Shelf to Scale

Alice Grey waited 16 hours for chocolate to come out of a 20K machine. It never did.Here's how she fixed it, got into Whole Foods and 140 stores, and why her first hire tripled the business.Alice Grey is the founder of Mindful Monk, dark chocolate squares sweetened with monk fruit juice concentrate and sold in the fridge section. She started making them in her kitchen in 2018 while pregnant with her second daughter and managing gestational diabetes.Today Mindful Monk is in about 140 stores across Canada, Whole Foods is its number one store, and she just launched Cacao Blends, a single-serve hot chocolate line.Key takeaways:Whole Foods lists through category reviews. After approval it took another 6 to 8 months to hit shelves, so plan for over a year.If you make it in-house, retailers like Whole Foods and Sobeys will ask for a food safety audit. Get a consultant or lean on founder friends. Alice passed her first one with 94%.Co-packers wanted her to swap ingredients, so she kept her chocolate in-house. For hot chocolate she found a co-man who used her ingredients.Vetting a co-man: price, MOQs, which brands they've worked with, and your gut.Your first hire should take over the task eating most of your time that you can train someone to do. For Alice that was production.Find Mindful Monk:Website: https://mindfulmonk.co/Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/mindfulmonkchocolate

Being in Whole Foods won't get your product into an ethnic grocery store.Aaqib Usmani, CEO at Tasteport, explains what actually does.How do CPG brands sell to ethnic and independent grocers, and why are those stores losing $210K in profit a year per location?Aaqib works with the international grocers that serve North America's Asian, Latin and African communities, and his platform holds a catalog of over 15,000 SKUs. In this conversation he breaks down how CPG founders should approach ethnic grocery stores: why trust beats sales stats, why store-by-store visits beat Zoom calls, why real customer content outperforms influencer content. He also shares the number behind his business: by his estimate, cultural grocers lose about $210,000 in profit per location every year to expiry, redundant labor and poor product discovery. If you are a CPG or FMCG founder trying to get on shelf in independent and specialty grocery, this is the playbook.GUESTAaqib Usmani, TasteportLinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/aaqibusmani/Website: https://tasteport.com/SHELF TO SCALEWeekly conversations with CPG and FMCG founders on distribution, retail and scaling. Hosted by Devesh Tilokani.#CPG #EthnicGrocery #RetailDistribution

He made ice cream out of cottage cheese. It's now headed for 1,500 stores.How do you build a frozen category that didn't exist, then get Sprouts, Whole Foods, and a 500-store retail win in your first year?Smear Case is the first and only frozen cottage cheese ice cream.Half the fat, half the calories, and the most protein of any pint on the shelf. Joe coined and trademarked the word "Froco" before he'd sold a single unit, won the Albertsons Innovation Launchpad pitch at Expo West (and 500 stores with it), and is closing in on 1,500 doors nationwide. If you're a CPG founder trying to create a category instead of fighting for shelf space in an existing one, this conversation is the playbook.GUESTJoe Rotondo - Smear CaseLinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/josephrrotondo/Website: https://smearcase.com/SHELF TO SCALEWeekly conversations with CPG and FMCG founders on distribution, retail, and scaling. Hosted by Devesh Tilokani | Silvertop Trading.

The buyer conversation most CPG founders get completely wrong — and what to say instead.Opal Rowe started Stush Patty during COVID, delivering hot patties out of her car. Today she's in Whole Foods, RABBA, and four provinces across Canada. In this episode, she breaks down exactly how she got there: two rejections from RABBA before getting inlanding Whole Foods at her very first trade showthe co-packing nightmare behind a product that looks simple.the one mindset shift that changed how she talks to buyers.If you're building a frozen CPG brand or any retail brand, this is the episode.Guest: Opal Rowe, Founder of Stush PattyWebsite: https://stushpatties.com/Instagram: @stushpattyNew episodes every week.Subscribe for conversations with CPG founders on distribution, retail and the real mechanics of scaling a physical product brand.

Miriam built Delicious Without Gluten from her basement to coast-to-coast distribution, an 8-year Boston Pizza contract, and a Wegmans pretzel that their own buyers couldn't tell was gluten-free.In this episode:Why the word "gluten-free" killed her Costco demo sales (and what she said instead)How a distributor exclusivity blocked her from Metro for years, and why she's still standing while that competitor isn'tThe pivot from retail to food service that saved her business after COVIDThe Wegmans private-label deal that almost died when Trump's tariffs hitThe one financial mistake she made on day one that cost her 13 years of clean dataMiriam started in fashion, moved into packaging design for food importers, then opened a peanut-free bakery for her daughter. When her two kids were diagnosed with celiac, she rebuilt everything from scratch. The factory had to have drains in the floor and lockers outside the production room. The certification took six months. The pretzel that pulled her into retail came from a kitchen experiment her kids actually wanted to eat. If you're a CPG founder who has been told the same retail playbook for years, this episode is the other side of the argument.Guest links:LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/miriampearl/Website: https://www.deliciouswithout.com/Shelf to Scale is a weekly podcast for CPG and FMCG founders navigating distribution, retail, and scaling. Hosted by Devesh Tilokani.

