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In this episode of The Startup CPG Podcast, Grace Kennedy welcomes Nikki Seaman, founder and CEO of Freestyle Snacks, to discuss the journey behind reimagining olives as a premium, convenient snack. Nikki shares her inspiration for launching Freestyle Snacks during the pandemic, identifying a gap in the market for fresh, flavorful olives packaged for modern, on-the-go lifestyles.
From early product development to navigating over 200 co-packer rejections, Nikki provides a behind-the-scenes look at building a CPG brand from the ground up. Discover how her data-driven approach, innovative packaging, and strategic focus on diverse channels like grocery, hospitality, and even Delta Air Lines snack boxes have contributed to the brand’s success.
If you’re curious about the intricacies of product design, scaling into retail, and creating a snack that stands out in a crowded market, this episode is packed with valuable insights.
Listen in as they share about:
- Introduction to Freestyle Snacks
- Challenges in Early Development
- Product Development
- Go-to-Market Strategy
- Unique Brand Positioning
- Expansion and Key Channels
- Trends and Market Fit
Episode Links:
Website: https://www.freestylesnacking.com/
Don't forget to leave a five-star review on Apple Podcasts or Spotify if you enjoyed this episode. For potential sponsorship opportunities or to join the Startup CPG community, visit http://www.startupcpg.com.
Show Links:
- Transcripts of each episode are available on the Transistor platform that hosts our podcast here (click on the episode and toggle to “Transcript” at the top)
- Join the Startup CPG Slack community (20K+ members and growing!)
- Follow @startupcpg
- Visit host Daniel's Linkedin
- Questions or comments about the episode? Email Daniel at podcast@startupcpg.com
- Episode music by Super Fantastics
Creators & Guests
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.
Nikki Seaman
As far as the recipe development, that was a lot of just formulating in my kitchen, what flavor profiles I thought went really well together and then always ensuring that were using super fresh ingredients. So with our lemon garlic olives, for instance, we use a freshly squeezed lemon juice and I think that freshness and that quality really comes across in the product today.
00:33
Grace Kennedy
Hello, everyone, and welcome back to the startup CPT podcast. This is Grace and I'm back with another founder feature. Today I'm talking to Nikki Seaman, the founder of Freestyle Snacks. Freestyle Snacks makes high quality, delicious marinated olives from Greece with convenient liquid free packaging. Nikki and I talk all about what it's like to reimagine a long standing category, how she is approaching multichannel distribution, and how she got her product into the hands of one very famous reality TV star with over a million followers. I hope you enjoyed this episode and as always, let me know what you think. Hello, everyone. Today I am here with Nikki Seaman, the founder of Freestyle Snacks. So welcome to the show, Nikki.
01:24
Nikki Seaman
Thank you. Thank you for having me.
01:26
Grace Kennedy
Grace. Yes. I'm so excited to have you here and I'd love for you to introduce yourself and Freestyle Snacks to our listeners.
01:33
Nikki Seaman
Sure. Yeah. So I am the founder and CEO of Freestyle Snacks. We are a premium olive snack that's reimagining olives as we know them by bringing together really high quality, fresh and delicious olives from Greece with convenient and liquid free packaging.
01:49
Grace Kennedy
Yes. And I have tried Freestyle Snacks olives and they are so good. I've had them as just a snack, but I've also put them out on like a charcuterie board when I was like hosting friends and I was like, what should I add to this board? And I just put them out and of course they were all eaten very quickly. They're really good and marinated in like a bunch of different flavors, which I appreciated as well because I've also in the past when hosting, like marinated my own olives in like some flavor profile. And you guys do all that work for you, so it's great. I think my favorite was the spicy one.
02:23
Nikki Seaman
Yeah, everyone has their you name favorites, of course.
02:26
Grace Kennedy
So I'd love to hear a little bit about why you decided to start Freestyle Snacks and where you were coming from before starting this brand.
02:35
Nikki Seaman
Yeah. So everyone's first question is always why olives? You know, it's kind of a more random category to tackle, but I really like that olives aren't sexy.
