Nosh Live 2025 Day One Recap: Keeping Up with Khloud

Day one of Nosh Live 2025 got off to a star-powered start with Khloud Foods founder Khloé Kardashian taking the stage in Marina Del Rey, California for a sit-down discussion about the ins and outs of being a celebrity founder in the food industry.

But that was only the beginning of a day of on stage sessions that included insights into the current state of CPG investing, lessons from Jeni’s Splendid Ice Cream founder Jeni Britton and more.

Here’s a taste of what went down!

Keeping Up with Khloud

In the opening session of the day, Khloud Foods CEO Jeff Rubenstein and its A-List founder Khloé Kardashian, covering the “double-edged sword” of being a celebrity founder, why protein popcorn is built for the GLP-1 consumer, and a hint at the brand’s robust innovation pipeline.

With camera crews for her Hulu reality series The Kardashians in attendance, Kardashian told Nosh managing editor Monica Watrous that she was inspired to found Khloud through her own personal health and fitness journey. Nevertheless, she said, she was cautious when launching the brand earlier this year, knowing that if the product looked like an inauthentic cash grab to consumers that she risked damaging her own reputation.

“You have a lot of people that already have preconceived notions of you, and if your journey is not organic and authentic, if it doesn’t speak to your lifestyle every day, it can really backfire,” Kardashian said.

“If you go into my house, if you look at my pantry, Khloud is there. Anything that I now touch is genuinely me, and I think especially in the era of influencers and celebrity brands, people – the consumer – they can smell that,” she added. “They know if something is authentic, they know if you’re just trying to pop a product, for a lack of a more sophisticated term.”

Khloud’s functional popcorns were designed to meet not only Kardashian’s personal needs and taste, but also to meet current consumer demands. Rubenstein noted that the inclusion of fiber and 7 grams of protein per serving were intended to meet the precise nutritional needs of people using GLP-1 drugs.

Of course, being a mainstream celebrity does let a brand hit the ground running a lot faster than most traditional startups.

Khloud will be available in 29,000 retail doors across the country by April, with Target being one of its top partners, Rubenstein said. In its first week in Target stores this year, he said the brand sold roughly $800,000 in product with just three SKUs available and he suggested that Khloud’s velocities are already outperforming top snack brands like Doritos, Fritos and Lay’s in the retailer despite a “very limited marketing spend.”

“It’s the power of visibility and having a community that [Khloé Kardashian] has incubated for many years,” he said. “Visibility plus credibility equals, I think, success.”

By April, Rubenstein said the brand will expand from three SKUs to 19 – though he and Kardashian were mum when it came to details on what those new products will involve.

As for other brands looking to engage a celebrity co-founder or investor, Kardashian said she believes there’s room for more influencer brand leaders – so long as they’re staying true to themselves.

“It really has to be something that someone eats, breathes, sleeps, and I think that’s a beautiful way to bring eyes onto a brand,” she said. “But it has to be organic…. People are on to everything now, which we love, and so you want it as transparent and you want it as honest as possible.”

The State of Food Investing

Velocities, repeat purchase, and focused execution are the name of the game when it comes to the modern food industry investment ethos.

In a panel discussion featuring leaders from four CPG-focused investment firms, investors shared their thoughts on how the money landscape has continued to cement its shift away from the pre-pandemic “growth at all costs” mindset that drove financing in the last decade, to the far more disciplined approach institutional financiers have taken in the past few years.

The lineup included Genevieve Gilbreath, co-founder and general partner of Springdale Ventures; Pedro Aldrete, senior financial analyst at Santatera Capital; Scott Caras, founder and president of Relentless Consumer Partners, and William Quartner, partner at Prelude Growth Partners.

Despite acknowledging the uncertain state of the overall U.S. economy, investors are optimistic about the strength of the CPG industry, with the renewed focus on paths to profitability and corporate stability serving as positive developments in the investment space.

“It feels to me a little bit more like where we were in 2014 and 2015, but I think a lot of the noise that was created during that time has filtered out of the market,” Caras said. “So we’re really excited about companies that have built really strong foundations, that are growing through a deep engagement with the consumer, and where we can help people with an accelerant and help you partner in that next phase of growth.”

But it’s no era of free cash. Aldrete noted that the focus on fundamentals has created new capital constraints, which has made it difficult for brands to secure investments without being able to make strong, airtight cases for their strength and ability to profit.

“There’s now a lot more really focused investors, who really know what they’re investing in, who really understand the business, and that’s caused precisely the capital constraints that I’ve mentioned,” Aldrete said. “Although it feels like capital may be constrained at the moment, I definitely think that there are still enough investors who really support the businesses.”

Getting Creative with Jeni Britton

Jeni Britton has a bonafide success story in the food world – as the founder of Jeni’s Splendid Ice Creams she took a brand from a small startup selling homemade ice cream at farmer’s markets to a national business with franchised shops across the country. She’s now working for repeat success with her new startup, Floura & Co., a plant-based snack business using upcycled ingredients from produce trimmings.

Sitting down on stage with Nosh editor-in-chief Jeff Klineman, Britton said she’s approaching Floura & Co. in the same way she tackled Jeni’s – by following her gut and intuition.

Though she acknowledged that Floura & Co. faces a higher consumer education hurdle than Jeni’s did in a far more nascent category, she believes her background as an artist benefits her mission to create an effective, profitable business that also resonates with consumers on an emotional and physical level.

“I love to say that creativity is efficiency,” Britton said, teasing that she can often ‘blow the minds’ of hard data-driven finance professionals with her approach to business. “The person who can do the most with the least is the most creative, whether you’re an artist or a writer, everything can matter. And so this is entrepreneurship.”

Of course, that creativity ultimately must serve a material purpose in business – especially when it’s a high input, logistically cumbersome product line like ice cream.

“I just think it’s like maximalism – how much can we do with every single dollar that our customer gives us?” she said.

More Takeaways from Day One of Nosh Live 2025:

• Heatonist founder and CEO Noah Chaimberg, also known as the “hot sauce sommelier” for YouTube series Hot Ones, broke down how brands can capitalize on the exposure generated from an unexpected hit.
• Venture capitalists Brian Bernstein and Axel Malbrain shared how they evaluate investment opportunities and how they believe brands can benefit from the resources provided by ‘Big Food.’
• Jason Parasco, CEO of Hispanic and Southwestern food business Insignia International, discussed tactics for getting small regional brands into big national retailers and how to support the expansion.
• A trio of founders – Fly By Jing CEO Jing Gao, Flexible Creative leader Kendall Dickieson and Fishwife CEO Becca Millstein – offered their insights into the “art of the collaboration.”

Stay tuned for more coverage of Nosh Live 2025.