The new CPG moat

+ how Fishwife scaled 15k new doors with a three person ops team

Hello hello!

We love to share the exciting, consumer-facing headlines: the raise, the retail doors, the buzzy collab. But this week, we’re going one layer deeper. Because right now, the brands winning at-scale aren’t just the ones with the cleverest marketing—they’re the ones who figured out the back end.

Fishwife is one of the most admired brands in the industry—the rare brand that grew an entire (previously stale) category and effectively catalyzed a cultural moment.

But we didn’t know the actual story, the one about the three-person ops team running a full omnichannel supply chain… while the brand was scaling into 15,000 new retail doors in under a year.

We spoke with Jack Delano, Fishwife’s Head of Operations (and first employee!), to walk us through exactly how they pulled it off, from the wildly inefficient Google Sheet era to discovering Jampack AI—the platform that saved them 40+ hours per week and turned 10-minute PO processing into one second.

The brands you admire have a back end. Here’s a rare look at one of them, thanks to our friends at Jampack AI!!

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News from the week

This week, Habiza—the Gen Z-founded hummus brand—raised $2.5M from investors including Tinder co-founder Sean Rad and Foodbeast Ventures, with plans to further expand into national retail channels like Albertsons and Target. The brand has become the fastest-growing hummus brand in the Natural Channel, achieving the third-largest dollar growth in its category (SPINS).

But there’s one part of this raise announcement that’s especially worth digging into: Habiza’s new exclusive partnership with Seeds n Snacks, a domestic tahini producer, to shore up their supply chain.

Hummus—like so many other globally-inspired CPG categories—is getting crowded. The domestic hummus market is predicted to reach $1.7 billion by 2030, growing at a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 8.98% from now until then. And the number of brands (and private-label copycats) entering the category has been relentless.

When a shelf is that contested, a great product only gets you so far. At some point, the brands that win aren’t just the ones with the best flavor or the coolest branding—they’re the ones that can actually keep up with a market that doesn’t wait around for a co-packer to free up capacity.

Getting ahead of vulnerabilities. With ongoing volatility in the Middle East and tariff pressure hitting imported goods, any hummus brand still dependent on international suppliers is sitting on a vulnerability they may not fully feel yet—but will. Habiza is getting ahead of it. A domestic tahini partnership means they can move faster on pricing, respond to supply disruptions before they become stockouts, and build retail relationships with the kind of reliability that actually earns more shelf space over time.

This instinct—to get closer to the source of what you make, whether that means locking in a domestic supplier or going further and owning production outright—is showing up everywhere right now. The underlying logic is the same: the further upstream you can extend your control, the harder you are to disrupt.

Some recent examples from other fast-growing brands:

• Little Sesame (another hummus competitor) opened a 23,600-square-foot production facility in Maryland in January, capable of processing up to 400,000 pounds of hummus per week

• Seven Sundays acquired its longtime manufacturing partner Birch Packaging to bring production fully in-house after a decade of working together

• Oats Overnight built in-house manufacturing from day one, and it’s become a core part of their brand story. They now operate two owned facilities in Ohio and Arizona—and just raised a $35M Series B to keep expanding them. Their COO has been explicit about the logic: controlling production from procurement to fulfillment increases resilience and lets them iterate on product in a way a co-packer relationship never could.

The co-packer model makes sense, until it doesn’t. It’s flexible, low-commitment, and lets you focus on the brand while someone else handles production. But at a certain stage of growth, that flexibility becomes a constraint. Lead times, minimums, quality control issues that compound as volume increases—what worked at $3M in revenue starts breaking down at $30M.

And then there’s the private-label of it all. Private label sales hit a record $282.8 billion in 2025, growing at nearly three times the rate of national brands—and store brands have outpaced national brand growth for three consecutive years. Retailers are investing in premium, innovation-forward private label programs, and more than 80% of consumers now rate store brand quality as equal to or better than national brands. And for brands that control their supply chain, private label’s rise is actually an opportunity.

• A locked domestic supplier or owned facility means you can pursue white-label contracts with retailers, pitch food service operators who need volume and reliability, and move into adjacent formats without waiting on someone else’s calendar.

