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May 11, 2025 39 mins

On this episode, we’re joined by Douglas Raggio, the founder of Pass the Honey and author of So You Wanna: Start a Food or Beverage Business.

Douglas spent a decade as an investor reviewing over 12,000 food and beverage deals before launching Pass the Honey — a single-serve honeycomb brand on a mission to combat one of the most pervasive forms of food fraud in the world. Today, the brand is scaling rapidly in Kroger, Albertsons, and Sprouts, all while pushing a regenerative beekeeping agenda that goes far beyond what “organic” can promise.

We go deep on Douglas’s non-traditional approach to CPG - from why he believes in margin over virality, to how he’s building a new category in the produce aisle, not the honey shelf. We also unpack key decision points from his book and why most founders misunderstand what “success” really means in food.

Episode Highlights:
🍯 Why 70% of honey on the shelf is fake
🐝 The problem with “organic” honey, and what regenerative apiculture offers instead
📦 Building a new category in the produce aisle, not the honey set
💸 Margin vs. consumption: the only two numbers that matter
🔁 Why Pass the Honey doubled sales after doubling their price
🔍 Why some products shouldn’t “fit” anywhere in the store
🏪 How dump bins unlocked 50–70 unit weeks at Kroger
📊 Top-down vs bottom-up pricing strategy
🚪 Saying no to accounts that don’t meet minimums
⚖️ How Douglas thinks about store count vs velocity
📉 Why 95% of CPG brands fail, and how to avoid being one of them

⏱️ Table of Contents:
00:00 – Intro & Origin Story
03:00 – Honey Fraud & Broken Standards
08:00 – Building Pass the Honey’s Regenerative Supply Chain
13:00 – Advice for Founders Entering CPG
15:00 – Book Lessons: Endgame Clarity & Critical Decisions
21:00 – What Retailers Want: Profit, Not Just Velocity
28:00 – Managing Margins & Avoiding “Store Count FOMO”
36:00 – Brands & Trends Douglas is Watching
38:00 – Final Thoughts & Where to Find Douglas

Links:
Pass the Honey – https://www.freshhoneycomb.com
Buy the book – https://a.co/d/ibCGJbs
Follow Douglas on LinkedIn – linkedin.com/in/douglasraggio

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

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