CPG strategy with a tasting spoon.
Taste Radio is a fast-moving CPG industry show centered on the messy work of building food and beverage brands. Its episodes mix founder interviews, panel-style banter, product picks, meetup news, and practical feedback for early-stage entrepreneurs.
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Taste Radio covers food and beverage entrepreneurship from inside the CPG conversation. It is not abstract business talk. The show spends its time on products, founders, packaging, retail placement, sampling tables, category momentum, and the practical decisions that determine whether a brand gets noticed. Episodes often open with industry events and meetups, placing the conversation in the same rooms where founders, investors, retailers, consultants, and suppliers trade notes. Then the show gets specific. Sustainable packaging at Kind Snacks becomes a discussion about scale. Color becomes a tool for shaping flavor perception and social sharing. A discontinued product becomes a prompt for asking whether the market failed the idea, or the idea arrived too soon. The interviews have a founder-story spine. Matt Joyce's Tomb story centers on years of obscurity, failed commercialization attempts, Lebanese garlic dip, flavor discipline, branding, major retailers, and a family-run breakthrough. Jeff Rubenstein's Cloud conversation uses celebrity as the opening hook, then shifts quickly toward execution, early pricing errors, Starbucks placement, protein popcorn, protein chips, and community building. That is the show's best habit. It notices the shiny part, then asks what actually has to work underneath it. Elevator Talk brings another format into the feed, with early-stage and disruptive brands pitching in front of experienced CPG voices. Wade Yenny and Chuck Cassano appear in that context as practical sounding boards, pushing entrepreneurs toward focus, authenticity, launch discipline, and distribution plans that do more than fill a warehouse. The regular roundtable energy is loose but informed. Ray Lateef, John Craven, Melissa Travers, Mike Schneider, and occasional co-hosts trade event chatter, product picks, category reads, and the kind of jokes that come from people who spend a lot of time around trade shows and sample fridges. The result is industry media with a lively palate. Taste Radio is strongest when it connects flavor to strategy, showing how a dip, snack, energy drink, cocktail, package color, or concession placement can reveal a much larger business question.
Made for: Taste Radio is for food and beverage founders, early CPG teams, investors, retail operators, consultants, and product-minded listeners tracking how brands grow. It also suits curious snack and beverage watchers who like business stories with trade-show texture.
What sets it apart: Taste Radio combines founder narrative, operator feedback, product tasting, and live industry-network context in one feed. Similar shows may focus on inspiration or news; this one keeps returning to shelves, doors, pricing, packaging, sampling, and execution.
The top podcast for anyone building a business in food or beverage, BevNET's Taste Radio features interviews with the leaders and rising stars of our fast-evolving industry. The shows also include discussion on emerging trends, innovation and news of the week from our regular cadre of hosts from the BevNET and NOSH teams. Tell us what you think at [email protected]. You can also email us if you are interested in Taste Radio sponsorship opportunities. And if you like the podcast, share it with a colleague, will ya?
Short reviews from the PlayNext desk, based on the episodes we processed.
A grounded look at beverage founders facing formulas, launch plans, production realities, and genuine advocacy.
Taste Radio's Elevator Talk follows five beverage brands as their founders get direct feedback from Chuck Cassano, who keeps pulling early enthusiasm back to the realities that decide whether a drink can actually move: formulas, production, timing, credibility, sampling, and the…
A patient look at how a craft-first ready-to-drink brand turns restraint into leverage.
Straight Away Cocktails gets a clear-eyed profile as Cy Cain lays out why the Portland brand is choosing the slower path in a ready-to-drink category full of fast followers and loud branding.
Trip's growth story gets the clearest airtime, with enough retailer detail to make the scale feel tangible.
Taste Radio spends this hour on what happens when a relaxation beverage brand gains momentum, and Trip gets the clearest business treatment in the process.
Rob Walling on bootstrapped SaaS growth, plateaus, and exits — with founders who lived them.
Abbey Ashley's playbook for turning your job skills into a virtual assistant business.
SaaS operators on scaling, pricing and AI, metrics included.
Alex Blumberg interviews guests like Megan Phelps-Roper and Shane McAnally about failure and reinvention.
This episode of Taste Radio revisits interviews from a London meetup with founders Olivia Ferdie of Trip, Catherine Bricken of Delicious, and Oli Dickson of Something and Nothing.
Ray Lateef interviews Cy Cain, founder and CEO of Straight Away Cocktails, on Taste Radio.
The hosts of Taste Radio discuss their experience at the Winter Fancy Fair trade show, highlighting new brands and the Elevator Talk video series.
Ray Lateef introduces five early-stage beverage brands and co-host Zar Daniolco, founder of High Touch Libations, on this episode of Elevator Talk.
Ori Zohar of Burlap & Barrel discusses how prioritizing quality and profitability over rapid scaling builds a durable CPG brand.
Taste Radio’s hosts examine whether Pistacchio’s fake shutdown scare earned attention at the cost of customer trust.
Taste Radio examines the dispute between Ben & Jerry's and the Magnum Ice Cream Company over the Ben & Jerry's Foundation and the future of the brand's social mission.
Taste Radio's Elevator Talk features Rebecca Barnard advising five beverage brands, including Hover, Purple Drop, and Atomico, on retail placement, pricing, sampling, and consumer targeting.
Taste Radio host Ray Lateef interviews Heathcote Bakery founder Suzanne Lyon about scaling an ultra-premium chocolate chip cookie business without compromising ingredients or process.
Taste Radio hosts Ray Lateef, John Craven, and Zoe Licata examine why alcohol companies borrow formats from functional sodas, sports drinks, and other familiar beverages.
This episode of Taste Radio explores how CPG shelves are becoming a sensory battlefield, covering sustainable packaging, color psychology, and social media campaigns.
This episode of Elevator Talk introduces four food brands and their entrepreneurs who will pitch to co-host Wade Yenny for feedback and advice.
Matt Joyce, founder of Tomb, shares how he turned a Lebanese garlic dip into a fast-growing food brand after years of struggle.
Taste Radio hosts discuss Hershey's recipe changes, discontinued CPG products, and a Grillo's-Liquid IV mashup.
Cloud CEO Jeff Rubenstein discusses how the functional snack brand leverages celebrity and community to achieve rapid retail growth.
The hosts discuss recent CPG acquisitions, brand building from stadiums to stores, and share product picks.
Taste Radio's Elevator Talk features Ray Lateef, Chuck Cassano, and founders Lindsay Frederick, Carlin Blaine, and Robert China Berry discussing Tartt, SoulKissed Elixirs, and Black Beverly Hills.
The hosts discuss strategies to maximize return on investment when attending the expensive Expo West trade show.