1800Hotline 029 // UTZ going private, Final Boss Sour levels up, and Shopify review crackdowns

Hey and Happy Thursday,

Writing this from the last day of DotDev in Toronto! If you said hello, great meeting you. If we didn’t have a pleasure let’s connect next time!

Earlier this week we introduced the new 1800DTC with one simple mission: to help brands find the right partners faster. We’re thrilled with the feedback so far!

If you haven't signed up, do it now!!!

Now back into some regularly scheduled programming. An iconic American snack food company is going private. A gaming-themed sour candy brand just unlocked seven major retailers. Reviews on Shopify are being removed? And Dubai chocolate might not be over, at least for pistachios.

Let’s get into it.

Connect w/ the 1800DTC Community

This edition is presented by Wallaroo Media.

The AI-Native Agency for eCommerce.

Wallaroo has been scaling ecommerce brands since 2012, long before AI was the pitch on every agency deck. The difference now is what’s under the hood: fully embedded AI tools and proprietary internal AI systems built to help brands increase profits.

Their agency profile was just listed and verified on 1800DTC, highlighting the brands they’ve worked with. Check it out here as they add to it via our new self-service!

And if you run a Shopify brand doing $1M–$30M+ in annual revenue that can use real data, connect with them for a free marketing assessment by clicking below.

See exactly how AI sees your brand

The World Cup of Missed Opportunities

The men’s national team for Spain won its second World Cup on Sunday, knocking down Argentina in a pretty dominant game. They held possession, controlled the time, and provided a tactical masterclass for everyone watching at home.

Before we all tuned in to see who was crowned, Wunderkind, a leading performance marketing solution, reached out to share a fun World Cup care package that featured seven playing cards, including Messi, Mbappé, and more top stars.

Work and play in one: this equated to ecommerce. Seven cards. Seven very real ecommerce use cases. All about how brands can recognize anonymous traffic, act on real intent, and turn missed moments (shots) into revenue (GOALLLL).

It’s all in an informative e-book you can grab here. Check out the LinkedIn post with a click below as well to learn a bit more and see what else they sent!

The fastest-growing brands in Europe show up here first

Want to know which brands are breaking out across Europe before everyone else does? That’s what we cover. Every week, The Checkout surfaces insights on fastest-growing DTC names, the trends reshaping the category, and market insights you won’t find in the US press. It’s the free weekly read for the founders, operators, and investors building commerce across Europe, from London to Berlin to Stockholm. If you want an early read on what’s next in Europe, start here.

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Brand We’re Watching: Maev

Courtesy of Maev

Part of treating your dog like family is respecting the food in their bowl, and Maev just launched a sharp interpretation on that: Nordic Fish, a limited-edition recipe built like a high-end omakase counter for dogs.

The recipe features single-source, wild-caught Marine Stewardship Council-Certified haddock and cod plus responsibly farmed Aquaculture Stewardship Council-Certified salmon, hand cut into whole pieces you can actually see in the bowl. No highly processed fish slurry.

Maev’s first limited-edition protein, Grass-Fed New Zealand Lamb, dropped in October 2025 and sold out in two weeks, then three more times in four months. Meanwhile, searches for “fish dog food” are up 69% YoY and fish oil supplements for dogs are up 149%. Dog Parents are applying the same nutrition-first, preventative thinking to their pets that they apply to themselves, and Maev keeps meeting that demand with what they’re putting out there. It’s nice to see!

Nordic Fish will be available exclusively on their website.

Catch the new wild caught nordic fish

Unwrapped w/ Hannah Perez from SEEQ

SEEQ started as a simple idea: make protein more enjoyable and more aligned with how people actually live. We sat down with Hannah to dive right into how it went from a basement to major retail. Check it out!

Operators of Every Size Take Note as Utz Plans to Go Private

Utz is going private in a $2.9B acquisition by Germany’s Intersnack, six years after the 105-year-old salty snacks maker went public. Intersnack will pay $14.25 per share, taking a half stake at a 91% premium per share to the closing price from Monday, with the founding family retaining the rest. The deal is expected to close in Q4 2026, giving the European snack giant its first U.S. presence.

The deal lands in the middle of an M&A wave across consumer goods and health, with companies consolidating to withstand inflationary pressure, shifting consumer tastes, and fierce competition. Scale seems to be the defensive play.

For DTC brands, the lesson is in what acquirers are paying for. Intersnack paid for brands consumers reach for on a crowded shelf and distribution built over decades. The same pressures squeezing the giants toward consolidation reward the brands that own their customer relationship and prove velocity.

Full story →

Final Boss Sour Beats the Retail Level with $4M Raise

Final Boss Sour, the gaming-themed sour snack brand built inside Science Inc.’s startup studio (the same studio behind Dollar Shave Club and Liquid Death), just raised $4 million in a strategic funding round. New investors include Evolution VC Partners, The Angel Group, and Mondelez International’s SnackFutures Ventures, with returning backers Melitas Ventures and GFR Fund, bringing total funding to $12 million since its October 2023 launch.

The money is fueling a massive retail unlock: Walmart, Kroger, H-E-B, Wegmans, and Hy-Vee soon, with Target and 7-Eleven landing this fall. Not bad for a brand that built itself almost entirely through digital channels, racking up 2 billion+ organic video views across TikTok, YouTube, and Instagram and the largest YouTube subscriber base of any sour candy brand. The playbook: monthly drops and collabs with NHL star Trevor Zegras, MLB star Jazz Chisholm Jr., PAC-MAN, and G FUEL that turn every release into a social media event.