02:45
Grace Kennedy
Right.
02:45
Nikki Seaman
There's so much opportunity to really give this trusty but dusty category a makeover. And the way that I kind of had this light bulb moment where I thought of freestyle snacks was during the Pandemic. At the time, I was working at Wisps, the cheese crisp company, leading special projects there. So kind of had a CPG bootcamp, which was extremely helpful in understanding how to commercialize a product. And with the pandemic, a lot of different things happened in one small, very small outcome was buffets and olive bars in grocery stores shutting down. And so I was very spoiled. I would get my fancy olive fix from the olive aisle each week, trying different flavors all the time. Those freshly marinated olives were my afternoon or evening snack. And so when that no longer existed, I had to turn to the traditional olive aisle.
03:37
Nikki Seaman
And that's really where I saw the white space opportunity, because none of the existing brands on shelf were really jumping out at me. And then when I did try a bunch of different products at home, they missed the mark in a few ways. So first off, from a taste perspective, they were a bit bland and mushy and didn't really deliver on that restaurant quality level of olives that I knew olives could carry as a flavor profile. And then on top of that, I found the olives very inconvenient to eat. So I was, you know, eating the olives over my sink, losing olives down the drain along the way. I couldn't bring the olives to my desk. I had stuff spilled on my. All over my desk. You have one too many times.
04:17
Nikki Seaman
And so I kind of thought to myself, why is such a healthy, delicious, savory, salty snack so difficult to enjoy? And so I kind of set out from that moment on to create an easier and more enjoyable way to eat olives.
04:31
Grace Kennedy
Absolutely. And it's so true. Like, I have such vivid. Like, when you say trying to eat olives over the sink, I'm like, I immediately see myself with, like, a fork trying to stab an olive out of the olive jar just to eat, like, two olives and then making a mess, and what a disaster. But I will disagree with one point, which I think olives are sexy. You know, you think about a martini, you know, a blue cheese stuffed olive. That's kind of sexy.
04:56
Nikki Seaman
But anyway, olives are having a moment right now as well, I think, with, you know, different trends of tinned fish martinis. Like you mentioned, lots of celebrities are very into the dirty martini, so it's been fun to. To see that trend kind of increase over time.
05:12
Grace Kennedy
Yeah, you kind of came in right at the Right. Time. And people like. Like, there's lots of clothing with olives on them now and different, like, little cute things like that. But another question I had was also just thinking about the name Freestyle Snacks, and I'm curious about how you came up with that name and also the specific positioning around olives as a snack. Right. Cause I feel like I haven't seen an olive brand on a shelf position themselves as a snack before.
05:38
Nikki Seaman
Yeah, I think all founders can relate that coming up with a name is often a very difficult part of the process. And actually, of course, I had the idea before I really nailed down what the brand name would be. And I even started working on the packaging design before the name was finalized. But in the end, I really loved Freestyle Snacks because I thought it had a few different meanings that were very relatable. So, first off, Freestyle as an olive lover. Now you can eat and enjoy your olives anytime and anywhere. And so you can kind of freestyle with your olives wherever you'd like to, whether it's in the airport or on a trip or on a charcuterie board. And then I also like the name because it's how the olives feel. You know, they're no longer trapped in the jars underneath the brine.
06:25
Nikki Seaman
They can now move about the pouch freely and bounce around. And so I. I kind of like that play on Freestyle snacks as well.
06:33
Grace Kennedy
Absolutely. That's so fun. So it sounds like you were kind of building the plane as you were flying it, as you were getting this all together, you know, building the packaging as you were still figuring out the name. But I'd love to hear a little bit more about how you were developing Freestyle Snacks in those early stages of both figuring out the flavors and the packaging and the name all at once.
