Will Nitze - $100M+ in Revenue With 9 Employees

On this episode, we’re joined by Will Nitze, the Founder and CEO of IQBAR, a functional nutrition brand pioneering “brain + body” fuel for the modern consumer.

Launched in 2017, IQBAR is on track to hit $125M this year with just nine full-time employees, spanning 10,000+ retail doors including Walmart, Costco, and Target.

Will unpacks how he built one of the most capital-efficient brands in CPG, his unique “hub and spoke” operating model, and how he engineered each year of growth around a new business “unlock.”

We dive deep into IQBAR’s multi-category expansion strategy, pricing philosophy, agency management tactics, and how Will strips cost out of his supply chain while still scaling velocity.

Will also reveals a pretty game-changing upcoming product launch (that’s now in market as of today).

Episode Highlights:
📦 Building a $125M brand with just 9 employees
📊 The “hub and spoke” model that drives $7M+ revenue per head
⚡ How faster iteration unlocked IQBAR’s biggest growth leaps
💰 Pricing to maximize volume (and a 50% velocity bump at Walmart)
🏷️ Rebrand learnings that doubled shelf velocity
🌱 Supply chain control as a gross-margin unlock
📈 Why category “durability” matters more than trend-hopping
👨‍🍳 Tease: upcoming product collab with chef Thomas Keller

Table of Contents:
00:00 – Intro & IQBAR Origin Story
04:00 – Lean Team, Big Business: The $125M Org Chart
08:00 – Broker Management & Third Party Ecosystem
14:00 – Agency Diligence & Accountability
18:00 – Rapid Iteration vs Long-Term Strategy
23:00 – COGS Reduction via Ingredient Sourcing
27:00 – Product Roadmapping & Category Selection
31:00 – Functional Ingredient Strategy
34:00 – Premium vs Value Pricing Strategy
38:00 – Rebrand Strategy That Boosted Velocity
42:00 – Trends (Liposomal Gels, etc.) 

Links:
IQBAR – https://www.eatiqbar.com
Follow Will on LinkedIn – https://www.linkedin.com/in/will-nitze/

Follow Adam on LinkedIn – https://www.linkedin.com/in/adam-martin-steinberg/
Check out https://www.kitprint.co/ for CPG production design support.

Transcript

Adam Steinberg (00:00)

Welcome to Shelf Help. Today we're speaking with Will Nitze, the founder and CEO of IQ BAR, who's joining us from Miami. IQ BAR, for those of you that aren't familiar.

focused on brain and body performance. Will launched the brand in 2017 with plant-based bars and has since grown into a pretty well-rounded brain and body product suite. A few other products, I think he's

going to surpass a nine figure run rate this year. So, seen a lot of success, so excited to get into it.

first off, for the listeners, that aren't as familiar with the brand, maybe just give us a kind of quick lay of the land in terms of

the quick origin story.

why behind the brand, core products you guys offer, and some of the main places that consumers can get their hands on these days.

Will Nitze (00:46)

Yeah. I mean, the why is was, I didn't like my job at the time and got into nutrition and wanted to be my own boss. And, I could never really understand why ready to eat foods were, there was nothing as it related to the brain. was all body, body, body, and, ⁓ weight loss, improve digestion, build muscle, nothing for the brain. And so, yeah, it was kind of a confluence of.

Adam Steinberg (01:04)

Yeah.

Will Nitze (01:13)

A lot of those things. and then, it was started as a bar brand and still, think the latest tally is 90 % of the revenue is still bar related, but a couple of years into it, we decided we could platformize and we should platformize because this brain and body nutrition concept.

was relevant to other use cases and we could solve other problems for the same consumer. And so we expanded into hydration with IQ mix and then into coffee with IQ Joe. So those are our three lines now. I don't think we'll go into other categories, at least not for a year or two, but yeah, you come first brand. were started DTC and then layered on Amazon and, then subsequently layered on brick and mortar, but now actually for the first year.

2025 is the first year brick and mortar will do more revenue than digital. So it's I think 55, 45 and we're yeah, Costco, Walmart, Target, Publix, HEB, all the, you know, yeah.

Adam Steinberg (02:12)

All the main places.

You guys are on track to hit 125 million or so this year, which I think is the nine full-time employees, which super impressive, really unbelievable what I'd say to a lot of founders who have a much bigger team

that are much lower from a revenue standpoint.

Will Nitze (02:27)

Yeah. I mean, I think we're like moving forward AI will allow for really, really small teams. That's not how we did it, but, uh, just as a concept, like I think that'll be more and more possible to have one, two, three person teams doing whatever 50 million bucks. um, yeah, I mean, we have nine full-time W two folks. Um, but if you, if you zoom out, we probably have, I don't know, 50 people working on the brand. We just, uh, created.