• You stop being just a brand on a shelf and start being infrastructure—a supplier in your own right.

The brands that don’t control their production are the ones most exposed: squeezed between private label eating into their retail velocity and a supply chain that limits how fast they can respond to any of it.

Supply chain control has gone from an operational milestone to a competitive signal—something retail buyers and investors increasingly read as a proxy for how serious a brand is about scaling.

• The conventional CPG playbook says focus on the brand and outsource everything else. Build the story, find a co-packer, let someone else worry about production. For a long time, that worked.

• Private label has killed that logic. When store brands are winning on quality, value, and increasingly on innovation, the brand alone isn’t the moat anymore.

• What these companies are betting—and what Habiza’s Seeds n Snacks partnership signals—is that in 2026, the brand is the supply chain.

Authenticity, quality control, speed to market, the ability to actually deliver on what you’re promising at scale… those aren’t minor operational details; they are the product.

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CPG & Consumer Goods

• The formula for success. Little Spoon, the #1 DTC baby and kids’ food brand (which recently launched nationwide in Target), is entering the highly competitive baby formula market—offering USDA Organic options made with grass-fed whole milk from New Zealand

  • The formula debuts exclusively on the brand’s site and goes beyond U.S. regulations: Little Spoon is the first U.S. formula brand to publicly publish its heavy metal testing limits and batch-level results, with a lead limit stricter than the EU’s own threshold.

  • The context: only 9% of U.S. parents say they trust baby and kids’ food brands, and the FDA doesn’t currently require manufacturers to routinely test infant formula for heavy metals at all.EU standards, by contrast, mandate ingredients like DHA and set stricter contaminant limits—which is why “EU-inspired” has become such a credible trust signal for formula brands.

  • Nara Organics ran a very similar playbook first. Launched in July 2025, Nara became the first FDA-registered, USDA-certified organic whole milk formula to meet both U.S. and EU food safety standards. It went from DTC launch straight into Target nationwide by January 2026. (We recently recorded a Brand’s Biggest Fan episode of The Curious Consumer with Nara’s founder—keep your eyes peeled for its launch!!)

  • Little Spoon’s formula entry is less about formula revenue and more about owning the parent relationship from day one. CEO Ben Lewis told Modern Retail: “Our goal isn’t to be the biggest player in formula. It’s to be the only end-to-end feeding solution for parents.”

  • The brand already has products for every stage through age 6—so a parent won at the formula stage is a parent who stays. This category is uniquely trust-dependent: decisions are made under enormous emotional pressure, with almost no ability to independently verify competing claims, so a brand that earns trust during the formula purchase likely wins the whole feeding journey.

• As we said last week, beauty loves beverage. The lines between food and beauty continue to blur: Freaks of Nature, the clean performance skincare brand co-founded by pro surfer Kelly Slater, just dropped its Skin Support Electrolyte—a zero-sugar hydration powder with clinically studied ingredients for UV defense (yes, drinkable sunscreen!), skin barrier support, and gut health.

  

  can't make this sh*t up (source: Freaks of Nature)

  • The product goes beyond typical electrolytes, including hyaluronic acid, Vitamin C, and (of course) prebiotic fiber and featuring “ingredients shown to increase photoprotection and UV tolerance, reduce sunburn intensity caused by UVB radiation, and combat free radicals triggered by UV exposure.”

  • As the line between beauty and wellness continues to blur, with ingredients like collagen popularizing the concept of “drinking your skincare,” this isn’t entirely surprising—and we appreciate the fitness-focused bend over pure vanity.

• …and on the other side of the gut-skin axis: “Nutritional body care” brand Iota is expanding into Ulta and select Nordstrom locations. With culinary ingredients like white truffle and yuzu, and an emphasis on “microbiome balancing,” the body care brand seems to be at the forefront of multiple trends: the “skinification” of body care (we talk about that more here), the convergence of wellness and beauty, and gut health (you best bet this brand features prebiotics, too).

