WWW.POPUPGROCER.CO
Q&A WITH EMILY SCHILDT OF POP UP GROCER Startup CPG WHAT IS POP UP GROCER, AND HOW DID IT COME ABOUT? Emily Schildt Pop Up Grocer came about all by accident. I was a brand marketer, who got my start very early on at a tiny little yogurt company that is now the behemoth you know as Chobani. I was a Jane of all trades there, but really specialized in building the brand. This was an amazing experience which led me to become a consultant for emerging food companies and bring their products to market. Through that work, I realized that there wasn’t an ideal retail environment to launch products. You could only be so lucky to have one SKU among 500 in a grocery aisle. And this isn’t that exciting, beautiful experience that I felt new CPG products warranted. A lightbulb went off; I decided to create that ideal launch environment for a few of my clients. Once I understood the appetite and excitement for it, we grew very quickly into something much bigger. We opened our first pop up location in April 2019 and had around 120 brands featured.
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SCPG HOW DOES A PRODUCT GET ON YOUR SHELVES? ES Sourcing new brands is my personal favorite activity and it’s truly at the core of what we do. It’s where we spend the most of our time. A brand that qualifies to be a part of Pop Up Grocer meets three key criteria. The first and most important is that the brand or founder is doing something truly novel, innovative and compelling, whether that be their founding story, a sustainability component, or a new approach to ingredients. We also look for founders who
