Heather Wood @ GOODLES

In this episode of the Omnichannel Marketer, host Kait Stephens interviews Heather Wood, SVP of Marketing at GOODLES.

Heather shares her journey from the organic produce and craft coffee industries to leading marketing at GOODLES, a better-for-you mac and cheese brand taking on the biggest incumbents in the category. She discusses what it takes to build a brand people genuinely love, how GOODLES made the bold leap from D2C into nationwide retail with Target before they even officially launched, and why packaging is still their number one point of discovery.

The conversation explores how GOODLES uses community — not scale — as their north star for engagement, the bold decision to turn off all paid media when transitioning to retail, and why keeping creative entirely in-house has been central to the brand's authentic voice.

TAKEAWAYS:

• GOODLES is a better-for-you mac and cheese and pasta brand built on the principle of maximizing nutrition without compromising on taste.
• Going up against major incumbents requires being nimble, creative, and authentic — and getting the product and brand right before launch, not after.
• GOODLES launched into Target nationwide before their official launch, making a bold go-or-no-go decision that set the trajectory for the brand.
• D2C is used primarily as a community and education channel, not a primary revenue driver, with the GOODLES Clubhouse serving as a hub for their most passionate brand promoters.
• Word of mouth is the second-biggest point of discovery for GOODLES, right behind on-shelf packaging, and investing in quality community engagement is what drives it.
• Packaging is the brand's biggest billboard; GOODLES built it with a timeless strategy to outlast fleeting dietary trends.
• GOODLES keeps all creative in-house and uses AI very sparingly, believing that authentic, passion-driven creative cannot be outsourced or replicated.
• Turning off all paid media when transitioning to retail was a scary but ultimately successful bet that forced full commitment to the retail channel.
• Celebrating wins and expressing gratitude to your team is one of the most underrated and important things a startup leader can do.

Where to find Heather Wood: 

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/heatherwoodsc/

Website: https://www.goodles.com/ 

Where to find Kait Stephens: 

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/kait-margraf-stephens/ 

Website: www.brij.it

SUBSCRIBE TO THE OMNICHANNEL MARKETER www.theomnichannelmarketer.com

Transcript

SPEAKER_01 0:00

This is the Omnichannel Marketer, the show where we get real about what it takes to build a brand, create a seamless omnichannel experience, and drive customer LTV across B2C, Amazon, and retail. I'm Kate Stevens, the CEO of Bridge. Join me for unfiltered conversations from the trenches of e-commerce. We'll unpack strategy and leave you with tactical advice you can use today to drive your business forward. Let's rock and roll. Hi everyone. Welcome back to another episode of the Omnichannel Marketer. This is your host, Kate Stevens. Today I'm so excited to have Heather Wood, SVP of Marketing at Goodles. Hi, Heather. Hi, Kate. Thanks for having me. I'm thrilled to have you. So tell me, Heather, a little bit about your career journey and what led you to Goodles.

SPEAKER_00 0:51

Well, I studied nutrition and food systems management. And I've always primarily been in the food industry. I did a couple of years in the agency world, specializing in graphic design and marketing. But the bulk of my career in the early days I spent uh working in organic produce, which was an incredibly, you know, taxing and fun industry. It was sort of trial by fire for earlier years in my career. But in between produce and Goodles, I did a stop over a year in the craft coffee industry, which was sort of a great bridge from a commodities-driven business into consumer packaged goods. And then I was connected to Jen, the co-founder of Goodles, um, after a year in craft coffee. And I made the switch and have been here for the last five years. So amazing.

SPEAKER_01 1:38

And, you know, I am a parent of a four-year-old and a two-year-old. So we are, you know, very much Goodles customers and love, love the product. But could you tell, you know, for those who might not be familiar with Goodles, what is Goodles? How are you guys positioned in the market?