  • And it only makes sense that Ulta would bet on it. Ulta, as we’ve spoken about ad nauseam, is set on becoming the wellness destination.

• MORE. PROTEIN. SODA. Actor and wellness entrepreneur Matthew Postlethwaite (of Peaky Blinders fame) partnered with Suja Life co-founder Jeff Church to launch a protein soda, Proda. Unlike traditional protein beverages that target the fitness crowd, the brand explains, Proda aims to push protein into everyday life. It’s launching exclusively at Sprouts Farmers Market.

  • It’s interesting to see this brand explicitly emphasize that it’s for the everyday person, when similar recent launches and pre-launches subtly shared this same positioning (like SkyPop, Koia, Waavy, and Dirty Pop).

  • I actually got to try this one pre-launch and was very very impressed, I loved the green apple flavor! - Nate

• Why did it take them so long?! Kraft Mac & Cheese is (finally) rolling out PowerMac, a new entry with 17g of protein and 6g of fiber per serving, available in Original and White Cheddar flavors.

  • This is another example of how BigCo brands, despite having all the cash, tend to move too slowly to capitalize on trends. This delay has led Goodles, a high protein and fiber mac and cheese brand that launched in 2021, to command 6% of the boxed mac and cheese market in the US in just 5 years. And remember, Kraft was the first to sell boxed mac and cheese in 1937! They quite literally created the category.

• Big CPG continues to narrow focus. Unilever is in talks to sell its food business to McCormick as part of a broader shift toward higher-growth categories like beauty and personal care. Analysts value Unilever’s food division between €28 billion and €31 billion. It’s the latest move in a restructuring that’s been years in the making: Unilever already spun off its ice cream business last year, creating the largest standalone ice cream company in the world.

  • But this isn’t just a Unilever story. 2025 marked the year Big CPG collectively hit the reset button. Facing tariff pressures, economic uncertainty, and consumers who’ve made clear they won’t pay up for legacy brands just because they’re legacy brands, the industry reshuffled in a way we haven’t seen in decades:

  • Kraft Heinz tried splitting into two companies, Ferrero acquired WK Kellogg (Kellogg’s cereal business) for $3.1B, Mars acquired Kellanova for around $35B, Unilever spun off its ice cream business creating the largest standalone ice cream business, Kimberly-Clark acquired Kenvue, General Mills offloaded its yogurt business. The throughline: get focused or get left behind.

  • That impulse is showing up in how the holdouts are operating, too. Hershey just announced its ONE Hershey model, unifying its U.S. Sweet, Salty, and Protein businesses under a single commercial structure. The pitch is streamlined marketing and sharper category strategy—fewer silos, more coordinated bets on what Hershey is calling “next-generation snacking.” Whether that delivers or just sounds like a reorganization remains to be seen, but the direction is the same as everyone else: narrower focus, cleaner story.

• How dairy-free can still win. NECTAR, a non-profit initiative focused on accelerating the alternative protein industry, just released its 2026 Taste of the Industry report, the world’s largest public sensory analysis of 98 dairy-alternative products. Through blind taste tests, the report revealed, 27 dairy-free products have achieved taste parity with their dairy counterparts, with brands like Califia Farms and Silk leading the charge.

  • It’s exciting to see some emerging brands make make the list, too, like Maizly (corn milk), Ripple (pea milk—$17 million in new funding as of December 2025), and Milkadamia (recently launched its oat milk slices!).

  • It should come as no surprise, but the biggest opportunity for plant-based dairy alternatives is better R&D around taste. The report found that milk, the best-tasting category, has 15x higher market share than cheese, the worse-tasting category—which indicates that there’s a huge opp for brands willing to invest in taste innovation.

Retail

• Target is going big on baby. The retailer is rolling out redesigned “Baby Boutique” departments to nearly 200 stores—adding ~2,000 new products and a Baby Concierge service (powered by Tot Squad) offering one-on-one expert guidance by appointment.

