Principle
You never know someone else's numbers, so do not infer margin from price
Price reveals little about a competitor's true economics; do not reverse-engineer margin from it.
Will contrasts IQBAR (about 2.19 on shelf) with David Protein (about 3.99) and notes they cannot know the trade margin or promo dollars David gives retailers. He adds that IQBAR's net operating margins compare favorably to Yeti's despite Yeti's premium prices, because Yeti spends far more on marketing.
Never assume a competitor's margins from their shelf price; the premium is usually funding backend costs.
Principle
Twenty percent of what you do should be off-brand
Reserve a fixed share of activity for off-brand experiments to catch trends and learn.
Will says people take stay on brand way too far. IQBAR leaned into keto (not really on brand) because nine of ten target shoppers were on keto, and it paid dividends, but the caveat is you cannot marry the trend.
Intentionally run ~20% of activity off-brand to ride new trends, but never commit the brand to a single trend.
Principle
There is always one human who can unlock a wave of growth
Growth often hinges on winning over one specific gatekeeper, so invest in those relationships early.
Early on, the Kickstarter food manager could put IQBAR in a newsletter for an incremental 15K in sales. Later it is the Walmart or Sam's buyer. Will stresses it is still very much a human-to-human business, and the relationship usually starts long before the ask.
Identify the one human who can unlock your next growth wave and build the relationship long before you need the yes.
Principle
Pick a category that fits you, not just a big one
A good category is both objectively attractive and subjectively yours; require both.
Will reduced founder-market fit to an almost comically simple test: what can I literally make in my kitchen without adding heat? The answer was a bar, and only afterward did he confirm it was a giant category.
Screen categories on two axes at once: market attractiveness and your own unique fit to win it.
Principle
Value wins in every market; premium wins in some
A value proposition is robust across all market cycles; a premium one only wins in some.
Will notes IQBAR has been through violent up-and-down cycles (COVID, tariffs, inflation) and value was always cool through all of them, which is why he would rather anchor on value than bet on premium holding.
Default to value positioning to stay winnable across every market condition; reserve premium for categories that reliably support it.
Principle
The same customer has a different brain in every aisle
Shoppers apply contradictory, category-specific criteria, so a single ICP is a fiction.
At a Costco roadshow, customers with cupcakes in their cart complained about minimal sugar in the bar. The same human shops for water differently than for a bar; the buying brains contradict each other.
Model customers by how they shop your specific category, not as one consistent ICP across the store.
Principle
In food, the CEO/founder must be the product person
The founder must own product because a food product is a permanent prototype central to the company's DNA.
Will praises AG1 for treating its number-one SKU as always a prototype. He built product mastery over years of reps with different consultants until he knew more than they did; it did not happen overnight.
If you lead a food company, own the product yourself and treat the formula as never finished.
Principle
In food, the product is 70% supply chain and economics
Product excellence is mostly cost engineering and supply chain, not the recipe.
Will only fully internalized this after losing a million dollars a year for five straight years: demand looked great, but it was not flowing to EBITDA until storage, supply chain, and payment terms were all humming. Those are all part of the product.
Treat cost engineering, supply chain, and terms as the core of the product, not an afterthought to the recipe.
Principle
Form factor determines which channel a product wins in
Consumption friction of the form factor, not brand quality, sets a product's channel fit.
Will contrasts bars (open anywhere, not temp-sensitive, sell everywhere) with hydration powder (must be mixed, so brick-and-mortar shoppers just buy a Gatorade instead). Same company, wildly different channel results by form factor.
Match each SKU to the channels its form factor actually wins in; do not assume brand strength transfers across form factors.
Principle
Partnership is a myth; negotiate suppliers hard
Real supplier partnership is paying reliably; it does not require going soft on price.
Will rejects the partnership-as-softness myth: the value you give a supplier is large, reliable wires of money, and in return you negotiate as hard as you can against them.
Be a reliable, high-volume payer and still negotiate suppliers to the bottom; the two are not in conflict.
Principle
Small flat teams create radical accountability
Tiny flat teams make accountability inescapable and cut coordination overhead.
IQBAR runs 15 people at nine figures of revenue, completely flat with no middle managers; everyone is the CEO of their department and acts without asking. Fewer people means fewer meetings and more doing.
Keep teams small and flat so ownership is unavoidable; accept that it only suits high-agency people.
Principle
Run the business so you could run it indefinitely
Preserve the ability to run profitably forever so external shocks never trap you.
Jess notes the prescribed way to do business changes yearly; IQBAR always kept a path to profitability so they were never dependent on the current fashion. They were never forced to sell and never ran out of options.
Build toward being able to operate profitably indefinitely; it is the only defense against a market you do not control.
Principle
Units are the north star in an economies-of-scale business
Chase unit volume as the primary metric because it improves every other metric mechanically.
Will argues even a breakeven bar sale is worth it: they tried it, likely liked it, and tell five friends. Cost per unit falls with scale, so volume compounds both cost and demand advantages.
In scale-economics categories, make units the north star; margin and demand both follow volume.
Principle
The category you pick is at least half the battle
Category choice determines most of a CPG outcome, so evaluate it on present and future dynamics before executing.
Will frames category selection as the single highest-leverage decision, comparing it to marriage: 50-70% is who you choose, 20-30% is tactics after. Yet all the business advice is written about running the business better, not picking the right situation up front.
Spend disproportionate effort choosing the category; it outweighs execution tactics and must account for how the category evolves.