Jordan Buckner (00:00)
Many of the new products launching today are selling some sort of functionality, going like really high protein, low sugar, energy, sleep benefits, but there's actually a growing return to making foods that prioritize flavor over just purely function, although that's always gonna be part of it with any good food. Of course, they're nutritious, but they have to actually taste good too. So when Mac Villarreal started I Eat My Greens, he wanted to make vegetables something people actually want to eat.

And that mindset has taken them from just an idea for a soup brand, Rooted in Family Cooking, to the shelves at Sprouse Wegmans and Fresh Time and More. And getting on the shelf is hard, but the real challenge is actually selling off of the shelf once you are there. So I invited him on today to really talk through the journey and share tools and strategies that he's using to drive retail velocity and get noticed in the category that has kind of grown stale over the years.

And also just wanted to make a note that this episode's sponsor is Retail Media IQ, which helps brands drive sales and velocity through Instacart, Walmart, and Whole Foods digital ads. And we'll be hearing from Matt from Retail Media IQ a little bit later. But Mac I want to invite you onto the podcast, so welcome, good to see you.

Mac Villarreal (01:13)
Hey, it's great to see you Jordan.

Jordan Buckner (01:14)
So I'd love for you to share a little bit about what I Eat My Greens is just as a product to give people a little bit of a context of what the product is.

Mac Villarreal (01:22)
Sure, eat my greens as a line of refrigerated, clean label soups.

Jordan Buckner (01:26)
That's awesome. And tell me a little bit about the kind of founding story. So you started with the goal of making vegetables, something people actually wanted to eat. What did that look like in the early days and what really prompted you to kind of start this as a CPG brand?

Mac Villarreal (01:42)
Sure. I found a problem that was more a personal problem. But I realized it was not just me. That people, of course, we all want to eat better. We all want to eat healthy food. But real life gets in the way. Time to cook. Too many processed, ultra-processed options out there. Just easy and convenient to just grab and go at it.

And then some of the healthy food just doesn't taste good. It just doesn't, that's why we reach for the other kind of food. And that's frustrating because we all know we should be in better, but it's hard to find those options that really fit into your life.

and I believe that that trade-off shouldn't exist and you should not be having to choose between what's good for you and what actually tastes good and that's really where I, my greens came in as an idea to pursue about five years ago.

Jordan Buckner (02:36)
That's awesome. Talk to me a little bit about what the soup category looked like when you're thinking about starting a brand, right? And what did you kind of see on shelf that you were responding to?

Mac Villarreal (02:47)
Yeah, of course we've seen the canned soup since before World War II. So it's been a long soup, it's been there, but it has lacked that home-cooked quality flavor. My grandmother used to make soups from scratch, right? And I was fortunate to grow up with home-cooked food, full of flavor.

made with care, but I actually used to hate vegetables. So I realized that through soup, mainly, it's the way I was eating healthier, better, more veggies. And then I moved from Mexico to the US, became a dad. Life just gets busier and crazier and didn't have time to cook. Just the options out there didn't feel authentic, real food like I was used to.

and that made me go at the farmers market with soup and try out if that would be something that people would really care about and value, making that same feeling of comfort, of feeling good after you eat food, that food is actually fuel, makes us feel better. So that's how it all started and that's why I saw an opportunity specifically in soups.

Jordan Buckner (03:52)
So a lot of those options are canned. There aren't very many refrigerated soup options in a lot of grocery stores, right? I think sometimes they'll have, there's jars of soup, sometimes a store brand, or think Panera had a couple of their plastic tubs of soup, but a lot of consumers may not go to the refrigerated section looking for soup. And so how did you get the...

educate consumers to really get in front of them so that they knew to look for your products like in that refrigerated aisle.

Mac Villarreal (04:24)
Yeah, yeah, it's a good question. I also come from the juice world where refrigerated juice has its greatest qualities over shelf stable. Just the freshness. mean, just the quality of the product when it's And we've, you it's been about once we're on shelf, I think it's a combination of promotions, the packaging and demos.

and I think the hardest one to do to nail is the promotions part because that's when things get either really expensive, scary and if the return of investment is not there then you know that's where I see brands or we've suffered

with a lot of expenses with not the return there and that can be scary and that's not a good thing.

