Building a High Growth Brand in CPG with Bryan Freeman: An EOFire Classic from 2022

Building A High-Growth CPG Brand Through Curiosity And Purpose

When Brian Freeman set out to rethink comfort food, he didn't aim to tweak a recipe — he aimed to redesign the ingredient itself. His story shows how relentless curiosity, a clear mission, and hands-on community building can turn an unconventional idea into a category-defining consumer packaged goods business. The journey from prototype to public markets was driven less by advertising budgets than by product proof, engaged followers, and a willingness to learn from people who had already walked the road.

From Radical Product Ideas To Proof Of Concept

The spark behind Real Good Foods came from a simple question: what if the tortilla or crust was made from chicken instead of grains? That kind of radical thinking is not about being contrarian for its own sake — it’s about solving a specific health problem with a different material match. Turning a provocative idea into a viable product required prototyping, testing, and getting to proof of concept fast. Once the product demonstrated performance — lower carbs, higher protein, satisfying flavor — investor conversations shifted from speculation to commitment.

Community-Driven Brand Building Beats Distribution-First Thinking

Brian emphasizes an important strategic reversal: build community before chasing broad distribution. Brands that focus solely on shelf placement without an engaged audience often struggle with velocity and pull-through. Real Good Foods grew by engaging followers directly, responding to messages, sending samples to micro and nano-influencers, and treating social channels as two-way conversations rather than broadcast megaphones. That grassroots approach produced unusually high engagement for a food brand and created the demand needed to support retail expansion.

Talent, Board Composition, And Continuous Learning

As growth accelerates, the team that helped you reach product-market fit may not be the right team to scale the business. Brian advises intentional recruiting of people with more experience and different perspectives, and assembling a board with proven leaders. He also underscores asking for help — even after success — and paying it forward to others, creating a feedback loop of learning that fuels better decisions.

Performance-Based Positioning And The Deep-And-Narrow Play

Real Good Foods positioned itself as a performance brand — emphasizing measurable benefits to the body rather than vague origin promises. Coupled with a go-deep-and-narrow product strategy, this helped the brand become the definitive solution for a targeted need group before broadening the portfolio. That wedge strategy makes expansion more credible and defensible once traction is established.

• Prototype to proof-of-concept attracts capital and improves valuation.
• Direct, authentic community engagement produces higher loyalty and shelf velocity.
• Recruiting experienced leaders and advisors prevents growth plateaus.
• Performance-based claims build credibility faster than marketing-driven promises.

From a chicken-based crust idea to a public company with substantial market capitalization, the story is both practical and surprising: big change in food systems often starts with a single, focused product solved for a specific audience. Curiosity, purposeful product design, community-first marketing, and intentional team upgrades form the backbone of that transformation, and each element reinforced the others as Real Good Foods scaled. In short, solving a real problem deeply and starting small can create outsized opportunities for growth, trust, and long-term brand equity.