1800Hotline 018 // $100M in year one for Smash Kitchen, Joyride hits No. 1 at Target, and Jolly Rancher is going zero-sugar

Hey DTC Fam,

Big week for brands playing the long game.

A celebrity condiment brand nobody took seriously at launch is closing in on nine figures in year one. A sour candy brand just dethroned everyone at Target. And Jolly Rancher is about to get a zero-sugar glow-up thanks to a fast-growing iced tea brand you should have on your radar.

Let’s get into it.

But first, take a second to connect with the 1800DTC Community with the link below!

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This edition is presented by Basis.

Ashli leads every project that comes through the door at Basis, an independent branding and website design studio. Like our own small, nimble team, their team operates on that same ‘basis,’ and we love how hands-on she is in leading the charge.

Thanks to Ashli’s background in designing and building experiences for large retailers and Fortune 500 companies, Basis is all about creating for smaller brands with the understanding that how you sell is just as important as what you sell.

“Getting to experiment with a magical mix of design, code and business savvy (alongside amazing clients!) feels like a dream each and every day.”

Ashli Nixon · Owner + Lead Designer at Basis

Specializing in Shopify and Wordpress sites, Basis can help your brand with:

• Your brand strategy and identity: What makes people stop and share your e-commerce brand? From positioning, naming, and tone to packaging, they analyze every customer touchpoint.

• Your website design and development: Creating all those digital experiences that make your brand memorable. Reinforcing the brand wherever your customer meets it.

They also offer ongoing growth support, collaborating with your team on strategy across campaigns, SEO, CRO, and creative. Everything’s geared toward tangible results. Check them out!

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Brand We’re Watching: Noon World

The gummy aisle has been overdue for a real shakeup for a while now.

NOON WORLD just landed in 878 Target stores nationwide, 18 months after launch, and they are doing something most supplement brands are not: actually engineering the gummy to work better. Their dual-layer construction is patent-pending and delivers high-concentrate extracts in a way that protects the active ingredients and gets them into your system faster than a standard gummy. Think soft gel efficacy in a format you actually want to take.

Three SKUs: FOCUS with natural caffeine, B-vitamins, and Lion’s Mane for clean energy without the crash. CHILL with a seven-mushroom blend for stress support. And SLEEP with valerian root, ashwagandha, magnesium glycinate, reishi, and GABA for real rest.

Founded in 2024 by Jane Kate Wong, Dr. Julie Hwang, and Dr. Christine Wong. The Target placement is one of the clearer signals we have seen that cognitive wellness is moving out of the supplement corner and into the mainstream aisle. Worth paying attention to.

Check them out

Unwrapped w/ Kendall Kransdorf from Cotto

Kendall did not set out to build a CPG brand. A restricted diet forced her to get creative in the kitchen, and she started making her own dips, dressings, and sauces using cottage cheese as a base. At some point she looked around and thought: how does this not exist yet?

What she did next is the part worth paying attention to. Before she ever called a co-manufacturer, she spent months refining recipes herself. She hosted tasting parties where nobody was allowed to say a single word until they had filled out an anonymous feedback survey. Everyone thought she was a little crazy. The feedback was gold.

She also built her social media following before she had a product to sell. Just talked openly about what she was working on, tested the concept in public, and figured out whether people actually cared. They did.

Before retail, she was running a pickup model across New York, delivering dips herself, meeting customers face to face, and tweaking the recipes week to week based on what she heard. That groundwork is exactly what got Cotto to the shelf it is on now, with flavors like French Onion, Garden Ranch, and Buffalo, all built on a whipped cottage cheese base.

Her advice to any founder just starting out: build the audience before the product. Test before you scale. Go deep before you go wide. Most people skip straight to the scale part and pay for it later.

The full story is in the post below. Give her a follow 👉 @getcotto.

Shop Cotto

Main Stories

Smash Kitchen is tracking toward $100M in retail sales in its first full year, and the pace of how it got there is worth understanding.

The brand co-founded by actor Glen Powell, Sameer Mehta, and Sean Kane launched at Walmart last April with a line of better-for-you condiments. In roughly 12 months it has expanded into nearly 15,000 doors across the U.S. and multiple product categories. Celebrity-founded CPG brands that hit this kind of velocity in year one are genuinely rare. Most celebrity brands either burn fast or plateau early. Smash Kitchen is compounding, and the condiment category it is playing in has proven over and over that it can support large, scaled businesses when the product actually resonates.