Jordan Buckner (05:08)
Yeah, right, like it's hard because I can see why retailers might be interested because soup is a fairly stable volume category for stores, but it's mostly been based in this canned format. When you were talking to retailers, how did those conversations go and what was most exciting about why they wanted to bring on I Eat My Greens into their store? What really resonated with them?

Mac Villarreal (05:30)
Yeah, they understand what has happened in other categories. For example, the baby food category, right? Going to refrigerated fresh, the bar category, going also some great options on fresh. So there's certain categories that are naturally moving and succeeding in the fresh format because that's what the consumer is looking for.

healthier, like I was saying, real food that's not preserved or over-processed. So that's the value they are seeing and now I saw and people can notice it in their shopping basket.

Jordan Buckner (06:04)
I love that. And I think that, you know, love how you mentioned like, you know, promotions, trying to figuring out how to get people to find it on shelf is always really important. What have you kind of learned in terms of how people are shopping for soup in that category and what's the biggest driver for getting them to actually like stop, know this and try your products?

Mac Villarreal (06:22)
I think it's applicable to many categories, it's, mean demos are always good, but they're expensive and really hard to manage and to do. Like I said, packaging is very important, but and then it's promotions, either sales tags or digital. And I know today we're gonna talk about that digital promotions and that's been key for bringing in.

people, shoppers that didn't know about our product specifically and that they're digital shoppers and just it's important to be present at the right time for what they're trying to purchase and solve in their life that in my case it's eating real food in a very convenient way.

Jordan Buckner (07:02)
Yeah, I think that's one thing that's really interesting because trying to change the way someone shops in a grocery store is really challenging, especially when they're used to like walking into the store. A lot of times it's moms, they're like busy. They may or may not have the kids. Like I go shopping with my kids all the time and like sometimes we're in discovery mode, but sometimes we're like looking for a product and I'll walk past literally thousands of products and not look at them at all. And so it's so hard to kind of stop and change behavior in the store. That's why demos and sometimes promotions.

work, but I've been really fascinated about how some of these digital platforms are changing how people are shopping for different products in the store, right? Whereas before if you wanted soup, someone might go and like look, okay, where's the soup aisle? That might be their first thought. It didn't go and there's a bunch of canned options, but if you're in the fresh section of the store, maybe buy produce or some have like the juices, that might be hard for someone to think about. But if they're using a digital platform like Instacart or

or kind of buying to have delivery or pick up or one of those options, if they type in soup, it can show you both the canned and the fridger fridger of the options in kind of one search. And so I want to bring Matt in from Retail Media IQ because I love kind of how you and the team are really thinking about this space and how it's evolving. And you work with, I my greens kind of as a client and brought them on. I'd love to hear from your perspective, like what this digital retail media landscape looks like. I know some people are familiar,

delivery every week. Other people have maybe never tried it and so they'll kind of what that landscape really looks like.

Mateusz Drela (08:35)
Yeah, absolutely. I mean, it's a

very fascinating, super quickly evolving landscape. It started with Amazon and now essentially every single major retailer has their own advertising platform that allows brands that sell through that particular retailer to promote their products to shoppers. And then on top of that, have like we mentioned Instacart and other delivery platforms which kind of sit in the middle or on top of these and facilitate the shopping between

the retail experience. And they allow

for advertising as well. this really is a very, very important change, especially for CPG brands and especially for growing for young brands. know, before, you know, as Mac mentioned, I mean, you really had a limited amount of choices when it comes to promoting your product. You could do in-store promos, you could do trials, you could do couponing, things like that, all things which are expensive and there is...

it's difficult to see an immediate return

investment. If you wanted to digital, your options were even more limited. mean, you could do social media, but then promoting a product like Max

say ⁓ Instagram or TikTok, okay, you can get some awareness, but translating that awareness into sales velocity, that's just...

it's a very difficult thing to do. then retail media actually allows you to see, I place an ad. I place that ad to a shopper that was looking for a specific product, let's say organic soup or tomato

case. And we see that we spend X dollars on ads and got Y dollars in sales. And not only that, we can also

work with it, we can optimize it, we can make it better. it's a very, very important development.

