Jessica Postiglione Of Bonny On 5 Things You Need To Create a Successful Food or Beverage Brand

An Interview With Martita Mestey

Loyalty: In the food and beverage category, you need customers to buy again and again. It is how businesses in this category scale and find success. Loyalty is created by all the other points mentioned above: having an amazing high-quality product you can produce at scale.

As a part of our series called “5 Things You Need To Create a Successful Food or Beverage Brand”, I had the pleasure of interviewing Jessica Postiglione.

Jessica Postiglione is the Founder & CEO of Bonny, an amazing-tasting fiber supplement brand that is helping people bathroom better. Jessica is a serial entrepreneur in the consumer products space and a consultant to corporate and start-ups alike. She is a graduate of the University of Chicago and the Harvard Business School.

Thank you so much for doing this with us! Before we dive in, our readers would love to learn a bit more about you. Can you tell us a bit about your “childhood backstory”?

As far back as I can remember, I have been interested in business. At one point in high school, I even tried selling homemade arts and crafts at local fairs. It did not pan out as well as hoped, but a number of lessons were learned in the process!

After college, I was an investment banker and held a number of corporate strategy roles post-business school. I always wanted to do something entrepreneurial and I am now on my second venture Bonny.

Can you share with us the story of the “ah ha” moment that led to the creation of the food or beverage brand you are leading?

Bonny was born during and because of the pandemic. During COVID, I became obsessed with nutrition and read everything I could about gut health.

I discovered that like 95% of Americans, I didn’t consume enough daily fiber. This is hugely disappointing and troubling because fiber has been shown to have numerous health benefits such as supporting gut health, improving regularity, boosting immunity, aiding with weight loss, reducing the risk of cancers, and much more. Fiber is the rockstar you need on your grocery tour.

So I did what most people do and Googled “the best fiber supplements.” And what I found was disappointing. Every supplement’s name ended in ‘cel or ‘lax. Artificial ingredients, artificial flavors, and dyes like yellow #6 were commonplace. I purchased a few options and their taste was terrible.

This motivated me to DO something. I had previously started a business and learned a lot from that experience. I saw an opportunity to launch a better-tasting fiber supplement, shake up the category, and that’s what I did. I get sh*t done (pun intended).

Can you share a story about the funniest mistake you made when you were first starting? Can you tell us what lesson you learned from that?

We started with zero brand awareness. We were looking for cost-effective ways to find and acquire new customers and explored paid marketing keywords like “natural fiber.” Sounds like a good idea right?

We ran small paid social media tests around these keywords and weren’t seeing the results we wanted. There had to be something we were missing. We realized that the natural fiber groups we were marketing to were actually enthusiasts of yarn, as in natural knitting fibers. It was a funny mix-up that made us all chuckle. We didn’t target that interest group again.

What are the most common mistakes you have seen people make when they start a food or beverage line? What can be done to avoid those errors?

One of the most common mistakes I see other founders make is not understanding their unit economics and not having a path to profitability. Namely how much does it cost to manufacturer your product and do you have a firm handle on all the related expenses to sell that product to your end customer.

I’ve talked with many founders who didn’t know what their all in cost was and equally important they didn’t know their repeat purchase rate or customer lifetime value.

For some products, there is the expectation that the customer will continue to buy time and time again which offsets the initial cost of acquiring that customer. For example, if a brand was selling a $5 beverage item and a customer purchases that beverage 10 more times in the next year, the 12 month lifetime value of the customer is $50, not $5.

It’s important to have these numbers dialed in to be able to scale profitably.

Let’s imagine that someone reading this interview has an idea for a product that they would like to produce. What are the first few steps that you would recommend that they take?

Start by researching the category to understand what products currently exist in the market and where the opportunity is. I always tell entrepreneurs to focus on the execution of the idea, rather than the idea itself.

The classic example is social networks; MySpace existed before Facebook came along but Facebook was offering something new that its competitors were not. Most likely your idea will not be brand new but you can — and should — differentiate your offering in the category to gain market share.

Many people have good ideas all the time. But some people seem to struggle in taking a good idea and translating it into an actual business. How would you encourage someone to overcome this hurdle?

Not all good ideas will make good businesses. It’s important to really think through how an idea will generate cash flow and scale.