David, 21 years old, just built three full UGC ad campaigns for Olipop, Feastables, and Rhode in under an hour. No creators. No studio. Just one product image and an AI prompt.In this episode, you will learn:Why the $150 to $500 UGC creator model is officially deadThe Pixar trend that's flipping AI ad strategy on its head (it works because it doesn't try to look real)How Petco Labs is running 100% AI ads at scale, right nowThe "context rule" that's the difference between a viral ad and a broken oneThe 13 formats every physical product brand should be testingWhy one operator with AI now does the job of tenDavid, founder of StarPop AI, walks through live demos of Feastables Mr Beast bar ASMR ads, Olipop fridge-grab voiceovers, and Rhode lip balm cinematics, then breaks down a Petco Labs ad where every single frame was AI generated. If you sell a physical product and you're still paying $5,000 to test 10 ad hooks, this is the episode that ends that math.Guest links:David Ishag, co-founder of StarPop AITry Starpop - https://starpop.ai/?via=shelftoscaleLinks that David mentioned on the episodeClaude Prompting System YT video - https://youtu.be/f83UH-qmNUs?si=LQQN3jzw3cDjmsKqClaude Agent - https://starpop.ai/claude-agentShelf to Scale is a weekly podcast for CPG and FMCG founders navigating distribution, retail, and scaling. Hosted by Devesh Tilokani.

Daniel Carson almost deleted the email that put his cereal on the Artemis II mission.The Canadian Space Agency picked Goldy's strawberry lavender flavor and orders started pinging in during live TV interviews.This episode covers the real mechanics behind getting from a commercial kitchen to 700+ retail doors and a Walmart launch in August 2026. Daniel breaks down the CPG pricing chain most founders don't understand until they're already losing marginwhy getting INTO Sobeys was the easy partthe co-founder dynamic that lets him and his best friend Schreiber tell each other to shut up with zero ego. If you're building a consumer brand and trying to figure out what comes after the first listing, this one matters.GUEST Daniel Carson - Goldy'sWebsite: https://goldys.ca/Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/goldysjustrightTiktok: https://www.tiktok.com/@goldysjustrightSHELF TO SCALEWeekly conversations with CPG and FMCG founders on distribution, retail, and scaling. Hosted by Devesh Tilokani 00:00 — The email we thought was spam (from the Canadian Space Agency)06:24 — Running events at Drake's house every two weeks08:36 — The David's Tea of oatmeal that almost existed14:14 — Mixing oatmeal in a commercial kitchen until 2 AM17:41 — How Sobeys said yes before we'd even launched19:27 — The pricing mistake that kills most CPG brands34:20 — Watching our cereal launch into space39:42 — Why Walmart in August is the real test45:25 — The one thing I'd tell myself on day one

For a month in 2025, a Dubai chocolate brand outsold Cadbury Dairy Milk in the UK . They launched just months earlier, with nine flavours, zero retailhistory, and a founder who'd failed six times before getting here.In this episode, we discuss: The distributor strategy that contradicts everything the big FMCG brands taught him and why it got Meltz to 48 countries fasterWhat a signed distribution agreement actually signals about the person across the table (it's not what most founders think)The story of a founder who handed over North and South America before selling a single unit and the 16 months he'll never get backWhy building a premium product isn't enough — and the brutal lesson six failed brands finally taught himThe exact threshold that told Mohit it was time to stop contract manufacturing and buy the factory outrightMohit Mirpuri spent 15 years in FMCG trading before building Meltz — a Dubai chocolate brand now in 48 countries with 12 million bars sold and 62 SKUs in its portfolio. He launched in four months, hit 200,000 bars a week in the UK alone, and reached the 12 million bar milestone by February 2025. This episode is the unfiltered version of how that happened — andwhat almost stopped it.Guest links:- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/meltz_dubai/- Website: https://meltzdubai.com/Shelf to Scale is a weekly podcast for consumer brand founders navigating distribution, retail, and international scaling. Hosted by Devesh Tilokani.