A story from the early startup days about winning a major beverage project against much larger competitors and what it taught me about differentiation, specialization and avoiding commodity positioning.

The reformulation wave is here. Regulatory pressure, cleaner-label expectations, sugar reduction, protein fortification and changing consumer preferences are forcing food and beverage brands to rethink their formulas. The brands that treat reformulation as more than a compliance exercise may find opportunities to improve products, margins and consumer trust.

Not all revenue is good revenue. Chasing the wrong products, customers, categories, or services can create complexity, weaken margins, and pull a company away from what it does best.

A great formula is not enough if the co-manufacturer, process, and operating model cannot support growth. Manufacturing is where product strategy becomes real.

A unique ingredient can help a food or beverage brand stand out, but if the sourcing strategy is fragile, it can become a margin and growth constraint at scale.

CPG brands don’t struggle because of marketing. They struggle because the business wasn’t designed to scale. Early decisions—product, margins, portfolio, supply chain, and go-to-market—often aren’t tactical. Get them wrong, and growth gets harder fast. At small scale, inefficiencies are easy to ignore and demand hides a lot. But as the business grows, critical decision points start to show up when margins tighten, complexity builds, supply chains strain and growth gets hard