SPEAKER_00 1:53

Sure. So we are a better for you mac and cheese company. We say mac and cheese, but you know, we also are generally a noodle and pasta company. So we also have a line of dry pasta products in addition to our mac and cheese product line. We innovated this product to have mass appeal, right? So rather than sort of picking a niche marketing trend to formulate our product against, we rent like the mass market route. So we basically dialed up the nutrition in this product to make it as nutrient-dense as we possibly could without affecting the eating experience. So it's the yum plus nutrition, is what we always call it. And it's selling like hot cakes. It seems to have struck a chord with a lot of consumers in really just going straight at the need of the product that's being consumed in mass every day in the market rather than sort of going after niche dietary trends or or or marketing positioning for food products.

SPEAKER_01 2:50

So, you know, you spoke to the mass strategy. You're you know very much going up against these massive incumbents like crafts and annies. Um, what does it take to, you know, build a brand to go after such large incumbents?

SPEAKER_00 3:04

I always say it takes a lot of heart, right? Because out of the gate, we're not gonna have the same sort of marketing budget and the deep pockets that they have to go after traditional advertising. They'll beat us every day on, you know, buying keyword searches and doing massive national campaigns. So, you know, we have to be nimble, we have to be creative, we have to be authentic. And I think more than anything else, we had to make sure that our product and our brand was dialed in before we launched, that our consumers' first experience with our brand and product was a positive one rather than rushing to market and then, you know, we'll reformulate later and optimize later. No, we spent a full year formulating the product and laboring over every single detail and touch point of the brand before we launched to make sure that our first impression in the market was a good one.

SPEAKER_01 3:52

And, you know, I really feel like Goodals is this brand that people love. How have you helped build that emotional connection as a brand?

SPEAKER_00 4:01

Well, I would say we don't go at it with the intention of sort of manufacturing an emotional connection. I think we take a much more vulnerable approach to it. You know, our co-founders both have marketing and brand backgrounds, which I am extremely grateful for, both because it makes my job easier and because I've learned so much from them. But we really labored over every single decision. I can remember spending three hours on Zoom meetings sometimes with our Pantone books and laboring over every single color choice, really deeply debating every single message and claim that we put on pack or what you don't see on pack was also very intentional. And really genuinely just had a love for that process because all of us were so passionate about it. I think, you know, it's been a large part of my job to make sure that we maintain that passion in our work and a culture that fosters that. And I really think that that approach shows in the work. I mean, there are times where I can go back and kind of look at our channels and feeds and see, like, ooh, we were really stressed that year because we were scaling big timers. And I think it, think it and just sort of subconsciously shows. And when there's really fun times happening in the company and we're really having, you know, a good time sort of being creative and putting work out into the world that feels genuinely like us, I think it's resonating with people.

SPEAKER_01 5:17

Yeah. Um, let's talk a little bit about, you know, that scale. So I think Goodles quickly went from D to C to launching major retail to over 35,000 doors now. What did that transition from D to C to retail look like? And how has the business evolved over that transition?

SPEAKER_00 5:37

You're asking me to go back like four years, but it definitely was memorable. Uh, we uh that decision was kind of made for us very quickly because it happened so early in the business, right? So both because it was our biggest opportunity and because we were so small when we made that decision that a lot of our the sort of the realities of the business in making the switch were just sort of decided for us, right? We didn't have a bunch of marketing dollars and trade spend to play with when we made that switch to retail. So it was the clearest path to the immediate scale we were looking for. And then those sort of like budget dollars got allocated for us because they were so limited back then.

SPEAKER_01 6:15

So uh effectively a you know, large retail partner presented itself and you're like, okay, we're gonna do this. Is that kind of how it happened?

SPEAKER_00 6:22

There was a go or no-go moment that I remember very shortly after we launched the website, and um, it was Target. Target was our first retail partner, and they wanted to go nationwide immediately, which was really amazing because back, I mean, I think it's a little more common now because they've realized how impactful these new brands can be for their strategy. But back then it was still kind of unheard of to sort of be pre-launch and having that kind of conversation with a nationwide retailer. So there was a go or no-go moment where we knew we had to put all our chips in to meet those first POs from Target and get on shelves, but we did it. And it's been gangbusters since then. It's incredible.

SPEAKER_01 7:01

So now your true omnichannel brand, you know, sold across multiple different types of retailers. Amazon, are you guys on Amazon? Yes. Amazon, D2C, what role does D2C still play, if anything, you know, your role as an omnichannel brand?