→ Full story

Nestle just completed its full acquisition of yfood Labs, buying out the founders after holding a 49% minority stake since 2023.

Yfood is a Munich-based meal replacement brand doing around €150M in revenue across 30 European markets and 50,000+ points of sale. What makes this interesting is the timing. New CEO Philipp Navratil has been cutting Nestle's brand portfolio aggressively since taking over last September, going from 400+ brands down to around 150. Buying out yfood entirely is his first acquisition and a clear signal that functional nutrition is one of the categories he is betting on, not trimming. For context on where valuations are sitting: Danone bought Huel at 3.4x sales, Usana bought Hiya at 2.5x. The big strategics are paying real multiples for this category right now.

→ Full story

Joyride has reached the No. 1 spot in non-chocolate candy at Target, less than two years after relaunching the brand.

Ryan Trahan-backed, 20,000 retail doors, more than a dozen SKUs, up to 80% less sugar than the conventional players. The brand has held that Target position through 2025 and into 2026 per Nielsen and just unveiled new launches at Sweets and Snacks. The better-for-you sour candy space is competitive and nostalgia-driven and Joyride is winning it. The playbook of taking a format people already love and making it cleaner without killing what makes it fun is working

→ Full story

Quick Hits

• Ryl Tea closed a $20M Series C led by Purchase Capital, bringing total raised to $42.5M across three rounds. The NJ-based zero-sugar canned iced tea brand posted 157% year-over-year growth while the broader canned tea category actually declined 1.8% in the same period. The capital goes toward retail and DSD expansion and a product innovation pipeline. There is also a notable new development: Ryl just locked in a multi-year licensing partnership with The Hershey Company to create the first zero-sugar Jolly Rancher-inspired iced tea products. Pairing one of the most recognizable candy flavor brands in the country with a zero-sugar better-for-you format is a genuinely smart brand extension move. Purchase Capital previously backed OWYN, which exited for $280M in 2024. That track record is worth noting for a brand at this stage.

• Neuro just landed in 265 Costco locations across the Northwest, Southwest, and Northeast with its Energy and Focus gum in a 12-pack bundle. For any functional brand, Costco placement is a milestone that signals the business is operationally ready to scale. The trust level Costco carries with its members is unlike almost any other retailer, and showing up there with a value-forward bundle gives Neuro a credibility boost and a new consumer entry point simultaneously. The brand has been building toward this for a while.

• California Naturals just closed a Series B led by Align Ventures, bringing its total raised to over $40M. 220% above its 2023 sales forecast. Projecting 800% year-over-year revenue growth. Capital goes toward Target, Ulta, and CVS expansion plus new categories. Founder Shelby Wild is stepping into a board role and handing the CEO seat to Hayden Hiatt, who was COO and previously held multiple roles at Glossier. Align has backed Starface and Touchland. Both got acquired. Watching this one closely. → More

• Filament, a bond-building haircare brand built around a patented molecule called Tensilyx, closed a $2M oversubscribed seed round. The round was led by Wittington Ventures with participation from Willow Growth Partners. Founder Nathan Puksta is a working hairstylist who bootstrapped to this point. The brand made its retail debut at Violet Grey and sold through eight weeks of inventory in three hours. It is now available at 3,000 salons and around 1,500 clinics. Prestige haircare is the fastest-growing segment in prestige beauty right now, up 10% in Q1 2026 per Circana. Henkel’s acquisition of Olaplex reinforced investor interest in science-backed haircare and Filament is positioning itself in that same conversation early.

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Event Radar

Pre-Match Dinner and FIFA Watch Party | DOSS x 1800DTC x Manifest.eco — Friday, June 12 | Austin, TX

The evening of June 12 in Austin is going to be a good one.

It starts with a small group dinner for CPG founders and senior operators at 5:00 PM. Intentionally tight on seats, real conversation, no filler. Wraps at 7:30 PM when we head into the watch party for USA vs. Paraguay. Open bar all night, big screen, and a room full of the people building the brands this community follows. Broader teams welcome for the watch party. Kickoff at 8:00 PM CT.

Both events are private and approval is required.

Apply for the Pre-Match Dinner

Apply for the FIFA Watch Party

That’s Field Notes for week 018.

Smash Kitchen on pace for $100M in year one. Nestle doubling down on functional nutrition. Joyride at No. 1 in its category at Target. What is the brand story from this week that has your attention? Hit reply.

We read every reply.

— Zach and the 1800Hotline Team

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