Rachel Krupa - Curated Convenience: Inside The Goods Mart's Retail Model

On this episode, we're joined by Rachel Krupa, Founder of The Goods Mart, the better-for-you convenience store that's reimagining what a 7-Eleven can be. Rachel is also the founder of Krupa Consulting, the CPG and wellness PR agency she's run since 2010, working with brands like Thrive Market, Our Place, and Goop Kitchen.

We dig into how Rachel went from running her PR agency to opening a convenience store after founders kept telling her they had no strategy for the convenience channel and The Goods Mart's core bet: a tightly curated shelf of better-for-you brands, no GMOs, no artificial colors or flavors, and accessible pricing so the store never feels precious.

Rachel walks through what she actually looks for in a brand, the packaging iterations every product goes through before it scales, and why a small-format store surfaces feedback that velocity numbers alone can't.

We also get into the curation business that now drives much of The Goods Mart, placing emerging brands in hotel minibars and corporate pantries for clients like the Fifth Avenue Hotel, the Waldorf Astoria Beverly Hills, and OpenAI New York. Rachel shares her honest take on fundraising, her grocery consulting work, and the brands she can't stop watching.

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Episode Highlights:

🏪 From PR agency to convenience store
🥫 The better-for-you gap in convenience retail
🎨 Brand pillars and the case for curation
🛠️ Building the first store with no playbook
☕ Accessible pricing and $2 coffee
🚫 Why The Goods Mart charges no slotting fees
💸 Getting creative with revenue instead
📦 The packaging iterations every brand faces
📊 Small-format stores and real-time customer data
🏨 Curating hotel minibars and corporate pantries
🏬 Consulting on grocery concepts like Flow Grocer
👀 The flat drinks and gummies she's watching

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Table of Contents:

00:00 – Intro
00:51 – Origin story: from PR to convenience store
02:55 – Brand pillars and the case for curation
04:49 – Building the first Silver Lake store
06:38 – Accessible pricing and everyday value
07:48 – Being first to carry emerging brands
08:37 – Why The Goods Mart charges no slotting fees
10:58 – The financial model without slotting fees
12:14 – The curation vertical and COVID pivot
13:50 – Small-format stores and real-time data
16:15 – What brands need buttoned up before pitching
18:56 – Why it's not a shoppy shop
20:19 – Everyday low price over promotions
22:08 – The new Williamsburg flagship
24:15 – Operating in LA vs New York
25:34 – Hotel minibars and corporate pantries
29:17 – Fundraising and consulting for grocers
31:08 – Brands and trends she's watching

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Links:

The Goods Mart – https://www.thegoodsmart.com/
Krupa Consulting – https://www.krupaconsulting.com/
Follow Rachel on LinkedIn – https://www.linkedin.com/in/rachelkrupa/
Follow me on LinkedIn – https://www.linkedin.com/in/adam-martin-steinberg/

For help with CPG production design - packaging and label design, product renders, POS assets, retail media assets, quick-turn sales and marketing assets and all the other work that bogs down creative teams - check out KitPrint.

Shout out to my friends over at Glimpse, the go-to partner for automating retail-related back-office operations and unlocking margin trapped in invalid fees and manual processes.

Are you in the market for a new flexible packaging partner? Check out HD Packaging. Third-generation, family-owned and built for the needs of category leaders like Newman’s Own and A Dozen Cousins. Faster launches, lower costs, and no artwork fees. 

