The Startup CPG Podcast


In this episode of R&D Radio, host Adam Yee sits down with longtime friend Thom King, Founder and Chief Innovation Officer of Icon Foods, for a deep dive on sweetener systems from a food scientist's perspective.


Thom founded Icon Foods in 1999 (originally as Steviva Brands), becoming one of the first companies to import stevia glycosides into the US. After partnering with Quest Nutrition on their first bar, the company shifted fully into ingredient supply, eventually rebranding to Icon Foods and expanding into rare sugars, fibers, and polyols. Thom holds a Master's degree in Food Science from Cornell and has spent decades helping brands solve one of the industry's toughest problems: removing sugar without sacrificing taste, texture, or consumer acceptance.


Adam and Thom break down the eight functions of sugar beyond sweetness, why fiber stacking (as seen in brands like Olipop) helps avoid gut discomfort while boosting mouthfeel, and how sweeteners like erythritol, allulose, and tagatose each behave differently in formulation. They also dig into supply chain timing, tariffs, and Thom's practical advice for founders working with a formulator versus experimenting solo in the kitchen.


Listen in as they discuss:

  • The eight core functions of sugar that formulators have to account for beyond sweetness
  • Why fiber stacking, like Olipop's approach, helps avoid GI discomfort while replicating sugar's viscosity
  • A breakdown of common alternative sweeteners, including erythritol, allulose, and monk fruit, and where each works best
  • Why stacking sweeteners (like erythritol with allulose and a high-intensity sweetener) often beats using just one
  • How monk fruit and stevia combined can actually mask each other's bitter off-notes
  • What tagatose is, how it’s made from lactose, and why it scorches faster than other reducing sugars in baked goods
  • Why allulose not being accepted at Whole Foods may matter less than founders think, and why Target can be a stronger retail runway
  • Why vegetable glycerin is an underrated tool for preventing bars and baked goods from going stale or crumbly
  • How protein-based sweetness modulators like thaumatin work, and why they need a sweetener backbone to succeed
  • The supply chain outlook for monk fruit, stevia, allulose, tagatose, and erythritol, including when to buy monk fruit and why to start planning 2027 purchases now
  • Why founders should work with a professional formulator rather than scaling a kitchen recipe directly


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Creators and Guests

Host
Adam Yee
Podcast Host and Food Scientist

What is The Startup CPG Podcast?

The top CPG podcast in the world, highlighting stories from founders, buyer spotlights, highly practical industry insights - all to give you a better chance at success.

Thom King
So there's eight primary functions of sugar. So when you're replacing that, you have to keep those things in mind. Like do you want your final product to brown? Do you want it to participate in my yard? Is it if it's a frozen dessert, is freezing depression point an issue overrun an issue? There's a lot of gaps that you're trying to fill. It's not as easy as like, hey, we're going to take an eighth of a gram of stevia and replace a cup of sugar because you're going to be losing so much mass. You're also going to be losing functionality too. So when you're replacing sugar, that's where the real food science begins. Because you're not looking to replace the sweetness as much as you're looking to replace the functionality. Sweetness is no big deal.

00:53
Thom King
You can find sweet things everywhere but the functionality and making sure that it works within your product is key.

01:02
Adam Yee
Hey everyone, this is Adam Yee, Food Scientist and Podcast Host of Startup CPG's R&D Radio where we interview food scientists and product developers and what they do and how they can help you build your CPG business. Today I'm interviewing my friend for over a decade, ThomKing, who founded the company IconFoods. IconFoods is a food science and ingredient innovation company helping emerging established CPG brands create better for you products through clean label sugar reduction, functional sweetening systems, prebiotic fibers and formulation expertise for a startup CPG's community. Icon Foods brings the ingredient access, technical know how and hands on formulation support that can help founders turn a great kitchen bench idea into a scalable, commercially viable product. Thomis a certified Food Scientist and one of the food and beverage industry's leaders on clean label sugar reduction and functional formulation.

