Express Checkout #109

Hello hello!

Welcome back, TikTok. What a whirlwind of a long weekend…

Last week, Jenna and I sat down for our latest Checkout Chat with Molly Baz and David McCormick to dive into the story behind Ayoh!, a line of flavored mayos, and it’s a refreshing departure from your typical celebrity product launch.

While most influencer brands rush to market, Molly started in her kitchen with a whisk and a vision. Together with David (a CPG veteran from Whole Foods), they've created a mayo brand that's exploding across the country. Check out our deep dive to learn more about their brilliant strategy (+ get a peek into Molly’s pantry faves).

An important note: We are devastated to share that Molly’s family lost their home in the LA fires. To support her at this time, we ask that you consider signing up for or gifting a subscription to her recipe club, The Club, to allow her to continue doing what she loves amidst this tragedy.

News From the Week

It’s time to talk about Walmart’s rebrand. Here’s the deal: It may not look like much (read: it looks like an intern hit Command+B and called it a day), but beneath those bolded curves lies a story worth digging into.

Why? It’s the latest move in a much bigger game: Walmart's aggressive push to challenge both Amazon's digital dominance and Target's upscale appeal.

Let's talk about the Amazon battle first. While Amazon's e-commerce business raked in $61 billion last quarter (about 2x Walmart's), Walmart is growing online sales at a blistering 27% YoY compared to Amazon's mere 7%. They're playing serious catch-up, and they're doing it fast.

• The secret weapon? Walmart+. Since launching in 2020, their answer to Amazon Prime has already accumulated nearly 60 million subscribers: a third of Prime's membership in just a fraction of the time. They've also tripled their marketplace sellers from 50,000 in 2022 to over 150,000 today

But Walmart isn't just trying to be Amazon 2.0—they're simultaneously taking pages from Target's playbook to attract more affluent shoppers. The strategy appears to be working too: about 75% of their recent market share gains in food have come from households making over $100,000 annually.

You can see this upmarket evolution everywhere.

• Their stores are getting Target-style makeovers with brighter lighting, wider aisles, and better merchandising that feels more boutique than big-box.

• Their 2024 launch of "bettergoods" – their largest private brand food launch in 20 years – brings items like artisanal pistachio spread and plant-based mac and cheese that wouldn't look out of place in a Whole Foods or Target.

The brand partnerships tell the same story. They're bringing in trendy names like Poppi and Olipop, launching fashion-forward private labels like Futurewise and Current State, and securing celebrity collaborations with Drew Barrymore's Beautiful and Jake Paul's W brand. Each move is calculated to attract style-conscious customers without alienating their value-seeking base.

That's what makes this strategy so clever. They're building a hybrid retail powerhouse that can serve both budget-conscious shoppers and affluent consumers, both online and in stores.

So yeah, maybe that new logo is just a bolder version of the old one. But that's exactly the point. It's Walmart saying they're still Walmart, just a more ambitious version that's ready to compete with anyone, anywhere.

CPG & Consumer Goods

• Say goodbye to your maraschino cherries. The FDA is banning the use of Red No. 3 in food and ingested drugs. Manufacturers will have until January 15, 2027, to reformulate their products.

• 🚨NEW TRADE SHOW JUST DROPPED. The Specialty Food Association is launching a new trade show, Winter FancyFaire, debuting in San Diego in January 2026, aimed at offering innovative opportunities for specialty food makers. Following its inaugural year, the show will move to San Francisco in 2027, while the Winter Fancy Food Show will be discontinued after 2025.

• High protein. 0 sugar. 4,000 stores. Hero Bread launched its products nationwide in over 500 select Whole Foods Market stores. Hero is already available in over 4,000 retail locations like Sprouts, Safeway, Albertsons, and even Just Salad.

• Target is really doubling down on wellness. Pressed Juicery is launching its exclusive "Express Cleanse" at over 200 Target locations nationwide. Just last week Target announced they’re introducing over 2,000 wellness-related SKUs to their stores nationwide.

• I love it when a rebrand comes together. US Snack brand Back to Nature rebranded, introducing a vibrant new identity inspired by Californian elements. The overhaul includes a refreshed logo, a new bold color palette across over 30 product SKUs, and a new tagline, 'Tasty Snacks Since Way Back', aimed at appealing to both loyal customers and new audiences.

