CPGSPN - Episode 8
CPG 12 Conference reveal, The DISTRIBUNATOR, a new entrant to the CPG Power Rankings, and a different kind of cold email that no one is talking about.
Welcome to another episode of CPGSPN.
The only sports-themed CPG newsletter where:
Power Rankings actually matter
Bad rebrands get booed off the field
Cold outreach gets sliced thinner than deli meat
…and this week? THE DISTRIBUNATOR.
Before we begin, a big thank you to this episode’s title sponsor, Fast Track Packaging. If you’re looking for a great partner with the most competitive pricing on cans in the industry, hit up Mike Bedrosian at mike@ftpackaging.ca and tell him Vasa sent you.
Entertainment X’s and O’s - College Football Conferences - CPG 12 Reveal
After revealing our starting offense and defense in Episodes 1–2, and launching the SEatC, Mac-12, and B1G Bev in 3–5, we took a break for NIL x CPG in Episode 6, but came back with the Atlantic Cuisine Conference in Episode 7. Today, we’re announcing the CPG 12 Conference.
CPG 12 Conference
Last week, I reported that Jocko’s brand was going to be paired with the Navy Midshipmen. The only issue? They’re not in the Big 12. DAMNIT. Rookie mistake. But these 16 brands are. And I hope you enjoy them. With this, we officially wrap the CPG Power 5. This signals the end of a saga for people who skim. 🤣
Without further ado:
Arizona → Halfday Iced Tea
$0.99 Arizona Iced Tea might be the super senior on campus, but Halfday is kicking up the competition in the $9B iced tea category, and might just be the next big Wildcat.Arizona State → Bachan’s
This pairing adds some new flavor to the meaning of “Forks Up.” ASU tailgates are going global with Bachan’s umami-packed Japanese Barbecue Sauce, which might be the perfect addition to the Sun Devils’ grill-heavy culture.Baylor → Hop WTR
Bears fans might be craving a ranch water, but the student section is going sober-curious at McLane Stadium. Hop WTR delivers hoppy flavor without the hangover, keeping Waco buzzing on game day and Sunday school ready the morning after.BYU → Built Bar
Provo’s own Built Bar was founded in BYU country and turned protein bars into candy-like staples. Clean enough for a Cougar, packed enough for LaVell Edwards Stadium.Cincinnati → Recover 180
The Bearcats’ biggest export? Travis Kelce. The future Hall of Famer is an investor in Recover 180, a functional hydration brand.Colorado → Epic Provisions
Nothing says Buffalo like bison. And Epic Provisions built a meat-snack empire with their Bison Bar that runs wild on Saturdays at Folsom with Ralphie.Houston → Anabar
Anabar Protein Candy Bars sound and taste explosive. Just like Houston’s 3-0 start and new offensive scheme that’s lighting up the Big 12 in 2025.Iowa State → Amylu Foods
Cyclones know comfort food. Amylu’s better-for-you meats bring Midwest grit and farm-strong protein to Jack Trice tailgates.Kansas → UNREAL Candy
Rock Chalk gets its sugar rush without the crash. UNREAL Candy flips the script in Lawrence, turning gameday treats into clean fuel for a Jayhawk run.Kansas State → Wilde Protein Chips
Manhattan, KS tailgates mean meat, and Wilde turns chicken breast into crunchy protein-packed chips that keep Wildcats fueled on gameday at Bill Snyder.Oklahoma State → Archer Meat Snacks
Stillwater is cowboy country. Archer Meat Snacks (formerly Country Archer) makes meats that ride shotgun with Pistol Pete. Some might say it’s protein for the plains.TCU → Frog Fuel
Horned Frogs, meet Frog Men. Frog Fuel, created by US Navy SEALs, packs protein into a shot built for toughness and recovery, two things TCU is known for.Texas Tech → Jocko Fuel
Guns Up meets “Good.” Jocko Fuel brings no-nonsense grit to Raider Nation, keeping Lubbock locked in from sunrise lifts to Jones AT&T Stadium nightcaps.Utah → Kodiak Cakes
Park City’s own powerhouse. Kodiak turned flapjacks into protein fuel. The Utes love a mountain breakfast before Rice-Eccles kickoffs.UCF → Sanzo
The Golden Knights love a little Florida flair, and Sanzo delivers it with Asian-inspired sparkling water. Lychee, calamansi, and yuzu bring the global flavor for a team that plays under the brightest lights at the Bounce House.West Virginia → Death Wish Coffee
Almost Heaven, fully caffeinated. Death Wish Coffee delivers “the world’s strongest coffee” to Morgantown, fueling Mountaineers from sunrise tailgates to late-night Country Roads. Proof that John Denver wasn’t “full of [it]” after all. Please tell me you got the Dumb & Dumber reference there.