01:56
Adam Yee
He holds a Master's Degree in Food Science from Cornell University and brings decades of hands on experience developing commercially viable better for you food and beverage systems. As Founder and Chief Innovation Officer of IconFoods, Thomleads innovation across rare sugars, high intensity sweeteners, fiber systems and sweetness modulation technologies, all of the topics that we'll get into in this podcast interview. His work focuses on solving one of the industry's most persistent challenges, how to remove sugar without compromising taste, texture or consumer acceptance. His and his team's formulation strategies are widely used across the beverage, dairy, baked goods, confections and emerging functional categories as well. I always admire Tom's pragmatic approach and systems driven drive when it comes to solving these types of problems. Sugar is not just a sweetness, it's a structure it has stability and it is, of course, a sensory experience.

02:50
Adam Yee
We're only scratching the surface of understanding how alternative sweeteners work, but I think Thomis on the forefront of it. His work centers around rebuilding those functions intelligently using modern ingredient systems that align with today's health conscious consumers. So you're going to learn a ton. For this interview, I found a lot of insights about how Thomthinks about replacing sugar with a suite of his solutions. You think of the common things like taste and textures, but you don't really think about things like browning or reactions, which all of these sugars have different ways of doing that. You also learn about the upcoming sugars in the market, like Tacatose, and some of the problems that Thomencounters in the supply chain that might give you a deeper understanding of how sweeteners work as you develop your food product. Enjoy this episode with Tom.

03:35
Adam Yee
I'm sure you'll learn a lot. ThomKing. We've known each other for probably over a decade, I would say, at this point, and it's good to have you on R and D Radio, my new podcast.

03:48
Thom King
Thanks, Adam. Yeah, love it.

03:50
Adam Yee
All right, so you've been in the sweetener game for a long time, and I'd love to hear a brief history of IconFoods.

03:55
Thom King
Well, I mean, Icon Foods didn't really start out as IconFoods. IconFoods started out as Staviva Brands. And so I started the company in 1999 and were one of the first companies to actually import stevia glycoside into the US So we had a fairly strong retail presence. But my goal was actually to scale it into an ingredient company. And so we started making different types of blends. We were bringing in, like the stevia, but were using stevia with erythritol, which made it more of a plug and play for people that were just looking to replace sugar. And then we really started moving into the food ingredients space. I would say that once we hooked up with Quest Nutrition, so were part of their first bar and that was just. That's all there was. It was just the retail brand kind of got abandoned.

04:47
Thom King
We changed the name because were getting pigeonholed into, oh, you're the stevia company. So we changed the name of the company to Icon Foods and then expanded our portfolio into rare sugars and inclusions fibers, you know, expanded our line of polyols to include organic coconut vegetable glycerin. And that's where we are today.

05:10
Adam Yee
So you guys are essentially experts in sweeteners or other types of add ins for maybe confectioners or bars. Is that a good description?

05:18
Thom King
I would say that we really position ourselves more as an ingredient supplier for people that are developing or have better for you products. So we focus on high fiber, low sugar and that's our wheelhouse. And we pretty much stay in the no added sugar game.

05:33
Adam Yee
Love it. And that's obviously been exploding. There's been a ton of, you know, better for your products in the space. I get pitched all the time for like a product that they don't want sugar so they want to replace it with certain sweeteners. And so that kind of brings me to our next question about sweeteners. And it's complex, right? Like substituting sugar for something that's different and there's a lot of options and I'd love to just briefly go over that and in terms of like how do you replace sugar in products?

06:01
Thom King
Yeah, that's a great question. And so I mean sugar has a lot of functionality. I mean it drives down freezing depression point. In frozen desserts it activates yeast in bread drives down or with baked goods, drives down water activity. So there's eight primary functions of sugar. So when you're replacing that, you have to keep those things in mind. Like do you want your final product to brown? Do you want it to participate in my yard? Is it if it's a frozen dessert, is freezing depression point an issue overrun an issue? There's a lot of gaps that you're trying to fill. It's not as easy as like, hey, we're going to take a eighth of a gram of stevia and replace a cup of sugar because you're going to be losing so much mass, you're also going to be losing functionality too.

06:49
Thom King
So when you're replacing sugar, that's where the real food science begins. Because not looking to replace the sweetness as much as you're looking to replace the functionality. Sweetness is no big deal. You can find sweet things everywhere. But the functionality and making sure that it works within your product is key.

07:07
Adam Yee
Yeah, I think something that for example, soda and if you replace sugar takes a lot of the bulking effect. Right. So not only does it taste good, but also you got kind of this texture that is hard to replace. So you need a combination of different things. Right. I think probably the most popular one now is Olipop's like inulin plate with the chikaru.