SPEAKER_00 7:18

We use our D2C channel primarily to stay in touch with our community. So just being able to segment our consumers and drive them into retail to stay in touch with them, convert them into being our most passionate brand promoters. We just launched a program last year called Gooddles Clubhouse that is a segment of our super brand promoters, and we're always doing really fun activities in the background with them and sending them out into the world promoting the brand. So D2C really is just it's community driven for us. We still get a lot of organic search traffic coming to the website too. So I think just an experiential moment for the brand to educate people on the product and who we are and then pull them into the funnel.

SPEAKER_01 8:00

Do you find that, you know, the shoppers on D2C are similar or different than your customers shopping you on Amazon or retail?

SPEAKER_00 8:09

Demographically speaking, all the research you know we've been doing for our retail consumers, they're they're pretty consistent. It's across the board. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 8:18

And so that the D2C is really just those those loyalists that you are learning from and building that community. Yes. Just thinking a little bit about launching channels. What is a recent channel that you you guys have launched and why did you launch it? And you know, how did you think about launching a new channel? You mean revenue or just like comms or social? Yeah, revenue, you know, i.e. like a distribution partner, like maybe have you guys done TikTok shop or maybe a new retailer.

SPEAKER_00 8:48

So TikTok shop, I think we dabbled in a little bit a couple of years ago. It just didn't make sense for us for what our product is, right? Yeah, that makes sense.

SPEAKER_01 8:57

I mean, like it's not really how you buy pasta or like, you know, mac and cheese. No, it's really a it's a grocery product. Like that makes sense.

SPEAKER_00 9:04

Right. So I think, you know, it wasn't recent, but I think Amazon is kind of a good anecdotal topic for us. You know, we I think whenever you're approaching launching a new revenue channel, all the, you know, old habits die hard to looking at efficiency of scale and margins and all those things. And I think we just because we were so, you know, such a small, scrappy team, we gave ourselves permission to say, you know what, we need to be on Amazon as a point of discovery. And we don't need to stress too much about what the metrics there look like. Obviously, we kind of set it and forget it to be as efficient as it can be right now. And then I think allow it to just be a point of discovery for the brand and know that it's an opportunity for us to dig into as it becomes strategically important from a business perspective.

SPEAKER_01 9:50

Let's shift over to retail and you know how you guys think about retail. You mentioned you were effectively a pre-launch brand, um, launching into Target. What does it take for emerging brands today to be successful at retail?

SPEAKER_00 10:05

You're at, I wish we were here with my VP of retail marketing because she's incredible and so much more well-versed in this topic. You know, she does a lot of work in partnering with our sales team to take incredibly good care of all of our retail partners. We plan out for the year, we make sure that everything's sort of ticking and tying against our distribution forecast and making sure that, you know, we're keeping a close eye on velocities at all times. But I think on from the side that I can speak to, especially being so involved in it early on, and still today it comes up all the time, is how important your packaging is. I think people love to talk about packaging and think about packaging from a fun perspective, and they just sort of, you know, think through kind of trends and design and messaging that are in the market versus, you know, we really approached our architecture with a timeless strategy in mind. So anything you see on PAC is really intentional to sort of live through the fleeting trends that we're seeing come through faster and faster in today's day and age. But it's the biggest and best billboard in advertising for your brand on consumer surveys. It's still our number one reported point of discovery for the brand. So investing early on in all of those decisions and everything that's going and involved in your packaging has paid off for us in spades, and I think super important on the retail shelf. What do you think is something that people get wrong on the packaging side? My executive creative director partner would say that I'm gonna get on my soapbox about it. I think it's probably because of my nutrition background, but I think people think in terms of what I call fleeting dietary trends and rely on that way too much. It's moving, it's moving so fast now. People are busy adding fiber claims to their box right now. I promise you, the next thing is gonna be like micronutrients and how important vitamins and minerals are for your body to absorb, you know, the nutrients from the food we're eating. That these things are moving really fast. So I think relying on fleeting trends on packaging, especially when it's such an expensive and cumbersome work stream to impact each, right? I think, you know, doing that work up front and kind of setting yourself up to be able to speak to the trends as they come through. If you've formulated your product thoughtfully, then do the same for your packaging.