Transcript

0:01

shelf help today we're speaking with Rachel Krupa founder of the Goods Mart the better for you convenience store concept that's redefining what a 7 11 could look like Rachel's also the founder of Trooper Consulting a very well respected PR agency that she's been running since 2,010 or so with including clients like Thrive Market R Place Seedleb Milka Bar Cloud Goop Kitchen Lunin Lucia just just to name a few my previous company actually worked with her team as well and they were awesome so definitely knows the CPG world PR world very well I think opened the first Goods Mart location in Silver Lake back in 2018 just opened the the Williamsburg we're gonna flagship location I think pretty recently maybe just in the past month or two and yeah so super excited to dive into it a lot of cool stuff to talk about yeah Rachel maybe just in terms of rewinding back to the 2018 you're running Crew Consulting full time you know seems like founders kept dropping by your LA office which I visited a few times with you know dropping off samples and sounds like eventually you decided to open a convenience store which I think is the very long story short but I think you you've sent like some of the past kept telling you they didn't really have a strategy for convenience stores and you just kind of LED you to feel like you saw an opening start off walking through kind of the origin story why behind the brand and Goodsmart and the Goodsmart concept and then we'll take it from there yeah um thank you so much for having me on yeah it's always fun when you have someone you I mean we worked with each other flocana was like one of the first clients that I had the first one within the cannabis space and that nice that was in 2012 2011 which is wild but yeah so it was like just through the PR world that essentially we were launching better for you brands and at that time like if to think 2017 that was like more the rise of Whole Foods and Whole Foods had this beautiful like local section that everyone loved it for and like the foragers that they were doing and then you would go to a 7 11 back then or you know not to bash 7 11 but any type of convenience store and didn't match the types of products that people were looking for and excited about we were also working with a lot of them from a PR perspective we had brownie brittle you know barnana and some of like the early darlings within like the better for you space and it's like you walked around like a conventional store you're like hmm what is everything inside if it wasn't better for you what was it you know and then you started to like dabble into ingredients and you're like why do we need you know more of like the standard Coca Cola Doritos type of products couldn't there be a convenience store that actually existed for our generation to have all of the better for you and so that was in 2018 our brand pillars were no Gmos no artificial colors and flavors everything was organic cotton and no hormones within like the meats and like curated based on what we were looking for as like customers so that you didn't have to do the work when you are the shopper like to me like shopping and like something great about curation is like I don't have to do work like I can go in and like yes if I'm plant based or gluten free like I'll look to see what those are but at least I know there's like a level like playing field of like I know I can trust all of these if I do have eating styles that are different at least I know like the base levels there and that's like more of like the initiation of the goods was like better for you but also elevating like really cool young emerging snack brands that didn't have a place to exist yet I mean the world has changed so much in eight years of like where things are in the whole CPG industry but back then it was completely different like it was just like just bubbling up into like what it was and what it has become make total sense I feel like especially when people are just getting so much overloaded with so much information so many choices these days like the paradox of choice is like such a real thing it I feel like offering such a more curated product set that people just don't have to think about as much it's probably a relief for a lot of people and I have a good story behind it too you know like they say like the major ingredient in like a really great product is love you know and it's not an ingredient that's on the label but it's the ingredient of the story behind it or the people touching it as they're making it and like you can taste it when someone's so passionate about what they're doing versus just like turning it out for profit totally the journey with that first location on sunset way back in the day well I mean it was I mean what I know now versus what I didn't know now was just like crazy of just like the learning curve of you know going to business school without going to business school and it was like a beautiful combination of having been in PR at that point for eight years I really tapped into the connections that I had garnered over you know I've been in PR 23 years so whatever the 8 - 23 is like you know tapped into all of those relationships and found a space that again did not know what I was doing and I was still like will be the first one to say like kind of know what I'm doing now but still don't know what I'm doing and anyone really knows because like you know you kind of have to go with the the flow in order to pivot in changes you need um but then I just didn't know I mean I didn't know contractors didn't know like actually how to get inventory how to receive it like distributors and so Learned all of that but like asked a lot of questions of former clients and like okay who's a general contractor I got the