2025-10-01 · 6 min read
Surviving the CPG valley of death
Every food startup walks through the same valley. Volumes are too low to buy ingredients well. Cost of sales is too high to make a unit contribute cash. Each additional sale can make the hole deeper before it makes it shallower.
Two decisions decide how wide and how deep that valley is. First: price as high as the value and the competitive set will allow. It is easier to come down later than to climb back up. Second: prove the product in the market with small batches — friends, farmers’ markets, a single independent retailer — before you commit to a production run you cannot unsell.
Leaving the valley is not the finish. Next is the desert: growth has to cover COGS, selling costs, and overhead. That is where brand position, channel choice, and a real marketing owner start to compound. Activity without a plan is how brands spend their way deeper into the sand.
If you are in that stretch, you do not need another mood board. You need someone who has watched a $700 million breakfast business and a chocolate franchise make the same kinds of trade-offs — and who will make them with you, this week.