07:25
Thom King
Yeah. They stack their fibers and I mean from. That's my forte is beverage actually. When I look at a formula like Olipop I mean, that's a super impressive formula because they're using a high intensity sweetener. I think they're using like monk fruit, but they're using a fiber stack, right? So like if you use just one fiber, like let's say you were only using inulin and you want to be able to make a gut health claim, you're going to need 6 or 7 grams in there in order for you to stay out of lawsuits and stuff. But with that load of fiber, you run the risk of like a consumer only being able to have one because then it's like, well, are they going to have a second one? Because then it can trigger like gas kinetics, upset stomach, bloating, disaster pants.

08:12
Thom King
I mean, those are the things you're trying to avoid. If you stack your fibers, which Olipop does, it spreads out that rate at which those fibers metabolize and gives. That allows you to put in more fiber in a smaller environment and not have to deal with the side effects of it. Another thing that it does too is these fibers gel. And so like if you drink a diet Coke in comparison to a regular Coke, you're going to be like, yeah, they taste sort of familiar. But the experience of a real Coke is different because of the viscosity that sugar brings. So it really like using fibers in conjunction with a high intensity sweetener or even like a rare sugar, it will coat the tongue, it'll allow the experience of drinking that better for you beverage.

08:58
Thom King
It will mirror what happens with sugar, like the viscosity across tongue, the same sweetness curve, the same decay rate. I mean those fibers, I think in beverage are brilliant, 100%.

09:10
Adam Yee
You know, you have all these tools replace searching one ingredient, right? I'd love to understand a little bit about those tools. I think let's just start in general with taste. So here's a handful of alternative sweeteners like stevia, monk fruit, erythritol, maltitol. If you're in the bar industry, I'd love to hear kind of your overview of the common alternative sweeteners used today.

09:32
Thom King
Well, I think that erythritol gets a bad rap because, you know, it was in some articles that said there was a correlation between erythritol and cardiac events, which, I mean, erythritol's been around for a really long time. There's over 600 studies have proven it to be safe. It's been FDA grass status for 25 years. So I still think there's a lot of purpose to erythritol I wouldn't use it in a beverage, but if you use it in like say a baked good or a bar where you're trying to drive down your water activity and extend your shelf life, it's a bulking agent, right? It is a bulking agent. So 70% it's sweet as sugar. The downside is it has like a slight cooling effect on the tongue. But I'm a big proponent of stacking sweeteners.

10:20
Thom King
So like if you used erythrol to drive down your water activity and then you comboed it up with allulose or tagatose to give it more of the viscosity and more of a real sugar taste to it and then ease in like some high intensities like monk fruit or stevia. And a lot of times even using monk fruit with stevia works because when you combine those two glycosides, they actually trigger the receptors on your tongue that will block bitterness.

10:50
Adam Yee
Really?

10:50
Thom King
Yep.

10:51
Adam Yee
I didn't even know that.

10:53
Thom King
They cancel each other's off notes out, but does have masking properties. So if you're using a combination of like monk fruit and stevia, you probably have to increase your sweeteners or mirror flavor somewhat because it will smooth them. But in any application, just like layering them in erythritol, great for driving that water activity. If you want to do like a frosting or some sort of a coating that works brilliantly or fillings even, I would say in baked goods. Probably a stronger sweetener in that environment would be allulose or tagatose because those are reducing sugars though you'll get some browning out of them.

11:32
Adam Yee
Let's talk a little bit about allulose. I think it's getting pretty popular. It's been a long time coming. I think I worked with it for like five years, but it seems like nowadays it's popular. But there's also some regulatory things. I'd love to hear your thoughts on allulose in general.

11:46
Thom King
Well, I like allulose. It's probably my daily go to. I usually use like allulose syrup on my coffee with some stevia. As far as like regulatory wise, I would say that there in the United States there isn't any real height restrictions. I think the toxicology report that's attached to the grass application puts it at about 5 grams per 100 kg. So you can use quite a bit of it. Again, 70% is sweet as sugar. You'd want to back it up with a high intensity sweetener, but I think that the real issue that people have with allulose is that Whole Foods doesn't accept it and it's not allowed as a sweetener in Canada or Europe.