general contractor from Michael Palmer who's the founder of McConnell's because like I know of you know whenever I say this to him is like how neurotic he is with like perfection of things and I'm like whoever his general contractor like I need him and he was amazing we launched Thrive Market from a PR perspective and we got their first buyer to come and help us like figure out that backside from the operations side um and then just tapped into friends of like who's a designer like who's like artist like just asked for help um in a way that was just like I'm building something like how do I do it we tapped Ashley Kauf who is an incredible registered dietitian to help build those brand principles of like what makes sense you know non GMO do we want to say everything needs to be organic no because it was just like more if you have these it just talks about the quality but you it was very important to me from the get go it was like also accessible because where we were opening in Silver Lake um and wanted to make sure that when people walked in it didn't feel too precious or pretty in like a sense that like I need to have a twenty dollar Bill to buy anything and so one of our brand ethos from the gecko is more of like we're gonna have cheap good coffee you know and black drip coffee you know eight years ago it was a dollar 50 now it's two dollars you know we got to have eight years of a little bit of inflation but like getting a really good cup of coffee for two dollars now like you can't get better but that was like the initial it was like I had no idea what I was doing but asked for help and made a lot of mistakes and continue to make a lot of mistakes but constantly learning so it's not a mistake if you're learning from it I guess it's growth they tell me totally yeah as long as you learn from it it's growth exactly right you're like hey totally if you do it twice then it's like you know that's on you yeah totally agree totally to be like the first to carry assuming that's I'm on the right track there from kind of a standpoint in terms of like what you stay on the shelf like what's the I don't know velocity threshold gets pulled and like how long does a brand on shelf some traction and show some solid velocity numbers you how does that whole process work all good questions and I think that's like what we've been saying is like we want to be one of the first four brands to be on and we still do but there's so many new avenues for brands these days that allow people to test and try things and like different models of how people are going to market you know what I mean there's so many different iterations of small format stores that people can get research so for us it's more of um you know we're a tried and true retailer like we buy product we sell it there's margin there's no slotting fees I'm a big believer in like giving people the opportunity to have shelf space without having to have them pay for it sure just because like that's a barrier for some really great brands that are just like hustling to get packaging right you know and then you have to pay for a slotting fee and then you have to pay for marketing and then you have to pay for all these things and if you have a really good product I want to be one of the first to introduce those and I think that's more of the always true like yeah we would love to be the first to carry a lot of different brands but we know there's so many more like concepts like us now these days that you know what I mean there's a lot of options so for us it's really from a standpoint of like we always wanna be the first we're always gonna give feedback we're always gonna be very brand focused just because for us like our logo and our backdrop is black and white because like we wanna be the platform for brands versus like the shininess of our brand our brand's important but it's more about talking about the founder and the brands that exist in like those that we can help build um and then because of the you know two decades plus of like CPG work is like also just trying to help them like how else can we be helpful like yeah you know do you need help with marketing do you have questions and like we know and we're very honest with brands you're like your package is gonna look like this now if you're just launching that's V1V by the time you get to Whole Foods or a national retailer your brand is gonna probably go through three four five iterations of the packaging totally yeah so like go bold like just like have fun with it because it's going to change it's not like yeah if it's when and for us it's like be a little bit test things like work with us to test things so that consumers can be like should the in core ingredient be in the front or should it be in the back do you lead with this color do you lead with that you know so for us it's more of like if a brand wants to like test and try things and like get fun and funky with it like like let's do it because like that's how we feel that we can be a really good value add because we're very brand and founder so we're very brand and founder focused a slotting fees that was one of my questions slotting fees I think historically are something that has really helped kind of way to boost the margins a bit for retailers you're not doing slotting fees which I'm sure brands are overjoyed by but in terms of like how does financial model structure differs from I don't know maybe the average I mean should we do slotting fees to like make it from a I understand people why like I hundred percent and it's like it's so needed and I think it's just like I'm a little bit you know I've always been told I'm hard headed and what I believe and what I feel is right I will always be leading with what I feel is right versus the bottom line could get