Simply put: can you ensure that sales will be higher than your expenses? Start by running the numbers. Talk to experts in the field who can give you a sense of how much it will cost to create and launch your product. Ask yourself — what can I realistically charge for this product? Do I have customers willing to pay for this at the price I want to charge? What assumptions have to be true to make the numbers work?

If the numbers do work, start to put the pieces in place to create that product such as creating a brand, developing a supply chain, hiring/partnering with talent, creating a go-to-market strategy, etc.

There are many invention development consultants. Would you recommend that a person with a new idea hire such a consultant, or should they try to strike out on their own?

I would recommend the person strike on their own rather than rely on a consultant at least at the beginning. No one is going to understand or articulate your vision better than you. I would also suggest conducting informational interviews with experts in your space to get a better sense of the invention process in your target market.

What are your thoughts about bootstrapping vs looking for venture capital? What is the best way to decide if you should do either one?

I’ve started businesses both ways: with outside capital and without capital.

Bootstrapping means that the business will likely grow at a slower pace because of capital constraints. The founder will have to learn how to make things work with little to no budget. However, the founder will remain in total control of all business decisions.

VC funding means access to a capital and the ability to grow faster but the founder will give up some control. Also, investors may have expectations about the venture’s growth prospects that may not align with the founder’s vision for the company.

Can you share thoughts from your experience about how to file a patent, how to source good raw ingredients, how to source a good manufacturer, and how to find a retailer or distributor?

There are a lot of steps and decisions along the way. Let’s assume you have a product you want to create. Sourcing a good manufacturer, especially if you are a first time inventor with no track record, will be difficult. You will most likely have to start cold calling manufacturers and convincing them to take a chance on you and your idea.

You will need to have these questions answered to make a compelling case: Do you want to create a custom product or use an off-the-shelf product? Do you have your packaging created or do you need the manufacturer to assist with that? Do you have a taste profile in mind or nutritional targets? Having answers to these types of questions upfront will help you find the right partner for your unique business needs.

What are your “5 Things You Need To Create a Successful Food or Beverage Brand” and why?

1. Flavor: It seems obvious, but it is not. The product needs to taste really good, average will not cut it. This should be your the top consideration for a new food and beverage brand. Customers will not purchase the product again if they struggle to eat or drink it.
2. Function: The product needs to deliver on its promised functionality. We offer a line of fiber supplement products that help customers go to the bathroom easily. If our fiber didn’t deliver on that promise of regularity, we wouldn’t have a business.
3. Personality: As a fiber brand, we lean into potty humor. The food and beverage category is extremely crowded. As a brand you need a way to stand out from the sea of same. One way to do that is to develop a strong brand point-of-view that engages the customer.
4. High-quality manufacturing partner: You can develop the perfect formula that tastes amazing and works, but if your manufacturing partner can’t produce the product at scale you are in trouble. It’s important to partner with a manufacturer who is highly capable, has the right quality control measures in place, and who cares about making your product.
5. Loyalty: In the food and beverage category, you need customers to buy again and again. It is how businesses in this category scale and find success. Loyalty is created by all the other points mentioned above: having an amazing high-quality product you can produce at scale.

Can you share your ideas about how to create a product that people really love and are ‘crazy about?

The product has to address a pain point for the customer extremely well. For Bonny that is helping people bathroom better in a delicious way. (And people really love and are crazy about Bonny, the reviews prove that.)

For customers to really love something, the brand and product needs to stand out; it has to be different from what is on the market otherwise the customer will continue to purchase legacy products. It’s difficult to execute on it because there are so many products that all claim to do the same thing. It’s important to cut through that noise with a superior product and brand experience.

Ok. We are nearly done. Here are our final questions. How have you used your success to make the world a better place?

At Bonny, we are passionate about helping people bathroom better. We even say that fiber should make you crap, not taste like it. The amazing benefits of fiber have been well-researched and consuming more fiber would help to make the world a better, healthier place.

We can’t say it enough — add more fiber to your diet!

You are an inspiration to a great many people. If you could inspire a movement that would bring the most amount of good to the most amount of people, what would that be? You never know what your idea can trigger.

I believe in the golden rule: treat others like you want to be treated. It’s simple yet so powerful. If we all treated each other with mutual respect and looked to support, not discourage, I believe that would bring the most amount of good to the most amount of people.

Thank you for these fantastic insights. We greatly appreciate the time you spent on this.