What I call a hub and spoke model. you have the hub. That's your team, your WTUs and everyone's kind of the CEO of their department. Like there's one to two maximum three people for each department. And so that's like good and bad, right? Like the people in those roles have to like that, be comfortable with a lot of accountability, be really good. and just like.

competent, et cetera, et But then each person manages at least three to 10 third parties. you know, those are all the spokes. So we have a spoke out to an Amazon agency, a DTC paid ads agency, an email marketing third party. we have a Walmart broker. have a target broker. We have a Costco broker. have a Publix broker. Right.

Adam Steinberg (03:24)

Yeah.

Yep.

Will Nitze (03:48)

You know, it's still a lot of humans working on it, but yeah, very small team. and I wouldn't do it differently. Like, I'm surprised more people don't try to do it the way we're doing it. ⁓ we can get into why I like the model if, if that's interesting, but.

Adam Steinberg (03:58)

Yeah.

Yeah, for sure. If you want to share why, I'm curious.

Will Nitze (04:07)

Yeah, mean, so for starters, yes, there are a lot more people working on it, but there are less still, I would say less total people working on it than, than, you know, peers of ours. there's like that obvious overhead savings. there are no.

people who you're like, I don't know what that person does all day, you know, which most, most companies, there's some middle management layer and you're like, I don't like a person sends me emails and tells people what to do. And then I don't know what they do for the other six hours a day. like everyone's doing stuff at all times. And yeah, you just frankly save a lot of overhead. So that's, that's nice, especially in the early years when you just don't have money to pay people. ⁓

Adam Steinberg (04:46)

Totally.

Will Nitze (04:48)

But honestly, like I would say the nimbleness is the biggest thing you can hire and fire third parties so easily and quickly. Um, and one thing I've learned is every year you have to fundamentally like re-engineer your organization. If you're growing fast. Um, if you're not, then you don't cause there's not much to change, but like if you're doubling, which we, we try to double every year. And if you are doubling. Well.

You need a lot of different skillsets that are going to get you to the next double. And so you're going to have to evolve manufacturing setups. You're going to have to evolve your.

broker, your broker over here has been knocking on target store for three years and hasn't gotten in like time for a change, you know, like, your Amazon, you know, your Amazon agency is kind of stalled out and you didn't have enough money to afford a better one until now, but now you do. And so, okay, let's level up our Amazon agency. So there's all these like,

Things that you have to re-engineer year in, year out. And it's way harder to do that with like an internal team than it is with a hub and spoke model, because you can just swap in and out spokes, you know, as much as you want. Now it's still annoying to do that, right? Like just cause it's easier, doesn't mean it's easy period. it's still painful to change manufacturers. It's still painful to switch brokers, but

Adam Steinberg (06:07)

Sure.

Will Nitze (06:12)

I would say like miles less painful than if you had a team of 30 people and you're like, crap. 10 of these people were great for the model last year and are like terrible for the model moving forward. Like that is a gnarly problem to solve.

Adam Steinberg (06:28)

Yeah, totally.

you mentioned Amazon agency, meta agency, email marketing agency.

beyond those three, if there are any other ones, what does that agency and or just say that core contractor ecosystem look like?

Will Nitze (06:42)

I mean, it's like all the, those things. we have a, we have a customer service third party, that they're like basically internal. mean, we've been working with them for years and, they know our brand catalog extremely well, all our policies, like,

Adam Steinberg (06:48)

Okay.

Will Nitze (06:59)

they're very good. yeah. I mean, brokers are huge. We only had one sales guy up until like a week ago. We hired our ninth person, who's only our second person in sales, but we have one guy, one sales guy sitting over like $75 million business, one guy. So, on the brick and mortar side. So, it was incredibly important for him to have a really, really good Costco broker.

and a really, really good Walmart program because those people are boots on the ground. They're meeting with the buyers. They're putting decks together. They're monitoring sales data and out of stocks and you know, and then yeah, like on the e-comm side, my wife, Jess runs our e-comm business and it's just so critical. have a great agency on Amazon. Amazon's our number one channel.

And so critical, we have a great, you know, paid ads agency on the DTC side. And ultimately each person largely becomes a manager of third parties, like over time, which is like by design. You want that. so yeah, I mean, I can get, it would take me a while to get into all of them, but just suffice it to say, like every department has that quarterback and then.

Adam Steinberg (08:10)

for sure.

Will Nitze (08:13)

a bunch of receivers.

Adam Steinberg (08:14)

I think I read that

you like to shadow an agency's

Slack org for like two weeks as an example of one data point. But I'm curious, obviously these agencies are a core part of the business. What's that typical

due diligence process look like? And then how does an agency

win your business?

Will Nitze (08:30)

Honestly, this is maybe not a good answer. They don't. We are recommended them via like there's nothing they can do necessarily. Whenever we have a need, I just like look at, I'm always trying to look at someone who's taken on the same problem and bang their head against the wall many times and then pick the right answer. I want to skip the head banging.

