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Melanie Kahn is the Founder of Poppilu Lemonade, a healthy lemonade that delivers all of the taste of traditional lemonade with added health benefits. Melanie started the business in 2017 after experiencing cravings for lemonade while pregnant. She recently added a new kids product line to the company that launched in Walmart and is expanding rapidly.
Poppilu is based in Chicago where Melanie started her career in CPG before creating and nationally launching the fairlife dairy brand, which is now part of Coca-Cola.
Melanie Kahn's career in the big CPG world and her transition to founding Poppilu
Melanie talks about the flavor and ingredients for her lemonade product and how she started producing it with a co-packer
How Melanie grew her distribution channels and the lessons she learned from the experience
Melanie talks about her customer's persona, explains where the name "Poppilu" came from, where to purchase her products, and her kid’s product line
How Poppilu has been impacted by the COVID-19 pandemic
The strategies Poppilu uses to create awareness for their products and what Melanie would do differently if she had to start her retail strategy all over again
Melanie talks about the formulation for fairlife and what she learned after leaving the big CPG world
Melanie's future plans for Poppilu and how she overcame the biggest challenge while growing her business
After growing her lemonade business for some time, Melanie Kahn realized that her core product—and her first product—wasn’t doing as well as she had expected. So she decided to discontinue its production.
Melanie learned that in entrepreneurship and business, if you continue doing what you've always done, your business won’t grow as you’d like. Why would you keep doing the same thing and expecting different results? Melanie found that the solution was to either change her processes or do something completely different. Although she loved her first product, she knew that she had to make changes and pivot if she wanted to improve her business.
In this week's episode of the NexxtLevel Podcast, Melanie Kahn, the Founder of Poppilu, talks with G. Steven Cleere about growing her lemonade drink business. She talks about the lessons she learned about distributing drinks, doing free fills, working in the big CPG world, and her go-to-market strategies.
2-Do Tuesdays by Kitchen2Shelf
G. Steven Cleere's interview with Louisa Lawless
“Words 2 Grow By - The Best of 2020” with G. Steven Cleere
“Words To Grow By - The Best of 2019” with G. Steven Cleere
Our podcast today is sponsored by Kitchen2Shelf, the educational arm of NexxtLevel Brands. Kitchen-2-Shelf provides online and in-person courses and workshops for CPG entrepreneurs at any stage of growth.
Whether you're an early-stage startup, a local growing business, or if you want to just expand your distribution to a national level, Kitchen-2-Shelf can help you learn what you need to know to grow.
Visit their website to get access to some free tools that can help you understand where your business stands.
Contact them today to find out how they can help you grow your brand and expand your business to reach its full potential.
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