by Jeff Slater | May 17, 2026 | Interesting Brands, Marketing Advice
Walk a trade show floor for ten minutes, and something odd happens. Everything starts to blur. Booths that spent six figures on design become wallpaper. Brands shouting clever taglines fade into ambient noise. You stop seeing any of it. This isn’t a failure of...
by Jeff Slater | May 10, 2026 | Foodpreneurs, Marketing Advice
Venmathy McMahan has a PhD in chemical engineering from Rice University. She spent years at Intel optimizing semiconductor processes. And then, in 2020, she bought a granola company. Not as a side project. Not as a passive investment. She bought Little Red Wagon...
by Jeff Slater | May 3, 2026 | Branding Issues, Marketing Advice
I’ve been in a lot of packaging reviews lately—brands at every stage, from scrappy startups to mid-sized companies trying to grow their retail footprint. The categories are different. The products are different. The founders are different. The problem is always...
by Jeff Slater | Apr 26, 2026 | Foodpreneurs, Marketing Advice
Every founder I work with can tell me why their brand matters. They have a story. A cause. A conviction about what’s wrong with the category and why they’re the ones to fix it. That clarity of purpose is real, and it’s valuable. But here’s what...
by Jeff Slater | Apr 19, 2026 | Interesting Brands, Marketing Advice
Most food companies start with a consumer insight, a trend report, or a gap on the shelf. Row 7 Seed Company started somewhere else entirely. They started in the dirt. Founded in 2018 by chef Dan Barber, Cornell University plant breeder Michael Mazourek, and organic...