Adam Steinberg (08:49)

Yeah.

Will Nitze (08:54)

I just want to go like, find someone who found the answer and then do that answer. And so, like pitching me doesn't really work because I'm just like, no, I'm just going to call five people and see how they solve the problem. And then if like three of the five solved it in this way, like I'm just going to do that. ⁓ It's kind of like outsourcing decision making. By the way, we do that with like everything. So, and then once they start,

Adam Steinberg (09:00)

Totally.

Yeah.

Yeah, makes sense.

Will Nitze (09:23)

Yeah. mean, I imagine we're pretty annoying because we're, we're just like on them. which by the way, like it's better for both parties. You iron everything out and then. Cause we make it very clear what our goals are. like, you know, you'll set your KP our KPIs for whatever the thing is.

And then it's just sort of objective and it's like, all right, let's check in and are we hitting them? And if we are great. And I have to think about less and less and less. Week over week. So, yeah. And it's, like a privilege once you get big enough to where you can pay good money. Like, because yeah, you do get what you pay for that. That's definitely true. And if you're paying 30 grand a month to a third party, like.

Adam Steinberg (10:02)

for sure.

Will Nitze (10:08)

It's reasonable to ask a lot of them and they don't want to lose you. So they're going to do what it takes to keep you. And so honestly, like managing third parties has gotten to easier because you're just paying them more. and they're just better. Like they just are.

Adam Steinberg (10:16)

Yeah.

Sure.

Yeah, that makes sense.

for some early stage founders that are a few years behind you, They really like what you've done in terms of building a really super lean team

If you just had to distill it down

What are

three things that come really top of mind?

Will Nitze (10:36)

Well, first I would say do it yourself first, right? So don't start with like the hub and spoke model only became a hub and spoke model after the hub did all the work first. So everyone does it first, deeply understands it. This is again, a principle that applies to many things in life. Do it first, understand it such that you could do it and then go higher. then, so, and that's true across like everything, especially as a founder.

Adam Steinberg (10:45)

Sure.

Will Nitze (11:04)

You know, you have to be up the curve 75 % on like legal and trademarks and food science. You know, if you're in the food and bed world and raising money and da, da, da, da, da, da. Like you have to be fairly competent in eight to 10 different areas, which is why it's entrepreneurship so tough. ⁓ but that just is what it is. So that, that would be a big one.

Adam Steinberg (11:25)

turn.

Will Nitze (11:32)

I would say like good agencies want accountability. And so I think there's like a misunderstanding about being annoying or whatever.

You want like both parties want it to be really clear how you define success and whether things are going well or not. That's bi-directional too. I guess that would be advice to agencies too of like, they should check in. I've always shocked when agencies don't check in to see like, how's it going? Like, what could we be doing better? And they just assume it's going well and then they get fired or whatever. like, what? I thought it was going well. It's like, well, you could have just easily checked in.

Adam Steinberg (12:02)

Yeah.

Will Nitze (12:11)

doesn't take a lot of time, but same thing goes to the brand or the agency. Like if you're not happy, like make that clear. and just like over communicate. The other thing I would say is like, it's almost impossible to genuinely over communicate. Like even if it sounds dumb, this is true for everything by the way. Same with your manufacturer.

Like it's not sufficient to tell someone to do something. have to tell them what to do something and then also tell them not to do five things. So you have to foresee like the errors and then say, don't do these five things in addition to do this thing. Like that's like, I would say most relevant on the manufacturing side. you're, you see enough stuff and you're just like, Hey, by the way.

Adam Steinberg (12:45)

Totally.

Yeah.

Will Nitze (13:01)

Definitely don't do this, this, this, and this and watch out for this, this, and this, you know? so, those are a couple of things. then.

Like you're still going to need money. Um, so we're super lean and we're super capital efficient. We still needed nine and a half million dollars to, you know, to get to now. And that's super like low, by the way, relative to peers and relative to now the size of the business. think we calculated it not long ago where I think we delivered like, or have delivered 13 or $14 in net revenue for every $1.

In equity fundraising we took in, so that's super high, but we still had to raise nine and a half million dollars. So, ⁓ there's this whole thing now of like bootstrapping versus raising. And I think it's kind of like silly. It's don't get, don't get dogmatic about any of it. to me, at least in the categories I play in, my belief is the answer is.

Adam Steinberg (13:46)

Sure.

Will Nitze (14:01)

be really lean, but also raise the right amount of money at the right times. Because again, like what I said earlier, you get what you pay for. It's going to be so much tougher to have bad people on your team and bad third parties and bad manufacturers. It's just, you do have to pay up for quality at some point.

Adam Steinberg (14:23)

For sure.

