September 30, 2026

Cart Culture: From GoodPop to Hershey, the Framework for Proving Velocity at Every Stage

Winning your first retail placement can feel like the finish line. It's actually the starting line, and the test only gets harder from there. In this conversation, we sit down with Kate Kasch, VP of Growth Channels at The Hershey Company, to unpack what actually carries over as a brand moves from proving trial to defending shelf space, from building GoodPop and Muddy Bites to now leading Growth Channels across Club, Target, e-commerce, and Natural for Hershey's total portfolio.

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Three Velocity Lessons Every CPG Brand Leader Can Use Now

Door Count Overstates Progress. Velocity in Your Current Stores Tells the Truth.

Kate challenges the investor question of how many doors a brand is in. The metric that matters is units per store per week in the stores you already have, whether that is 10 or 10,000.
A strong benchmark is ranking in the top 50% of items in the competitive set while matching or beating the closest comparable product on shelf.
Define the category wide. Ranking second in a narrow niche means little if the product sits at 160th of 188 SKUs in the full frozen novelty set.

Your Package Has 8 Seconds to Do What Your Pitch Deck Does in 10 Minutes

Shoppers give a package roughly 8 seconds at shelf, compared with nine pages of content and reviews online, so the pack has to lead with the claim your shopper values most.
A low-cost email survey showed GoodPop that real-fruit sugar was the deciding factor. Putting 100% fruit juice and no added sugar front and center produced a velocity impact almost immediately.
A Costco buyer's test still holds: if the package cannot tell your story from 10 feet away, it is not ready for the shelf.

The Buyer Meeting Rewards Proof and Punishes Surprises

Retailers want to serve their shopper but do not know your product, so bring numerical proof points, such as how a SKU turns at $5.99 compared with $12.99.
GoodPop's sparkling juice launch earned distribution at Costco, Walmart, and more but did not turn. Kate's lesson: the team should have spent another year on validation.
When velocity dips, go to the buyer first with data and a fix. If a senior leader has to ask your buyer what is wrong, you are too late.

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