If you’re here, you’ve probably decided you want to start a food or beverage company — or you’re close.

You might already be:

• Googling food scientists or beverage formulators

• Talking to copackers

• Sketching branding ideas

• Pricing out ingredients and packaging

That’s all normal. It’s also where most first-time founders make their most expensive mistakes.

I’m not writing this to talk you out of starting something. I’m writing it to help you avoid wasting time, money, and momentum before the business even gets off the ground.

The mistake most founders make at the start

Most people think the first step is formulation.

So they hire a food scientist.

Or they call a beverage formulator.

Or they start paying labs and consultants by the hour.

Sometimes that’s correct. Very often, it’s too early.

Formulation is a problem — but it’s rarely the problem.

What actually causes early-stage food and beverage brands to fail isn’t taste.

It’s decisions made around the product before the economics, the path to market, and the constraints are fully understood.

That’s where tens of thousands of dollars quietly disappear.

What founders think they need vs. what they actually need

What most founders think they need:

• A “perfect” formula

• A copacker quote

• Beautiful branding

• A prototype they can show friends or investors

What they actually need early on:

• A realistic cost structure

• Clarity on minimum order quantities (MOQs) and cash requirements

• A distribution path that makes sense for their product

• A launch scope that won’t kill them financially

If those things aren’t aligned, even a great product becomes a liability.

The hidden cost of “getting started”

Here’s a hard truth:

Early-stage CPG isn’t expensive because of one big bill — it’s expensive because of death by small, confident decisions.

I’ve seen founders:

• Spend $25k+ on formulation that had no viable copacking path

• Lock into packaging specs that crushed margins

• Build for national scale when the business needed a local launch

• Raise money too early (or too late) because the plan wasn’t grounded in reality

None of these people were reckless. They were just early — and didn’t have someone pressure-testing their decisions.

Why I’m qualified to say this

I’m not a theorist. I started and built a food & beverage company from scratch.

• Raised real capital ($9MM)

• Sold into thousands of retailers (3,500 including Whole Foods & Costco)

• Navigated distributors, buyers, and copackers

• Scaled — and eventually did a strategic partnership

Since then, I’ve helped early-stage founders do this more intelligently— before they’re locked into decisions that are hard (or impossible) to unwind.

I also spend a lot of time with:

• Food scientists

• Beverage formulators

• Copackers

• Investors

I sit between all of them. That’s the perspective most first-time founders don’t get.

When it does make sense to hire a formulator

To be clear: food scientists and formulators are incredibly valuable.

But they’re most valuable when:

• You understand your target cost per unit

• You know your rough MOQ range

• You understand where and how the product will be manufactured

• You’ve decided what “good enough” is for version one

If you skip those steps, you’re paying experts to solve the wrong problem.

What I actually help founders with

I don’t replace formulators, designers, or manufacturers.

I help founders:

• Sanity-check their idea before they spend real money

• Understand the true cost of launching (not the optimistic version)

• Decide when to do things, not just what to do

• Avoid common early-stage traps that stall or kill momentum

• Build a path that fits their goals — not someone else’s playbook

Think of it as orientation, not consulting theater.

The first 90 days matter more than you think

The earliest decisions tend to shape everything:

• How much money you’ll need

• How long you can survive

• Whether growth helps you or hurts you

Most founders don’t fail because they’re lazy or untalented.

They fail because they made a handful of reasonable decisions without seeing the downstream consequences.

That’s what I focus on.

A simple offer

If you’re early — idea stage through first formulation conversations — I offer a straightforward orientation call.

No pitch deck required.

No obligation.

No hard sell.

We’ll walk through:

• What you’re building

• Where you are in the process

• What decisions actually matter right now

• What can wait

• What might be a red flag

If I can help, I’ll tell you how. If not, I’ll tell you that too.

You’ll leave with clarity — which is usually what founders are actually looking for at this stage.