me in trouble for saying that later on you know what I mean but at the end of the day to me it was just a non negotiable um to do that because at the end of the day I love building brands and helping them and so that allowed us to get a little bit more creative and how we are generating additional revenue because like yeah those fees do make it a we're talking about pennies when we sell things like if you're selling a five dollar you know item and you have a 40 50% margin like you gotta sell a lot of things yeah totally you know and at the end of the day for us it's like okay we got a little bit creative during covid and started launching more of curation and for us again it's our mission has always been to how do we grow and help emerging snack brands it is getting to the hands of more people and we can do so much within a store and stores are hard to operate like everyone knows that who owns the store it's not easy getting the product on the shelf and like getting that is the easiest part of the business it's when you have to layer in like staff you have to layer in like you know just like expiration dates layering all the operational wizardry that you have to have in a retail store it's hard yeah totally long winded to say like we now have like a curation vertical where we're curating and getting these young brands that are in our store into the hands of more people through hotel mini bars and corporate pantries and so for us like that felt like more of the right because that felt more of now these brands are not only on our shelves they're in where we say active participants of shoppers where you know if I'm in a hotel minibar I'm the first one to be like what's in the minibar and like wanna try everything if it's given to me free at work I'm 100% gonna try it so the level of discovery is increased you know what is it tenfold I don't know how many folds it would be but like the ability to be discovered is so much greater and higher that then they're gonna be found tasted and then hopefully repurchased and like then their trajectory of growth is like you know they're flying out of the nest and they're ready to go to the next step totally on more anecdotal data what is that kind of small footprint the store when we say our flagship store people are like oh how big is it and you're like it's 700 square feet that's big for us so we love stores that are smaller format because a is two fold like you're talking to the customers and actually getting real time feedback from them like I was in the store earlier today and it was just like hey what do you like you know and you're actually asking questions and we prompt the team of like sweet or savory so we're learning if more people are going for sweets or like savory you're learning if it's chocolate or gummies you're learning if it's like you want monk fruit or stevia or do you want real sugar and like where are people going do you want energy drinks or do you want hydration drinks do you want functional so these are questions that we're asking just to help our customers kind of lead them into like what snack or what product that they want then we also just have like back side some Slack channels that we're like talking about these are what people are looking for here's this so it's more of the soft touch of things that are not necessarily so much of like yes we have the velocity because of our POS system and we're gonna be able to say these things are what selling but the backside of it is like where I think more data is more valuable to young brands because then you're able to say like hey like we are having you know 200 people coming in and half of them are steering away from stevia cool no one's asked for energy drink but everyone wants hydration or people keep coming in to ask for hydration like you know the little like sachets yeah right did I say that word right I think so I think so I'll just own it or are they coming in literally for hydration like in a can and so those are more of the the qualitative points that we look for in addition to velocity of like you know right now like our number one skew is like rotten people love a good gummy and they like that it's a version of a Trolli gummies are like our category that like we literally cannot keep in stock we've sold out of product within you know the few weeks that we've been open and so you know people are going for gummy but they're going for real sugar gummies you know what I mean interesting so how often do you get that and how often can you get a actual customer to give you um all of their input sometimes too much but we want it all for goods Mark want to do all they can to get on the shelf what's have buttoned up before they come and walk to the door getting meeting with you your your buyer team to give them best chance of actually getting on shelf have a good product that tastes good you know what I mean pretty simple like simple yeah I think it's just like there it's you know having like a good like communication system like making sure you know what your pricing is like making sure your volumes are like just like you know kind of know the basics but at the same time like we've definitely helped brands like figure out their pricing you know or help them dial in on like a flavor of something so I think it's just more of like understand where you are with the product at least come and be like hey here's where we're at we've told brands of like it's too soon like you need to dial up the salt because like we know that for us for a brand to be on the shelf like I just want it to be that people know at least they're gonna try it and like know that someone in their life is gonna like it that we've all had like a cookie that's been $12 and you ripped it open and you took a bite and you're like I wish