Melatonin-free sleep supplement + the hottest home fragrance brand
+ grocery shopping with the founder of Culture Pop
Happy Friday friends!
We’ve been curious about something lately: what are the coolest people in CPG actually shopping for themselves? So, we started a fun new series to find out (with the help of our incredible intern, Natalie!).
ICYMI, we’ve been going grocery shopping with some pretty cool folks recently—and this week, we had an especially fun guest take us through his weekly shop: the Tom First, Founder of Culture Pop (and former co-founder of Nantucket Nectars)!
We’ll be putting these out more regularly, so if you know someone in the NYC area whose grocery cart is worth a peek, email us at hello@expresscheckout.co!
P.S. We’d love to hear from YOU 🫵: if you have any feedback on our recent content, ideas for future content/events/activations, or just want to tell Nate he looks pretty in his most recent TikTok, please fill out this quick form!
With that, let’s get into this week’s pickups →
Nate’s Pickups:
Nose Dive (aka one of my new favorite home fragrance brands)
There’s truly nothing better than finding the perfect home fragrance solutions that just work for you: candles, room sprays, diffusers…all of that jazz. And now, I have another one to add to my ongoing roster of fragrance brands that I love. On top of Nose Dive, I’m also a huge fan of Ranger Station, which I’ve talked about before, and Realm, which is more of a Febreze competitor. And now we have Nose Dive!
I actually first heard about Nose Dive from an event I attended. I got one of their candles as part of their gift bags. It turns out they work with a publicist friend of ours, Morgan Kilmer (she’s amazing)! She invited me to their launch event for their new room sprays where I got to test out the rest of their candle line up and all the room sprays that had just launched. I’m now a huge fan of the entire brand.
I currently am using the Nightcap candle and the Home sick and Soft Petrichor Room Mists in my home.
Quick Facts: Nose Dive is a Minnesota-based fragrance brand that creates high-end candles and room mists designed to capture specific moods and nostalgic memories. Their scents focus on “sensory anchors” like the smell of a slow morning or a rainy afternoon.
Reasons to love:
A scent for everyone. A lot of fragrance companies don’t have a really good variety of scents. Many of them may have one or two that smell really good, but not the entire line. Each of Nose Dive’s scents feels crafted in a thoughtful, unique way. It’s not the same scents as everyone else, they feel designed for the moment.
These sprays LAST. My god do these room sprays work so well. I feel that with some of these new, cleaner brands they don’t always perform as well as they should. The smells might not linger or they might leave oily stains on furniture and linens. This is one of the first room sprays I feel not only lasts a long time but smells great too. I learned why it works so well, it has alcohol in it. A lot of the new “cleaner” fragrance brands avoid that one ingredient. But it provides so much to the efficacy of the product! Alcohol is commonly used in fragrance dispersal, it’s not a bad ingredient. It helps ensures spray disperses and evaporates quickly without leaving a greasy residue and acts as a preservative to prevent microbial growth.
But the products are still vegan, paraben and sulfate free!
The perfect middle ground. Nose Dive sits in a perfect middle ground of brand and price. Many products are positioned either higher or lower, or more masculine or more feminine. These products occupy that same middle ground, making them accessible to a broad audience who want something that looks good, smells good, and doesn’t break the bank.
Where to buy: Online
Jenna’s Pickup:
Mary & Jane - Dreamy Melts
Over the past few weeks, I feel like I’ve been having the same convo with different people on loop: everyone‘s struggling with falling asleep, staying asleep, or getting enough sleep more broadly. Whether you blame it on some astrological, inescapably moon-derived funk or (less likely) the blue light constantly pouring into our eyes, sleep feels trickier for many of us these days.
Personally, I’ve been struggling with the staying asleep thing—which is unfortunate as someone who needs 8+ hours of sleep for basic functioning, but also is literally afraid of melatonin (shoutout to my fellow melatonin-induced vivid nightmare girlies <3). Most sleep supplements either contain melatonin or kinda just… don’t work. Mary & Jane’s Dreamy Melts, though, are my new favorite exception to that rule.
I was first introduced by Mary & Jane last year, when we were working on a piece about THC. It was the first “microdosed” THC product I’d heard of, specifically positioning THC as a wellness/lifestyle product for an older population. I’ve loved following the brand since then, and was so thrilled to feature them in our IN SEASON event in the THC trend section!
Quick Facts: Mary & Jane was founded by two moms and best friends who wanted to find a better way to incorporate cannabis into their lifestyle and wellness routines. Their Dreamy Melts are a calming blend of cannabinoids, botanicals, and minerals designed to help you unwind, fall asleep faster, and wake up refreshed—made without melatonin.
Reasons to love:
The melt format. This is the first product I’ve tried in a “melt” format, which is a small tablet that melts in your mouth. It dissolves gently—a far more calming action than swallowing a hard pill—and has a light, lovely cherry flavor. And because melts absorb through the mucous membranes in your mouth, you don’t have to wait to digest them to feel the effects (unlike a gummy).
A thoughtful layering of ingredients. Dreamy was designed for the reality that sleep is complicated, so the ingredients address more than just one potential cause of sleep challenges. Made with CBN (cannabinol: a mildly psychoactive, sedative byproduct of aged THC) and a microdose of THC (just 1mg, it won’t get you high!), these were designed to support your endocannabinoid system and ease you into sleep. The addition of tart cherry and magnesium reduce inflammation and calm the nervous system, while reishi mushroom reduces stress.
CBN is the real powerhouse here. In human clinical trials, participants taking CBN experienced meaningfully fewer nighttime awakenings and less overall sleep disturbance compared to placebo, with no impact on how they felt the next day.
Side note: Because these only contain 1mg of THC, they’re legal for domestic travel!
They actually work. The promise of a better sleep and “no grogginess” is a big one—especially for those who have relied on melatonin or higher-dose THC products in the past. But for me, these actually uphold their claims. I take one melt ~30 minutes before bed, reliably sleep through the night, and wake up feeling incredibly well-rested and refreshed—sans the melatonin nightmares.
Where to buy: Mary & Jane’s website!
This week we sit down with Stacey Hartnett, SVP of Marketing at Chomps to talk about their biggest product launch yet: chicken sticks.
Then, we dive into the week’s biggest CPG news. The L-theanine and caffeine combo taking over the functional beverage space, colostrum soda, the booming luxury laundry detergent category, and more. Let’s get into it! →
Thanks for reading! Anything you think we should try for an upcoming edition of Express Checkout? Email us at hello@expresscheckout.co
You guys are the best!!