Most of you guessed why I was in Arkansas.
Free letter today.
Today’s letter is free because it’s sponsored by Walmart.
Good morning everyone, and happy Halloween. If we’re talking candy, I’m going for sour strips. If we’re talking chocolate bars, I’m going for the Cracker Jack ice cream bar at Bar Contra.
Today’s letter includes: Why I was in Arkansas last month, Kin Euphorics is asking customers to invest, Jane Pratt’s memoir “will have more in common with Charlie Sheen’s than with Graydon’s,” Bon Appétit is giving YouTube another shot, and the spookiest news of the day: a book about The Sloppy Tuna.
Planning an Election Night party next week? Invite Cami Fateh, Feed Me’s associate editor and resident party reporter by emailing cami@readfeedme.com
When I told friends earlier this month that I was traveling to Bentonville, Arkansas for work, almost all of them guessed why: to visit Walmart. One of my regular New York real estate sources said that every time he goes to Bentonville for work, his girlfriend gets nervous he’ll want to move there. Another told me that if I didn’t have time to visit Crystal Bridges (the art museum founded by Alice Walton, daughter of Walmart’s founder) I should extend my trip to make time. Four readers emailed to recommend dinner at The Preacher’s Son (I went alone with a book and the kitchen sent me fried pimento cheese balls on the house). Apparently everyone has been going to Arkansas without me.
The reason I was in town wasn’t just to spend a Monday afternoon watching the sunset from inside James Turrell’s Skyspace (although that’s what I did after I landed). It was to work with Walmart on this story. Every year since 2014, the company hosts Open Call, a two-day event where over 500 entrepreneurs from 47 states pitch their products directly to Walmart buyers. It’s part Shark Tank, part Willy Wonka: businesses enter conference rooms with shelf-ready businesses and, if they’re lucky, leave with a golden ticket signaling they’ve landed a deal with the retailer. The goal is simple: put more American-made products on Walmart shelves. Through 2030, Walmart plans to invest $350 billion in American made, grown, or assembled goods, supporting an estimated 750,000 jobs nationwide.
I spent some time in my hotel room browsing The New York Times archives to read more about Sam Walton’s vision for Walmart. In a story from 1985, Peter T. Kilborn wrote about a letter that Walton sent to 3,000 American manufacturers and wholesalers telling them that the chain wanted to buy more American goods: ‘’Our continued success depends on our mutual reaction to a very serious problem with regard to our balance of trade deficit… Wal-Mart is saying that if you don’t buy the workers’ goods, they’re not going to be able to buy your goods. It’s all in Wal-Mart’s enlightened self-interest.’‘’ During Open Call, I got to see that commitment in action.
Only 2,076 of you were reading Feed Me when I published my New York Magazine story on Shoppy Shops in 2023 (thank you, Substack analytics), but that reporting on the state of retail and CPG has shaped a lot of what I write today. I think about CPG brands constantly, because I believe the way Americans spend money says a lot about us. And I wish more of the founders who read this newsletter knew about Open Call. The entrepreneurs I met said that working with Walmart changed the course of their businesses.
“Walmart is the whale,” Jason Patton of Fire Dept. Coffee, a 2023 Open Call winner, told me while standing outside of a truck serving coffee to people on Walmart’s campus. “Because of the number of stores they have, our product is the most accessible when it comes to being in retail.”
Ben Moore, a fourth-generation farmer and the founder of The Ugly Company (a 2024 winner), told me, “As a little guy, kind of new to CPG, you think of Walmart as this behemoth, but they’re in a lot of ways the smallest retailer of all time. I can get a hold of everybody – even people pretty high up – on the same day.” The Ugly Company now employs 94 people and is Farmersville, California’s largest employer. “They have this real push for American manufacturers, American goods. That could mean starting as small as 20 stores in your local area. Don’t be intimidated by the fact that it’s Walmart.”
In the hallways of Walmart’s massive new home office, I noticed the badges many employees wear proudly display how long they’ve been there: 5 years, 15, I saw one that said 25. Some had past careers at Coca-Cola or Amazon. “If you’re in a bind, if you have a problem, our vendors can pick up the phone and call us,” said Melody Richard, Walmart’s SVP of Pantry. The company is an organization of experts committed to solving problems and evolving the business. “Most likely, somebody on this campus has experienced it.”
Over two days, I met founders pitching everything from flavored intimate wipes to garage mats to cocktail mixers to plantain chips. I sat down with Tommy Reed, Walmart’s Director of Hot Beverages, to learn what makes a CPG brand stand out to him after a day of nonstop coffee, tea, and cocoa pitches. “It could be the size of the business,” he said. “Sometimes we want brands to work digitally first as direct-to-consumer brands to understand where they’re shipping to. Coffee is a very competitive space.” When I asked if there was still room for innovation, he smiled. “Instant coffee has been around forever, but it’s been exploding the last three to four years.” (For all the business school readers: free idea.)
I asked Melody Richard what separates the brands that find steady success on store shelves. “It always starts with understanding the customer,” she told me. “What are the brand’s guardrails? What do they stand for? Is there a white space and a problem they’re solving for a customer?”
After two days in Bentonville, I understood why the entrepreneurs I met were spending a better half of their workweek in the middle of the country for this event – because the shelf your product lands on dictates who buys it. Of Walmart’s annual purchase of goods, more than two thirds are products made, grown or assembled in the U.S.
If you’re a small business owner with a product ready for shelves, or just someone curious what it takes to scale something from an idea to an aisle, you can learn more about becoming a Walmart supplier here.