Jordan Buckner (10:16)
So talk to me a little bit about when you started working with I Eat My Greens, what opportunities did you see for how this retail media advertising through retailers platforms could really help out Mac and the company?

Mateusz Drela (10:29)
Yeah, so when we started working with Mac, he was already actively advertising on Instacart.

this is a very, very common story. The advertising was working well. I mean, was delivering sales.

But the economics were really working out as well as, in this case, Mac would really have liked to. So our challenge was to take a channel that's already been proven that it can be effective, but actually make it

for his brand specifically, for his unit economics, for his sort of, ⁓ know,

costs and margin levels so that this doesn't become just an advertising cost that might pay off at some point in the future, but it becomes an ongoing engine where every dollar invested is actually a profit, and that profit can be reinvested into more customer acquisition.

Jordan Buckner (11:22)
No, I think that's so important. Mac, to bring it back to you, ⁓ when you started doing some of this advertisement yourself, did you set it up? And what was it like when you went through yourself to start using some of these ad platforms?

Mac Villarreal (11:37)
Yes, mean, Instacart makes it pretty easy to set up as far as just automatic and don't do anything, but it's not the most efficient, so I knew that was...

things that we can do better. That's always been the case as a company. It's like, let's find a way to be better. can do better. And I knew we could. The results were not a hundred percent there. So that's why I got, I talked to Matt and really, really easy to talk to the team at RMIQ and set our goals together, understand what we're looking for.

and really build that confidence that okay we're going to try this because it sounds like it's a good idea we're going to get what we're looking for it's going to be a win-win

that has been the case.

Jordan Buckner (12:20)
So it sounds like you, we talked through your problem of like you have this really great product, but it's outside maybe of how consumers are typically shopping. There's an opportunity that maybe you reach them in a clearer way through digital. You tried it yourself and it it sounded like it was like pretty easy to set up with like going fine, but not done to like the maximum amount that you probably could of and is that kind of what led you to reach out and to look for help?

Mac Villarreal (12:44)
Yeah, yeah, we're a very lean team, right? So we're not experts in digital. Digital is its own world and there's a lot of shoppers that only shop digital so we're never going to reach them no matter what product or...

but it's hard to reach them no matter what product or where we were in the store. So I knew we had to capture that digital shopper and we had it to make efficient and smart. And we are not, we don't have the digital market expert on our team. So, you know, here's Matt, the expert and let's see what he can bring to the table and ⁓ things have worked well.

Jordan Buckner (13:17)
I was gonna say, tell me about what improvements you've seen from working with Matt and his team. Have you noticed more sales that you've been able to drive from it, better kind of ad efficiency, what's been kind of the biggest impact?

Mac Villarreal (13:30)
Yeah, optimizing, for example, keywords, like just the whole Instacart algorithm to get the better returns.

there's things that they have that I could let Matt talk about the technical stuff that make just the raws higher you know everything all the KPI's just improve

things that are much better done with expertise than just turning on the automatic algorithm that Instacart offers

Jordan Buckner (13:55)
Yeah, so Matt, then what did you notice about some of those changes that you were able to identify and make to the account and what were you able to accomplish and what kind of impact did you have on the business?

Mateusz Drela (14:06)
I mean, our approach in general is trying to break the performance. I my background is in performance marketing. I've been doing it my entire business career. So essentially what we're doing with RMiQ is taking that knowledge and experience and translating it into this world of retail marketing.

And the basic principle

performance marketing is break everything down to the lowest level that you can control and optimize at that level. So with Mac or with other clients that we work with, we take the products. Products are always going to have, there's always going to be a difference in performance on the product level. Take the keywords, keywords for product, they're always going to be different in terms of performance and take the bids. And those are the elements that you can control.

Then essentially, you figure out what's efficient, what's not efficient, that you cut off the parts which are not efficient, the ones that are already delivering sales, we improve those, and then we make sure that, let's say, Mac's soups show up to users that are performing the most relevant searches, and that we pay for that

right amount.

I mean, it all comes down to relevance and price.

Jordan Buckner (15:18)
one thing that's interesting, I always think, is what kind of products are best suited for growth through this channel? Do you find, are there particular product categories that are better for advertising through these platforms?

