Operator Spotlight: R&D Insights with Matt Craighead, R&D Manager Trubar

0:02Friends, did you know that a party has been going on this whole time with 35 ,000 people and you're invited? it's our startup cpg slack you hear about it all the time on here and if you haven't yet joined in this is your moment take out your phone type in startup cpg.com and then click to join our community you'll be at the party you'll hear about all our events you'll get in front of buyers investors brands whatever's most important to you we have such big plans ahead but you got to be in the community to hear about all of it see you on the slack

0:53In my past, what's been really helpful is project briefs. It's understanding, you know, here's the flavor profile. Here's the timeline. Here's the cost targets. Here's the macro profile. And then you can kind of work backwards for yourself so you can plan and keep the brand, the client, whoever it may be, up to date and aligned on, here's the kind of outline of the projects and where I see it going. That's kind of where to start, I would say. I think it's good to stay organized that way. Hey, everyone. I'm Hannah Dittman, operations and finance host of the Startup CPG podcast. And today I'm joined by Matt Craighead, who leads research and development at TrueBar.

1:29Matt has spent his career at the heart of product creation, taking ideas from concept to formulation to scaled production and shaping the R &D engine behind one of the fastest growing brands in Better For You snacking. He brings a rare blend of technical depth, operator empathy, and practical storytelling to what is often the most misunderstood part of the CP journey, how products actually get created. In this episode, we break down the real R &D and development process, the major milestones, how long each phase truly takes, and why the quality of your R &D work quietly determines the fate of your product and often your entire company.

2:03Through Matt's lens, we explore what new product development actually looks like on the ground, the iterations, the trade-offs, the unexpected discoveries, and the small decisions that end up changing everything. This episode is practical, tactical, and full of operator gold for anyone bringing new products into the world. Enjoy!

2:26Hey, everybody. Welcome back to the Startup CPG podcast. This is Hannah, and today I am here with Matt Craighead, an R &D leader from True Bar. Matt, welcome to the show. Thank you for having me. I appreciate it. It's going to be a lot of fun. We're so excited to have you here today and to dive into some ops and R &D talk. I'd love to kick off with a brief background of your career and then ultimately what led you to True Bar now? Yeah. So I've been in the R &D space in the food industry for about eight years now. I previously was with a company in the co-manufacturing space, but I've known True Bar for the last six, seven years since they started back in 2018, like the back of my hand.

3:03So it's been great to start this new role with them over the last two months. Isn't it so nice when you are already a consumer of a product and can dive right in? If you could give an overview of True Bar as well, you know, what products you make, your positioning and differentiation for context, That would be awesome. Yes. True Bar is a vegan protein bar company, and they focus on gluten-free, non-GMO, soy-free, no sugar alcohols, artificial sweeteners are not allowed, and then also no seed oils. That's a big one for consumers these days. And there's a flavor for everyone. And they have very creative marketing names.

3:36So like O-O Cookie Dough, Daydreaming About Donuts, Strawberry Shorty Got Cake. That's probably my favorite one. Yeah, I love that. Yeah, they're always very fun. And everyone else is just like cookie dough, chocolate peanut butter. So it's similar flavors, but just kind of a fun spin on it. Yeah, no seed oils is such a win. That is a hard thing to find. And I feel like especially with the way ingredient list nomenclature can even be, they can get you sneakily sometimes too. I'm sure. Yeah. What are natural flavors? And I'd also love to kind of get some context. I know you mentioned R &D, but I'd love to get some context of your role within the broader organization, what departments you work with and what the structure of the team looks like.

4:16So still learning that. obviously it's only been two months so I'm within the R &D team the R &D manager so I'm on the operation side of things mostly a lot of my weeks as I'm learning is product development that's what I previously did at the previous company so I spend I would say about 50 % of my time doing either product development for current SKUs or future flavors as well so I have a home kitchen that I'm sitting in right now could be a bit messy at times but as long as I do my dishes every day I'm good to go a lot of you know chocolate and rubbing with compound chocolates fun flavors looking at different protein powders, stuff like that, trying to find the cheapest possible ingredients that are still quality and safe to use consistently.