Yeah, totally.

a week or two ago, I saw you shared a post,

where you're talking about

fast reactors survive, slow reactors don't.

how do you think about balancing the need for,

those quick pivots reactions versus

at the same time,

giving an initiative or strategy enough time to generate success in terms of maintaining the commitment or confidence in a strategy that you know

that may entail some delayed impact, if that makes sense.

Will Nitze (14:52)

Well, you're always micro pivoting. is something I always say is like the product's never done, but that's like true. Like you're never done as a founder or the team's never done. Like I think people think, you create this thing and now it's done. No, no, it's never done. So you're always iterating. So you need to be patient over the long scale of just.

Allowing a thousand iterations, but you need to be fast reacting for each iteration. Right? So if you're iterating twice as fast, you will get to the finish line twice as fast. So there's, that's a kind of a bit paradoxical, right? Cause it's like patients, but also, reacting really quickly. So. You know, if you look at any of our products, what we sell today is not what we sold.

Adam Steinberg (15:29)

Yeah.

Will Nitze (15:45)

three years ago, like, and we're not even, we're not afraid to make like fairly substantial changes to things. you know, we, when we first made the bar, was like eight grams of sugar and six grams of protein. wasn't a protein bar. Like it was a brain food bar. And then we just kept getting feedback of, could you add protein? Could you add protein? And then we're like,

Adam Steinberg (15:46)

Sure.

Will Nitze (16:05)

Okay. Could we add this thing and make all these people happy and not piss off these people. So if it's, if it's an incremental benefit and like almost zero detraction, always do it, always do it. Even if it's like disruptive operationally or administratively or whatever, always do it. Cause in the long run, it's you know, for a fact that is the right move. And by the way, you know, once you hit a certain scale,

Making the right move a week quicker is like massive sales wise, like each week, each day is really impactful. And so

there's also like a revenue output of acting fast. solving problems slowly means growing slowly, usually. so yeah, I guess that's what I meant

Adam Steinberg (16:41)

Yeah.

Will Nitze (16:52)

the whole game is a game of patience, but you're, again, you're just, always iterating. It sucks, right? It's not fun to always be iterating. think a lot of people stop because it's not fun and it's exhausting, but it is usually the right move, especially as the market moves too, right? So oftentimes you can't control the need for iteration. So again, an example there would be like keto.

Adam Steinberg (16:55)

for sure.

Will Nitze (17:19)

And so iterating into that was like a massive benefit. We're like, okay, we were already, we kind of locked into it a little bit because we were already keto compliant, but then we were like, okay, how do we capitalize on this like giant new demand? And we put keto and huge letters on it on the front of the pack and

And it was epic. Like our opportunistic iteration was epic and had huge implications for us. Then keto died and the same iteration or a very different iteration, but that same style of like looking at macro trends and acting was needed. And then we had to cycle off it and then we survived and kept growing while keto first brands all died. So that was like.

Adam Steinberg (17:55)

Yeah.

Will Nitze (18:05)

Out of our control, but we were paying attention to the environment and thus iterated around that as well.

Adam Steinberg (18:12)

Talking about

supply chain for a second

you've said there's plenty of brands out there that could probably pretty significantly reduce their cogs if they just really focused on optimizing their supply chain, but it's just something that often people don't want to do or, and, or just don't know how.

Will Nitze (18:27)

Well, the don't know how is like, you don't, there's no playbook for dealing with manufacturers or suppliers or like, I mean, you could call 10 people and kind of figure it out, but it's, it's usually people learn this stuff via doing or via necessity, and via trial and error and like, ask, you're like, you asked for something and it happens and you're like, damn, I didn't know I could ask for that and could get it, you know? And then.

You ask for the next thing. it's again, when you're iterating so many times on like the supply chain and op side, in addition to the positioning and marketing and all the other sides, you just learn how to strip costs out of, of your products. And you have certain like step change, kind of like aha realizations. ⁓ like one for us was taking our supply chain in house.

Adam Steinberg (19:12)

Yeah.

Will Nitze (19:17)

Which by the way, is not like objectively the right way to do it. There are many major downsides to that. And many other people don't do it, even though they know they could, because they don't want to deal with those downsides. Like that's fine. But for us, that was a huge unlock. so. You know, that you, you, you, you learn those things. The, the first piece was.

They do it because they don't do it because they don't like it. It is not fun. That's also true. Like usually people don't get into CBG to order pea protein powder. Like that's not fun. and it's not fun to test 30 different pea protein powders when

If you test three and one's like pretty good and you're on a schedule and you want, you need to get to market. It's lot easier and less, fun to just pick the best of those three. The right move is to look at all 30. So it's just, I do think it's a combination of those two things. I guess baked into that last one is time, right? It does take more time.

Adam Steinberg (20:16)

Yeah.

on that similar track, it seems like one thing I heard you talk about is one of the first big COGS impacts that you saw was when you started buying your lion's mane and nuts directly. I'm curious, what was the hardest part about making that switch?

