$100M in Y1 sales. This lofty goal has been uttered countless times in the hallways, cubicles, and strategic planning meetings of today’s packaged food and beverage companies. Daunting as this goal may seem to many emerging leaders, we cannot discount the importance of demonstrating to investors that a company is capable of producing rapid organic growth, not just capable of rapidly acquiring it.

By sneaking up on the market, under the radar, premium businesses often are market disruptors, capable of overturning categories or launching new segments seemingly out of nowhere. The majority of these premium businesses have traditionally begun in the natural channel and then have spread deliberately and steadily into conventional channels.

While each brand ultimately travels on its own path in the market, most innovation launches fit well onto one of the innovation growth-curve archetypes in today’s food and beverage marketplace.

In 2013, we wrote about the emergence of a unique growth curve in the packaged food and beverage sector. We call it the Skate Ramp. It is sneaky. It requires patience and persistence. But it works in the end. 

It was the Skate Ramp that launched Chobani to stardom as many in the industry sat back and wondered: how could no one have seen this coming? The answer is simple: because, back in 2006, CPG companies weren’t looking at the growth dynamics of early-stage food companies selling below $25M. They left this to VC/PE firms.

Why? There are two basic reasons:

• The gold standard launch model for packaged food and beverage companies orients to a swift, high ACV market share grab-and-hold, whether large or small. The focus is on attaining large Y1 revenues through line extensions and then sustaining stable velocities that maintain shelf presence with customers. It is a model designed for incremental innovations easily copied by a competitor. In this model, a plateau or a mildly inclining slope (i.e., low single-digit %) are considered successful. The emphasis is on scale, not growth.
• Exponential growth from low initial scale requires a level of sneakiness and patience inimical to the core management culture of most major CPG firms.

We believe that the entrenched brand-driven go-to-market launch model just described has lulled the industry into complacency in the face of the continuing threat of product-driven early-stage companies sneaking up on the market via the Skate Ramp.

Download the free white paper to see the three brand examples (illustrative purposes only) that meet our criteria, based on their performance through mid-2015.

For more about our growth-curve analysis, download the free Hartbeat Exec: Riding the Killer Curves of Food Innovation