Worth noting who’s writing the check: Mondelez is the parent of Sour Patch Kids. When the incumbent invests in the challenger, that’s the category leader admitting consumers want sour snacks made with real dried fruit instead of artificial gummy candy. For operators, this is the modern sequence in action: build the audience first, prove velocity in early retail tests, then let the audience pull you onto shelves. Distribution follows demand, not the other way around.

Full story →

Shopify Is Cracking Down on Fake and Incentivized App Reviews

Reviews are one of the most important signals merchants use to decide which apps to trust in the Shopify App Store, and Shopify just announced two major changes to keep that system honest.

First, when an app is found to be incentivizing reviews, a significant portion of its reviews will be removed. Second, reviews that don’t come from genuine users are being unpublished, and that removal follows the reviewer: if the same accounts left reviews on other apps to make them look legitimate, those get pulled too.

The changes have created short-term concern, with threads picking up in the dev community and on Reddit from developers watching review counts drop. Long-term, though, this looks like Shopify raising the quality bar to keep the App Store healthy. As Shopify put it: “The Shopify App Store should be a place where the best apps win. That’s what we’re building toward.”

Full story →

• Peppertux raised $2.35M to fuel its retail expansion.

  The Southern California startup is a pistachio-only brand, turning the hero ingredient into butters, creams, drizzles, and even pistachio coffee. The founders started at farmers markets and went door to door to mom-and-pop shops before landing shelf space at one of LA’s largest regional grocers. The bet behind the raise is that America’s pistachio obsession outlasts the viral Dubai chocolate moment and becomes a durable category.

• The Vita Coco Company Announces Acquisition Of Copra.
  The deal, 80% cash and 20% stock with an earnout that could add up to $100M more, gives Vita Coco entry into the chilled super-premium Thai Nam Hom segment where it previously didn’t compete. Copra brings a purpose-built factory in Thailand’s main Nam Hom growing region and a tree-to-bottle-in-hours operating model, plus a 48% net sales CAGR over three years and 2026 sales expected to top $100M. Coconut water is the fastest growing category in the beverage aisle, and the category leader just bought its way upmarket. Another one for the consolidation tally.

• London-based brand, MOTH, serving canned cocktails secures $14M.
  Co-founded by Sam Hunt and Rob Wallis, the ready-to-drink cocktail brand secured the round from Puma Growth Partners with participation from Beringea, Guinness Ventures, and Rianta Capital. The numbers behind it are strong: 67% growth last year with revenue topping $25M, and US distribution already live in Whole Foods, Target, and Trader Joe’s across California, Florida, and Illinois. Premium RTD cocktails keep proving they’re a category, not a trend.

• Organic Traditions closes a $10.5M Series A to scale U.S. growth.
  The Toronto-based superfood brand, founded 25+ years ago by Jerry Zeifman and now led by his daughter Ally Mamalider, raised the round from strategic angels including operators from FreshPet, Shopify, Frito-Lay, and Colgate-Palmolive. The star of the show is Fiber Flow, which launched at Costco Canada earlier this year, sold out three times in its first two weeks online, and is projected to grow 200%+ over the next 12 months. A second-generation family brand with 70% revenue growth over three years raising its first institutional round after two decades of patience. Compounding trust is a moat.

• Golf culture is becoming a new lane for modern CPG.
  Functional beverages and better-for-you snacks are looking to gain traction on and off the golf course. Golfers deserve better options than sports drinks with 30+ grams of sugar and energy drinks with 200mg of caffeine. Enter COURSE RECORD and Swinger. A look into how a demographic shift in an area reshapes not only the audience but also the surrounding brands.

• Lioness founder believes women deserve more than another protein bar.

  Nicky Jackson from Lioness has spent decades in the food industry working with some of the biggest brands. She’s also a mom who hits caffeine crashes. So she built what she wished existed: functional gummy snacks designed by women, for women, because a woman’s day and body don’t follow the same script as a man’s. Lioness landed in more than 1,900 Target stores last month. A good reminder for founders and operators: build what you know.

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Event Radar

Creator Economy Live East | NYC, July 29 - Last call on this one! It’s the #1 influencer marketing event for brands on the east coast...and free passes for the first 500 brands have already sold out. We secured a handful of free passes exclusively for brands in our community. Hit the link to apply for a free brand pass.

From Cart to Shelf | NYC, July 29 - One week out. Tastings and good vibes from 20 emerging CPG brands in one room, with the founders right there to tell their story. Add drinks, a live DJ, and a crowd of operators and investors, and it’s the kind of night where you leave with a full stomach and three new favorite brands. Request to join.

DTC River Float | Utah, July 31 - Skip the panels and presentations. This one is good people, good convos, and an afternoon floating the Provo River with Patrol, 1800DTC, and friends, then dinner and drinks at Slackwater after. Limited spots. Grab yours.

That’s a wrap for Field Notes this week.

Common theme this issue is consolidation, and we're noticing a lot of it lately. Momentum categories like Dubai chocolate and RTD cocktails keep showing not just staying power but real growth. And across every story, quality is what's getting paid for: Copra's tree-to-bottle model, Final Boss Sour's real-fruit bet pulling in Mondelez money, Organic Traditions' 25 years of trust, Utz's decades of shelf presence. Whether you're raising $4M or selling for $2.9B, the brands winning right now are the ones that built something worth acquiring.

Our team will be in New York next week. Let’s grab coffee?

See you Tuesday.

— Zach and the 1800Hotline Team

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