Recorded live at The Yard in Herald Square, this edition of Ugly Talk dives into the unpolished reality of building and scaling a food and beverage brand in 2025. This isn’t about the highlights—it’s about the messy formulation tweaks, the grind of “pounding the pavement” in New York City, and the hard-earned lessons that come with trying to move product off a retail shelf.

Moderated by Glenn Johnson (Marketing Consultant & Fractional CMO), the panel brings together three founders building their brands in real time:

• Joe Rotondo (Founder & CEO, SMEARCASE) shares the journey of turning cottage cheese ice cream into a high-protein sensation, detailing how a chance outreach from Whole Foods turned into a tri-state launch.
• Kabir Kurani (Founder & CEO, GetUp Nutrition) discusses the “ugly” side of manufacturing overseas and the sheer hustle required to sell through a nationwide trial at 455 Sprouts locations.
• Will Custis (Founder, HoopFuel) breaks down the “Corporate Hooper” persona and his hyper-focused strategy of dominating the basketball category through community events and equity-based creator partnerships.

You’ll hear their unfiltered takes on:

• The Power of Niching Down: Why speaking to everyone means speaking to no one, and how to identify your “hyper-focused lens”.
• The “Ugly” Side of R&D: Handling flavor failures, bitter caffeine maskings, and shipping 50 pounds of dry ice across Brooklyn.
• Retail Reality vs. Hype: The difference between getting on the shelf and actually hitting the velocity targets required to stay there.
• Community as a Growth Engine: Hosting tournaments and “demoing” in unmarked containers to get unbiased feedback from the right audience.
• 2026 Strategy: How to move from a “pounding the pavement” founder to a scalable business with smart creator ecosystems and regional dominance.

Chapters

00:00 – Intro: The importance of niching down and hyper-focus.

01:00 – Housekeeping: Ugly Talk’s national footprint and host introductions.

02:00 – Sponsor Spotlight: AI-powered operations with Copley.

04:20 – Meet the Founders: Elevator pitches for Smearcase, GetUp, and HoopFuel.

07:13 – The “Corporate Hooper”: Building a brand through a social persona.

08:50 – Validation: Testing cottage cheese ice cream in marathon training groups.

10:56 – Finding the Gap: Why basketball players were ignored by traditional nutrition.

14:40 – The Co-Founder Fit: Balancing brand vision with strategy and ops.

16:00 – Creative Expression: Why every entrepreneur should start a clothing brand.

20:50 – Scientific Formulation: Using sweat-tracking patches to design HoopFuel.

23:20 – The Bias Trap: Getting honest feedback outside of friends and family.

26:00 – The Failed Batch: Selling through “disgusting” product to fund the fix.

28:50 – The Super Bowl Moment: Landing Whole Foods via a “janky” website.

34:15 – The New Influencer Model: Moving from one-off posts to equity-based creators.

40:55 – The Network Effect: Using Manhattan dominance to fuel word-of-mouth.

44:30 – Advice to Self: The logistical nightmare of dry ice and being “supply ready”

Want to share your Ugly story? Visit uglytalk.com/podcast and send us a message.