someone would have told me it was a stevia bomb you know and there's something so disappointing that you spent $12 on a cookie that you thought was gonna be your best cookie of your life and it was actually the worst cookie so for us like that's where again like more of the the conversation that we have with our team members in the store is like hey do you like this flavor just to give you a heads up so that when they rip anything open that comes from the store at least they're like oh I understand why they say this is so good maybe it's not for me but I know why and it's not too like bipolar in one way or another flags that would tell you regardless of how the product is amazing that they're not ready or not a good fit to be on the shelf at Get Smart they don't answer an email for like two weeks okay fair enough you know what I mean like it's not you say that you laugh that it sometimes happens or yeah you order a product and it takes like a really long time or it's not for the communicated that hey we're gonna be out of stock in like two weeks and we're not gonna have like a refill for another two months because of this so again it's just goes back into the communication side of it so that we're all working together we all are driving sales like we wanna push your product but we need your product to push and so I think that's where it's more of just being honest and I think any buyer is gonna say the same thing it's just like be upfront with if things are going young emerging brands are gonna have hiccups but the sooner you can tell us about that hiccup the sooner we can plan so we're not disappointing our customers or disappointing you know our clients totally that just jumped out to me when I was doing a bit of research beforehand and I think you said something along the lines of I'm not a big shoppy shop type person that you want good marks to be more more than a Shoppy shop can you walk me through what you mean by that well if you look at the definition of a shoppy shop and shoppy shop is by definition something that is more of like touristy and more of a very trendy store I think after eight years of having the goods Martin of being around so we're not necessarily trendy do you know what I mean but we're highly curated I love you know what I mean those in the world of shoppy shops today like there's so many people doing beautiful things we are not the ones that are gonna ever label ourselves as that just because for us it's like about longevity and about the curation that we do yeah and sometimes we're not gonna have the product that everyone is buzzing about if we feel that there is another product in that category that we love better we are gonna have the one that we love better versus the one that is getting the rise of like social platform love because for us it's like who's the founder how does it taste and how does it look so that's where I say it a little bit and like that's more of how we look at it but there's so many people in like that space that call themselves that are doing incredible things and so it's never a negative but it's like all ties are eyes but like I would never call it because like it's just I can't not every C store but a lot of C stores they run like pretty heavy like limited time offers holiday programming and like resets regular like promotional cadence holiday type stuff we do none that you do or thinking about doing we do none okay it was one of those early conversations like in yeah 2017 Alex Tuan who's like an incredible like operations wizard who was the one that helped us who was at Thrive Market one of their first employees there and he was just like we talked about this it was literally I feel like a half day discussion of like okay here's like what it's typically ran blah blah blah his parents own got like gas station convenience store so he grew up with the knowledge yeah and or he was like or you can do an EDLP and I was like what is the EDLP he's like everyday low price and I'm like I am doing an everyday low price I am not doing promotions it's too much operational it's too much of this this this and on this like it just adds a level of complexity when you are a small nimble team like to do promotions for us it was like every day low price you know we're gonna put it on there we're gonna be fairly priced our big philosophy is what should someone pay versus what will they pay is the bottom line ethos of like what we do and our fun things are more of like hey we're trying this product we want you to let us know if we should carry it you know what I mean sometimes when people come in sample or we do more community things that are like hey this slushy is gonna be a dollar today because all the proceeds are going to this nonprofit so that is more of our promos or it's the last day of summer let's have a hot dog cookout you know we're very much of like you know of the dirt and the grind of like New York City and like yeah old school way of marketing and building a community I love that look like from here or like like you know a beautiful years off my life in the sense of just like creative and I would just encourage everyone to come and see this store that we have because it is the true expression of what I've always felt the good smart should be I think you open a store your first one is like I love it but then you are like what are the things that I could change as soon as you open it and this is like eight years of all the things that I wish I could change or what I would want to carry our stores have been 3 400 square feet like while this is just over 600 like yeah double the space like people are like oh it's small I'm like wait this is like you know it's like when you move into a one bedroom from a studio in New York and you're like oh my gosh I am