Cart Culture: How Force of Nature Translates Regenerative Ag Into a Story That Sells at Shelf

What you'll learn

Every brand has a story. The real question is whether it lands with the person standing in front of the shelf.

In this edition of Cart Culture, Emily Steele, CEO and Cofounder of Hummingbirds, sits down with Mike Hondorp, VP of Marketing at Force of Nature, for a candid conversation on how to translate a complicated, mission-driven story into something that sells. Mike brings over 20 years of marketing experience across industries and platforms, having helped launch and scale brands like Instagram and Cameo before leading marketing at Force of Nature, the first brand built on regenerative agriculture principles. If you are building or marketing a brand with a story that is hard to say in one sentence, this session will challenge how you think about translation, audience, and what actually earns a shopper's attention.

In this conversation, we'll cover:

The Translation Problem
Why regenerative agriculture is genuinely harder to communicate than most value props, and why the instinct to over-explain it fails at shelf. How Mike decides what earns pack space, what lives on the website, and what only comes up in a founder video.

Knowing Your Audience
Not every buyer needs the same version of the story. The mission-driven DTC subscriber wants depth. The retail shopper price-comparing at the meat case needs something faster and more visceral. How Force of Nature builds for both without diluting either.

Lessons From Building Platforms
Before marketing a physical product, Mike helped scale Instagram and Cameo. His take: platforms are built on experience over brand, meaning format and moment shape a story more than voice alone. How that lesson translates into telling the same story differently across pack, ads, buyer decks, and video.

What's Failed
Real talk on messaging that tested too dense, too preachy, or too insider for a mainstream shopper, and what Force of Nature changed as a result.

A Framework You Can Use
A simple way to decide what version of your story goes where, built for any brand with a complex or values-driven value prop, not just Force of Nature.

Built on Real Experience

Mike Hondorp has spent over 20 years building and scaling some of the most influential brands and platforms in the world, from Instagram to Cameo, before bringing that lens to lead marketing at Force of Nature. This is not a theory conversation. It is built on real experience translating a hard story into one that sells.