Foodbevy: Building a Community of 5,000 CPG Founders

Some people learn about the food industry from the outside. Jordan Buckner learned it from all sides at once, and then built the community he wished had existed while he was figuring it out.Jordan Buckner is the founder of Foodbevy, a community and resource platform now reaching over 5,000 CPG founders and food and beverage professionals, and of Joyful Co., a corporate gifting company built around emerging CPG brands. But before all of that, he was a fifth grade entrepreneur selling Airhead candies out of his cargo pants, a high schooler running a student-operated coffee shop with a $4,000 grant, an architecture student with two degrees from Michigan and Illinois, and the founder of not one but two simultaneous CPG businesses: ChopBox, a meal kit company, and TeaSquares, a green tea energy snack that made it into Whole Foods Chicago in its first four months.In this episode, host Sarah Perkins sits down with Jordan for one of the most candid, educational, and genuinely warm conversations about what it really takes to build in the CPG space. From a childhood surrounded by entrepreneurship on every side, to the night he collapsed on his kitchen floor in a panic attack and his wife helped him see that TeaSquares had to end, to the decision to build Foodbevy with an intentional stress level of 2 out of 10 and no plans to sell, Jordan is one of the most honest voices in food and beverage today.He also pulls no punches on the structural realities of the CPG industry: Why it is stacked against brands from the start, how distributors and retailers hold all the leverage, what AI is actually doing for small founders right now, and why building a personal mission statement might be the most important thing any founder can do before building a product.In this episode, we cover:Growing up surrounded by entrepreneurship on every side: a grandmother with a grocery store, a dad with grocery stores in Chicago, and a mom who got her culinary degree and ran a catering businessSelling Airhead candies out of cargo pants in fifth grade and his mom's leftover cookies in high schoolOpening a student-run coffee shop at Whitney Young High School with a $4,000 grant from the parents associationStudying architecture at University of Michigan and University of Illinois with a dual MBAWhat architecture taught him about creativity within constraints and entrepreneurshipChopBox: a meal kit business born during an internship in Michigan, run out of his mom's commercial kitchenTeaSquares: green tea energy snack bars made from puffed millet, almonds, and pepitas that got into Whole Foods in four monthsWhy having too many points of differentiation created a moat that kept customers out rather than competitorsRunning two CPG businesses simultaneously and almost everything himselfThe night he fell to his kitchen floor in a panic attack and finally realized something had to changeShutting down TeaSquares during COVID after corporate office revenue disappeared overnightWhy the CPG industry is structurally stacked against brands: retailers, distributors, and leverageSuja paying $1 million in slotting fees and getting cut six months laterOne point of differentiation being the right answer instead of white spaceFounding Foodbevy during COVID with a small membership fee and a founder meetup modelFounding Joyful Co. with a COVID relief box for first responders that became a corporate gifting businessHow Foodbevy has evolved: 250+ podcast episodes, webinars, articles, and a retail buyer directoryThe shift in CPG from e-commerce back to retail and what that means for founders right nowAI for CPG brands: three founders using Claude to build dashboards, sales analysts, and full business softwareHis conscious decision to run Foodbevy at a stress level of 2 out of 10, with no plans to sellHis daughter at age three pretend-negotiating with UPS and running her own art marketCreating a personal mission statement as the foundation of every business decisionFind Jordan and Foodbevy:Website: foodbevy.comInstagram: @foodbevyLinkedIn: Jordan BucknerJoyful Co: joyfulco.comSubscribe to The Perfect Bite podcast on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you listen! Want to watch the entire episode? Head here to our YouTube!You can follow us on social media @perfectbitepod and sign up for our newsletter!