living large like I feel like I'm living large in this space right now but for us it's like more focused on this space there's so much more community building that we have to do and there's so much that there's gonna be living on this I'm also a believer and like I like to see how people interact with the space so if and when we open up another one that is gonna be the expression of what it will be next of more of like what's missing and also I don't like having cookie cutter ways of things looking and feeling and if someone is doing something I'm gonna do the complete opposite because like I think the world needs more creativity and uniqueness and interest to just spark a little like I've I don't know why I've been saying lately it's like a hip hip hop you know what I mean you know something with a little hip hop you know when you walk by and you're like it's a little pop of the hip and I think that's how like I always look at our stores you're like oh this is like a little thing and so that's why we have like vintage things our merch is literally vintage t shirts that are I found spam I found Tony the Tiger right now I'm like noodling if I should have my mom pull the trigger of a you know Macho Man Randy Savage Slim Jim T-shirt that I found like those are the things that for us is like I probably wouldn't have done that eight years ago but today in today's world like that works and so I like to sit to see what is of the moment versus totally long winded I totally respect that standpoint you've you've now operated in both LA and New York which I imagine are probably two of the hardest places to operate from a real estate standpoint which which have you found is is harder and why I mean they both have their challenges but I mean we haven't had one in LA now for you know a good amount of years yeah it's been a while so it's hard to say but I think there's there's pros and cons I would say like New York may feel something that I would always do more than LA because of LA and parking parking and if you have a small footprint store and you're in LA where people going to park and like the cost of parking in LA cause like no one's gonna valet I mean you know what I mean for a small format like you're gonna have to park and then walk blocks and so I think that's the only thing that I would say is different is like the parking when the first Silver Lake store had six parking spots in front that was like the the kicker for us and like six parking spots like that were on our lot like oh my gosh this is amazing yeah but here people walk people travel for things in New York like it's so easy to take a city bike or get on the subway or you know like it's just easier to navigate so I will always say New York also has its pros and cons but like you gotta love the grit and grind of New York totally in a curation side of the business so they get like hotels corporate parties probably big event of activate activations it started as a friend was like hey can you curate the snacks for my mini bar in my new hotel that I'm opening up I'm like okay sure let's try it you know what I mean like again like I will try anything at least twice I will not say just once you know give it like something may you know not work the first time but yeah it was just kind of fun it was more of again like I love curating snacks for people and for places and snacks to me are a moment of what people are talking about and it adds to an emotion you snack when you're happy you snack when you're sad you snack when you are stressed or you know just like need to chill yeah and so getting into again like the hands of more people is like why we did it and then it's also like a really great like just revenue driver for us as well so we act as a we're just trying to figure out the term because like we're acting as like a wholesaler but also a distributor of it and creating like our own back side so like our clients are ordering directly from us so on our side it is just fun you know we're working with open AI in New York we're opening you know working with like Fifth Avenue Hotel with Hotel Chelsea the Waldorf Astoria in Beverly Hills 26 convenient locations in all the Alfred coffees so it's like they are opening up and crushing it and so for us again it's like a great revenue driver a great way to introduce folks the hospitality business and like the corporate side and like talking snacks all day is like the my favorite thing and it just was like a natural extension of what we were doing and also the relationships that I had you know over the past 20 some years of PR world where the conversation was not necessarily always hard it was like who's doing your mini bars and like can I just revamp them and there's just different systems and so I think that's where it was a great natural extension that is now become I would say more of the major driver of our business in the Goodsmart than the retail shop because we're shipping to over 70 locations right now that's awesome within like where we are focused on more so than the brick and mortar like so that is definitely a a you know the driver for us um and I would say you know you're working with smaller margins because like it just depends on you know people are either selling or reselling and so you just have to be conscious of that and like again like we never want to have someone not experience a really great product because of the cost yeah obviously things cost more within natural but at the same time there is like a threshold that people be willing to pay on things so it's more about volume and so but these are places and it depends on if people are purchasing or if they're giving it away for free so I would say no two accounts are ever the same which is like has its complexity and challenges and I think we're