After years of tight capital, stalled dealmaking and investor caution, early-stage food and beverage founders are entering 2025 with cautious optimism – and a renewed focus on building capital-efficient, investable businesses.
That shift was on display at Startup CPG’s Founders & Funders event in New York City, which brought together 160 emerging brands and roughly 70 early-stage investors for a full day of curated, one-on-one meetings. Startup CPG has grown into a national community connecting founders with the capital, retailers and operational know-how needed to scale.
For Daniel Scharff, founder of Startup CPG, the takeaway was how founders are surviving and scaling in a constrained funding environment.
Rather than chasing whatever categories are “hot,” Scharff said he sees founders focus on bootstrapping, non-dilutive financing and disciplined growth strategies to be investible.
“We’re seeing amazing stories of founders using alternative financing options to get to the point where they’re ready for institutional capital,” he said.
Scharff added that while pre-seed and seed investing has felt quiet in recent years, the investor appetite is still there, and may be picking up as downstream M&A activity resumes.
“We uncovered so many really active early-stage funds through building this event,” he said. “They’re out there, they’re ready to write checks.”
The Founders & Funders event addressed what Scharff sees as one of the hardest challenges facing young brands today: access. Only about 25% of applicant brands were selected to attend, based on traction, innovation and investability. Each participating brand submitted a detailed one-pager ahead of time, allowing investors to pre-select meetings, a structure Scharff believes will translate into real deals in the months ahead.
“This is the biggest early-stage, investor-dedicated event that’s happened in the industry,” he said. “Our goal isn’t necessarily checks on the show floor – it’s deals happening three to six months from now.”
Startups redefining indulgence across snacks and beverages
Against that backdrop, several founders used the event to share how they’re reinventing familiar indulgences, and how they’re financing growth in a still-challenging capital environment.
Leveraging an existing audience to fund the next phase of growth
Anna Vocino, founder of the sauce and condiment brand Eat Happy Kitchen recently expanded beyond sauces into shelf-stable cheese bites, a product that took more than a year to commercialize after years of home experimentation.
To fund growth, Vocino turned to equity crowdfunding, raising $700,000 from her existing cookbook audience – a strategy that allowed her to tap into a highly engaged community while preserving control.
Still, she acknowledged that fundraising is far from over. “I feel like someone once told me you’re always fundraising, and now I know that’s true,” she said.
Reimagining chocolate as functional indulgence
Tatyana Jones, founder of functional snack brand DEFI Snacks is betting that the future of indulgence lies at the intersection of dessert and function. The chocolate bites combines premium chocolate with protein and nutrient-dense ingredients like buckwheat and casein designed to blunt sugar spikes, without relying on artificial sweeteners.
Funded initially through personal savings and friends-and-family capital, DEFI is preparing to open its first seed round in early 2026 to support growing demand after just 10 months on the market.
Caribbean ginger beer brand scales through diversified financing
Caribbean-inspired ginger beer brand Uncle Waithley’s is positioning itself at the intersection of craft flavor and the fast-growing adult non-alcoholic beverage space, drawing on the founder’s background in mixology to deliver nuanced, bar-quality profiles.
The brand has taken a deliberately diversified approach to growth, raising early capital through a mix of personal investment, small business loans, friends-and-family funding, angels and crowdfunding. That flexibility allowed Uncle Waithley’s to scale across multiple channels — including natural grocery, on-premise bars and restaurants, and e-commerce — while remaining selective about its next institutional raise.
Allergen-friendly, vegan cookie dough built through lean growth
Vegan cookie dough brand Whoa Dough was launched after Founder Todd Goldstein identified an opportunity to develop allergen-friendly treats his own family could enjoy. The result: a plant-based, gluten-free cookie dough that’s safe to eat raw or baked.
After initially launching a shelf-stable cookie dough bar, the company pivoted when consumers began baking the bars – a shift Goldstein said underscores the importance of listening closely to how shoppers actually use products.
Whoa Dough has relied on self-funding, debt financing and strong supplier partnerships to grow leanly, and is now raising its first institutional capital to support retail expansion.
Coffee rooted in origin, reinvesting in women-led cooperative
Mission-driven coffee brand Kahawa 1893 sources from women-owned cooperatives in East Africa and reinvests in the communities it works with through a give-back model, according to Corey Stary, VP of revenue and operations, Kahawa 1893.
While the company is actively raising a Series A, Stary emphasized capital discipline, noting that Kahawa has generated roughly $20 in revenue for every $1 raised to date. Looking ahead, the brand plans to expand into functional beverages inspired by African-sourced ingredients.
A Gen Z–first cold brew brand bootstrapping early traction
Launched just months ago, RIP Cold Brew is positioned as a Gen Z-first challenger brand in a crowded cold brew category, leaning heavily into bold branding and future-forward flavor innovation.
The company is fully bootstrapped to date, but RIP Co-founder Brendan Flannery said early traction, including placement in more than 60 stores, has prompted the team to seek outside capital to accelerate distribution and innovation.
Check out more Startup Spotlight stories
Whole-cut technology emerges as plant-based meat’s next proving ground: Backed by a $1 million investment from Global Brain, Baltimore-based startup Offbeast is scaling a proprietary fiber assembly process to tackle texture, one of the category’s toughest challenges.
AI that speaks the language of CPG: What the food and beverage market needs isn’t just another AI model - it needs artificial intelligence that understands CPG-specific business.
Yough! scales gut-friendly frozen pizza with clean ingredients and specialty retail strategy: From Greek yogurt crust to store shelves, Yough! is navigating the hurdles of scaling a healthier frozen pizza.
A subtle signal: Branding shorthand and acronyms
While the products spanned categories – from coffee and cold brew to cookie dough and chocolate – one subtle throughline stood out: branding shorthand.
Names like DEFI (Delicious, Energizing, Fitness, Indulgence) and RIP (Reap Infinite Potential) reflect a broader startup trend toward acronym-driven branding that feels bold, values-led and instantly legible to younger consumers – particularly Gen Z.
Whether that trend has staying power remains to be seen, but it was clear that founders are thinking deeply not just about products, but about identity, efficiency and long-term scalability.