Will Nitze (20:39)

I think, I think different co packers are different. Like some, don't think they love having to manage like in some ways it's, it's nice for them and a lot cleaner for them to charge a tolling rate. And they're like, because again, all those downsides of you doing it, those would be their downsides too. Yes, they get to mark it up, but they have to outlay all that cash to buy it. They have to sit on it. It's on their balance sheet. Like it sucks for them too. Um, so.

Adam Steinberg (20:58)

Sure.

Yeah, airplane.

Will Nitze (21:09)

No, I mean, you see this a lot with 3PLs by the way too, right? Where they, they don't necessarily want you to use your rate cards because they have their own rate card and they're marking it up. they, it being a black box is actually beneficial to them. They don't want you to source cardboard because they want to buy cardboard and then mark it up.

Adam Steinberg (21:28)

Right.

Will Nitze (21:28)

⁓

I would say it's less painful for the three PL. And so it makes, they're going to push back harder than maybe like a manufacturer would, but you're right. I mean, some manufacturers want to manage it. ⁓ and I guess to that manufacturer, would say like, too bad. Like, know, here's the demand I can give you. Here's what I'm willing to do it for like dealer or no deal.

Adam Steinberg (21:36)

Yeah.

Check.

Will Nitze (21:53)

And a lot of this comes down to like leverage, right? So that's the, nothing I said in the last 15 minutes is useful whatsoever. Unless you have volume. So forget everything I just said and focus on getting volume. If you don't have volume.

Adam Steinberg (22:05)

Sure, totally.

Will Nitze (22:12)

And then start thinking about all those things. Like, order of operations is key. Like number one, product market fit and get to like 10 million, 20 million, 30 million units. Then you have a menu of things you can do to expand gross margin.

Adam Steinberg (22:23)

Yeah.

Yeah, yeah, totally.

in terms of...

earlier stage founders again, that are ones that are a years behind you, how can they, at least maybe they're not at to that point yet where they can actually do it, but how can they,

at least start thinking about how they can start setting up their business to be able to own more of that supply chain as early as possible?

Will Nitze (22:50)

They might not want to, like it might not be the right. First of all, would say don't.

There is no playbook. Like don't look at what I did and assume that's right for you. would consider all paths and fit. again, there's pluses and minuses, right? like there was a time when really it was more important. Your top line was way, way, way more important than your bottom line. Like, you know, 2015 to call it 2021. And so it just wasn't, it didn't make economic sense. If you're trying to get to exit to nerd out on all this stuff, you're going to get a

way better deal and valuation by truly focusing 100 % of your efforts on sales and marketing. And so, and then that changed, right? So you just have to like understand the environment you're in, what worked backwards from your goal. and

Adam Steinberg (23:31)

Sure.

Will Nitze (23:39)

You know, maybe taking supply chain in-house is the right move. Maybe, maybe it isn't, maybe you're in such a high gross margin category that you're actually fine with a materials markup from your co-packer and you don't want to sit on $10 million of ingredients, which I have to do. Right. So, I guess I wouldn't say like, think about XYZ earlier in terms of specific things to do. would say.

Adam Steinberg (23:50)

Yeah.

Will Nitze (24:05)

Just strategize more broadly earlier. Like think about every possible path earlier. and understand like the true open book pricing of everything. Like don't, don't ever accept black box pricing of anything. You should be able to get to the line item detail of everything. And if you're not like, just demand it, you know, ask for it.

Adam Steinberg (24:21)

Sure.

Yeah.

Will Nitze (24:29)

cause again, it's like, it's like that saying, you can't, what gets measured gets managed and that is absolutely true. If you have a black box, you're not going to do anything with that.

Adam Steinberg (24:40)

Yeah, yeah,

I think all these are really great points.

talking about product in general, I know you started with the bars, expanded in powdered mixes.

what's your

general thought process in terms of how you think about product roadmap strategy. I know you said you probably don't have anything else coming for a while, thinking back to maybe as you guys started thinking about what makes sense and how to expand beyond the bar, what's your general

approach to product roadmap strategy?

Will Nitze (25:07)

I mean, we thought about it in terms of what's coherent for the brand and then also what satisfies a long checklist. And I guess the third thing would be what's not cannibalizing and ideally complimentary.

So most brands will have a form factor and they'll just ride that form factor and they won't platformize at all. And they'll sort of create new flavors and limited time offers and create variety that way, but they won't go into other categories. So by the way, that's the best thing to do. If you can scale that to the moon, like if you're AG one and you can have one product more or less like do that, do that for sure.

Adam Steinberg (25:35)

Yeah.

Totally.

Yeah.