the ones that are cookie enough in the sense to like try it because for us is talking snacks in like Fifth Avenue Hotel which was amazing because they were like we want all art Deco and like more mid century modern type vibe and you're like oh packaging that fits your energy and vibe like okay let's do that you know and so you're talking more about the snacks and more about like what is that experiential side when someone wants to go into a hotel room and what is that story because like if you want that entire ethos to fit that's like the beauty of it like snacks have a story to tell let's tell it yeah totally fundraising at all less than a less than 500,000 let's say that we have not raised a lot in eight years I like doing and trying things and so I will not say that fundraising is never on the table but like I um like to be crafty and like figuring out like how to do things and some things are meant to be funded and other things are meant to be built and spread versus scaled and so for us right now fundraising is not something that we're actively looking at I can't say never um but for us now um I really love trying to be creative in what we're doing because like we have our store we have the corporate side and then we also consult actually for grocers and developers who want to build their own their own grocery so we just built out and helped curate Flow Grocery in Miami and really worked with their team to do the operational side of what a grocery looks like I've built out five six grocery stores and so it's like you know over the years and so it's those are things that like I think you make a lot of mistakes when you're building out retail concepts and like I've made those mistakes and so I have a lot of knowledge and my team has a lot of knowledge that we can share with people to not make those mistakes and so that's like another side of the business that allows us not to have to necessarily fundraise all the time because we're doing consulting and those are also fun projects if it's our ethos it's how do we get brands in the hands of more people it always doesn't have to be the Goods Mart it can be another really great concept that's in another state that we are helping to curate and figure out the logistics for that's equally as fun you know and so we're very much of like how does it fit our mission and our goal and like kind of that's our North Star and so everything we do kind of has this fit within that North Star of what we're doing yeah totally yup I love that last question for you definitely curious to see what your answers on this just because you're running a good smart you see so many new and cool brands coming through the door coming on the shelf or maybe not quite ready for the shelf any particular brands that really jump out to you that are on the shelf or you've just seen or just kind of trends in general in CPG that are like jump out to you first things are especially piquing your interest as of late um I mean I will always eat gummies gummies are my thing but like at the end of the day there's so many different gummies in the category you know I think it's a matter of like the flavor and like what are the it's taste and texture for me with a gummy same I think beverages are always like interesting and like I love like the hydration like kind of like flat I think there's such a like category to be had in flavor forward flat drinks that's not a tea that's not a matcha that's not just a still water like that's like my favorite brands right now are like OEM which is like a really cool hydration drink out of LA it's like this soft grapefruit like taste that's like I'm not a grapefruit fan but this soft grapefruit is like what is called and it's just like the perfect citrusy but like also just like really pleasant and then you have like high Q which is like also another hydration drink that we I know you know a lot of people love Rick and like he's a really great founder coming from liquid Death um but like that hydration drink so I think it's like how do you do things that are flat that are thirst quenching because like I think the powders and things are great but at the end of the day you're bringing things to powder and you gotta shake things and you gotta do things but like just pick up a can people like it and just like chug it how can you chug it so I think those are categories that I like right now yeah and then just like random things you know cloud popcorn I eat a bag a day and like if you put the birthday cake flavor in the refrigerator it's like the best thing you've ever had wow alright let's try that one Awesome Rachel this has been awesome it's been all that you're all that you got going on building and then best place to follow along with with Goodsmart probably social of Instagram right now just Rach Krupa R a C H Krupa and then the good smart perfect I will always answer DMs LinkedIn is always there too so we're all perfect I'm always easily to be reached awesome I think that's the pod interviews like founders so yeah love to just have you kind of it's it just makes us feel like we're like how many years ago is that it's like more than a decade correct me if I'm wrong but I'm pretty sure like one of their something like the first to carry brands decide to keep or cut and keep on what I know about retailers you know retail is not question in terms like how your kind of overall kind of I know C store let's say mean in practice yeah so because our stores are also intentionally interview you had said something that you like to do or kind of seasonal yeah how does that side of the business work how are you thinking about potentially I have not raised a lot in eight years you know what's the best place for people to follow along with Awesome Rachel it's been awesome I think