06:54
Nikki Seaman
Yeah, there were a lot of parallel path work screams that I was working towards at the same time. And so one of the first things I did, though, was work on the packaging design. From my experience at wisps, I just knew how critical packaging design was. I think you have five seconds on a shelf to grab a consumer's attention. And so I wanted to make it count, since I wasn't planning to go the traditional farmer's market path, and I wanted to go straight to retail. That's why I focused so heavily on the packaging design upfront. And actually, you know, almost three years into the business, we have not made any packaging changes besides some really minor updates. So very happy I invested early on that front.
07:36
Nikki Seaman
And then the other things I was working on at that time was of course, finding a co packer, I had this great idea. Startup cpg of course has great resources on all the co packers available. But all the olive and pickle co packers I was calling, they were packing olives in jars. They were not packing it in pouches. And they were had been doing that for decades. And they weren't really looking to invest in new machinery for this brand new company that has no sales data. So got a lot of no's. And then for the companies that do have machinery that we needed for our product, they didn't want to put olives on that machinery. Right. Because they're used to producing dry snacks like chips or popcorn on it. So it was a lot of NO's.
08:20
Nikki Seaman
Actually over 200NO's and rejections from Co packers until finally one kind of was really excited about the idea. He was a traditional olive packer, but wanted to kind of start small and figure out how we can bring this product to life. And so got very lucky on that front. Actually, that was one of the co packers who didn't email me until months later because my message had gotten sent to his spam inbox and he somehow miraculously dug it up. And so I feel like that was very serendipitous. And as far as the recipe development, that was a lot of just formulating in my kitchen what flavor profiles I thought went really well together and then always ensuring that were using super fresh ingredients. So with our lemon garlic olives, for instance, we use a freshly squeezed lemon juice.
09:09
Nikki Seaman
And I think that freshness and that quality really comes across in the product today.
09:13
Grace Kennedy
It absolutely does. You can really. They don't taste like jarred olives at all. They really taste fresh. And like you just marinated this at home, which is definitely a challenge when you're coming up with something that can be mass produced in that way. And so after you finally found a co packer and had all the recipes down, it sounds like you wanted to go straight into retail. And so how did you sort of begin to approach getting into retail and like getting the product to customers?
09:45
Nikki Seaman
Yeah, that's a great question. So my background before wisps was actually in management consulting. And everything we did there was very data driven. And so I tried to take the same approach with freestyle snacks. And I initially launched the product on our website just to get an initial feel of is this a product people actually want? And purely through word of mouth, friends of friends, we sold over $10,000 worth of product in that first launch day. And from there I Knew, okay, this is a product people actually are excited about and has a lot of potential. And that kind of gave me the confidence to go out and push it out to the market further. And so from there, we launched on Amazon, which is still a really incredible channel for us today.
10:29
Nikki Seaman
And then I just went door to door in Atlanta, which is where I'm based, and tried to get the product in wherever I thought it could be a fit. Olives are very versatile. So I kind of took that to my advantage and tried to get Freestyle snacks not only into local grocery markets, but, you know, local liquor stores and local gyms and workout studios, just kind of playing the gamut, juice shops to see where Freestyle snacks would actually perform. And then I would go into these locations on a weekly basis, count how many units on the shelf have sold within the timeframe, and kind of determine which channels would best for us to keep heavily pursuing. And then I use that local sales data to go and pursue some regional accounts like Central Market in Texas or Erewhon in la.
11:16
Nikki Seaman
And then when we continue to excel and do well in the regional locations, that really opened up the door for us to go national and launch with a partner like Whole Foods.
11:26
Grace Kennedy
Yeah, you are such a consultant. I love it, like, thinking of all the data and really getting it together in that way. But it's great advice too, to like, start where you are, but try a bunch of different locations where you are so that you can really see on a very, like, weekly basis, as you said, what's working and what's not before you go to a larger scale where you can't necessarily have that same in person presence. And I love that you guys are approaching different channels. And, you know, were talking before we started recording about here in Philly, where I'm at, you're at my local Whole Foods, but you're also at the Philadelphia airport. You're also at the Four Seasons in Philly.
12:04
Grace Kennedy
So I'd love to hear a little bit about those channels that you found that have really worked for you guys since you first started. And now you have a couple years of data to really hone in on your approach.
