Back Label Branding

Katina Mountanos is the Founder & CEO of Kosterina, a modern wellness company centered around early harvest, extra virgin olive oil with high polyphenol content from her native home in Southern Greece. She saw a huge gap in the American market for authentic, high-quality extra virgin olive oil, and recognized that most mass-produced olive oils here are late harvest and poor quality, which negates most of the health benefits. Prior to starting Kosterina, Katina led Walmart’s Brand Incubation team, which focused on incubating and operating brands in the fashion, beauty and home categories. This role furthered her skills in brand development and marketing, and in 2016, she left her corporate career behind and set out to create a premium Greek olive oil for the American market. Her mission is to educate American consumers on the benefits of premium olive oil, and introduce the market to a better-for-you option.

In this episode we chat about leaving a career in corporate America, key indicators your product/brand might have legs, getting discovered by Whole Foods on Instagram, how to tell if your olive oil is actually extra-virgin, and why PR and partnerships can be hugely beneficial in building a wellness brand. 

Brianne Nemiroff started her career in entertainment journalism in 2012, reviewing concerts and interviewing artists all over the U.S. In 2013, she started contributing to VIVA GLAM Magazine, a vegan lifestyle publication in Los Angeles, where she climbed the ladder to Managing Editor over the next 5 years. During her time at VIVA GLAM, she wrote articles for every category on the site earning her experience in beauty, fashion, food, entertainment, and travel, which led to her starting her own vegan travel column, "Visiting as a Vegan" in 2016. 

In 2017, Brianne and her husband Benjamin left Los Angeles to add to her travel column and start building their own vegan travel website. Over the next two years, they drove to 60-plus destinations all over the U.S. and Canada to learn about the growing vegan restaurant scene and visited over 200 restaurants. 

Brianne is currently living and eating her way around Vancouver, British Columbia, managing her website It's Bree and Ben, and working as a Product Sourcing Specialist for a vegan beauty box, Kinder Beauty.

In this episode we chat about how, as a writer, Briann decides which products and restaurants to cover, how she has been growing her new vegan travel blog, plus vegan food branding trends & tips!

Grace Ventura was born with a passion for wellness, a desire to help others heal and live healthy lives, and has decades of experience as a licensed massage therapist, yoga instructor, and wellness coach (and is a mom of six!). Grace launched her broth brand, Beyond Broth (now re-branded as Grace's Goodness Organics) after being under the weather and craving a simple and nourishing vegetable broth that she didn't have to cook.

In this episode we chat about practicing wellness and putting health first, creating alignment with your brand, managing your energy, Grace's quarterly business check-in practice, and much more. 

Welcome back to the Back Label Branding podcast! In the first *official* episode of Season 2 I'm interviewing Renee Dunn, founder of Amazi Foods. Renee started her company after leaving her job and boarding a plane to Uganda. After working on her thesis in this African country, she realized she wanted to connect the abundant resources of the region to the global market. Amazi was founded in 2016, but 2020 was a huge year of growth for the brand. Launching in Sprouts, their first national account, created headway for many changes in marketing, distribution, production, and more. In the past year, Renee's company has sourced from close to 300 farmers in Uganda, 55% of which were women, paid farmers upwards of 68% above market price, and created over 30 jobs for local youth. Amazi continues to work towards the belief of "snacking on purpose" and goes beyond just sustainable supply chains. Their mission is to close the gap between source and consumer, between consumer and source.

After season 1, I've decided to do it again. But before we dive into the next round of amazing female founders, I wanted to share some things that I learned while making my first podcast in the hopes that it will be inspiring for those of you who are also considering starting your own. I've immensely enjoyed the platform for storytelling, but there are definitely some tips for editing, producing, and launching that you will need to know!

Listen to my solo mini-episode to learn about a few things that might help you too. 💫

World Spice Merchants has been a hub of flavor exploration since 1995 (!). In this episode, I’m speaking with Amanda Bevill, who took over the business and brand 15 years ago accredits turning left instead of right one day for how she got into the spice business. An herbalist by training, Amanda literally walked into the World Spice Merchants store by accident. Within a week, Amanda was working at the shop. And within the year, she was signing papers to take over the business. While Amanda moved back to Montana a few years ago, she still maintains the original Seattle location today!