12:27
Adam Yee
So.

12:28
Thom King
And who knows when that's going to happen. But when I start working with a customer and a customer's like, yeah, we want to do a soft drink or even like a bar with allulose, I don't think that Whole Foods is as big of a concern as a lot of people would imagine it would be. They hold less than 2% of the total grocery market share. When I look at like, okay, if I was going to do a bar, would I target this bar for Whole Foods or would I target this bar for Target? And it's like, from a retail perspective, I think Target is a lot juicier than Whole Foods. They're going to hold about 4 and a half, 5% of the total grocery share.

13:06
Thom King
And I think if your product makes it in, Target makes it an excellent Runway for moving into Kroger, which that's going to be 33% of the market share.

13:18
Adam Yee
And then eventually Walmart. Right. Which is, I think, 50%. Right. Or something.

13:22
Thom King
Walmart's huge. Yeah, like Walmart, Costco. I mean, Walmart gonna probably grind on you and margins are gonna go away.

13:29
Adam Yee
It's a tough one.

13:30
Thom King
Yeah. At Costco, usually you have to make a special pack size for them. Like, oh, yeah, we got an 18 pack and so a 12 pack. But you can totally move some product. But the folks that I work with, when they're trying to formulate four Whole Foods, I just remind them, it's like, that's a small share of the market you're trying to get into. Just Target.

13:48
Adam Yee
Well, speaking of that, you know, you have all these options, especially you guys specialize in making blends for people.

13:55
Thom King
Yeah.

13:55
Adam Yee
And I just would love to hear the general conversation you have with brands who want to replace sugar.

14:01
Thom King
Well, I mean, it's a case by case basis because sugar does have a lot of functionality.

14:06
Adam Yee
Yeah.

14:07
Thom King
And so you always have to kind of keep that in mind. And I would say in the past four years, I have not gotten a single formula where somebody is asking for no added sugar. So I think the new Target, I mean, that we're running into is 5 grams or under.

14:23
Adam Yee
Yes. Just a little bit of sugar is kind of the right.

14:26
Thom King
Just a little bit of sugar. And I'm telling you, it's. It's that little bit of sugar makes a formulator's job so much easier because you can lean into the Functionality. And I mean, even like if you're going like 4 or 5 grams of sugar, it was a beverage and you're like, hey, we just want to increase the perception of the sweetness of this sugar. You got options with like sweetness modulators like Thalmitin or Brazine or Monolin. Like there's a lot of like super high intensity protein based sweeteners that actually will trigger the T1. Was it the T12R and T1, T2R3 receptors on the palate that perceived sweetness. Umami, sour and I think bitter. But were at ift, and I know you guys were at IFT too.

15:20
Adam Yee
Yep.

15:21
Thom King
And that you had an amazing, smashing success there. This is what I heard.

15:27
Adam Yee
Yeah. Our first time doing an event adjacent to ift. We'd love to have you next time. We're definitely gonna do it again.

15:31
Thom King
I would love to be involved.

15:33
Adam Yee
Yeah.

15:33
Thom King
So at ift, were actually doing, we did AB samples. Like we sampled a beverage that was, I would say tasted like a real watered down Gatorade and then we added a protein based sweetness modulator at 20 parts per million and it completely changed the perception of sweetness. Like people that would a B test it were like, wow, yeah, this tastes like Gatorade now.

15:57
Adam Yee
Yeah. I just want to get really quick on this specific topic. The Brazine and these modulators.

16:01
Thom King
Thalmitin.

16:02
Adam Yee
Yeah, Thalmitin. A lot of brands don't know. This is because they can be labeled as natural flavors.

16:07
Thom King
Yeah. So they could be labeled as natural flavors. I mean, we've got some blends. I've worked with Thalmitin for probably close to 10 years and it's been difficult because a lot of developers, a lot of like, I would say brands that want to start, you know, start a beverage or something are like, get us the Thalmitin. And I'm like, look, you don't understand, like Thalmitin. Like you could take thalamitin, right. And put 20 parts per million in like a glass of water and you would be like, this is not sweet. There is nothing sweet about it. Followed by five minutes later, you'll be like, I can't get the sweet taste out of my mouth. So the onset with Thalmitin is at the very end of the experience.