Next week: We say goodbye to this God-awful idea of matching CPG brands to Power 5 Conference teams! Yewwwww…this was tough! But I hope you enjoyed. Comment your Alma Mater if you did!
Hall of Fame (or Lame?) 🏆
The Coconut Cult’s Collab Lab
Verdict: Fame
I feel that experiential has been a lot tougher to break through in the past few years, but there have been some recent outliers that caught my attention.
The two that I personally love?
Last month, Chomps launched their Protein Pit Stop.
Last week, The Coconut Cult launched their Collab Lab popup, and holy moly is it cool?!
This segment is about the latter.
Here’s a video that covers a lot of the cool options that were available in SoHo:
From build your own bowls to custom plushies and all of the details in between, this was a first-class execution that I hope gets talked about more.
I’d personally love to learn about some of the logistics here. How long was the planning process? How much did this cost? What were some key learnings?
How about you?
What are some of your favorite experiential marketing activations you’ve seen recently?
The CPG Power Rankings - Week 8 📈
Reminder: this is how the Power Rankings work.
The List
1. Liquid Death: Huge raise last week. Can’t go higher!
2. Bloom: Chomping at the bit for #1!
3. Olipop: Staying put
4. Grüns: If I could be biased, this would be my #1 brand right now. I absolutely loved the zero sugar Grünny Smith Apple drop. And I've seen some pretty good results from the product.
5. Magic Spoon: Staying consistent at #5, but look for them to climb the rankings soon. Some really cool things happening online and especially on TTS/TikTok Live.
6. Graza: Mini packets launched this week. But I can’t tell if they’re real or not. TBD
7. Legendary Foods: Holding steady.
8. Chomps: Still in the mix.
9. Chobani (NEW): There was an error in the CBA. The Commissioner takes full responsibility. Respect to Chobani and everyone involved. You should have been in the Top 10 to begin with.
10. 1st Phorm (⬇️ 1 spot): Dropped due to Commissioner oversight
🔁 Recap: Liquid Death has held the #1 spot for 8 weeks. IQ Bar drops out of the rankings, and Chobani enters the Top 10 as a TOP RISER.
Tea Time 🫖
The Distribunator
This one’s personal. Buckle up.
This is a story that was actually supposed to be a spinoff of the podcast a few years ago. If you go back to past Food Chained episodes, you’ll see a series called "The CPG Diaries” where I share fictional CPG stories (or are they?).
This one is just another story that’s par for the CPG course. And it goes something like this:
I started working with an unknown DSD in late 2022, early 2023. I went with this group because, reportedly, it was two ex-cops from a well-known, arguably beloved agency on the East Coast. I figured,
“They’re going to be ethical as fuck or con-men. No other way around it.”
As it turns out, they had me work with one of those up and down the block guys. You know when someone says, “I got a guy.”?
THAT GUY.
So I started paying the guy to help move product that the distributor had ordered. Sooner or later, they started to be late on payments. And then eventually, not pay at all.
It seemed like they were running a Ponzi scheme. And then they started saying THE GUY was going to be making the payments, not them. But they were the ones making the orders.
It was fucking insane. And we started to get into some heated conversations.
I started calling the guy who had introduced us every day for what felt like months.
I even had to have some very tough talks with the guy who ran the distribution company. It was just so toxic.
I paid for months of sales retainers without receiving payment for their PO within the terms agreed upon. Hell, not even 2x the terms. It took months and months!
But, not only that, MY GUY made me pay extra on top of the retainer to land the retailer.
This is what upset me the most.
I paid a fee to do business, not like slotting. It turned out to be a backdoor fee paid directly to THE GUY. Not sure where that money went afterward…and I probably don’t want to.
And the planned demand that the buyer put in unlocked UNFI Howell because the retailer was an anchor. However, when the PO arrived, the buyer only pulled for one specific store. ONE STORE! So, the product just sat, aged, and got disposed of.
So not only am I paying THE GUY. I paid the retailer. I paid UNFI between $500 and $1,200 (or whatever it was) per SKU to unlock the DC. And the retailer doesn’t even order the products for every location as planned. So the product goes bad.
Truly a nightmare. It was ugly. I stopped focusing on that territory for a while.
Ultimately, I got paid in full. But I lost the product. I lost the retailer. And I lost the UNFI DC.
That’s the DISTRIBUNATOR. The distributor that ended up terminating my happy-go-lucky, “I’m building a brand!” personality, and turned it into a “I don’t trust anyone” personality.
I guess they helped me in a way.
Who knows, maybe the happy-go-lucky Vasa will say the following someday:
Lol. Moving along…
COLD CUTS!!! 🐖
Cold Cuts is where cold outreach goes to get praised or sliced into deli meat!