4:54And then also I do a lot of traveling to other commands for production to make sure that things go well and that I'm there to be a decision maker when things don't, which is very infrequent. And then I also spend time with looking at like new ingredients and alternate ingredients to make sure that in case there are supply chain issues, which were tariff issues, that we have something planned for a secondary option so that way we can always have bars producing and in the market to keep our customers happy. That sounds so fun to have a home kitchen. I bet dinner parties at your house are a blast.

5:25Oh, yeah. I definitely got to clean up every day if I do that. Otherwise, it wouldn't be very presentable, but it's still fun for sure. Yeah, it's really a work in your home situation going on there. It would be awesome to just get a better understanding of what the R &D development process is like. What are the major milestones that you're working through, for instance, when you're launching one of these exciting new flavors or working on a new project? Yeah, we're very quick. We're a very fast-paced company. We've been growing a lot the last few years. So the R &D ideation stage is very quick.

5:57And then it gets passed on to me, say, hey, let's work on a PB &J bar, whatever it might be. And so then that idea is posed to me. Then I kind of do my thing where I look for the new ingredients if they're needed. Then like new flavors, source those, have them get delivered to my house here. And then the fun creative benchtop process starts. And that could be anywhere from two weeks to eight months. Depends on feedback and timeliness of getting samples. I mean, if it's kind of a new ingredient that we've never used before, that's tweaking that process and that flavor profile with the actual other supplier.

6:30so I can take iterations. Sometimes it could happen on the first try or it could take 10 to 15 tries. And that's where food science and food production is very humbling. So you never say, how did you not like this? It's bigger than just you. So you want to make sure that you're meeting the needs of everyone as best you can. Yeah, I feel like the custom development process, even outside of food, just scents, flavors, formulations, anything you're doing, that can be such a long time depending on the vision you have in your mind, how much market research testing you're doing, how perfectionistic you're being about things.

7:06It can definitely be a long haul. How long does R &D typically take? If you had, I know, obviously, that's a huge range. But if you kind of had to put a timestamp on this is a good goal post that people should have in their mind, what do you think the R &D process should typically run like to be efficient? And then how long does the development process take once you've established the R &D phase as approved? Yeah, R &D phase, I think, is typically quicker and maybe two to four months, give or take, at most. I think for us, it's quicker than that. I would say like one to two months at most. And then the development process, that could be a little bit longer where, especially if you don't have bar already in the market, you're starting from scratch.

7:48So that could be even a year or two doing, you know, kind of sizing up and stuff like that, line trials, etc. But the benchtop process, that could be a bit quicker, but it's kind of tinkering with those small little things, you know, whether it's flavor, texture, finding a cleaner ingredient, looking at the food safety aspect of like water activity, making sure that you're in range there. Like for us, we're ready to eat bars. So there's no baking involved. So that way, it's very important to focus on water activity and an allergen control, whether that's in-house or at the actual command itself, make sure that their processes are well aligned.

8:21Yeah, I feel like there's so many moving parts and getting through, like you're mentioning, It's not just the small batch trials. It's also the large batch trials that end up take quite a long process to make sure it's matched. Unless you've been in the weeds doing it, I think the amount of time product development end to end can truly take can be shocking to people. I mean, if I heard three years, that wouldn't even surprise me for a new product easily. Yeah, it all depends on capital that you have, you know, and how much time you're willing to invest into the future of that bar, flavor profile, whatever it is.

8:54Don't let perfect be the enemy of the good, but you want to make sure to do your diligence to make sure it goes well in production because that's where the money is made. Yeah, it's so hard to get to the 80-20 mindset on product development, especially when you're a product person and that's your whole passion and what your focus is or a founder and you're believing in it so much and you just want it so perfect for your customers. It is a hard job to decide what is the threshold point of this is approvable or good enough for us and to make sure that bar isn't overly idealistic where it's an unreachable, unattainable goal.

9:28It's definitely a tightrope to walk. I'm going to be like leading the witness a little bit here, but how important is R &D to the overall product development process or your company's success? how much of the experience or the consumer demand do you think is driven by what's achieved in the R &D phase? R &D is, I mean, that's where it all starts. Without a great tasting product and a great running product, you don't have really anything. So if you have a great product, then it's that much easier for marketing and sales to say, hey, let's go sell this product, you know, but not losing sight of that either.