SPEAKER_01 12:22

Makes complete sense. So you mentioned the importance of community and you know, how you're building community. How, how do you think about growing community, cultural moments, you know, all of that supporting Goodle's growth strategy?

SPEAKER_00 12:36

I think the question that always comes up with community is how do you scale it? And we tend to think of our community in the opposite, right? We don't think of scaling the touch points we have with our consumers or the number of touch points we're having with our consumers. We focus on the quality of engagement we're having with our community. So even if it's a small one or a slow growing community, the quality of engagement we're having with them is more important to scale, even though it's hard for us to measure that and report back on it. It shows up obviously in your sales. So that sort of like faith and trust in believing that if you're having really quality engagement with your passionate brand promoters, they're doing the scale for you out in the world. Word of mouth is still, you know, a massive deliverer for us. It's right under discovery on shelf for how consumers are discovering our brand is through word of mouth. So it's it's really important. And, you know, the good old clubhouse that I mentioned just a minute ago is how we're staying in touch with them for the most part. They are in a recent brand survey we did, we did the first touch in September, the second touch a couple weeks ago. So I'm not through all the data yet, but there was a huge statistically significant jump in word of mouth being a point of discovery for our brand since we launched that clubhouse. So that being able to at least have sort of some anecdotal, if not totally causationally proved out, but we can assume that a lot of that work we're putting into quality of engagement is delivering against, you know, our top of funnel awareness strategy. Makes complete sense.

SPEAKER_01 14:03

Okay, so shifting into everyone's favorite topic right now, AI, and how it is changing the way that we all work. How is it changing the way your marketing team is operating? Where are you seeing some of the biggest opportunities today?

SPEAKER_00 14:18

It's not changing much for us, to be honest. We are a creative-driven brand first. We have never had an agency that we outsource our creative to. We've always done it in-house, and it's something we're really precious about and passionate about and love getting to work on. So I think there were a few moments early on in the business where we outsource some of our creative and it gave us all hives. So we try not to do it at all anymore. Even though people are so talented and do amazing work when it doesn't feel like us, we just can't do it. So we keep it all in-house. And AI obviously certainly doesn't feel any better. If anything, it feels worse than outsourcing creative to an agency. Um, so it doesn't impact what we do creatively in the world. We use it very, very sparingly. So maybe, for example, on the creative side, we'll set up and do a whole world shoot for a new flavor we're launching on our mac and cheese line. And we hire prop stylists and food stylists, and they create mini worlds with all sorts of fun little props and we have storytelling in the shot. Maybe we will take, you know, we will layer an AI effect over it where rather than just capturing one still image, we'll sort of be able to make it look like we're punching into frame on it or something of the like. Right. But there's still worlds and everything that we are building, you know, with care and passion. On the work stream side, we've tried out a few tools that just help make our lives easier as employees, kind of get back some of the time that we would otherwise be spending deleting 30 junk emails a day, right? Have an AI email agent that sort of filters through your email for you. So at the end of the day, you can kind of quickly respond to everything that needs to be responded to. It just makes us more efficient and gives us back quality time.

SPEAKER_01 16:03

Yeah, of course. From a kind of like lessons learned perspective, is there any bold marketing bet that you've made that you feel like has really paid off?

SPEAKER_00 16:12

Yes. Well, so like I mentioned earlier when we made the transition to retail, we decided to just turn off all paid media. It was happening right around the same time as the iOS updates where meta-ads were going haywire and everyone was like, what is going on? So we just made the bold decision to turn it off altogether and say, we're gonna go all in on investing in our retail presence and finding consumers that way. And even though it feels scary to do that because we don't have a direct, you know, link to those consumers, we had to kind of just put all our faith and trust in that and make sure that we set ourselves up for success on the retail side. And it paid off. It was very scary at the time because obviously we were running ads in the very beginning days to drive to D2C. And that was a way we could tell that something we were doing was working and at retail longer, but it paid off.

SPEAKER_01 17:03

That is a that is a bold and scary bet that is definitely clearly, clearly paid off. What is your view of where the CPG industry is going over the next three to five years?

