#111 Twrl Milk Tea: Boba is the New Sprinkle & Twrling into Sprouts, Costco, & Pop Up Grocer

This episode was sponsored by RangeMe. Go to rangeme.com/startupcpg

I’m so excited today to learn from Twrl Milk Tea, a long time and very active member of the Startup CPG Community! We’re joined by co-founder Olivia Chen, and Twrl was recently a Shelfies finalist for their Ube milk tea. Twrl Milk Tea makes the world’s first canned milk tea made with pea milk and single-origin, non-GMO, organic tea, and they also make chewy cafe style boba toppings, which are the new sprinkles! Twrl is women & minority owned, and they were recently certified as a women-owned business by Women's Business Enterprise National Council. Twrl launched in 2021 and has accomplished so much in the last couple years that I can’t wait to dig into.

Listen in as Olivia shares about:

• How Twrl got started and behind the scenes of starting a new category
• Their recent retail launches with Central Market, Wegman’s, and in just a week, nationwide with Sprouts, and tips for standing out to retailers
• Twrl’s marketing, press, and event strategies and how they leverage unique moments like Pop Up Grocer and getting an advertisement in New York City’s Times Square
• Their test with Costco and tips for testing your team’s infrastructure and evaluating retail opportunities
• And more!

Episode Links:

• Twrl Milk Tea website
• Twrl’s Cookbook Zine: Boba is the New Sprinkle
• Olivia’s LinkedIn

Show Links:

• Transcripts of each episode are available on the Transistor platform that hosts our podcast here (click on the episode and toggle to “Transcript” at the top)
• Join the Startup CPG Slack community (15K+ members and growing!)
• Follow @startupcpg
• Visit host Jessi Freitag's Linkedin or website
• Questions or comments about the episode? Email Jessi at [email protected]
• Episode music by Super Fantastics

RangeMe Links

• RangeMe website
• Listen to our episode (#108) with RangeMe founder, Nicky Jackson here