Retail media for CPG operators
Practical frameworks built on real account work — covering Instacart ROAS, Amazon Ads, and retail media waste diagnostics for CPG operators who run their own programs.
7 posts in Brand Breakdowns — clear
Bachan's: The One-Bottle Brand That Sold for $400 Million
Bachan's is the Sebastopol, California condiment brand Justin Gill founded in 2019 around his grandmother Judy Yokoyama's Japanese barbecue sauce recipe. A single hero SKU sequenced from Amazon into Whole Foods, Target, Kroger, Costco, and Walmart to roughly 35,000 doors. $17M raised across two rounds, then a $400M sale to The Marzetti Company in May 2026 on roughly $87M in TTM net sales. The one-bottle playbook explained.
Sanzo Sparkling Water: The Founder and the Costco Push
Sanzo is the New York-based Asian-inspired sparkling water Sandro Roco founded in 2019 after stints at J.P. Morgan and Bombfell. Six flavors built on real Asian fruit — calamansi, lychee, yuzu, mango, mandarin, pomelo — stocked at Whole Foods, Target, Panda Express, and a Costco Pacific Region 18-pack (item 1995579). The Costco arc, $16M cap table, and what the wedge strategy looks like when it works.
Brand Breakdown: Fishwife
Fishwife is the Los Angeles tinned fish brand that turned a quiet European pantry staple into a Whole Foods category. Founded December 2020 by Becca Millstein and Caroline Goldfarb. $6M 2023 revenue, $350K Shark Tank deal, national at Whole Foods, Target, Costco, and Kroger on modest pre-seed capital. The structural play: find a brandless household category and build the brand nobody built.
Brand Breakdown: Graza
Graza launched in January 2022 as a Brooklyn-founded olive oil brand with three SKUs in a green squeeze bottle. Three years later it is the fifth-largest national olive oil brand in the US, stocked in more than 11,000 stores, on less than $3M of outside capital. Pack as positioning, naming as instructions, single-farm sourcing told honestly — the structural breakdown.
Brand Breakdown: Goodles — Mac and Cheese With 14g Protein, 7g Fiber, and a Pack That Broke the Aisle
Goodles launched in 2021 with a bundled nutrition claim nobody had tried in boxed mac and cheese: 14g protein, 7g prebiotic fiber, and 21 nutrients per serving — in a wheat-based noodle that actually tastes like mac and cheese. Here is the structural breakdown of how Jen Zeszut, Galit Laibow, and investor Gal Gadot got it into 18,000 doors in under four years.
Brand Breakdown: Sobrii 0-Gin
Canada's first distilled non-alcoholic spirit launched in 2017 before the category existed at scale. How Sobrii built first-mover advantage in a market growing 24% year over year -- and what the retail media path looks like from here.
Brand Breakdown: Okazu by Abokichi
Canada's only authentic Taberu Rayu started as a farmers' market side dish and became a Gold Award-winning condiment. What makes Abokichi a compelling retail media story -- and what scaling into mainstream grocery actually requires.
From the community
Curated weekly from r/InstacartAds, r/Google_Ads, and r/DigitalMarketing.
CPG digital ad recommendations
Marketers sharing channel recommendations for CPG brands — where to spend, what benchmarks to target, and which platforms deliver real retail lift.
Open thread →r/Google_AdsHow is CPC 10x less on Google-generated ads?
Discussion on why AI-generated Google ads can show dramatically lower CPCs and whether the quality of traffic actually holds up for conversion campaigns.
Open thread →r/InstacartAdsI tested Instacart Acquire (New-to-Brand) with optimized bidding
Real-world test results from running Instacart's Acquire NTB campaign type with optimized bidding — including ROAS, NTB rate, and spend efficiency findings.
Open thread →r/InstacartAdsDoes optimized or autobidding on Instacart actually work?
Operators comparing manual bidding vs. autobid on Instacart campaigns — sharing spend data and whether ceding bid control improves or hurts efficiency.
Open thread →