Will Nitze (25:47)

we just saw an opportunity to grow faster and sort of ensure that we could hit. You know, nine figures. I think we would have hit it anyway with the bars, but,

Sort of like almost an, a level of insurance to get the business to the size we wanted to get it via platformizing. And so then the question was, okay, what else is brain and body nutrition relevant to what are their problems? Can we solve for the same consumer? And so there was like, you know, satiate. Well, what about hydrate and caffeinate? Like both of those are ultra relevant to brain and body nutrition and the function of brain, your brain and body. And, sleep was another one we looked up, but didn't go and do for.

variety of reasons. still think we could one day, but, then what's the long list of check boxes that need to be checked? It has to be econ friendly, meaning lightweight, long shelf life, needs to be high gross margin out the gate. Needs to, not again, not cannibalize bar. So you're not.

Adam Steinberg (26:31)

Sure.

Will Nitze (26:46)

consuming coffee instead of bars, you're consuming oftentimes coffee like consuming A helps you consume B, et cetera, et cetera. So the category has to be big and growing. We don't wanna play in shrinking categories. Ideally, the category is not super competitive. Hydration sachets.

We're somewhat competitive when we launched IQ mix and now they're like insanely competitive. If you go to Amazon and you type in electrolyte powder, there's thousands of options. So that's not great. I'd say much less so on the like enhanced instant coffee side, much less competitive, but, again, nothing's perfect, right? We're still willing to, to make trade-offs. but yeah, that's the thinking.

Adam Steinberg (27:08)

you

Yeah. I'm like, that's

an actual product in terms of specific to your guys' brand in terms of the brain performance stuff. Are you guys,

exploring

whether they're,

under the radar

and or more well-known ingredients that

aren't currently in your products

And if so, what's the process so that you guys go about vetting these, let's just say like emerging brain nutrients?

Will Nitze (27:49)

No, this is a short answer. so you have to think about everything in a, like form factor specific context. for bars, for example, you have to decide if you want to create a supplement or a nutraceutical or a food. And if you want to create a food, you really.

First of all, there's like price implications. You can only sell a bar for so much. And if you want to scale into Walmart and Costco and whatnot, you can't just like put, you can't just raise your cogs by like 20 cents a unit. It's just not, it's just not going to work. And also, even if you do do that, no one wants that. There's zero people demanding that out of you. And, but that's like a very bar specific thing. Like one thing we learned is with bars, there are people,

go to the bar aisle and no one, by the way, says, I want brain food. They're like, I want a plant protein bar or an RX bar or whatever. And they show up and then they cycle through a fairly predictable list of considerations. Protein slash protein source, sugar, label cleanliness, flavor appeal, price. And then yeah, of course, taste, right? That's a post purchase consideration that then brings them back and

And then like the last thing would be like, is there something cool about it? Enhancements or this or that. And that's where the brain thing comes in. It's not the inverse of that. They don't start with like, what's this like really novel thing. They have to cycle through those first six things to get to that last thing. That was a huge learning for us, humbling, honestly. so that's bar. So if we were to like,

Adam Steinberg (29:20)

Yeah.

Will Nitze (29:27)

You know, constantly be thinking of how do we incorporate this into the bar and that into the, but like, again, can't won't work for cost purposes. No one cares or wants it from that form factor. And then just operationally it's a disaster. that's powders. You.

Adam Steinberg (29:32)

Yeah.

Yep.

Will Nitze (29:43)

is people are much more interested in like drinking functionality than eating functionality, generally speaking, especially in a powder context. So, you know, we landed on Magteen because, you know, magnesium's an electrolyte and it went well with, you know, in that form factor in an electrolyte powder product and

Adam Steinberg (29:50)

Yeah.

Will Nitze (30:04)

It had all these great clinicals that demonstrate it to cross the blood brain barrier and improve mood and improve focus and yada, yada, yada. And so could we have used cognizant for example, which is another molecule, which is, I believe acidic, citric, choline. yes. I mean, again, there are like trade-offs to, you know, heck, couldn't, we could have both of them in there.

but then it's like, again, you have to work backwards from what does the consumer want and what is the consumer willing to pay for? And so, I think a lot of times where companies fail is they make stuff that they just think is cool or they make it for themselves or they like overly nerd out on it. And it's like, you have to stop and be like, does anyone want this? Usually no, usually no. Like you do, I know you do, but.

Adam Steinberg (30:34)

Yeah.

Will Nitze (30:52)

Does anyone want this? And then a critical follow-up, is anyone going to pay for this? So yeah, mean, that's kind of like considerations.

Adam Steinberg (30:56)

Right.

Yeah.

Speaking of getting people to pay for it,

pretty sure I saw that you guys reduced your price and one of your four packs from 6. 99 to 5. 99 at Walmart. you guys saw

50 %

jump in velocity. seems like a lot of,

aspiring CPG entrepreneurs, a lot of them talk about the desire to build,

a premium product with a premium price and.