Mateusz Drela (15:33)
I mean, not necessarily. mean, we're finding, you know, ⁓ I guess success across many different product categories and product types. I think the ones where you would, which might be slightly challenging as products that are a category of their own, that nobody really searches for that particular sort of keyword combination, right? the, marketing is, very much based on.

showing relevant products to shoppers at relevant decision moments. And if you have something that's completely new, that's out of the category that nobody's really thinking of and searching for, the best thing you can do is kind of show them doing category adjacent searches. And that's still going to drive sales, but it's not

efficient.

Jordan Buckner (16:20)
Okay, I think that totally makes sense. And then is there a sense of how big this channel can be? Determine how many sales you can drive through Instacart? I know it's a little different because you're advertising on the platform, but the sales kinda come through the retailer as well. How does that combination work in terms of understanding how much revenue you're able to drive or what performance you're able to drive?

Mateusz Drela (16:44)
Yeah, so if you think about it, Instacart is an intermediation platform, So

something that allows you to shop for products which are physically on the shelf, which is actually what happens, right? In most cases, an Instacart shopper goes into a store, picks up an item, puts it in a basket, and delivers it to you. So

spend

slightly limited or is limited by your distribution.

then, know, a factor

your distribution, mean,

average 20 and 30 % of CPG

online. And of course, know, into a certain demographic, Instacart skews

audience.

So if your target audience or if your brand's target audience is in that category, of course

can over-represent and can represent a higher percentage than that average of 2030.

Jordan Buckner (17:39)
I think one thing that I just always thought was fascinating about the Instacart platform as well is it uses some of the shopping behavior of people in store to make it easier to buy again online, right? So like normally if you're people going to the store, you're making a shopping list, maybe 70 % of the items are the same week to meet week with a couple of changing. And then when you buy something on Instacart, they make a recommendation like, know, add this to your cart again or start with your cart from last week. And so if you can interrupt someone and get your

product on their shopping list one time, there's a higher likelihood that they'll purchase it again because they almost have to actively take it off instead of adding it on every single week. And so I think there's an outsize impact that repeat purchase can make. I'm kind of wondering how you think about that and as it turns into spend and getting products on the cart because I know you're paying for advertising, do you think about it terms of being essentially first order profitable with your advertising?

or maybe having a longer term strategy of just getting on as many carts as possible, knowing that there'll be a certain number, a level of repeat purchase.

Mateusz Drela (18:45)
That's a very good question.

I

you mentioned, Instacart is great in building that loyalty. And this is what we're seeing with clients that are with us over a long period of time is just these sales accumulate.

done right, you can very much

towards your loyal consumer base. So you can essentially work actively towards excluding people who would buy your product anyway from sort of your marketing set. That way you're actually maximizing the chance that you will be exposing the

new buyers.

pay once.

to get that product in front of a ⁓ new consumer. And then obviously some percentage of them will stay and will become your loyal shopper. And you can see that this accumulates over time, it grows, your

or consumers grows over time.

the strategy, mean, still, especially for younger brands, mean, we always advise to try to be profitable from the beginning.

very often not necessary to be burning through advertising dollars.

just to get in front of consumers,

have the ability to optimize these campaigns. You have the ability to, once you accumulate enough data, to be able to actually get the performance to a level in which you make profitable sales, and then you're essentially reinvesting money from new sales into generating more sales, and it becomes like a flywheel. So I don't think I've ever advised any client of ours to burn money

at the beginning because some customers will, or some percentage of customers will stay over time. Rather, you know, build up that momentum in an efficient and self-sustaining way.

Jordan Buckner (20:32)
I think that's so important. ⁓ I'm always curious too. So Matt, if you look at all kind of across your various clients that you work with in these channels, what are some kind of revenue targets that a brand can expect to see coming from Instacart Edge? I know it's going to range based on the size and the company, but I guess I'm looking directionally. Like is it $20,000 kind of average per year or something that comes from Instacart or can it be

you

know, a million dollars that come from Instacart sales, or whether some like kind of tiers or buckets, just to think about how much of an impact this channel can make on your business. So kind of just generalizing across kind of all clients.