16:50
Thom King
So if you're going to use Thalmitin or you're going to use a, a protein based modulator like that. Yeah. I would highly recommend that you have a backbone of either sugar or some other bulking type sweetener and Even a high intensity sweetener to bring that pop at the front end. Because if you tried using Galmatin, you're going to be highly disappointed with the results.

17:16
Adam Yee
So there seems to be a lot of tools in this toolbox, even, I don't know a lot of these. Honestly, I ask people for like, oh, can I have this and does this work? Right. I assume you guys have done a lot of research and application testing on all of these types of sweeteners, right?

17:31
Thom King
Yep. From beverages to frozen desserts, to bars, to chocolates, all of it. I mean, for folks that are starting a brand, I think it's essential they define what that product is and where you want to land in the market. And I mean, if it's going to be sweet, then start planning out the system that you're going to use and then go to a professional formulator, food scientist to get it go lined. Because while it will cost you some money to do that, in the end it's going to save you so much more money because you're not going to have to keep going back to the bench. I run into this all the time.

18:08
Thom King
I'll get a founder who like hits us up and it's like, I've got these really terrible off notes and I've got, you know, like, we're doing a high protein and I'm getting sulfur coming through. And when I look at the formula, I'm just like, where did you get this done? He's like, oh, I'm doing it in my kitchen. It's like, I get that. Right?

18:26
Adam Yee
I can see that.

18:27
Thom King
Yeah, yeah. And this is the difference between a formula and a recipe. Like a recipe you do in a kitchen. A formula is scalable, but I just encourage people, if you get an idea, go to a good formulator. They're worth their weight in gold.

18:40
Adam Yee
So let's talk about this new sweetener kind of bubbling up. I've been hearing it quite a lot. I think our mutual friend Rachel Zemser talks about all the time. It's called Tagatose. I mean, even some of my clients are like, interested in it now. So I'd love to hear what Tagatose is and I guess your thoughts on that unique and new sweetener.

19:00
Thom King
Well, Rachel is the queen of Tagatose.

19:05
Adam Yee
I got a lot of text from her about it.

19:07
Thom King
Love her. So Tagatose can either be, I mean, it can be made from lactose, which ours is, or it could be made from enzymatically hydrolyzation through starch.

19:20
Adam Yee
So with lactose how is it made into tacatose?

19:23
Thom King
So lactose is treated with an enzyme, right? And this enzyme breaks apart the galactose. And the galactose is then treated like microbially. It's microbe.

19:35
Adam Yee
It's like fermented, right?

19:36
Thom King
So it's fermented and that actually create the tagatose. And once you've got the tagatose in its natural form, it's going to be a syrup. And so then you go through an actual natural crystallization process to make those crystals. So when you think about, I mean, there's other steps that are in there too, like filtering and you know, washing and stuff. And then, I mean, I have a flowchart on it. But basically you're breaking the bond of the galactose and the lactose and then you're converting that lactose to tag toast. And then the tag toast is been crystallized. And then think of it just a supersaturated state where you start getting crystals. And that's. It's very similar to allulose because allulose goes through the same process. And that's where the inefficiencies come in.

20:25
Thom King
Like if you're using tagatose syrup or allulose syrup, super easy going to cost you less money than the crystals. But when you go to crystallize it, I mean, you're either going to be using a reactor or using a natural crystallization process. And that's where the inefficiencies come in. I mean, that's the manufacturing, that's how it's made. When you bring it into like a food environment, I would say that it works amazingly well in baked goods, with the exception because it's a reducing sugar. It goes into Maillard and it goes into Maillard faster than probably fructose or some other reducing sugars. So you would have to reduce your bake temp and increase your bake time. Otherwise you're gonna. It's gonna scorch.

21:10
Adam Yee
Okay. So it'll burn easier.

21:12
Thom King
It burns easier or it'll burn faster. Yeah, it burns faster, is more sensitive to burning. So that's one thing you would wanna watch out for. I mean, you can also add a polyol to sort of reduce that. You could use erythritol. But I mean, the unicorn that I always go to is vegetable glycerin.

21:32
Adam Yee
Oh yeah, that's a good one. It's underrated. It's very underrated.

21:35
Thom King
I will say that it is so underrated.