12:15
Nikki Seaman
Yeah. So the Grocery channel is definitely still the biggest for us right now, and we still have a ton of ground to cover. So really excited to keep partnering with our existing retailers, increasing velocities there, but then also expanding to new points of distribution and new retail partnerships. But on top of that, like you said, one of the channels that really excites me is travel and hospitality. So we partner with otg, and we're in Chibo Express stores, which is probably where you saw us in the Philly airport. And that's been huge for us. And then we actually just launched on Delta flights this month in their snack boxes. So just further kind of speaking to freestyle snacks being a really great, salty, savory, but healthy snack to fuel travel days.
13:00
Nikki Seaman
And then, you know, we also play in some other fun channels, like the Liquor channel, partnering with Total Wine and Binny's. And then a channel that's very recently emerged for us is TikTok, and I'm talking in the last month or so. And so I feel like there's a lot of opportunity to continue digging into TikTok as they're also figuring out how to grow the TikTok shop. So, excited to see where we continue to push into in 2025.
13:26
Grace Kennedy
Yeah, absolutely. And your mention of TikTok reminds me of another question I had, which is, like, how you are working with social media and, like, social media influencers. And also another story that I had told Nikki right before we started recording, which was that I was reminded of Freestyle snacks when I saw Paige desorbo, who is a reality TV star for those who don't watch Bravo like I do, but she wrote a list of, like, her favorite things for the strategist. And I saw she listed freestyle snacks. And I'd love for you to share a little bit about, like, how you got freestyle snacks into her hands. Because in my mind, I was like, oh, the PR is working. And you were like, So I'd love for you to share that story.
14:05
Nikki Seaman
Yeah, it's a fun story. So I'm also an avid Bravo watcher. Paige desorbo is a star of Summer House, and one of my best friends from high school, you know, had mentioned to me that Paige lived in her building in Manhattan. And so immediately I was like, we need to get freestyle snacks in her hands. And so I basically sent an influencer package to my friend's apartment building, noting what floor she thought Paige desorvo lived on, and, you know, sent the product to her. And I send tons of influencer packages out all the time, and most of the time they're not gonna post. But Paige, I knew, was an olive lover, and she just fell in love with the product, and from there, you know, was purchasing on her own and mentions us all the time.
14:51
Nikki Seaman
She wore the pair of olive socks we sent to her on the show as well. And so it's just been really fun to see kind of the natural Progression of shooting your shot, turning into something really awesome and, you know, the gift that keeps on giving.
15:04
Grace Kennedy
Yeah, absolutely. It's such a sweet story, but also just a testament of, like, finding the right people to sort of send your product to. You know, not just sending it to, like, any famous person or any influencer that you think, like, might post about you, but finding someone you're like, okay, I know she loves olives. I know happen to know where she lives. But what has been your approach in terms of working with, like, other sort of potential, like, partnerships with, like, influencers or anyone on social media, if you have an approach to that at all? Because maybe you're not doing it at all.
15:35
Nikki Seaman
Yeah. So it's funny that you mention, you know, you have to partner with the right types of influencers. So Paige is an amazing example because she has such a captivated audience who, whatever she says, they're like, yes, I totally need to try that. And so whenever she's posted about Freestyle Snacks, we've seen incredible conversion from her. I would say we do a bunch of other influencer activations that are targeted around big moments for our brand, like when we launched into Whole Foods or launched into Delta Snack Boxes. We've done kind of different gifting opportunities there. But it really does depend on the influencer and how they connect with their audience and engage them. And that's something that's just a little bit difficult to gauge probably without, you know, an influencer marketing agency.
16:21
Nikki Seaman
So, you know, sometimes it works, and you just kind of do it for the ones that are gonna hit.
16:26
Grace Kennedy
Yeah, totally. And. And sometimes it doesn't work, and you just have to be okay with that as well, trying to see what sticks. And I'm curious about other marketing approaches you've taken, if you've spent any money on marketing or if you have still continued to mostly rely on word of mouth or what your approach has been to marketing Freestyle Snacks.
