Big Spoon Roasters Is Defining Their Own CPG Success
(Listen on Apple or Spotify. Full transcript below.)
On January 14th Big Spoon Roasters announced they were voluntarily walking away from “BIG grocery”.
They were choosing to refocus on independent retailers and direct-to-consumer sales. This wasn't just another business decision – it was a bold statement about what success can look like in the good food space.
My DMs immediately lit up with this news, and when I shared the story on Instagram, our community's enthusiastic response confirmed what I already knew: this resonated deeply with many of you who are questioning the traditional paths to growth in the food industry.
The Real Cost of "Making It"
For many good food brands, landing national distribution feels like the ultimate validation – proof that your products deserve those coveted shelf spaces. Big Spoon Roasters had achieved this milestone, expanding from regional Whole Foods placement to nationwide distribution, garnering press coverage and industry recognition along the way.
But beneath this apparent "success," a different reality was taking shape. The national grocery system, designed for high-volume, standardized production, created mounting tension with Big Spoon's commitment to small-batch production. Their team found themselves increasingly bogged down managing:
Invalid chargeback disputes with distributors
AI-driven pricing discrepancies between retailers - and the resulting customer frustration
Customer complaints about inconsistent availability
Forecasting challenges leading to stockouts or excess inventory
In CPG, Bigger isn't Always Better
Big Spoon's pivot isn't unprecedented, and it hopefully won't be the last of its kind. For decades, the industry mantra has been "bigger is better."
But what defines "better"?
Within the national distribution system, "bigger" translates to high volume, low margins, and massive investments to cover distributor and retailer fees (fees that, if anti-trust laws were enforced, wouldn’t exist). While revenue might look "better" on paper, cash flow, profitability, and return on investment often tell a different story.
These realities help explain why so many better-for-you brand founders ultimately aim to sell to mega-corporations. While this might create a "better" financial outcome for founders and investors, it furthers industry consolidation and continues to limit real choice on grocery store shelves.
Lower Revenue, NOT Lower Profit
Big Spoon Roasters' transparent announcement acknowledges that 2025 might be their first year without revenue growth. But I've seen firsthand with clients who've made similar channel and distribution changes that lower revenue doesn't necessarily mean lower profits – quite the opposite is often true.
Redefining Success
The most powerful aspect of Big Spoon's announcement isn't just what they're walking away from – it's what they're walking toward. Their decision challenges the industry's (and media’s) equation of success with fast growth, big investment, and national distribution.
Instead, they're demonstrating that success can mean:
Choosing quality over quantity
Prioritizing customer satisfaction
Building genuine relationships over widespread distribution
Letting values guide business decisions
Finding the right size rather than the biggest size
And crucially, none of these choices necessarily compromise financial success. In fact, I predict improved financial outcomes will follow.
Building a Food Business on Your Own Terms
Big Spoon's decision represents more than just one company's strategic pivot – it signals a maturing, evolving good food industry. Their transparency about this choice expands the crucial conversation about the true costs of national retail presence and illuminates alternative paths to building successful food businesses. Most importantly, it reminds founders they have choices and can build a successful food businesses on their own terms. Which is exactly why we’re sharing their story.
Looking Forward
While Big Spoon acknowledges this transition won't be simple, it does align with their values, how the founders and team want to spend their days, and the type of relationship they want with their customers. They're showing that success doesn't always mean getting bigger – sometimes it means getting better at being who you are.
For consumers, this shift promises more authentic relationships with food makers. For better-for-you brands, it demonstrates that there's more than one way to build a thriving food business. And for the industry, it signals that change is happening and brands are no longer willing, or needing, to “play the game”.
Want to Dive Deeper?
🎧 This blog post just scratches the surface of their story and what Good Food Founders can learn from their experience. Join me and Producer Chelsea on this episode of The Good Food CFO Podcast where we dive deep into Big Spoon Roaster's decision and what it means for the future of good food brands. We'll unpack the full story, share additional insights, and explore what this could mean for your business journey.
