The Modern Retail Podcast

Once Upon a Farm is on a growth trajectory that is powered in large part by a new look in the baby aisle.

The brand, founded in 2015, offers organic, cold-pressed baby food and children's snacks. It went public in February after spending the past several years building up a unique wholesale strategy that places branded coolers in baby food aisles. The company ended 2025 with more than 3,400 coolers in grocery stores across the U.S. and is looking to surpass more than 5,000 by the end of 2026.

Overall, the company saw net sales hit $85.4 million in the second quarter of 2026, an increase of 42.3% from the prior year, according to its second-quarter earnings released Friday.

But the cooler strategy is a major part of the growth story, per chief marketing officer Katie Marston. She joined special projects editor Melissa Daniels on the Modern Retail Podcast this week to discuss the strategy and how the brand convinced retailers like Target, Walmart and Kroger to place branded coolers in their baby aisles. The result is a way for Once Upon a Farm to shake up a category long dominated by shelf-stable products.

“If we are going to create systemic change in children's nutrition, if we are going to shape the future of food, you have to place big bets, and you have to stick with them," Marston said.

Many Americans have spent the last few weeks contemplating whether to eat fresh produce, due to concerning headlines about the ongoing cyclospora outbreak. The parasite is creating a wave of confusion for shoppers, retailers and food service businesses.

The outbreak has food service chains like Sweetgreen and Taco Bell scrambling to assure customers their produce supply is safe. But the question remains: How much responsibility do companies actually have to communicate these health concerns? This week, the Modern Retail Podcast is diving into the new rules of retail safety, the PR challenges caused by food outbreaks and the difficulty of rebuilding consumer trust in the long run.

To discuss the cyclospora outbreak, senior reporter Gabi Barkho is joined by Helena Bottemiller Evich, the founder and editor-in-chief of Food Fix, a new online publication about food policy in Washington and beyond.

This episode gets into:

What makes this foodborne outbreak historically unique and difficult to trace.

Dos and don’ts: How companies can gain customer trust by communicating potential product contamination.

What food brands can learn from the outbreak.

As an official sales partner for Ray-Ban Meta glasses, Best Buy is rethinking what it means to deliver experiential retail in the age of AI.

This week on the Modern Retail Podcast, special projects editor Melissa Daniels sat down with Best Buy's executive vice president and chief revenue officer, Patrick McGinnis, to go behind the scenes into the development of the new 30-by-30-foot Meta AI shop-in-shops rolling out in select stores.

It’s the latest example of how Best Buy is looking to position itself as a destination for cutting-edge technology — and it's also a case study into how legacy retailers can rethink the store experience for new audiences. Best Buy plans to have 50 stores selling the new Ray-Ban Meta frames by the end of the year, with the hopes of increasing that to as many as 200 or more by the end of next year, McGinnis said.

The company knows there's demand for people to check out the specs in person; its own survey data shows that more than 50% of Best Buy customers say they want to see the Meta glasses in person before making a purchase. And since the retailer first launched smaller displays in 100 stores last October, more than 175,000 customers have completed a demo in a Best Buy store.

But beyond creating a destination for people to try out cutting-edge tech in person, the shop-in-shop provided an opportunity for Best Buy to revamp its store layout, McGinnis said. It aims to have more flexible space for experiential retail, including for more AI-powered products, on the horizon.

For many U.S. retail startups, expanding international distribution is the ultimate goal to establish themselves as a truly global brand. In the era of digital storefronts and globalized social media presence, selling a product in foreign countries could pay off exponentially. But betting on this global growth means navigating all the friction that cross-border retail can bring.

Bloom Nutrition, which has been growing its energy drink line over the past year, is launching in multiple foreign markets that include Australia, France and the U.K.

Joel Contartese, the vp of global growth at Bloom Nutrition, joins the Modern Retail Podcast to discuss the advantages and challenges of distributing beverages in other countries. In this interview, he discusses:

Why the beverage startup is betting on international consumers for longterm growth.

Navigating ingredient regulations in the European Union and South America, which differ greatly from the U.S.

Learning to tweak branding and flavors to localize for each international market.

Nutrition and supplement company AG1 famously built a $600 million business off of a single SKU. Then, in 2025, the brand made major leaps by introducing new flavors and a sleep supplement. CEO Kat Cole speaks with Modern Retail’s Melissa Daniels about how the brand grew its next generation of products from its own scientific research, and how it’s looking to scale through retail beyond its DTC roots.