16:45
Nikki Seaman
Yeah. So before starting Freestyle Snacks, I had dozens and dozens of conversations with other CPG founders before a podcast like this existed. And obviously connecting with them was extremely helpful. And marketing was one of the things I always asked about. And for founders that have been in this for a while, they consistently said, within the four walls of a grocery store is where you want to do as much of your marketing as possible, people. So I kind of go by the framework of sampling, promotions and placement as the three pillars of marketing to focus on. And then everything else, like influencer marketing, social media, email marketing is more kind of ancillary, more top of funnel awareness for me. So with sampling, of course, you know, that's doing demos, programs like Social Nature and Aisle. With promotions, it's, you know, running those TPRs.
17:39
Nikki Seaman
And then with placement, this has actually been the most effective for our brand, is just getting secondary displays. So typically we are merchandised in the olive aisle. And so when we can kind of come out of the olive aisle and show up maybe on top of the salad bar or near specialty cheeses, maybe we're paired with wine or sandwiches, that's where we see an incredible velocity uplift. And that's probably been the most successful marketing that we've done to date.
18:08
Grace Kennedy
Yeah, that makes a lot of sense. And I'm curious if you have any advice for founders trying to work with retailers to have that kind of, like, bring us out of our ex aisle and put us on top of the olive bar, like you were saying, or in another location. Do you have any advice for, like, how to have those conversations? Cause sometimes I feel like founders feel a little bit nervous to, like, ask for something like that with a retail partner. But, yeah, do you have any advice for them?
18:34
Nikki Seaman
Yeah, I mean, I try and live by this. If you don't ask, the answer is always no. So, you know, you just have to put it out there and do it in a respectful way, of course. And I think, again, going back to data, if you can bring any data to that conversation, that's just going to help your case. So with Whole Foods, for instance, we did a program in Florida working with a merchandising group called Front Page Retail, and they helped us to secure secondary displays on top of the salad bar. We saw incredible results from that and then got to bring that to the Whole Foods team. And then, you know, that kind of opened the doors for us to explore a shipper program with them.
19:14
Nikki Seaman
So I would say definitely need to ask the questions, and then any supporting data to make your case and tell your story is going to be helpful.
19:24
Grace Kennedy
Yeah, that's great advice. And data is God, as it turns out. Again and again, we. We continue to discover that. But another question I always love to ask founders, and this is kind of a bigger question, but really, what has been one of the hardest parts about founding Freestyle Snacks? And how have you worked to overcome it, or how are you continuing to overcome it?
19:48
Nikki Seaman
Yeah, I think there's, you know, lots of challenges. I once listened to a podcast, and I think it was the founder of Shake Shack said, you know, business is just one big problem, so there's always going to be challenges. And part of the excitement is coming to work every day and figuring out how to solve those challenges. So I won't talk about like some of those actual day to day business challenges, but I think for me, one of the hardest things starting up was kind of twofold. One, you know, as a solo founder, I just found it very lonely, especially in the earlier days. And so that's when I look to connect with other founders, kind of commiserate in some ways and just share learnings and tips and tricks. And I feel like that really energized me and fueled me to keep going.
20:32
Nikki Seaman
So I think, you know, that was definitely one big challenge. And then also coming more from a consulting background, moving into entrepreneurship, there is no structure. And so it's figuring out how to effectively structure your days, make sure things keep pushing along and you're spread so thin across so many facets of the business, from sales and marketing to operations, making sure you know your product is actually getting produced and the finance side of things. So really ruthlessly prioritizing and figuring out how to best structure your strategy all the way down to your day to day plan.
21:09
Grace Kennedy
Yeah, absolutely. And I've heard so many founders speak to how hard it is to be a solo founder and how nice it is or from people who have a co founder, how nice it is to have someone like you said, to commiserate with. And even in that element of like structuring your days, you know, having a co founder can help you be like, okay, you log off now and I'll take this part of the day or, you know, however people do it. But I think a lot of people will probably resonate with those challenges and also the fact that there is always one big challenge, as you said. So this episode will air in early January 2025. So I'd love to hear a little bit about what your plans are for freestyle snacks in 2025, which is crazy to say that it's so close.