10:00I've seen that be a big issue in the past. You know, R &D is the start of everything. So yeah. Yeah, I think there's kind of two minds in consumer, I would say, where there's either like a very marketing driven approach to something. It's novel. Maybe it's a stock product. I've definitely had my experience with stock products in prior lives, or it's very R &D driven and very uniquely product driven. And those animals cannot be different. And the mindsets of those companies cannot be different. It's like two different worlds that you're living in. Yeah. I've seen in the past where you get so focused on the functionality or health benefits of a certain ingredient that you lose sight of, well, this actually manufactured well on the lines.

10:42And then you go to a line trial or first production and it fails. And that can either cost at least a timeline, if not the whole business itself. So thinking about not just the flavor profile or the macros or the health benefits of whatever functional mushroom it may be, you got to think about, hey, can this run? Can we actually sell it? I think people need to think about not just the R &D, but also the manufacturing side. And that's such a great point. And to even expound on that further, thinking about consumer psychology, I call this concept first principles where you always need to have consumer psychology in mind and go back to the basics of why is someone eating this, using this, doing this in the first place and meeting that first principle need.

11:22I think on the functional food side, especially that can get squirrely really quick because at the end of the day, the number one reason you're eating something like a bar is because you want to be eating something that tastes good. And you need to prioritize eating experience first and then the functional experience second, because no one's going to eat something again that they didn't like eating. Or we would hope not. The bars, it's all about, you know, typically you're on the go. You don't have time to cook that breakfast or that lunch or whatever. I still want to get something healthy that has a decent amount of protein and healthy fats and this and that.

11:55How can I get that and still enjoy the meal too and not just chug down a green smoothie or something, you know? Yeah. What are those wheatgrass shots? That was like super popular. Yeah, that's a bit much. Oh, brutal. We've come a long way. Yeah, we really have. We have like blended green drinks now. Exactly. Yeah. Sweeteners, but still clean. You know, monk fruit, stevia, aylos, whatever it may be. Yeah. Yeah. What's the picture like anecdotally of a new product development process? If, you know, we've kind of touched on it a little bit, but if you guys wanted to make like a whole new type of bar or maybe you wanted to get into beverage or something like that, what would the process be like through the lens of new product development?

12:37Yeah, I think it's market research and trend analysis first. It's kind of where you start. Because if you're putting something out in the market that's already out there and already oversaturated, it's probably unlikely to be successful unless you have something to differentiate yourselves. And that's what it's all about is what is the vision? What is the sales story of the actual bar, products, et cetera, that you're trying to launch? And then going from there, if you have the time and cashflow to do the kind of upfront work of, hey, let's get some consumer feedback on our first, second, third, fourth round, and then kind of tweet that based on what you get feedback on, and then invest in line trials, making sure that the product is going to run well, and then really kind of trying to source and look for the best possible partners, whether that's ingredient vendors, the manufacturer side of things, and really thinking about how do they look on paper?

13:25Are they communicative? Do they have the right safety, food safety practices in practice, stuff like that. And I think you can get a bit one track minded and lose sight of that. When you're focused on the products and kind of, hey, this is my baby, this is my product. And I've seen that cause brands and bars to fail. So you want to make sure to think about the whole picture and not just that one little thing. That's very important. Yeah, so true. I think it's like easy to get tunnel vision on whatever part of the process you're on. But like anything else in broader operations, it's a million moving pieces that all need to come together in synchrony.

14:02And the second you stop thinking about something is the second that is the thing that breaks. It's like you have to have all the drums beating all the time. And yeah, you mentioned submissions. I think also a really important thing to have in the back of your mind is how many submissions you're able and willing to get through in a process in prior life we had like a two submission target which is insane you know in my current company I've worked on something for over like I think I literally had 50 submissions with something before yeah that's the way it goes sometimes I've had 45 40 50 for sure and you got to just kind of stay the course and you realize is not about your feedback or your opinions.