Mateusz Drela (21:12)
It is a very big generalization because obviously, you know, there are brands big and small

Instacart. Instacart itself powers, I believe, over $40 billion in CPG sales per year, right? So it is certainly not limited to, you know, tens of thousands of dollars once you have, you know,

distribution, it can easily be in the millions. And it can be in the millions very, very efficiently. you know, one of our bigger clients, for example, is generating...

so I don't give you a false number. Let's say $15 million in sales

Instacart per year. And they're still doing this with advertising on a 10x ROAS.

getting 50 % new to brand. So even though they're a widely distributed brand, they've been in business for a long time, they have sufficient velocity, we can

advertising, help them drive this further and make the advertising very, very, very efficient.

You

course, with younger brands, the starts

couple thousand dollars per month in sales generated. But the, you know, the important is that, you know, you are reaching your customers, you are reaching a customer base that you wouldn't have reached otherwise. It is incremental sales. It's not moving, you know, from one bucket to another. You're essentially growing, not only

in terms of visibility and awareness about your brand,

growing the bottom line as well.

Jordan Buckner (22:34)
No, I think that's super helpful. know, Mac bring over to you. obviously like in some of these advertising is great for just driving sales and reaching new customers. I'm curious if you started using any of this to help boost other conversations with retailers around kind of hitting certain velocity numbers to stay on shelf or kind of making sure you're hitting numbers for your category review, right? Because I know shelf space is limited and expensive in the refrigerator set.

using kind of these tools helped with staying and growing on shelf with retailers as well.

Mac Villarreal (23:07)
Yes, mean supporting our retailers is key, it's super important. We all know getting on shelf can be hard, but it's not the hardest. The hardest is staying on the shelf and being a true partner to your retail partners. One big way of doing it is showing them, look at it. mean, I'm investing.

the digital shopper, on the digital channel and these are our results and

investing for X amount of months and we're going to keep doing it. We see that it's working even better perhaps depending on the case than ⁓ typical TPR. So definitely build the partnership stronger and they see that you're supporting them so that's key.

Jordan Buckner (23:45)
Yeah, you know, it's interesting because when I first got into selling in this business with my brand TeaSquares I remember talking to the retailer, someone who works with retailer and they were like, yeah, know, as a retailer, like we provide a shelf to sell your product, but for new brands and even larger ones really want you to help drive customers into our store to purchase. And I was under the conception naively that, you know, my whole job as the brand was just to make a product. And then the retailer's job was to sell the product.

and realized quickly that they saw it as like, we want our brands that we work with to actively be working with us to sell our product, to drive new customers into the store, to provide incremental margin on higher margin from the products in our store. They're gonna help us because they're working on tight margins as well. And this is a really great way of doing that, right? Like showing the retailers you're investing in them and driving new traffic to their stores, but then also getting their existing customers to trade up. And yeah, that's gonna help.

them perform their job better as category managers and buyers within the store. So I think that's great. Mac, kind of close things off, I'm curious, like, what's next for I Eat My Greens? Any fun things on the horizon or things that you're looking forward to?

Mac Villarreal (24:57)
Yeah, mean more growth, smart growth. Look for us in the deli section and more retailers nationwide. The idea was always to be a national brand and help people eat better, feel better and have a very easy time eating well and enjoy it. We're working hard towards that.

working on new flavors, so we'll see. It's exciting times. And

please check us out.

Jordan Buckner (25:20)
Awesome. Mac thanks so much for being on and sharing your story. And Matt, thanks so much for coming on and talking about Retail Media IQ I just want to kind of throw out to our listeners as well. If you are interested in maximizing your campaigns on Instacart, Walmart, Whole Foods, let me know how to introduce you to Matt and his team. They help any CPG brand kind of drive incremental revenue, increase that retailer velocity. And the best part is that you actually only pay when your campaigns generate sales and they don't have a retainer that they work with.

And so really founder friendly in getting started to make sure that they're, you know, only get paid when you're successful on the channel as well. So definitely worth checking out. Mac, Matt, thanks so much for being on today.

Mateusz Drela (26:00)
Thank you.

Mac Villarreal (26:01)
Thanks so much.