Listen now wherever you get your podcasts or click the link above to hear the complete discussion! ___________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
Episode Timeline
00:00 Introduction to Big Spoon Roasters' Decision
02:53 The Shift from Big Grocery to Independent Retailers
06:10 Understanding the Values Behind the Decision
09:00 Challenges of National Grocery Distribution
11:55 The Impact of Pricing Discrepancies
15:13 The Decision-Making Process
17:58 The Future of Big Spoon Roasters
20:45 Conclusion and Reflection on Industry Changes
Full Episode Transcript
This episode of the Good Food CFO podcast is sponsored by Settle.
you are listening to the Good Food CFO podcast. I am your host, Sarah Delevan, joined as always by our producer, Chelsea Stier. Hey, Sarah, and hey, listeners. Welcome back to a new episode. I'd love to ask wherever you're listening to the podcast, leave us a rating and a review. If you're watching on YouTube, don't forget to click the subscribe button down below, turn on notifications so that you're updated every time we drop a new video. Okay.
So Sarah, today we are going to be talking about a story you shared on Instagram recently is kind of hot off the presses. As always, right, our friend of the podcast, Felice Thorpe is on top of the news in CPG. She's always sharing and she shared this story with you about Big Spoon Roaster and how they have basically declared that they are breaking up with big grocery.
So today we're going to talk about that, how they came to the decision and what that looks like going forward. Yeah. So as you mentioned, we shared Big Spoon Roasters post on our Instagram stories and the response unsurprisingly from our audience was really supportive. People were responding with fire and hearts and claps and just really supporting Big Spoon Roasters in their decision and this sort of announcement that they were making.
big spoon roasters said, you so much for the support and the encouragement. It means so much to us. I said to them, I shared that our audience was really resonating with this message and was showing their support via our stories. I would regret to ask, although not wanting to overstep, if they wanted to come into the podcast and talk about their decision and the process. Very politely, they declined.
They obviously have a lot going on. are in the midst of this pivot. Their last shipments are going out to Whole Foods and we'll get into all of what they're in the midst of now. But they did share this blog post with us. And we want to thank the co-founders, Mark and Megan, for being really open and being transparent about their decision, sharing it with other brands. And we really just want to amplify their message and their story. So if founders listening...
maybe saw the news but didn't get a chance to read the detail because they too are busy running their operations, we can talk about it and kind of dig into it a little bit here. All right, Sarah, well, shall we get into it? Yeah, let's do it. Good food founders, let's talk about cash flow, the metric that truly determines your ability to grow your business. We all know that figuring out your true
costs, your margins, and projecting cash flow isn't always as straightforward as it could be. When your data is scattered across systems, it is easy to lose track and leave money on the table. That's where Settle comes in. Settle is the only platform built for CPG brands that combines inventory, payments, and procurement into one unified system. And they offer integrated financing for your invoices to help extend your cash runway.
Settle helps you make smarter decisions and keeps your business on track to grow sustainably. Head over to settle.com slash good food to learn how brands like Carnivore snacks use settle to manage their cashflow and growth. All right, Chelsea. So on January 14th, the founders of Big Spoon Roasters, Mark and Megan published a blog post on their website declaring that they were making an unexpected pivot. And in their words,
They were ending their 10 plus year relationship with Whole Foods Market, the distributor UNFI, and other national grocery chains to focus exclusively on partnerships with independent retailers and smaller regional grocers, as well as direct to consumer relationships through their online store. And I want to talk about this. I mean, this is really big, Baba Yacht Energy. And I think it's worth, as I said in the intro, amplifying
talking about, digging into it a little bit to share the why and how big spoon roasters came to this decision and what their future looks like at this point in time. Yeah. And I thought it was very telling, right? That one of the first things they talk about in the blog is that the overarching reason or the big reason that they're doing this is that the system itself is
unfortunately, as in their words, unfortunately not set up to support small batch values driven independent businesses like theirs. Yeah. And what they mean in that is the national grocery system is not set up. Yeah. So I also, you know, something that I want to express for anyone who didn't read the blog post, maybe didn't see the full post on social media and you're just hearing it here, I want to share that they are so grateful.
throughout the blog posts and all of the messaging that they've shared for the consistent growth and support that they experienced at Whole Foods and the other retailers. They call out by name some folks at Whole Foods and at UNFI that were supportive to their organization, to them as a team as they were growing in quote unquote big grocery. But this decision that they are making is going to allow them to continue to grow the business in a way that aligns with their values.