The Shinola store in Tribeca has opened a coffee shop. The retail trend of Brewtiques continues.
Jane Pratt, my queen, is publishing a memoir. This morning she told Feed Me:
“I love memoirs, and I have read pretty much every major one that’s come out for decades. I have also read almost as many obscure memoirs (Cojo, a sometime friend of the Kardashians had polycystic kidney disease - also devoured the memoir by Andi Dorfman, who was a runner up on a season of The Bachelor, so I’m not picky) but lately I haven’t been able to get through some of the media-centric memoirs just because they are so cautious and careful. I’m lucky in that regard because I don’t have a reputation to uphold. I’ve already gone as low as you can go so there’s no such thing as something being below me, and I’ve torched every bridge so I don’t have to worry about that either. I’m just telling all the gory details as they actually happened, both in the Media world and in my life in general. I’m getting to tell the truth about a lot of publishing gossip that I lied about before, which is nice.
One thing I can definitely say is I don’t think you will fall asleep reading it and I don’t think anyone will call it dull. Those are pretty much my goals for it. And to tell the whole truth. My memoir will have more in common with Charlie Sheen’s than with Graydon’s, which is fitting because I probably have more in common with Charlie Sheen than Graydon.”
Trigger warning for millennials who spent their summers in the Hamptons: One of the former owners of The Sloppy Tuna, Drew Doscher, is self-publishing a book. Doscher, who also has a long career in finance and seems to like going to court almost as much as he likes shots poured directly from the bottle into peoples’ mouths, certainly has some stories to tell. I reached out to Drew this morning to learn more. He told me, “Nothing surprises you when it comes to running business in Montauk. It’s a satire that tells the truth through humor. It’s not just a book, it’s a hand grenade.” When I asked which direction the hand grenade was being tossed in, he said, “Buy the book.” If you’re unfamiliar with The Sloppy Tuna, just know that back when it opened it caused pandemonium on Long Island that Montauk would become the next Jersey Shore.
It’s probably too late for you to buy a house on the North Fork of Long Island.
Kin Euphorics is giving their customers an investment opportunity. Someone from Feed Me’s Tip Line reached out to me last night to share that Bella Hadid’s non-alcoholic tonic brand, Kin, is crowdfunding via customers. The email reads, “With premium placement at Target, Walmart, and Sprouts, we are poised to become the defining name in international drinking.” They cite Poppi’s recent Pepsi acquisition as a reason to lean in. Most interesting are the Kin Euphorics stats in their SEC filing from this past September. To me, this paints a picture of a company low on cash with a high amount of debt: They have eight employees, made about $10mm in revenue last year, and their cost of goods was about $8mm (so we know they are a 21.6% gross margin). And crowdfunding might suggest that they couldn’t raise the money they needed from traditional investors.
I spoke to Jen Batchelor, Kin’s CEO and cofounder, about the decision to crowdfund. Her response was twofold: A) the business needs capital to go all-in on a new distribution deal with Southern Glazer’s, and B) the consumer VC ecosystem isn’t what it once was, and she wants to give her customers a chance to be on her cap table. “In my experience, a brand like Kin can only rely on venture for so long and less so in an economic environment like this one,” she says. “If I had known this option was available to us before this year I would’ve done it way sooner.”
Bonjour! Hola! Cheers! Hi! Substack is hiring partnerships leads in Spain, Paris, London, and Toronto.
Penn got hacked today. A friend sent me the below email that current students and alumni received. In other Penn news, a columnist for The Daily Pennsylvanian wrote yesterday that Wharton “hollows its students and enriches the ultra-wealthy.”
The Atlantic’s Editor in Chief Jeffrey Goldberg announced to staff that Jonathan Haidt and Eugene Robinson will be coming on as contributing writers.
Adam Friedland and Zohran Mamdani got some late-night biryani with New York City taxi drivers last night. One review of Kabab King in Jackson Heights — where this dinner took place — reads, “Extremely disorganized but totally worth it. I ordered two kebabs which were so juicy and delicious. You get a side of yoghurt/cucumber sauce. This has got to be one of the most delicious kebabs I’ve had ever.” I’m sold.
Beware of TikTok street interviews. Mike Gannon, Snowflake’s Chief Revenue Officer, caused his company to make a Securities and Exchange Commission filing this week after he thought it was a good idea to give year-end guidance to a grindset interviewer.
Everyone on “FinTwit” is making a scene about the “definancialization” of NYC.
I love reading about talented designers working on hotel and restaurant uniforms. Today, FT reported that Kipper, a Cotswolds-inspired tailoring brand is working on the new uniforms for The Rosewood in London. Eckhaus Latta is making the robes for the new Pocketbook Hotel in Hudson. And the team at Flynn McGarry’s Gem Home wears J. Crew oxford shirts at the cafe.
Charlie sheen calling Denise Richards the N word is the only time that word has ever been used comically.
Also wondering if the people without color who are so focused on affirmative action will ever shift their lens to why the white male mental health crisis is so high in the United States when they benefit more than anyone else.
Obsessed with NWA and also the Walmart trajectory. Grew up in NYC but my dads family is five generations Ozarks—the 12th ever Walmart opened up in his town and my grandad put a strict embargo on us shopping there growing up, because my grandad felt like Walmart killed the downtown and ultimately the development of the city. I don’t think that experience is unique…a lot of small towns in America were changed (not for the better) by Walmart in the 1960s BUT what has been so interesting to me is how Walmart has had a complete 180 and is doing things like Open Call now.