14:41It's about everyone. Yeah, and it's hard. I mean, to our earlier point in the conversation, it's a hard balance of not having too perfectionistic of a mindset. And for anyone listening that's unfamiliar with submissions, it's when you're revising a product and you're getting the new iteration version of the product that's counted as one submission. So yeah, I mean, there's at least like a few weeks, if not a month between submissions. So you can run up the clock really quick if you haven't budgeted the appropriate amount of time for how many realistic submissions you think you're going to get through in that process as well.

15:13And that can totally blow up the whole rest of your development process easily. Kind of going off of that a little bit, I proactively got us into a little bit of a nugget, but what makes R &D go well and what makes it challenging? You know, do you have any thoughts on strengths and weaknesses of where you can really help guide the process? Yeah, I think with my role changing with TrueBar versus my previous company, I think it's always important to plan ahead. I think about, hey, what do I need to be successful in four weeks from now, not just tomorrow or today? So thinking, hey, I need this flavor from this flavor house.

15:47I need to reach out now for January 1st. So making sure that you're planning ahead, whether that's using a calendar or AI or whatever it may be these days, there's so many ways to do so. And not just trying to keep it all up here because we're all human. We're going to forget stuff. It's such the gut reaction to do that because the thought of you're like, the amount of project management that needs to go on to avoid that is staggering. yep and also it's communication at the end of the day is we all work for someone so making sure that i'm communicating with you know my boss my team to make sure that hey here's what i have going on this week here's my plans this you know makes sense to you we aligned so i think my dad always taught me like this week he will gets oiled the more you communicate the better i think there's never too much of a good thing within reason so communication planning and then just making sure that you have all your documentation in order you know reaching out to suppliers getting all the specs and nutritionals and stuff like that to make sure that whatever the macro targets are for the finished product that you're attaining those and not realizing after fact like oh wait this is 10 calories too high i gotta go back and kind of fix my mistake behind the scenes that doesn't look good for anyone so kind of slow down to speed up great point yeah reworking an existing formulation you already got to approval is what nightmares are literally made of what do you think kind of going off this too.

17:01What do you think operators should know about R &D that they tend to miss? Where do you feel like people kind of have the biggest trip ups or mistakes that happen that you've seen over and over again or that you think are the most common pitfalls? I think we've said it a couple of times, but focusing too much just on the flavor or the texture, you got to think about, obviously, we need to sell this product, but if it doesn't run, we can't sell it. So I've seen products in my past where it was focused on like honey and honey is a big thing and you have the clean, you know, no sugar added space right now.

17:32And it's great, super good for you, as long as you have moderate to small amount of it. But they were so focused on the functional benefits of the honey that the amount in the formula was too high that it would not run. And it failed, and it did not look good for that brand. So making sure you're thinking about the manufacturability of that co-man or whether you're self-manufacturing, do I have the right equipment in place? The co-man willing to invest or co-invest in equipment to make sure that we can partner together to run the products well. And then, you know, communication styles, planning, thinking about working backwards of like, okay, here's where it's launching in the stores in two years.

18:05What do I need? You know, get there. It's not just formula. It's pricing, it's lead times, it's MOQs, it's a lot of different things. So there's never just one thing that makes something fail or succeed. It's 10 ,000 different things. I think that's daunting for a lot of people, but the more you can either think about that yourself or reach out to the experts that know about each of those different aspects is the best way to do it. Yeah. And to your point on kind of like the functional benefits or the vision, I think the other place where that gets challenging is it's so cross-functional across departments.

18:36And when you have someone in brand management or on the marketing side thinking that they've got like the marketing story and then packaging is already in the works in the background and you already are thinking about the product marketing and what's going to be on pack. And then you're kind of re-engineering your formulation to meet those PAC standards. It's like a chicken and an egg sometimes because I get it. You can't blow up your lead times by fully getting through formulation and then starting on PAC. And there's the whole compatibility component and stability component that you want to get through your quality testing together as well.

19:10But I do think it's such a hard dance to make sure that order of operations is right, where your North Star is always on a good product and you don't necessarily have claims or pack running really important formulation decisions. And at the same time, you're not so tunnel vision on formulation that your lead time doubled because you started pack so much later and that whole process wasn't able to run in parallel. It is the dance we are all always doing. I think especially as a founder myself, like I've run into that headache so many times but it is easier to rework artwork on pack people for sure that is true yeah but then it's if you're doing constant pack changes every month or every quarter gets to be a lot to manage and then you're having like different version numbers and like wait i still have version two over here what about version one can we use this is it good just creates headaches for everyone so the more you can plan ahead and align on what the plans are for packaging is better.