Wow. And I think this is important. Also redirecting their valuable staff and company resources toward relationships with end consumers and the smaller regional and independent retailers that have always made up the foundation of their retail partner community. And those are also words from their blog posts, which we will of course link to in the show notes if you want to read it in full on your own. Yeah. And I actually can't wait till we get to that part of the, like dig into that part of the conversation because
I love what they're saying about redistributing their valuable staff, but I think when you really dig into what does that mean and how is their staff currently being used in a way that does not support their growth, does not support their values is really big, really important to talk about. Yeah. One of the things you and I talk about, and we've talked about with Felice actually on this podcast.
is the mission vision values and how important they are, especially for a good food brand. What do we stand for? What is the mission that we want to achieve through the existence of this company? What value do we have? What values do we have as an organization? But also, what value do we want to provide to our customers, to perhaps our community, whether it be
local, regional or national, right? And being very clear on those things helps you make really difficult decisions like Big Spoon Roasters has made. And one of the things that they say in their blog posts, everything they say is from their blog post, but I just want to be very clear on when I'm quoting them and using their words. They say that their hope has always been that through pure delicious food experiences,
They could nudge the communities they touched toward a more sustainable future. And that the number one value on the values list that their team created, number one on that list was that craft matters. They have remained independent with no outside investment for the entirety of their business up to the point of this recording. And they say that that is in part to make sure that this priority, this priority of craft mattering, right,
this values-driven idea was never threatened. And they go on to say that in a high-speed age, right, getting faster by the minute, big spoon roasters will always provide slow food made well. And as you continue to read, you know, that doesn't necessarily align with being in big grocery and how big grocery works and how big grocery wants their CPG brand.
partners to work. Yeah. And they even go on to talk about exactly what that means, right? First of all, starting out by talking about how it feels to land in a grocery store like Whole Foods, right? They talk about how their partnership with Whole Foods grew throughout the region, starting in, I believe, North Carolina, right? And then to the nation and how for them that felt like validation, like what they were doing.
meant something. But then they go on to talk about that that kind of multi-region global distribution actually meant, and they very quickly realized as they talk about in the blog, right? Yeah. That that kind of large scale national grocery system was not designed to celebrate or nurture the maker and exactly what they're talking about, right? Making slow food that's made well. Yeah.
It's interesting. I love the balance in this blog post. I love the balance that the founders bring to this. It felt validating. It felt felt prestigious, but they received prestigious recognition, right? National press, a presence in many of the country's best retailers, shelf space on national grocery stores. This is both validating as a brand because it's telling you people like our product.
people want our product, the buyers in these stores want our product, and they were able to remain on shelf. Winning awards, getting press, that's also validating. Beyond feeling validated on a personal level, externally, there's a lot of I'm going to say cache, right? When a Better For You brand lands on the shelves at Whole Foods, people are saying, yes, you've made it, right? The more stores you're in, the more shelves you're on, people
are excited for you as they should be because undoubtedly you have worked incredibly hard to get there. the level of growth, the number of stores, the number of states and cities that you're in does not necessarily reflect the same kind of growth on your bottom line. And it doesn't always mean that your team is doing the work that they love to do. And I want to talk about
that a little bit. Some of the things that they specifically call out in the blog post is that this global distribution, if you will, moves producers into a position of higher volumes and lower margins. Now this, if you think back to what they said earlier in the blog post, craft mattering, they call out how they still make everything in small batches, there's a direct conflict.
there. If I'm reading between the lines, it's like we make things small batch, we're not trying to go high volume, low margin. They want high quality ingredients. I'm sure that they want to pay their nut partners well, the farmers who are growing. So as there is with many better for you brands, a real rub, if you will, when growing at this
this level. The other things they call out are the requirements that makers have to give up control of pricing on the shelf, which for them led to significant pricing discrepancies between independent retailers and grocery stores. Their customers, as all customers would, are expecting fair and consistent pricing and treatment. They say that's what we were aiming to provide, but
the price discrepancies that they had no control over led to confusion with their consumers and eroded trust in their brand. Pricing teams now often, as they say, are AI driven. They operate separately from the buying teams and they set prices to meet their needs, not the needs of makers who depend on consistent pricing across all retail environments. This is something I want to dig into a little bit because as brands are
let's say growing, for example, from farmers market into retail. They're starting to sell to their first wholesale customers. A question I get all of the time is, A, should I charge all retailers the same price for my product? And what do I do if one retailer wants to charge more for my product than another? My answers are typically, yes, charge all of your retailers the same price.
Quite frankly, you have no control over what price they sell your product at once you've sold them the product. The same goes if you are in a direct relationship with a retailer or you are in a distribution relationship. The distributor is once they own your product, once it's been sold to them, they are going to determine what they sell your products to the retailer for and the retailer will determine the price of your product on shelf. Quite frankly, it doesn't have to be consistent. It can change.
