it's getting people to enter the aisle again.

8:58And so that is also part of the strategy of you're seeing retailers put it there. And now you're seeing retailers talk about two coolers or a freezer in that aisle as well. And whether or not we're in that shared with others, we feel very proud. Like when we set out to shape the future of food and change the industry, it was never just about us and only us being there for the whole time. It was really about servicing and being an ally to parents and getting kids to get better nutrition. then. So if I'm a retailer and I'm sitting here and I'm looking at my baby food aisle and you're telling me, hey, we want to reshape the future of food.

9:43We want to bring these coolers in. It's going to cost you X, Y, and Z. We'll put in Z, Y, X. You are going to have to run electoral lines. You are going to have to retrain store associates. Yeah. That's like a scary conversation for retailers potentially, right? I mean, what was sort of the back and forth like there? What were some of the factors that you were able to then introduce to get them to finally say yes? Every case study helps. I mean, and the success and the incrementality that is being shown across the board is a really wonderful, we've got a killer sales and research data team that has these wonderful decks that they're able to put in front and say, we promise you the risk and the investment will pan out.

10:37And I'm talking about today, right? Like that has really helped with the tipping point when you think of, you know, Walmart going at it for the third time, HEB coming in, some of the early adapters who went much wider with it, they saw the belief early and that just took a, I think more modern thinking, progressive team or member on that team that really pushed for it. Like we have had some amazing internal advocates or this wouldn't have happened that they believed beyond and put up with some of the headaches early on. We still have headaches, right? It's not a perfect situation, but it is improving all the time, optimizing all the time.

11:24And it looks different for every retailer. Yeah, that makes me think about something that I have conversations with a lot of times when brands are launching in retail, either for the first time or when they're expanding into a new category. And that is the back and forth and the partnership really has to be there if you want to do something different. If you want to be more than just another SKU on the shelf, you really need that back and forth and the buy-in from all sides. Completely. And that's where I do say, like, it has taken a lot of visionaries. And then even Whole Foods, who, you know, got to see what others have done, had now just put in this massive open-air cooler.

12:15And they were able to take some of the learnings that they have seen other retailers do and be like, okay, how do we make this for Whole Foods for our customers and make it bigger and better? And like, theirs is just this beautiful, wonderful billboard that we are so grateful for. And then I was just in Sprouts and I love what they have done, which is they stuck it where the aisle goes longer. So you enter the store and it is like, I mean, we were there for retail call recently. And it was like Jen, myself, like running to Emily, our sales manager, like running to it because it was just calling you.

12:53And it sends such a signal of this is what we stand for. And this is what you deserve. How has this changed how you talk about the brand internally? You know, Once Upon a Farm recently went public. I imagine this was something that you all talked about a lot when you were on your roadshow. You know, talk to me a little bit about how the coolers play into how you talk about yourselves and what the vision of the company is. Yeah, it plays an anchor, right? And it shows a commitment level. Like, we are very mission-driven. And if we are going to create systemic change in children's nutrition, if we are going to shape the future of food, you have to place big bets and you have to stick with them.

13:43Like I say, if you've got a good idea that helps to make your consumers' lives easier, don't give up. Like it will take time. This is a big behemoth of a system. You have to be really brave to come into CVG, I think, with an idea that is not the norm and it will take time. And so when we talk about it as an anchor, what we've seen, not just with our coolers going in, it's when we also launched pantry snacks in the same aisle, which was one of our first forays into shelf stable. We knew that that sometimes is the first food. Like parents might be making their blends, but then they're using convenient snacks.

14:22That enabled us to go much further into retail. Many more stores get an introduction to ourselves within that aisle while we are placing coolers in and parents are getting those first foods without compromise from once upon a farm, which now leads them into the other area of stores that we're already in. So we know that the incrementality across the store where we are is that consumer journey that we're like, look, retailer, we were getting people to enter the aisle and buy products that were not entering the aisle before. And so that helped the story of this plus our online presence and then the journey that continues, they'll stick with you.

15:06Yeah. Shout out to Tractor Wheels on the shelf stable front. Big hit in our house. We love, love, love Tractor Wheels. Tractor Wheels are one, such a fun product, so tasty. And I love that your household loves them. I've said dip them in yogurt, put them in the freezer. You're going to have a nice little treat. Oh, that's fun. That's a good twist on the frozen treat as I am drowning in popsicles and lemon ice this summer. Oh, popsicles. We got to talk about the once upon. All right. That's an offline conversation you and I have to have. Thank you. I'll take any and all product ideas. I've got a vision.

15:48I am curious, you know, when you talk about this, this customer who, you know, is a new customer to this aisle at a certain point. You know, what do you want the customer to know about Once Upon a Farm when they see these coolers? You know, what are you trying to communicate? And I guess this is you putting on your marketing hat again for me, but like, you know, what are you all trying to communicate to the customer with the coolers? What we're trying to communicate is outside of a fresh experience and the taste and texture and what that can do for leading a child on a path to healthy eating, right?