21:37
Adam Yee
Yeah.

21:40
Thom King
So often. I mean, through the week I'll have somebody like, yeah, my bar is turning into a brick after six months. And I'm like, oh, just put in some glycerin at 2%, literally free real estate.

21:49
Adam Yee
It's like, yeah, it's a 8% limit generally.

21:52
Thom King
Yeah, you don't even need that much. Like, you could drop in 2% into a bar. But yeah, if you're running into a situation where you have a baked good and this baked good is like, it's just getting too crumbly. Just turn to vegetables, start out at 2 to 3%, titrate up if you need to. But that's gonna do so much. It's not gonna add to your water activity. It's actually going to drop your water activity. But it's going to give the perception of moisture. It is the unsung hero of formulating. I mean, I wouldn't put it in a beverage. I mean, you could put it in a beverage depending on like, if it was like a protein. Like if you're doing like a 30 or 42 gram RTD protein drink, I would say definitely use a little bit of vegetable glycerin in it.

22:36
Thom King
But if you're doing it baked good and it's like, hey, this is burning or scorching. 2%. Titrate up if you need to. But that will get you out of the woods.

22:44
Adam Yee
Yeah. At least. Glycerin has been surprisingly very clean label. So a lot of people accept it as clean label. It's very cheap. Honestly. It is. Right. So the final topic I want to get into is supply chain. I think one example is like, monk fruit can be pretty difficult. Or like, I had no idea essentially is that it goes all over the place whenever I ask for it.

23:02
Thom King
Yeah, monk fruit's seasonal. So if you're using monk fruit, generally the harvest will happen in September, October. And so, I mean, if you're using a lot of monk fruit, keep an eye on the market because you want to make sure that you buy at the right time. And once you'll start seeing the prices come down. Usually they start coming down in August when they get a projection of what the crop's going to be like this year. The crop is smaller in acreage, but more, I would say, higher in fruit. So it looks like it'll probably be stable. That's on the monk fruit side of it though. So the crop comes in September. They usually are done processing it in October and then that's like October ish, November ish.

23:46
Thom King
That's when you want to pull the trigger because they're going to be trying to get rid of the previous year's stock. That's when you'll see the prices start to dip a little bit. By the time you run into middle of Q1, you start seeing the prices come up and then they'll usually follow that cycle up till maybe July when they hit just this peak threshold where nobody will buy it anymore because it's too expensive. And then it does that cycle every year. So when we're talking with customers about Monk Fruit generally we're like, okay, so let's. Right about the end of August, it's like we've got visibility on the crops. Let's pull the trigger. Let's get you locked into 2027 rate and set it and forget it.

24:32
Adam Yee
Got it.

24:32
Thom King
With stevia. Stevia crop, super solid this year, prices will probably stay flat, maybe dip a little bit, particularly in Reb M because the stevia leaf extracts more of those crops are leaning heavy into Reb M production. And then you've also got the competition with all of the bioengineered fermented Reb Ms, which are great. But if you're looking to do something organic, the leaf extract is I think a better place to go. The supply chain on it's pretty stable. I'd say allulose supply chain's very stable. Tagatose is one that's becoming more stable. I think that some of the overseas, like in Europe they're kind of allocated out right now, but that's. It is scaling like Tagatose is scaling. Erythritol, I would say the supply chain on erythritol is kind of tricky right now because Cargill. Yeah, because Cargill won their anti dumping and countervailing petition.

25:29
Thom King
And so we're burning off a ton of material that's still in the United States and got to the United States before the anti dumping tariff went in. But that's going to be a tricky one. I think people can pick it up reasonably cheap for through the probably the end of the year. 2027 I would say is going to be a mixed bag. You might get some drips and drabs. If you're looking to fill a pipeline throughout 2027, I would start planning that right now.

26:00
Adam Yee
So Juan, this is like a huge like kind of uncracking of. Of what goes on in this industry specifically.

26:07
Thom King
Oh, it's crazy.

26:08
Adam Yee
Yeah, I didn't expect to go here. How do you get all this information? Like well, I'm serious a job.