And I think more and more with the use of AI, we saw price elasticity testing during COVID, right? And that essentially means we're going to see how high we can push this price and people will still buy it. And when we hit the max and people stop, we'll dial back just enough where we can make the most possible margin at retail for the store.
and people will still buy. The brand has no control over that. It absolutely does erode trust because the to date, currently, the vast majority of consumers do not understand that you, the brand, have no control over the price of your product on the retail shelf. No. Another thing I thought was really interesting that they mentioned here on the blog when it comes to
that distribution piece, right, is that the distributor system also often struggled to forecast accurately the demand of the product. Okay. Let's talk. Yeah. I'm sorry to interrupt you, but let's talk about the two ways that that happens, right? So in this case, and I'm so sorry to cut you off, but there's something else happening in my world right now in this regard. In this case, it was leading to empty shelves.
right at certain Whole Foods stores. So you've got customers saying, hey, why are you out of product here? Again, the consumer doesn't understand that Big Spoon Roasters, like any other brand, is not responsible for filling that shelf and keeping it full. They are not showing up to Whole Foods around the country and stocking the shelves. What's interesting though is if you go to a grocery store, you'll see a Frito-Lays guy, you'll see a Pepsi person.
stocking the shelves there. And so there's a great misconception about how this industry really works. And particularly, and I don't know if this is the case with Big Spoon Roasters, but with some of the brands that I've worked with in the past, the negative effects of being a quote unquote small guy in the sea of large CPG brands that distributors work with is that your product can be just left off the truck.
And we talked about this back when, I don't know if you'll remember this story, but when we talked about when Snoop Dogg, right, was suing, I think Walmart maybe, because they weren't stocking his product out on the shelves. So it did make it off the truck. It just didn't make it onto the shelf from the back room. Yeah, that's a great point to bring up. there's this, you know, this
lack of product being available to customers, which is affecting the customer. It's affecting the customer relationship with the brand and it's obviously affecting the brand. Because on the flip side of this is that oftentimes the distributor will miss forecast either they're going to short product, right? So maybe it's not available to go out to the store. Maybe it's available to go to the store, but it's not being sent. Maybe it's being sent to the store and the store is not putting it out on the shelf.
There's also situations where they're ordering too much. And something that's happening with a client now is someone ordering too much product. We talked about this with Modest Coffee. They ordered more than was going to move and now they're in a situation where the brand has to quote unquote buy back the product or donate it or something like that. So on the flip side of then this can happen if
the product should have been ordered and is not moving out of distribution and onto the retail shelf. Your expiration date is approaching. That's on you, sadly, the brand. It's not your fault. You lost control of your product once it hit the distributor's floor, but it falls on you within distribution contracts to have to take care of, get rid of, buy back this product. own that.
Right. And that's one of the things that they actually are exactly talking about in this blog post is again, going back to before when we talked about the resources, right? How they were having to use their staff. They talk about how a tremendous amount of their staff had to be basically required to dispute all of these charge backs with UNFI.
And they say that they actually did win 100 % of their claims. So that's awesome. I'm super happy for them. I don't know that we hear that often, but that's a huge strain on your business to have that many people in that dispute process constantly. I mean, there are, and maybe this was the case for Big Spoon. I don't know, but
single – people employed specifically for the purpose of handling this. So let's say you pay someone $40,000 a year, $30,000 a year salary to dispute this. Okay, how much must you have in erroneous chargebacks in order for that to be a valuable role that gets played, even if it's not full time, right? That's a lot of money, a lot of time, a lot of energy to spend on that.
process, which should not exist. It should not be a requirement. The erroneous chargebacks just simply should not exist. They talk about the moment that the decision was made to break up with big grocery. They were having an impromptu meeting discussing the latest compound of frustrations as they word it regarding
these invalid chargeback fees that you brought up, the pricing discrepancies, and the latest customer complaint email asking why product was out of stock again at a Whole Foods location. And their words from the blog post are, stopped, we took a breath, and we realized that the underlying causes of these issues were systemic and part of a path we no longer wanted to travel.
in that moment, say, we don't want to do this anymore. I want to pause here for a second and say, I don't know the founders. I do not know them personally, literally have communicated only with their marketing person via Instagram, but I am so proud of them for saying, we don't want to do this. We recognize the systemic issues. This is a path we don't want to be on anymore, so we're going to change it. Huge, baba yas.
