Yes — "it's hard." There are many hoops, pay-to-play models, and big margin cuts, and grocery stores are "really built for these legacy brands" at scale. But the flip side: "if you can break in, you can really be on a pretty quick ramp to growing your brand," potentially doubling revenue and turning a small independent brand into a legacy one.
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The founders describe grocery as a place where "the consumer only sees the tip of the iceberg." Getting in is "a lot of work," with "so many hoops to jump," "the level of, like margin cut that you get as a brand," and "some have a pay to play model" — all of which "make it really hard for a new independent brand to break into a grocery store." The shelves are "really built for brands at scale to really continue to scale" and churn out new SKUs because they already have distribution. But "if you can break in, you can really be on a pretty quick ramp to growing your brand and to... doubling your revenue." They add that Sourmilk is "probably choosing one of the hardest products to launch" — "a animal based perishable product" — but they're excited because "yogurt has like 92% household penetration, so it's very widely used." Elan's ambition: "I would love to see 92% of Americans... have [Sourmilk] in their kitchen one day."