26:13
Thom King
But like that's a good question. So we've got supplier relationships. So we're different than Cargill. Like, Cargill is going to produce their own erythritol. When they're allocated, they're done. Nobody gets erythritol. We have at least three supply chain partners for every spec that we carry because it gives us that flexibility where we can pivot to one supplier. It also gives us the ability to negotiate with suppliers a little deeper. But we've got great relationships and we've got boots on the ground. And we're like, how's the corn crop looking? How's the. I mean, that's the global corn crop. How's the monk fruit? How's Monk fruit crops coming along? How's the stevia crop coming along? We're in constant communication and they're continually feeding us data. And we'll pull that data into an AI and just be like, hey, show us any red flags. Weigh in.

27:05
Thom King
The straits were moves. Weigh in, like pressure at ports in Philly and Long Beach. So we're constantly including those factors and then we just get it out to our customers. It's like, hey, if you guys are doing planning for 2027, these are the specs that I would look at right now. We're encouraging people to lock in tag toast because there's probably going to be a decent Q1 run on it. Allulose. It's like, I don't think there's any red flags there. Monk fruit, hit your seasonal buy. Stevia, don't worry about it. Lock in a good price. It's not anything to freak out on. Erythritol could get tricky. Xylitol and I mean, we haven't even started talking about tariffs, which is hard to do because you have to pivot super fast. And you can even have stuff on the water.

27:52
Thom King
And it's like, oh, yeah, by the time this lands, you're going to owe 12 and a half percent more on it. And it's like, dude, that was our margin. What are you trying to do to us?

28:01
Adam Yee
Yeah, the fish good guys we talked to here, you know, they suffer through that. But the ingredient suppliers also are dealing with that too. Right. So it's like a compounding cost.

28:09
Thom King
It does. And it's like, what do you do? Go back to your customer? And it's like, hey, yeah, I know you were contracted with us. I mean, more often than not, we end up eating it.

28:18
Adam Yee
Yeah.

28:18
Thom King
And a lot of times we'll be in negative margin on it. And you don't see that coming. Like, were moving so much product in, everything's fine. We got past the whole 25% tariff, 35% tariff and 40% tariff. And we're like, okay, so now we have pricing stabilization and then lo and behold, nope. Everything that's coming in now, 12 and a half percent. And it's like literally wipes out our margins. And it's like, where's that money going? It's not going here. And the consumers aren't saving any money. Somebody's getting it.

28:53
Adam Yee
That's a big can of worms. They will get it is a can of worms.

28:57
Thom King
No, I get it.

28:59
Adam Yee
Well, obviously you're super knowledgeable on anything alternative sweetener, of course. So I learned a lot personally from the start of man call about certain sweeteners. I thought I knew a lot about sweeteners. Now I know even more. Obviously supply chain and the different types that are coming up are really cool too. And you work a lot of brands, so I'd love to just get your contact information for everyone here. And so if people want to reach out to you and learn more about the wonderful world of sweeteners, I would love to hear it.

29:24
Thom King
The best way to track me down is LinkedIn and I get back to anybody who DM's me on LinkedIn. You can shoot me an email at Thom T H O M KING .K I N G @ICONFOODS, I take any kind of questions. There's no silly or stupid question if they want to get a hold of me. LinkedIn, I post a lot. I mean, I do a couple hundred papers a year on sweeteners, fibers, GLP1s, you name it, love it.

29:53
Adam Yee
And you know, obviously you have a whole company called icon foods@iconfoods.com.

29:58
Thom King
There's that. There's that too.

30:02
Adam Yee
Honestly, your staff are really great. They're really responsive and they give me my documents really fast. I will say so. Good job.

30:09
Thom King
Thank you. Yeah, I'm blessed with an amazing team.

30:11
Adam Yee
Tom, good to talk to you again and good to have you on the show.

30:14
Thom King
Yeah, likewise. It's good seeing you, Adam, of course.

30:18
Adam Yee
Thank you for listening to startup CPG's R&D Radio. I hope you guys enjoyed this conversation. We've now arrived together at the end of another episode of the Startup CPG podcast. I'm proud to be part of the team that's part of the top globally ranked podcast in cpg. As you may know, we're not just a podcast. We're a community of brands and experts and you should join. You can sign up @startupcpg.com and you'll then get invited to our online Slack community and be informed on great guests and amazing networking opportunities to get you in front of buyers, investors, brands and more. Thank you for listening and have a great day.