Because so often, yes, so often we hear people say, but this is the way it is. And this is what we have to do if we want to be a national brand. And so we have no choice. And the reason I wanted to talk about this and bring this blog post and turn it into an episode is because this is such a great example of a company and founder saying, we're not going to do this anymore. We don't believe that this is the only path.
We know, Chelsea, you and I and so many of the founders that we work with and who listen to this show that there's more than one way to build a successful food business. I know. I love hearing what they're saying about how they want to continue working with those specialized independent grocers that they've built really great relationships with. And they even say here, and I kind of love this quote from the blog.
2025 might be the first year our total revenue hasn't grown ever. Yeah. And I love that because Sarah, at the end of the day, you know, right, and you've talked here many times before about what that really can look like. Yeah. So before I comment on that, which I want to, I also want to recognize that they're saying that
despite this very obvious truth and reality, the decision wasn't easy. Because it does require, as you just pointed out, giving up a large percentage of their revenue and restructuring their operations. They're moving from having large distribution to, I'm assuming, not, or working with regional distributors, perhaps. They don't go into that level of detail.
in particular in this blog post. But as we talked about with Leah and April, right, in the pulling out of retail episode, this isn't something you do overnight. This isn't something that you just say, yep, we're going to do it and you don't look at the numbers, right? You do have to understand what will the revenue impacts be? What will the cash flow impacts be in the short term and in the long term? And in the long term, I truly believe that they will be positive.
cash flow changes for them. I also hope that what we have seen with our clients and some of our coaching members as well is that they will see improved profitability because we know that growing revenue does not equal a growing bottom line, but we do know that what we call right size,
You find the partners that are right for you. You find the channels that are right for you. Your revenue may shrink, but your profit may grow. And so that is not to downplay the transition because the transition will take time. The transition will take money, right? And it is a dance and we have seen that, you know, and if you have
I'm hopeful the people at UNFI and Whole Foods that are transparent about, what does this roll out, if you will, this roll back look like? What will the timing be? What are the costs associated with if there's product left over or whatever? There may be gaps in money coming in the door as channel structures change.
I absolutely do not want to downplay the realities of what it might look like during the transition, but it seems they've thought this out very thoroughly. They know what they're getting into and they're pivoting in a way that we hope will be really, really successful. Yeah, definitely. I love that they end the blog off by saying, we view this strategic decision as an important step forward and a re-centering around our
founding values. In our definition of success, growth isn't always about getting bigger, but about staying true. Yeah. I love that too. They go on to say, we don't regret our time or our investment in national grocery relationships because we learned so much from the experience, but this is the right decision for Big Spoon Roasters, our team, our customers, and our network of supplier.
and retail partners. And I think this just goes to show and is exemplary of so many good food brands and good food founders. about more than money. And it's a fine balance, right? Yeah. Between doing good in the world, fulfilling a mission, taking care of yourselves, your team, your customers, your network, and also making money so that you can continue to do that. And it also
you know, what I'm, what I'm leaning from this story as well is like, they care about the day to day work and enjoyment of their work and their team's work, you know, and how they spend their time. And it just, it just feels really good. Again, I just feel so like proud of them. I feel so glad that they shared their story and were transparent about the reasons and that also they're not angry.
about it. Because any changes that are going to happen in global grocery, we'll call it, big grocery, it's going to take time. And I think one of the things that will have an impact over time are decisions like this and brands pulling out of retail. Because my hope is
my belief, I should say, is that it's going to be really hard to find anybody who compares to Big Spoon Roasters to put on the shelf in all of these Whole Foods that they are leaving. So Whole Foods is going to feel an impact in terms of margin. They might feel an impact in terms of the loss of revenue from the customers who want to continue buying Big Spoon Roasters products. And if they're not doing it at Whole Foods, they're doing it somewhere else. And if that happens enough times, if it happens on a big enough scale,
they will be forced to change because not every company wants to sell to a conglomerate and consumers do want better food. And so this is a long, seemingly slow battle, but this is an amazing step forward, right? This is like one more person kind of like in the army of the revolution of truly changing our food industry. And so it must be
celebrated. And so I'm so glad we had a chance to talk about it. Well, Sarah, thanks for sharing this. yeah, again, we want to thank Mark and Megan for sharing their story in such a transparent and honest way.
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