It seems like a lot of entrepreneurs are building successful brands and are looking for ways to how and when can we increase price wherever possible. And it seemed like you definitely have a different approach to this. I'm curious from your perspective and what you've seen,

why is this not the right approach? And why does it seem like some of other operators get this wrong

Will Nitze (31:40)

Well, it's

not, it's not not the right approach per se. You can build a great premium brand business. Um, it's very con it's very, uh, category specific, right? So, you know, vital proteins built a giant business and sold it to Nestle and that was a premium product, right? So that category, the consumer gave them license to price at a premium. And there were a large number of those consumers who were going to pay up for that. So.

Adam Steinberg (31:57)

True.

Will Nitze (32:10)

So,

it's very category specific. I think a lot of people want to be premium because they think they're premium, like they see themselves as premium and they're like, I shop at Whole Foods. Wouldn't that be cool to have an item that would work well at Whole Foods and Whole Foods is a premium retailer. So they, again, they make that mistake of conflating what they want with what's a good business practice.

Adam Steinberg (32:22)

Right.

Will Nitze (32:31)

And then I think a lot of people want to do premium too, because quite frankly, their cogs suck and they have to be premium. So they're just saying, I want premium. want to price it a premium. Like for XYZ reasons, it's like, yeah, but like 50 % of why you want to do that is because you literally have to, like, you will just bleed money if you don't price high. And they're just not honest about that. So, I mean, what I would look at is.

Adam Steinberg (32:49)

Right.

Yeah.

Will Nitze (32:57)

I would look at it very differently. do look at it very differently, which is what is the point of the business? And if the point of the business is to get really, really big, well, premium is probably not going to work. mean, again, there are exceptions, vital proteins, whatever. So it can work. just saying probably it's not going to work. And like in bars, it's definitely not going to work. and

Adam Steinberg (33:20)

Yeah.

Will Nitze (33:23)

For me, I think mostly about like volume, like I want as many human beings in America and globally, to be able to buy our products. If you can buy our product, because we come at you with an approachable price point, I have another at bat that like other people just straight up don't have because they price themselves out. I just want more at bats and I never want to like I'll look at any retailer and try and think how could we sell in there like included, you know, dollar general, let's say.

Adam Steinberg (33:42)

Right.

Will Nitze (33:53)

I've had a long thought experiments on how could we create an offering that could work in dollar general. That's how I think, cause I want more volume and I want more humans to eat this or drink this. ⁓ but again, you have to divorce yourself from the consumer, you know, the consumer writ large. A lot of people struggle to do that.

Adam Steinberg (34:03)

Yeah.

Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah. Yeah, this all makes a lot of sense.

I know you guys went through a rebrand a while back. I think I you said, double your velocity post-rollout. What did that, thinking back a bit, just what did that packaging refresh process look like? And what were the key things that you had included in that creative brief from whomever you worked with to make sure it achieved what you had in mind?

Will Nitze (34:45)

Yeah. Hopefully the agency isn't listening, but, ⁓ no, mean, we, we could have done a better job in our creative brief. it's so tough. These things, cause you say what you want theoretically, and then you get manifestations of that back of what the agency, like how they interpret that in their mind and how they create that artistically. And then you're like, but that's not.

Adam Steinberg (34:50)

Okay, fair enough.

Will Nitze (35:10)

It's a disconnect between this sort of, um, murky vision you had, and then like the literal manifestation of their interpretation of that. And we were like, let's be out there like a little more liquid deathy, not fully that extreme, but let's just say we want to make a statement because bars are so saturated. There's 200 of them in a bar aisle. Like let's be more out there. And, and just, kept getting like,

instances of that back that were, we just knew we're not going to work. And so we took that as like far as we could and eventually kind of pulled the plug on that process. ⁓ which was very painful. And then we stopped and we were like, okay, like, let's pivot again, the micro pivot thing, like let's micro pivot. What is going to move more units of this product? And we like created a list of it. And it was like, number one is taste appeal, flavor appeal.

Adam Steinberg (35:50)

Hmm.

Will Nitze (36:08)

Does someone's mouth water when they see that like imagery? If yes, great. You're going to move more units. Like it just is what it is. you know, number two, like we want like a catchy tagline, which still I think was like a callback to that original goal of be more, like shocking or alarming or at least just memorable, be more memorable.

Adam Steinberg (36:12)

Yeah.

Yeah.

Will Nitze (36:32)

And so

we want some like cool tagline cause like IQ bar. does that mean? Like add a tagline that gives more context and softens it to like makes it more accessible. and then just like, what are the key, call outs? What are, what are the key value propositions? Cause we could give 10, but we only have space for three or whatever it is, you know? And so what are they? And then we worked with another.

Adam Steinberg (36:50)

Mm-hmm.

Will Nitze (36:56)

It's more freelancers. I don't know if they're an official agency, but be like iterated on the prior work and got it to where it was. And so it was very messy. It was very challenging. was painful, expensive, all those things. But ultimately we got it to, think a really good spot. and then, like immediately saw velocity increases. Yeah.