20:10Yeah, I totally agree. In a perfect world, it's like everyone makes no changes. It's all perfect and it all goes in order. And that literally happens 0 % of the time. Exactly. There's always change. Change is always guaranteed. Yeah. It's how you roll with it. What's something that went wrong one time now that we're talking about this and what did you do to fix it? And how do you think someone can approach when something starts going off the rails and get it back on track quickly? Yeah. You know, I think there's different ways of thinking about it. But But in the past, I used to think, oh, it's the formula.

20:38You have to change the formula because it's not running well. Formula changes should be the last resort. I think it's looking at different ingredients, looking at temperature, looking at mixing methods or mixing process. Mixing, as I've always said in my past, is mixing matters. Order of addition. Hey, we have been mixing this way. Wets first, then dries. Let's try dries first and wets and see what that does. Just be willing to think outside the box and not be so tied to the typical process you've tried in the past. and just try different things until it works. And if none of those work, then okay, maybe it's a formula change.

21:10But that's the last thing you want to do because then you're putting your packaging, your order of ingredients at risk. And that could be an issue down the road. So thinking about in-process control stuff. Yeah, that's such a great point. And honestly, I've run into that myself too. Even your like RPMs of what you're mixing at can make such a huge difference. And I've run into something like that as well where the ingredient didn't need to change, But changing ingredient suppliers from small batch to large batch had, even though it was the same ingredient, we were working with a sterile alcohol.

21:43It had the biggest impact on texture and product performance and experience. I could not figure out what was going on small batch to large batch for the life of me. And then we reoriented the ingredients to the original suppliers from benchmark standards and it fixed it. And it's just sometimes it's something as little as like you just needed to dial in where you were getting something from or quality differences across ingredient suppliers vary. I mean, the world of possibilities of what could be impacting. I mean, we're talking about chemistry, like the world of possibilities of what could be impacting something.

22:22There's infinite variables. And I agree, not knee jerking, not getting panicked and too quickly throwing the baby out with the bathwater is really important. Yeah, we've seen that so many times in the past where vegan protein bar company and we've changed suppliers on protein powders and like didn't really think about it. It's like, why is it so different? Like, oh, yeah. You go back to the original and you're like, oh, OK, there's where we thought it would be. That's the actual, you know, ideal gold standard bar right there. You think about like, yeah, there's, hey, it's brown rice protein, but they could be getting it from a different place in that country.

22:52We're using different processing equipment on their ends. And that affects the finished product, which affects your finished product. It's a domino effect. So thinking about that can be kind of crazy, but it's super important. Make sure you're taking accurate notes as to like, hey, this spec was a little bit higher. Say the spec is 80 % protein. There could be a range because manufacturing is not a perfect science. There's a range that way that they can protect their business. So seeing that change in production can make or break your formula. So understanding, hey, we need to adjust based on this spec that day is important while keeping in mind nutritional profile and macros and food safety and all that.

23:28It's so true. And I think, I don't know if you feel this way, I've never been in your shoes, but I could imagine like not every founder and not every organization, especially a larger one is in the level of weeds that you're in. You know, I'm a solo founder. I have like a high touch on everything I'm doing. I'm very involved in the formulation process. So those decisions and information flow so fluidly in my organization. I could very easily see how you have this knowledge and someone else who's making approvals on something doesn't. And then you're like two ships passing in the night and a million different things are going on and everyone's worried about something.

24:04So I think it's also just the more you sponge up information and the more understanding you have of the process and the more that it's communicated. I could see that also being like really helpful in these circumstances for sure. Yeah, you got to stay curious for sure. Always ask questions. If you don't know something, find someone who does and reach out to them and ask for help as long as you're not trying to make it transactional. Definitely. We'll be right back. Are you going to crush it on Amazon this year? It's such an important channel, but it's so hard to do alone. And most agencies are a total ripoff.