16:29That if that is what they're tasting, they're more likely to enjoy fruits and vegetables as they grow, that we are a compliment to what you're doing at home, right? All of us, I think so many of us, especially first-time parents, I can say I have, Melissa, I'm so curious because you're a working parent as well. I had the best of intentions. I was going to make everything. Of course you were. right of course I was with all my free time of course I was and what you recognize is it's very hard to do and yet you don't want to sacrifice and you but you need the convenience to live lives you want to leave and to actually be present with your child and so it is that you're getting very close to what you could make from home with ingredients you probably don't have always in your kitchen that is a taste that not only your baby is going to love, your toddler, your older child, but that you can eat and enjoy.

17:27And at the same time, go choose to use your time for something else that is going to benefit you, your family, just life in general. Yeah. Yeah. See, to me, that speaks to this broader trend that we're seeing with CPG right now. And it's that we want the convenience of the packaged and prepared foods that, you know, we all grew up with as, as Gen Xers and millennials and Gen Z parents, but we want to feel better about the ingredients and where things are coming from. And that there's just the, the, the window there I think is only going to get wider probably as far as the Tam is concerned. It is.

18:08I would say more produce, less processed. Like another thing that we'd like to show, with ours is real ingredients. Like everyone wants to get back. I think we like seeing, we want the convenience, but if you're flipping it over, the biggest compliment that I get from parents is once I've looked at your products a couple of times, I don't even look at the back anymore. I know that it's all ingredients that I can understand. And I think that the retailers that are putting in these coolers and believing in this, that is something that they're trying to show, right? It's like, this is something we believe in as we evolve the store, as we evolve this aisle, that is a focus.

18:45Real food for real people. Yeah, yeah. So that speaks to acquisition really well. But I'm curious, you know, about retention and repeat buys, because you all do have some really good repeat rates that you've shared with your retail presence. And I'm wondering, you know, you mentioned making the coolers bigger as you grow, which is one great way to drive that. But anything else you do from like a merchandising standpoint or what's sort of behind getting repeat purchases from the cooler? Having an understanding for price-back architecture and where you need single serve to upsizing, I think that was a really interesting learning, is that older kids are much more interested in high value, bigger pack size of something they already love.

19:37But if you are feeding your child and we know that variety is so important that those coolers, it's the variation of the different products that you can offer from a single serve and then where you also are offering the upsize or the starter pack opportunities for new parents or repeat parents. We do have incredibly high repeat rates above 50 for new families. And that's something we're really proud of. And so we're very cautious of every single launch that we have, that it's additive, or there's a real purpose to why it exists so that it's not just trying to get the parent to buy more. Right, right.

20:20Yeah, break down the merchandising and sort of like skew variety there for me for a second, because I think people might not be aware that as your company's grown, so has your product catalog to kind of age with your customer a little bit. Right. Um, you know, how has that changed over time? What's available where? So over time, like when we first were in dairy, uh, and produce and stores, like we did have, I think we thought we were having baby purchasing our product. What we found was a good majority of the product was being purchased between two and four. And so that was why that even when we started, um, I came on in 2020, we bifurcated the line.

21:07We put teams in it that were developing products directly for the need states of these key age ranges. We kept what we were doing within produce and dairy on the pouch side and then started to age up and create different products and functionality that mattered to those consumer groups. And in the baby aisle and what we were looking at in coolers, we directly were then developing a portfolio for that audience. And so there's about 30 to 40 SKUs that can go in a cooler. And you really want to make sure that you're taking someone from six months right on to 12, 18 months plus with products that make a difference to their development.

21:55Yeah. So that means you're getting different food groups, different flavor profiles. different functionalities yeah like we just launched protein right the first organic protein options within the cooler of you know organic beef and poultry and that was something that we were hit we're always listening we everything we do is for our consumers and that was something they kept asking for and so we wanted to make sure we did it with the O-Farm standards. And that took longer than we would have liked, but we wanted to do it the right way. And we're so excited when it launches last year. Yeah, that is really exciting.

22:39And I imagine it's something that you talk to the retailers about too, when you are ready to, hey, we're going to launch this in coolers. Do you want it? Where are we going to put it? is that, you know, your sort of new product introduction happens now in concert with them because they know where they're putting it. Very much so. I mean, the baby buyers are, I mean, baby kids like our retail partners, as I've kind of said, are some of the best in the business. And it's been fun. Like his target has looked to overhaul their baby aisle, their conversations that we've had for what they're looking for.