Adam Steinberg (37:11)

I agree with you.

That's awesome. That's such great validation.

All right,

if

I came to you, I ran marketing for, to say a better for you brand, told you I'm considering a packaging refresh. What questions would you ask me to

help me confirm Just even if this is the right strategy in general to even do in the first place?

Will Nitze (37:36)

Yeah, it's tricky because you can only digitally, you can do more ABCD testing, right? And you can literally change the packaging in a thumbnail and just see, does this convert better? That, that never like perfectly maps to on shelf where you really can't do that ABCD testing, right? It just, you just can't. But it's close enough to where you can do a lot digitally.

and so we w we would, yeah, I would say start there, like start by an example for us was like keto is in big letters on the front of the pack. And like, what if it wasn't, what if instead one gram sugar was there? Like you can digitally make that change and see what happens for a week. so just like, see what moves the needle digitally.

you are going to have to, I would just say like understand what just like your consumer's lizard brain wants, which usually is taste appeal. Like you like humans are not that complicated at a baseline level. There are just, if it's a drink, it has to be ultra refreshing. Like I have to picture myself sweating outside and like chugging this thing.

And so like condensation and like cues of refreshingness are just, I can just guarantee you are important. And for, you know, and bars like decadence and dessert like stuff that is, that helps. Like there are just things where you don't even, you could ABC test it, but I could just tell you that is appealing to the lizard brain of your consumer. And you should probably do that.

But honestly, like once you get past all those things, it's like just pick an identity and be consistent and hammer that identity. cause ultimately what will drive your business is, is repeat purchase, which is really going to come down more to the product itself. ⁓ so there's only so much you can do. By the way, price is, is killer too, because it, it's going to convert someone quicker and

Adam Steinberg (39:32)

Yeah, totally.

Will Nitze (39:43)

and having intro products that are very low barrier to entry helps. And then it's like the product, does the product deliver?

Adam Steinberg (39:50)

how do you balance the need for obviously a fresh look to a certain extent, there's a reason you're doing the rebrand, but also keeping some of those familiar legacy brand elements that customers recognize when they're walking down the aisle?

Will Nitze (40:03)

Yeah. I mean, we have kind of like, uh, I would say memorable logo aesthetic, but, with like the, I, the queue and things above the queue. And that was very intentional. Um, but we even changed our logo. We added a box around it because we always thinking like, this is kind of weird and it's floating. And how do we like make this like distinct and segment it from the rest of the packaging?

So we changed like everything down to the logo, but we kept the general aesthetic of the logo.

But we changed a lot. mean, to be honest, we really leaned on the logo and having the logo be really big. we didn't want to have an understated logo. so actually before we had a horizontal logo that took up like the whole front of the pack. And so we made the logo smaller, but it was still, it's still compared to other bar brands, pretty damn big. ⁓

Adam Steinberg (41:00)

Yeah.

Will Nitze (41:02)

So I would say if you have one element that's you can, that's a key to your identity, often a logo that you can hold onto. I think you're going to do a pretty good job of retaining, people's like, you know, callbacks to what your prior iteration of branding was. But I don't know. I mean, it's a good question. It would be, I would love to know like how many people like couldn't find us. I don't have a good answer to that.

Adam Steinberg (41:19)

Yeah. Yeah.

last question for you, Any brands or trends just in the CPG space broadly that you're particularly excited about as you've been watching and or any trends that you wish you would have jumped on earlier at all? I'll let you pick either of those questions and answer one or both.

Will Nitze (41:47)

No, because trends come and go and. I'm more interested in durability than trends. like bars are just durable. They're always there and they keep growing and trends will happen within them. But the key is you picked a durable category. ⁓

Adam Steinberg (42:03)

Yeah.

Will Nitze (42:05)

I do think the liposomal stuff is really cool. Those gel packets. I think that's a cool form factor. mean, anything that'll take people away from pills is a good thing. Like gummies are having a big kind of moment right now. Why? Cause it's not a pill. It's more fun to eat. It's tastier. It's kind of like candy. And then like the gels, like they taste pretty good. It's, it's easy to slam in the morning and it's just different. There's an awful

novelty to it. So I do think the liposomal form factor will get bigger and bigger. Probably if I was going to do something right now, I'd do something in that space.

Adam Steinberg (42:41)

That makes sense. That's how they carry around tracking too. Well, yeah, well, this has been great. Really appreciate the time. This has been awesome.

anything else you feel like you want to share before we close out about IQBAR or anything else that's on your mind?

Will Nitze (42:55)

By the time this is airing, will have launched a product with Thomas Keller, famous chef. So check it out. Give it a try. Yeah.

Adam Steinberg (43:01)

Wow.

Awesome. All right. We'll definitely find  that and put it in the notes.

Awesome. Thanks, Will. I appreciate it. It's been great. Ready.

Will Nitze (43:08)

Thanks for having me.