21:55
Grace Kennedy
And when you're all hearing this, it will be 2025. But yeah, what are some of your plans for Freestyle Snacks and some of your goals for this year?
22:03
Nikki Seaman
Yeah, so we have a very lean team, but got to hold kind of a strategy workshop in August of this year for 2025 planning. And that was really fun and energizing for the team to just all figure out with our respective areas where we want to push. And so in 2025, some of the bigger things roadmap one is innovation. We might be dipping our toes out of the category a little bit. You know, hence the broader name of Freestyle Snacks. So excited to see how agile we can be and commercializing some new items quickly. I think that's really big. And then also, as I was mentioning before, continuing to push in the grocery channel, so expanding points of distribution while also really nurturing and prioritizing our existing amazing accounts.
22:51
Nikki Seaman
So figuring out, you know, what are those secondary display opportunities, which promotions are working best, and how can we do more of them. So a lot of learning and then implementing with existing customers, and then we have pretty ambitious growth goals as well, especially as we think about our online channels. Like I was mentioning with TikTok, you know, this is a business that we didn't even have two months ago, and now, you know, it's becoming a more significant part of our E. Comm channel. And so figuring out how to just optimize there and. And really grow those channels in an efficient way.
23:25
Grace Kennedy
Yeah, absolutely. And I do see the TikTok shop. I feel like when I'm on my for you page now, it's like every other video is like, TikTok shop. TikTok shop. I'm like, oh, okay. They're really pushing this. So I'm excited for you guys to grow that for Freestyle Snacks as well. But my last question is another question I always like to ask founders, which is if you were day one of Freestyle Snacks doing it all over again, what's one piece of advice you wish you'd been told or wish you'd known before you started this whole journey?
23:57
Nikki Seaman
There's a lot of things I can say here, so I'm just trying to pick one of my favorites. I think one thing that I would say is you really need to have grit, which is passion and perseverance. So make sure this is a product that you love and really believe in, because that's the thing that's really going to carry you through. To wake up every day and work on the business. And then having the perseverance to sift through all of the rejections, which there were many rejections, not only across the co packers, but retailers. But a no is not ever. It's just a not right now. And so you just have to keep pushing. And when the timing is right for the brand, everything will kind of fall into place. So just have to keep going and not give up.
24:42
Grace Kennedy
Absolutely. Yeah. You might get 200 rejections from Co packers, but then a few years later, you might be growing and thriving and all of the above. So I love that advice. My last question is, where can people learn more about Freestyle snacks and purchase freestyle snacks and follow along on your journey.
25:03
Nikki Seaman
Yeah, our website is freestyle snacking.com that's snacking with an ing and then can follow us on Instagram. Also at freestyle snacking on TikTok we are freestyle snacks and then to purchase you can find us across the country at Whole Foods and then we're also available on Amazon as well as our website which has our store locator on there for any great independence that might be close to you.
25:29
Grace Kennedy
Absolutely. I love it. Well, thank you so much for coming on the show, Nikki. It was such a pleasure to learn more about Freestyle snacks and your delicious olives and I can't wait to see what you guys do in 2025.
25:41
Nikki Seaman
Thank you so much Grace all right.
25:45
Grace Kennedy
Everyone, thank you so much for listening. If you enjoyed this episode, it would help us out so much if you left a 5 star review on ratethispodcast.com startupcpg I am Grace Kennedy, the host of the Founder Feature series. So feel free to add me on LinkedIn or reach out to me on Slack. I'm always on the hunt for new and exciting brands to feature and if you're a potential sponsor who would like to appear on the podcast, please email partnershipstartupcpg.com and finally, as a reminder for anyone listening, if you haven't already, we would love for you to join our community on Slack. You can sign up via our website startupcpg dot.