23:17Whole Foods has given that great partner, Walmart, who was there from, you know, the beginning as they have really grown and stuck with us from when we couldn't fill a full cooler to where we're at now. We take all of their input into consideration and are talking to them much further in advance before we even launch. So they're very much aware and part of the process. Yeah, that's part of that buy-in magic as well. That's so important to have if you want to do something differently. You know, I'd love to hear just a little bit about what you all do internally to keep these trains running? Because you do have a lot of SKUs and you do serve a lot of demos, right?

23:59Parents of first foods, parents of picky toddlers, parents of picky kids. You know, how do you make sure you're talking to the right audience in the right way? We invest in a lot of research. That is one thing that when I had come And I, you know, I had worked in various industries before this. Like I was not, I'm not a CPG veteran. I mean, I can maybe say I'm now after eight years here, but even companies that were 10 times the size of ours when I really started, once upon a farm over-invest in research. And so it's really, really important that every single concept product that we're launching has several different research touch points that if it's not landing at the numbers or the way that we want it to, we're not launching it.

24:52So we try to be very purposeful and not scatter spray everything. So while we have launched, I think as parents and a lot of, you know, our founders are parents, so many of us are parents, like we even start internally of talking and seeing what everyone might be looking for. And there's a lot of great ideas there before concept testing, taking the products external. And there are some that are in parking lots now that we know are interesting and innovative, but the timing just isn't right. Or we can't give it the just retail partner it deserves. And so we do and say no to more than has asked of us.

25:34If it was up to, when we asked parents, they're like, we would like everything from you or like retailers are like, please come in here. We want to make sure that we are successful, which is why I think we've had a really good success rate with each of the innovation we've launched over the past, you know, seven years. Yeah. Yeah. So making sure that when you put that new product out there, it's more than ready, that the timing is right. And then there's a communication aspect to this. I think you had, you know, you've mentioned this split between baby, toddler and kids. And it sounds like you you think about that differently from a not only product perspective, but a marketing perspective as well, too.

26:16Yes, the team is fantastic from everything from the visuals and how we shoot and how many photo shoots that we're doing to make sure that you feel that your child, your family is represented, in how we're being highlighted to the messaging and the functionality that we can message to you to know that what you're buying is right for your child. That matters. At the end of the day, I think if we can say, hey, it's organic, it's fruits and vegetables, it's real ingredients, and that the taste is there, so your kid's going to eat it, we know that that's enough. We know that we've done our job. But for those parents, and there are a lot of them that want to dig further, we want to make sure that we've delivered for them the resources that they need to make the best decisions for their families.

27:11And so we have split the team, so not just on the product side, on the marketing side as well, into a focus on those consumer groups and end-use ages. Well, any lessons learned I didn't ask about? You know, when you think about this journey and coolers becoming such a big part of how you communicate and sell to your customer. Anything I didn't ask, any lessons learned? Because I'm sure there's more than one brand out there that wants to know how they get, you know, a big old billboard in an aisle in a grocery store. Yes. You know, as I said, if you think it's worth it, if you think you're meeting a need state, don't give up.

27:56The other is there is a lot of failure. Like we fail and embrace that all the time in different ways. And we are constantly optimizing. So I would say invest your time in optimizing. You've already put in a ton of work to launch something. Before going on to the new thing or thinking there's the next great idea, we are always looking back and seeing, can we make this better? We invested a lot in this. What can we do from the recipe? What can we do from the packaging? and in ours, like my, you know, we're recording this. I've got a book, Packaging Design, like right on my desk at all times, just as a reminder that it's one of the most powerful, high impact things that you can do in order to change velocity of your products and really, you know, communicate with a parent and thinking about that now for not just an in-store shelf, but a digital shelf.

28:51And so that is like, too, you're going to see us put QR codes on coolers so that we can better have an in-store experience of a parent that then wants to, you know, not get overwhelmed by a cooler, but be educated in that for each of the items. Yeah. Yeah. And channel it into your DTC experience, right? And we can channel, as we said, yes, our DTC experience complements the shopping at retail. We know that parents are shopping three, at least three retail partners, including a DTC brand a month. So we consider it just part of the journey, not solo. And that's kind of how we view it. I love it.

29:33Well, there is so much to look forward to, to see how Once Upon a Farm grows. And yeah, if you haven't seen them in an aisle in a grocer yet near you, you probably will sometime in the next couple of years. Katie, thank you so much for joining the Modern Retail Podcast today. Thank you, Melissa. It has been such a pleasure. I appreciate it.

29:57Thank you for listening to this episode of the Modern Retail Podcast, a show by Digiday Media. If you haven't already, please subscribe and head to Apple Podcasts to leave us a review and a rating. If you want more from Modern Retail, you can find us at modernretail.co. You can find me, senior reporter Melissa Daniels, on LinkedIn and Blue Sky. And you can also subscribe to our LinkedIn newsletter at the Modern Retail Profile. We'll see you next week.