• People want premium treats! Nightingale Ice Cream Sandwiches launched its super delicious ice cream products in over 2,400 Kroger stores across the U.S., marking a significant retail expansion for the women- and veteran-owned company.

• I guess the world needs another energy drink (…he says sarcastically). Anheuser-Busch and 1st Phorm, a leading sports nutrition brand partnered to innovate within the energy drinks sector. The initial energy product is expected to launch this summer.

• Still hope for plant-based meat? Meati Foods, a fungi-based meat alternative startup, nearly 2x’d its revenue in 2024. Despite challenges in the meat alt market, the company expanded its distribution significantly, launched new products (including breakfast patties), and is exploring partnerships to maximize production capacity.

• Ice cream legend → fiber focus. Jeni Britton, (of Jeni’s Ice Cream), has launched Floura, a fiber company focused on gut health and sustainability, with its first product, the upcycled Fruit Crush Bar: delivering 13g of fiber from 12 whole plants and available in five flavors.

eCommerce

• Say goodbye to Try Before You Buy. Amazon is ending its Prime Try Before You Buy service on January 31 after nearly 8 years, citing increased customer adoption of AI-powered features like virtual try-on and personalized size recommendations.

• Everyone’s coming for Amazon. This summer, Best Buy plans to launch Best Buy Marketplace, a third-party marketplace, partnering with Mirakl to facilitate product integration for third-party sellers.

• Wirk it, Walmart. Coming off of its “Wirkin’” (i.e. Birkin dupe) hype, Walmart partnered with luxury resale marketplace Rebag to offer its marketplace customers access to genuine luxury items (like Chanel and Louis handbags).

Retail

• Putting on a pretty face. Sephora is undertaking a major project to redesign all of its North American stores over the next five years, focusing on improving the shopping experience based on consumer feedback and shopping patterns.

Funding news

• Retail is so hot right now. Leap, a leading physical retail platform operating over 100 stores across the US, raised $20 million in funding led by Tribeca Venture Partners and DNX Ventures.

• "The future of financial ops for CPG.” Vividly, a trade promotion management platform that uses AI to help CPG brands manage trade spend, raised $30M in Series B funding, led by Centana Growth Partners.

• Everyone’s favorite bev gets acquired. Gryphon Investors acquired a majority stake in sparkling water brand, Spindrift.

• Pipe17, an AI-powered order operations platform, raised $15.5 million in a Series A funding led by LFX Venture Partners.

• Symbotic acquired Walmart's robotics business for $200 million as part of a deal to enhance Walmart's automated supply chain—ultimately creating an AI-enabled robotics platform to improve online pickup and delivery services.

• Seaweed FTW. Atlantic Sea Farms secured $3.8 million in funding, from investors including True Wealth Ventures, Third Nature Investors, and Builders Bridge.

• Daash Intelligence, an AI-powered predictive commerce platform that delivers weekly retailer-specific updates for beauty and personal care brands, raised $5.5M in its second seed funding round, bringing total funding to $8.25M.

• Will dairy-free cheese finally compete with the real deal? Misha's Inc. acquired Vertage, a dairy-free cheese company, allowing Misha's to expand its product line and leverage Vertage's partnership with Fresh Del Monte for enhanced logistics.

• Passport, an ecomm service provider acquired Brand Access, a provider of internationalization services for brands such as HexClad Cookware, enhancing its international eCommerce solutions.

Weekly Pickups

I got to try the next-gen fiber one bar, Floura! I went to the launch event at Popup Grocer last week to try the bar and meet Jeni herself! I was genuinely surprised how much I liked all the flavors. The bar tasted like a really solid fruit bar, which I’m a huge fan of.

Blueberry matcha was my favorite!

Jenna’s latest obsession: Yammy. These single-ingredient snacks are changing the game for me—and in the most surprising of ways. The Dragon Fruit Chips have become my go-to crunchy snack (similar to beet chips in their casual sweetness but functional as a chip replacement) and the Dried Sweet Potato is chewy, almost like dried sweet potato fries? The 3 SKUs cover all flavor/texture bases and I can’t get over their literal single-ingredient label.

See ya next week!

Nate + Jenna :)

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