What He Learned Reviewing 12,000 CPG Deals & Why 70% of Honey is Fake | Douglas Raggio, Pass the Honey

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/douglasraggioFollow Adam 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.