In this episode, we chat about how Amanda learned to cook (at the spice shop), why black pepper will and forever be their best-selling spice, the importance of sticking to - and staying true to - the core of what you do, why she moved the business’ operations from Seattle to Montana, and how they’ve built their digital content to really focus on their core set of customers.

Starr Edwards is the Founder and CEO of Bitchin' Sauce, a plant-based almond dip that has started as a teenager's kitchen experiment. Starr began making Bitchin’ Sauce in 2004, prompted by a newly acquired vegan diet as a sparky sixteen-year-old. At the time, there was a growing raw foods movement, but the vegan-friendly options were either highly-processed or high priced. So she created something herself! Starr's sauce quickly became
 a family staple and flagship recipe that she used in her budding personal chef business. She did spend a few years working as a home chef but realized that what she really wanted was consistent, flexible work so that
 she could care for her one-year-old son and be with her family. Starr started selling Bitchin sauce at local farmers' markets. And then to local grocers. And then, as we’ll talk about in this episode, she was able to get distribution at Whole Foods. And then Costco came a-knockin!

We also dive into the Bitchin brand… how it was an alternative to “Awesome Sauce” which she originally googled. But the Bitchin name has since become fundamental in creating a brand identity and an internal culture.

In this episode, I’m speaking with the very bright and creative co-founder of GoNanas, Morgan Lerner. GoNanas is not your Nana's banana bread. Their product is vegan, gluten-free, top allergen-free, and downright delicious. Morgan started GoNanas in college, with her best friend Annie Slabotsky, and the two have just gone full-time, working on the company and growing GoNanas as a digital brand. I felt like our conversation was really capturing a moment in time for the brand. The COVID-19 pandemic was a big kick in the pants for them... in a good way. After realizing all of their retail partners wouldn’t be ordering their single-serve products for the foreseeable future and customers kept asking where they could get the product, they decided it was time to package and sell a mix! We dig into how creating inventive flavors is a big part of their brand strategy moving forward and how before 2020 is up, they’ll be launching their mixes nationally on Amazon and partnering with Nordstrom’s Rack. We dive into why growing their brand slowly, at first, was key to success in launching their mixes digitally, and Morgan shares her tips for using Instagram and TikTok as tools to grow a community online, do brand research, and foster ambassadors.

Hillary Folkvord is Montana’s hospitality hostess. She manages The Sacagawea Hotel and RSVP Motel in Bozeman. The latter, she concepted, designed, and remodeled as a very Palm Springs meets Montana vibe. With her sister as her business partner, the two manage both properties’ operations and marketing along with a recent addition - The Farmer’s Daughter cafe, a passion project she opened in 2018 featuring a menu inspired by the recipes from Hillary’s kitchen as well as her travels. 

In this episode we talk about the rollercoaster of a ride COVID has brought to her business - from giving birth to her baby boy 1 week before lockdown, having to furlough her entire staff, to sold-out bookings and record sales. Hillary a self-proclaimed “oversharer” through her blog Lady H Life, where she gives insights into her #momlife and entrepreneurship. So of course we dug into marketing on Instagram and how she has used it to build both a lifestyle brand and bring in revenue for her businesses. 

Heather Howitt is a food & beverage entrepreneur and tea guru. She started and sold her first very successful brand tea brand, Oregon Chai, in 2004 after having a successful partnership with Starbucks and getting her product picked up in grocery stores around the world. Now, Heather is back in the entrepreneurial game with a newly launch product, Thaiwala Thai Tea. Claiming she stumbled into entrepreneurship accidentally, Heather is also a seasoned managing partner in a private equity investment and business acceleration firm that has supported food & beverage brands such a Dave's Killer Bread, JONES Soda, and Boyd's Coffee.