At Female Founder Collective's The 10th House, we know that building a food brand from farmers markets to national retailers sounds impossible when you're bootstrapping from your apartment. In our exclusive fireside chat with Elizabeth Stein, Founder and CEO of Purely Elizabeth, we discovered how she built one of the most recognized better-for-you breakfast brands—now in Whole Foods, Target, Kroger, Walmart, and Costco.
Elizabeth's track record speaks for itself. A single Daily Candy feature generated $10,000 in orders within three hours, forcing her to overnight flour pallets to her mom's suburban cul-de-sac and fulfill orders from a NYC walk-up apartment. After discovering that consumers would eat "a couple bags of granola per week" versus baking "once a month," she pivoted entirely from baking mixes to granola. Sixteen years later, she's still the majority owner—a rarity in consumer packaged goods—and has built manufacturing processes so artisanal they bake just three pounds of granola per pan.
With 90% of food brands failing to reach scale and founders losing hundreds of thousands on premature national retail expansion, understanding how to sequence channels, prove regional velocity, and time outside capital has never been more critical for emerging CPG founders trying to survive year three.
Food founders often romanticize farmers markets and viral moments without understanding the brutal logistics behind scale. Elizabeth's philosophy is different: taste-first conviction beats market sizing decks, and regional proof beats national distribution in the early days. In a market where retailers demand seven-figure trade spend and co-manufacturers ghost small brands, Purely Elizabeth quietly built systems that created competitive advantages while competitors burned cash on broad distribution.
The journey she's navigated is a masterclass in strategic patience. What worked in 2009—a Daily Candy feature driving immediate sales—required three weeks of around-the-clock fulfillment from an apartment. Today's founders have DTC infrastructure, but the core lesson remains: earn the right to scale by proving you can deliver before you expand.
Here's what Elizabeth revealed about building food brands that last:
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The biggest mistake Elizabeth sees founders make? Thinking that landing a retail account means you've made it. The truth is far more expensive and complex.
When her sales lead told her "Getting into Whole Foods nationally costs $1M," Elizabeth thought he was exaggerating. He wasn't. That figure represents the aggregate of slotting fees, promotional spend, trade spend, distributor programs, in-store demos, merchandising support, and velocity-driving marketing that retailers expect. Being on shelf is just the entry fee—the real work starts after you land the account.
Elizabeth's strategic approach was to prove regional velocity before expanding. She entered Whole Foods as a local brand and local loan recipient, then expanded to roughly four regions by proving her turns were superior to competitors. Only then did Whole Foods push her to go national. "Own your home region, concentrate marketing where you have distribution," she emphasizes. Regional proof still matters more than ambitious national plans.
The takeaway for founders: choose a tight retail footprint you can afford to support. Avoid overextending into markets where you have no customer base or budget for sustained velocity drivers. Narrow focus beats broad distribution when capital is tight, and retailers respect brands that can actually move product off shelves—not just onto them.
For food founders, your co-manufacturer relationship can make or break your business. Elizabeth spent an entire year sourcing the right partner, and even then, she learned critical lessons the hard way.
Her three non-negotiable constraints: a certified gluten-free facility, capability to handle almond flour, and willingness to do small production runs for an emerging brand. She personally visited three potential manufacturing partners before making her decision. Her selection criteria went beyond capabilities—she evaluated relationship fit and trust through gut checks during facility visits, MOQ requirements and costs that aligned with her current stage (not where she hoped to be in three years), the partner's ability and willingness to scale alongside the brand as it grew, and whether they'd allow hands-on involvement during production runs so she could maintain quality control.
Her biggest mistake was hiring a generalist attorney for her first co-manufacturing agreement instead of a food-specific lawyer. "A generalist firm missed key protections that could have prevented major headaches later," Elizabeth explains. When she eventually switched to a food-specialized attorney (she specifically cites Chuck Cotter at Morrison Foerster), they immediately identified gaps in her existing agreement that left her exposed.
The manufacturing complexity itself became Purely Elizabeth's moat. Baking granola three pounds at a time in small pans isn't scalable in the traditional sense, but it creates a quality standard that's nearly impossible for competitors to replicate while maintaining consistency. Finding partners who can deliver that day-in, day-out artisanal quality at increasing volume is non-trivial, which is exactly why it works as a competitive advantage.
Elizabeth bootstrapped for years to remain majority owner (a rarity in CPG where founders typically lose control by Series A). She finally raised when cash stress became chronic, juggling distributor payments against payroll and managing scaling demands.
Her first investor was General Mills' venture group, chosen for strategic capabilities beyond capital: market research, R&D resources, and industry relationships otherwise out of reach. Her philosophy: only raise when you have proven velocity, know exactly how capital will be deployed, and can partner with investors who bring capability, not just cash. Sixteen years later, she's still majority owner.
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