SPEAKER_00 17:14

Well, I hope it's going in the direction I would like to see more brands like girls that approach their formulation, you know, with the value of nutrition to the consumer in mind. So really just deliver I think it's becoming more true, even with, you know, everything that's going on with GLP1s, that nutrient density is becoming a really important part of the conversation and, you know, intentional clean ingredients and making sure that per calorie you're delivering a nutritive value. So I'm hoping that we see more products in the market. I think we already are, but I'm hoping that it starts to turn away from marketing-driven innovation on the product side to true nutritive value on the innovation side.

SPEAKER_01 17:54

Yeah, I um I agree. I think that that's better for everyone. And as we think about, you know, the better for you category in general. If listeners take one action away from this episode, what would you want it to be? Oh, that's a good question.

SPEAKER_00 18:06

Probably not anything I've discussed so far, but I'm feeling really sappy right now because of how much fun we're having in the office together lately. But I think stop and thank your team. Take a moment, celebrate the wins. This is a long road. I've been at it for five years. Most of my marketing team has been here for at least four of those as well. So to think we've been doing this and sprinting full speed for so many years in a row, it's been really nice to take a few moments and pause and express gratitude for one another. We throw little parties at HQ whenever we launch a new product, like really being intentional about pausing and thanking everyone for the work that we're doing to make this a success is so important as part of this process as a startup.

SPEAKER_01 18:51

I mean, I can very much relate to that. It's so easy to just catch yourself sprint after sprint after sprint. So making sure to, you know, pause and and celebrate, you know, how far you've come. So as well as, you know, the people who got you there. So that's a really great reminder. Moving into the final segment of our discussion today, it's our lightning round. So just you know, quick answers to these questions. Favorite omnichannel brand, of course, other than Goodles.

SPEAKER_00 19:15

Yes, I've been living and breathing up and cheese. So um, I am really excited about Mave Chocolate. I met them at Expo. They were a few aisles over. And since Expo, I have seen them everywhere and in the weirdest spots, like the most omnichannel I think ever. Because literally last week and I was shopping in downtown Santa Cruz here, and I was at a plant shop. Literally, all they sell are plants, and I was there buying a couple air plants, and I saw Maeve Chocolate by the register. I was like, how did they even get in here? They're doing such an amazing job. I'm interested. I don't think I know that brand. I'm gonna check them out. You should Google. Their brand world is amazing. Okay, awesome. Most underrated growth channel. Ooh, kind of of a similar vein. I think I'd like to look into something like um boutique distribution wholesaler partnership, like a fair. I think maybe it'd be really interesting to set up a small segment of the business where we could test and trial different products that maybe are a little more adventurous than even what we're used to. I know we push a lot of boundaries here on flavor and innovation, but I think we have some really wack-a-doodle ideas that would be really fun. We could figure out how to set up a segment of the business and and trial it in a way that feels really intentional and gets really good feedback, like in community small shops and and boutique. Well, favorite podcaster newsletter. Okay, so favorite podcasts, I'm usually listening to true crime, which is probably awful. My favorite murder, something a little less, you know, scary, probably Radio Lab. I love Radio Lab. Okay. Awesome. Favorite tool you can't live without the email agent I told you about since I installed Fixer in my Gmail. It is so easy to clear out my inbox every day. Now I don't want to. I love that one. I use Fixer also. Favorite event that you're attending this year. Well, Expo was a blast, but now we're all hands-on deck planning for our pop-up event in New York that's happening in May. Yes. We'll do a pop-up shop in Soho, and it's gonna be so much fun. We're all very excited about that one. Where can people connect with you? LinkedIn is great. I will get better at checking it. I promise. LinkedIn is great.

SPEAKER_01 21:26

Um, well, Heather, thank you so much for all of your time and insights today. I really enjoyed the conversation. I am so excited for the pop-up in May and appreciate your time. It was great to see you, Kate. Thanks for having me. Bye. If you liked this podcast, follow me and the bridge page on LinkedIn and Twitter for hot takes and tactical advice. If you really love today's episode, we'd love a review on the podcasting platform of your choice, Apple Podcasts or Spotify. Thanks for listening.

unknown 22:00

Yeah.