Kim has SKIMS. $5B valuation. Kylie has Kylie Cosmetics (51% sold to Coty for $600M). Kourtney has Lemme, on track for $200M in 2026. Kendall has 818 Tequila, sold to Sazerac. And then there's Khloé.

GOOD AMERICAN is respected but never broke out. Khloud is different.

$27M raised in the past year, backed by K5 Global, Serena Ventures, WME, Shrug Capital, and Springdale Ventures. At Target, retail velocity is running nearly double the standard popcorn category average. At Walmart, 62% of Khloud buyers are entirely new to the premium popcorn category. At Starbucks, the brand flooded 13,600 locations paired directly with high-protein customized espresso drinks, described internally as one of the most successful food partner launches in Starbucks' recent history. In under 14 months: 29,000+ retail doors.

LesserEvil, the clean-label popcorn brand I wrote about earlier this year, sold to Hershey for $750M on $165M in revenue. Khloud is already outperforming them at Target velocity.

The trust architecture matters here. Khloé has spent twenty years building an audience that identifies with her specific story, body image, health, authenticity, before a single popcorn bag existed. When that audience reaches for a snack, the brand decision was already made. Most celebrity brands try to retrofit a product onto a vague platform. Khloud found the product that the platform was already pointing toward.

The protein tortilla chip rollout on endcaps nationwide suggests the category ambition extends well beyond popcorn. Whether this becomes the Kardashian-Jenner breakout nobody expected is the most interesting bet in snacking right now.

When I lived in Sydney, I had one of these every day. Rokeby Farms protein smoothie. 425ml bottle, grabbed from the 7-Eleven on the way to the office. 286 calories. 30g protein. No added protein powder. No artificial sweeteners. No preservatives.

Danone just paid $1.5B for it.

Made Group, the Melbourne-based food and beverage business behind Rokeby, has been acquired by the French dairy giant. $325M+ in revenue. $80M+ in EBITDA. Consistent double-digit growth. TPG bought it five years ago for ~$250M and is exiting at roughly 6x. EBITDA grew 5x in that period.

This is Danone's second major acquisition in 90 days. They bought Huel, the protein-led, DTC-first meal replacement brand, for $1.2B in April. A UK protein brand, an Australian protein brand. Both for $1B+. Both built on the same consumer trust that took a decade to earn and that Danone cannot replicate internally.

The thesis is explicit: Danone is buying protein-first consumer trust at scale. The products are different. The distribution channels are different. The geographies are different. The underlying asset is the same, a loyal consumer relationship built on nutrition credibility that a legacy dairy giant cannot manufacture. Who's next?

I was wandering around a supermarket in Athens when I found the most macro-efficient protein drink I've ever seen. 55g protein. 2.5g carbs. Under 2.5g fat. ~230 calories. $4.20.

A ready-to-drink, chocolate-flavoured egg white drink by Golden Eggs, the leading egg producer in Greece. Ingredient list: 94% pasteurised egg white, cocoa powder, food flavouring, citric acid, sucralose.

It doesn't exist in the US. Doesn't exist in the UK. Doesn't exist in Australia.

The EU has different regulatory standards for Tetra Pak liquid egg whites than the US, not more onerous, just different. The product almost certainly meets or exceeds US safety standards. The barrier isn't trust. It isn't quality. It's a format technicality that no one has bothered to navigate.

In a world of protein-maxxing where whey protein costs are up 125%+, where GLP-1 users need maximum protein density per calorie, where the consumer has been educated about clean labels and ingredient lists, a $4 drink with 55g of protein and four clean ingredients is not a niche product. It's the best macros-per-dollar product that doesn't exist in the largest protein market on earth.

The opportunity: build the trust architecture and regulatory pathway for this format in the US before anyone else does. The product is already proven. The demand signal is already there. The white space is entirely structural.

47g protein. 6g sugar. 700 calories. Pretty good macros for a healthy meal. Now imagine those are the macros on a pepperoni pizza, one you actually want to eat at 2am after a night out, or after a workout, or just because it's a Tuesday.

That's Yough! Last month it was the number one selling frozen pizza at Target.

Michael Rolland didn't get there in a straight line. Yough! launched DTC, but cold chain in the hottest summer on record was a tough start. Supply chain challenges forced a full relaunch. They went specialty retail, built credibility, built reorder velocity, and built the kind of sell-through data that tells a bigger story to a national retailer than any pitch deck could.

Then came a cold LinkedIn message from a Target buyer they nearly missed. That turned into a Target HQ pitch, which turned into a nationwide launch. Macro tailwinds, great packaging, and viral TikTok videos did the rest.

Three things from the conversation worth taking with you:

Specialty retail before national retail isn't a consolation prize, it's the trust-building sequence. The sell-through data from smaller retailers is what gave Target confidence the product would move. The pitch was the proof, not the story.

TikTok credibility is now a form of retail collateral. Buyers are watching what moves on social before they decide what goes on shelves. Building the organic content machine before the retail conversation gives you leverage in the room.

The cold LinkedIn message is still underrated. The most consequential meeting in Yough!'s retail history came from an outreach that almost got missed. The deal flow lesson: be reachable, stay active, and don't assume the right people will find you without friction.

The cold chain disaster, the supply chain relaunch, the specialty retail grind. None of it was wasted. It was the trust-building process that made the Target conversation possible.

🎧 Watch on YouTube, listen on Spotify.

Thanks to sponsors:
⚙️ Visit Patrol - simplified ADA compliance for Shopify merchants
🧾 Check out Aftersell - boost AOV and increase sales
✈️ Go to Ecommerce Equation - coaching brands on systems that work

You're partnering with TikTok affiliates. Balenciaga is sponsoring Substack newsletters.

Balenciaga is the first consumer products brand to join Substack's native sponsorship program, alongside Uber, T-Mobile, Polymarket, and Whatnot, a collective multi-million-dollar push into the creator economy. Programmatic advertising in newsletters already exists. The Substack model is something different: a relationship between a reader and an individual contributor built on the specific trust that person has earned with their specific audience.

When someone pays $10 a month to read a writer's analysis, that's deep trust in that writer's judgment. That's what Balenciaga is paying for. Not the eyeballs. The editorial credibility behind them.

This has already been true in podcasting for years. Host-read podcast ads command a 3–5x premium over programmatic equivalents because the trust leverage is deeper, the host's recommendation carries genuine weight with an audience that chose them specifically. Brands that understood this early built category leadership through that trust transfer. LMNT didn't buy Huberman's audience with a standard ad unit. They built a relationship with a host whose credibility in the category was irreplaceable.

Substack is the next frontier of the same dynamic. The editorial independence of the writer is the asset. The sponsorship that compromises it destroys the very thing it's paying for.

For brands thinking about where to allocate in 2026 and beyond: the question isn't where the eyeballs are. It's where the trust is, and whether the format preserves it or consumes it.

That’s it for this week.
If you liked this issue, forward to a friend who obsesses over brand strategy, capital flows, or exit timing.

In the Money, following the flow of capital in consumer

P.S. We love talking to brands interested in exiting in the next 3-18 months. If you know of any brands interested in exiting, or any firms trying to help port cos manage turnarounds, we'd love to share a POV.

Email: [email protected]
LinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/fanbi/