  • The timing is deliberate: when BuyBuy Baby closed, 85% of its shoppers said they planned to switch to Target, and this is Target formally collecting on that. Both BuyBuy Baby and Babies ‘R’ Us are attempting comebacks, but neither has the physical footprint to compete at this scale. Baby is one of the few categories where in-store experience genuinely drove purchase decisions—and no one has filled that gap yet.

  • This is a wildly well-timed announcement for Little Spoon, which—as we shared above—is going all-in on baby with its new infant formula, and already has a relationship with Target as its first retail partner. We predict the formula will quickly be distributed in Target stores post-DTC launch.

Funding news

• The rise of K-Beauty. Korean skincare brand JiYu raised $6.5M to expand its U.S. presence and fund clinical research, tracking toward $70M revenue in 2026. Known for science-backed formulations like its K8-Rejuvenate™ toner pads and NAD+ anti-aging cream, JiYu develops products in Seoul with leading Korean manufacturers and sells via Amazon and TikTok Shop.

  • Some context: Social media has driven consumers—especially younger ones—to prioritize skincare routines and seek dermatological and tested solutions. Korean beauty delivers on this with innovation, novel formulations, and science-oriented skincare development, earning a global reputation for technologically sophisticated products.

  • From 2020 to 2024, South Korea’s cosmetics exports grew from $7.57 billion to $10.23 billion—a 35% increase over four years.

    

• Not your kids’ Shirley Temple. Sazerac acquires Dirty Shirley, a vodka-infused ready-to-drink cocktail brand capitalizing on Shirley Temple nostalgia. The acquisition adds to Sazerac’s massive 550+ brand portfolio—including Fireball and Buffalo Trace—as consumers seek grown-up versions of childhood favorites in the expanding RTD category.

  • The other side of this bet is nostalgia: consumers want their childhood favorites all grown up. Just look at all the brands offering Shirley Temple flavors this year (OLIPOP, Stiller,’s and more)! The playbook is showing up everywhere, because nostalgia comes with built-in emotional recognition and a previously built on product loyalty.

  • RTDs keep on winning in the US. The Distilled Spirits Council found that spirits-based RTDs posted 16.4% sales growth last year—making them the fastest-growing spirits category even as the broader alcohol market softened. Premixed cocktails hit $3.8 billion in sales, and spirits RTDs have more than doubled their market share since 2021.

  • The strategics are paying attention: Sazerac grabbed BuzzBallz in 2024 and now Dirty Shirley, while Anheuser-Busch paid ~$490M for BeatBox back in December. Consumers—especially younger ones—want convenient, flavored, grab-and-go drinks that don’t require a bartender or a recipe. That’s why we’re seeing countless brands with build internally or acquire these buzzy RTDs.

• Protein pizza is having a moment. Founders Row invested in Yough, a startup launching Greek yogurt-powered frozen pizzas in nearly 2,000 Target stores nationwide. The three flavors feature a protein-rich crust, aiming to disrupt the $7 billion frozen pizza market with improved nutrition and clean ingredients.

  • It’s one of several bets landing at once: Tattooed Chef is launching a cottage cheese crust pizza hitting Albertsons, Kroger, and Sprouts in March, delivering up to 23 grams of protein per serving Tasting Table. And Loopini—a startup making frozen pizza with lupini bean crust, boasting up to 54 grams of protein per pie—just hit Target shelves too.

  • Banza’s chickpea crust has been in the game for years. The crust has become the new battleground: cauliflower paved the way, and now every functional ingredient with a protein story is getting its shot at the freezer aisle.

• And in more frozen food funding news… Laoban, the brand known for its frozen Taiwanese dumplings (and has now expanded beyond dumplings!), raised $7 million to expand its footprint in the frozen aisle. With this funding, the brand plans to enhance its offerings and distribution.

  • Laoban is a combo of two categories that have seen a recent influx of funding and validation—frozen foods and global flavors—with recent raises from frozen brands like Evergreen ($15M) and Bachan’s $400M acquisition.

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This week on The Curious Consumer, we sat down with Jen Burke, Faire’s Chief Revenue Officer, to dig into some fascinating data on beauty & wellness and learn about the future of retail. This episode is chock full of fascinating insights for brands and definitely worth a listen →

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