I pushed an excellent Cold Cut to next week to bring up something I’ve been seeing constantly with newsletters.
At what point is adding everyone you’ve ever emailed to a newsletter that they didn’t sign up for crossing the line?
The few friends who did it? I don’t care. I want to support them. And I’ll consume the content when and how I can. Heck, I don’t even need to consume the content. All I have to do is open their emails when they arrive to help boost their open rates. No harm, no foul. No heavy lift.
But there are people that I vaguely, if at all, remember emailing years ago, adding my email to their newsletter subscriber list that I didn’t sign up for.
It’s an easy unsubscribe.
Sometimes I’ll even block the sender and move to junk.
But, more than anything, it feels invasive.
I would rather write to the just under 100 subscribers on here (who actually signed up), and do my best job to provide industry news in an entertaining way.
To try and keep it positive, I want to say thank you. Thank you for actually signing up and donating your time to me in exchange for some real takes on the industry, the news, and my experience building Perfy.
Overall Grade on a Scale of Prosciutto de Parma to Bologna:
Moving on to CPG Fantasy Football…
CPG Fantasy Football Scoreboard - Week 2
Brooke finally got on the board with a huge Cheddies multiplier, and every team brought their A-game this week.
As a reminder, here are the rules, scoring system, and draft board.
CPG Fantasy Football - Week 2 Scoring
A lot of action in The League this week, and we’re still tallying up the points with a TI-89 graphing calculator, a hot pot of coffee, and a positive outlook on life. Stay tuned to our Instagram for the scoring update. All activity below!
9/2 - LesserEvil Pumpkin Spice is back
9/2 - Quest Pumpkin Pie and Peppermint Bark Bars are back
9/3 - Good Culture Pumpkin Spice is back
9/3 - Grüns released NEW limited-edition Grünny Smith Apple gummies
9/3 - Mike’s Hot Honey did a collab with AriZona Iced Tea
9/3 - Tony's Chocolonely launched a NEW Pecan Caramel Crunch Bar
9/4 - Fly By Jing launched NEW Classic Soy Noodles regionally in Costco (LA, OC, Hawaii, Bay Area)
9/5 - Quest Nutrition launched Nacho Cheese Protein Chips (larger 7oz bag) nationwide in Sam's Club
9/5 Kinder's released 6 NEW Fall flavors at Sam's Club
9/10 - The Good Crisp’s Halloween Black Potato Chips are back (and re-release at Thrive, Sprouts, Whole Foods, Publix, and Kroger)
9/12 - TRUFF launched white truffle oil magnums regionally in Costco (Southeast)
9/12 - Bloom Pop launched nationwide in Target, Kroger, HEB, Albertsons/Safeway, Hy-Vee, CVS, Walgreens, and more 😵💫 (previously, they were exclusive to Walmart)
9/12 - Cheddies drops Pizza flavored Steve Aoki collab at Whole Foods nationwide
9/16 - Olipop did an apparel collab with StaycoolNYC
9/18 - Liquid Death Psycho Cider is back
9/18 - Green Valley Coconut water is now available in Bashas' Markets
9/18 - Siete launched NEW Habanero Hot Honey Chips and Corn Chips in Target
Movement From Around The League 🏈
Roster shakeups, personnel changes, and more!
SIGNED: Khloud (by Khloé Kardashian) inks a blockbuster deal, signing Restricted Free Agent Jeff Rubenstein to a Veteran’s SuperMax Contract as Co-Founder & CEO. Jeff is a certified championship builder. He helped guide Poppi all the way to the Pepsi acquisition and has notched wins with Health-Ade, WTRMLN WTR, Vita Coco, a small startup called Coca-Cola, and more. Expect Kloud Snacks to make a serious playoff push with Rubenstein running the offense in 2025 and beyond.
Waiver Wire ☎️
Teams scouring the wire for playmakers that can make an immediate impact!
Pressed Juicery: VP, Paid & Performance Marketing ($200-$260k/year Hybrid, Culver City, CA)
Pressed Juicery: Senior Director of CPG Brand Marketing ($175-$215k/year Hybrid, Culver City, CA)
Pressed Juicery: Director of Email, CRM, & Retention ($160-$185k/year Hybrid, Culver City, CA)
Pressed Juicery: Social Media Director ($110-$150k/year Hybrid, Culver City, CA)
MORE CONTENT - Fast Break and Perfy’s Food Chained Podcast
Catch reruns of Fast Break (our CPGSPN Opinion Column) here. This week I wrote about The Fall of Caffeine.
And catch Food Chained below or wherever you watch tape (Spotify, Apple, etc.).
That’s it for this week. Catch you next Thursday!
Good morning. Good afternoon. And good night.
– The Commish