[EO Sacramento] Scaling Food & Beverage Brands Using AI and Innovative Marketing With CJ Bruce

CJ Bruce is the Founder and CEO of The Missing Ingredient, a marketing agency focused on helping food and beverage brands grow through strategic digital campaigns, audience engagement, and data-informed marketing. CJ specializes in simplifying complex marketing, elevating brand awareness, customer acquisition, and loyalty for high-impact food brands like Sumo Citrus, Amy’s Kitchen, and Baskin-Robbins. His expertise blends research-based strategy with creative execution to deliver measurable results.

Here’s a glimpse of what you’ll learn:

[05:00] CJ Bruce shares how The Missing Ingredient helps food brands grow quickly
[13:10] How AI transforms marketing strategies for food and beverage brands
[17:15] Top AI tools and platforms CJ’s agency uses daily
[23:24] The secrets behind creating viral brand videos online
[34:46] Avoiding costly mistakes many brands make with influencer marketing
[40:09] How strategic email lists boost retail brands like Sumo Citrus
[45:57] CJ’s picks for the best food industry events and conferences

In this episode…

Marketing a food and beverage brand today isn’t just about having a great product on the shelf. It’s about building awareness, creating genuine connections, and knowing how to use modern tools like AI without losing the human touch. So what does it actually take to scale in such a crowded space?

For CJ Bruce, the answer comes down to focus, creativity, and smart adoption of technology. He explains that brands grow fastest when they combine strong storytelling with systems that move customers from discovery to purchase, both online and in-store. CJ sees AI as a powerful co-pilot, helping teams generate ideas, automate workflows, and unlock opportunities that used to be out of reach for smaller brands.

In this episode of the Rising Entrepreneurs Podcast, Dr. Jeremy Weisz is joined by CJ Bruce, Founder and CEO of The Missing Ingredient, to discuss scaling food and beverage brands through innovative marketing and AI adoption. They explore influencer relations, viral campaign strategy, and how AI tools are reshaping agency workflows. CJ also shares advice on building long-term partnerships that drive measurable growth.

Resources mentioned in this episode:

Quotable Moments

“Food has the potential to have some of the biggest impact on individuals, the planet.”
“I realized I was better at getting people to see content than I was at making my own.”
“We think about a human in the loop workflow or going from human to AI to human.”
“It really started, even before the ChatGPT craze, where machine learning and kind of back end AI was happening.”
“If you could do it for citrus fruit, you could do it for anything.”

Action Steps

Double down on a specific niche: Focusing on one industry builds deeper expertise, stronger differentiation, and more scalable client results.
Treat influencer marketing as relationship-building: Long-term partnerships create better engagement, trust, and more consistent performance over time.
Use AI as a co-pilot, not a replacement: Human-in-the-loop workflows enhance creativity, speed execution, and maintain quality control.
Build automated systems for repetitive tasks: AI-driven reporting and workflows save hours each week, freeing teams for higher-value strategy work.
Leverage owned channels like email, even for retail brands: Growing an email list strengthens customer connection and lowers communication costs long-term.

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Episode Transcript:

Intro: 00:02

Welcome to the Rising Entrepreneurs Podcast, where we feature top founders and entrepreneurs and their journey. Now let’s get started with the show.

Dr. Jeremy Weisz: 00:12

Dr. Jeremy Weisz here, Founder of InspiredInsider.com, where I talk with inspirational entrepreneurs and leaders. Today is no different. I have CJ Bruce of Founder CEO The Missing Ingredient, and we’re going to go deep on that. And CJ, before I formally introduce you, I always like to point out other episodes of the podcast people should check out. And maybe you just share some of the brands you like.

But because The Missing Ingredient is you can tell a health food and beverage companies with their marketing. And some of the ones I’ve had on IQ bar founder, eat IQ bar. So I like to have the companies that I eat and like on the podcast to talk about it. That’s one of my favorites. I had the the Founder of Wild Tonic Kombucha and that was a great one.

I really love kombucha. There’s so many. I don’t know. I’m into protein bars, wild chips. I don’t know if you’ve had these before.

The chicken or chicken chips. And people joke around when they call me like, what are you doing? Because I literally am always eating these chicken chips. They’re made of chicken breast, except they’re chips, so they’re healthier. They’re packed with protein.

And I had the founder on after I like loved them the barbecue, the salt and vinegar ones. I don’t know what are some of your favorite. We’ll go on with your intro, but some of your favorite brands that you like.

CJ Bruce: 01:31

So many brands, so many. I mean.

Dr. Jeremy Weisz: 01:33

The ones you actually snack on. Yeah. What do you snack on?

CJ Bruce: 01:36

Yeah, I think the I mean, Annie’s Homegrown comes to comes to mind, especially with the kids and getting again kind of the better for you comfort foods. Siete foods I really like their, you know, their whole line on, on the chip side, but also their dips that they’ve, that they’ve got.

Dr. Jeremy Weisz: 01:53

I haven’t seen their dips. I’ll check it out.

CJ Bruce: 01:55

Yeah. They’ve got a queso that’s pretty pretty solid. Yoko’s on the on the plant based. What is it called? Butter’s miyoko’s.

Miyoko’s creamery. Yeah, they’re in Northern California. Another really great brand. Yeah, I mean, Oatly just from a product. Plus the marketing perspective, I love the way that they’ve done all their marketing communications.

Copywriting. Really great in there. I mean, I could go could go on and on, but those are some that come to mind.

Dr. Jeremy Weisz: 02:24

One that stuck out on your site for me. I mean, there’s a lot because you have like healthier brands and things, but the yoga because I am lactose intolerant. Oh, talk about yoga for a second.

CJ Bruce: 02:36

Yeah. So yoga. Unfortunately, yoga is no longer around, but it was a plant based yogurt. And so they had a yeah chia based. But there’s there are other good, good yogurt brands.

Siggi’s. Actually I like Siggi’s. They have a they have a dairy free line that’s got a good amount of protein and it’s just like a nice. Yeah, they did a really good job with that one. So that’s another go to in our house or Harmless Harvest, another dairy free yogurt brand that we we frequent.

Dr. Jeremy Weisz: 03:04

I love it. No, I, I I’m making a grocery list as you’re talking so I appreciate that. So before I formally introduce CJ, this episode is brought to you by Rise25. At Rise25, we help businesses connect to their dream relationships and partnerships. We do that in a few ways.

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So you just send us the list of your addresses and we do everything else. So it’s not like a one off gift. It’s kind of like think three gifts a year for five years type of thing. And I don’t like getting like a pen or a mug. So usually these are food related items that people are excited to open and eat because I like to get food right.

And so for me, the number one thing in my life is relationships. So I always want to give to my best relationships. And I found no better way to profile the people and companies I admire on the podcast and to send them sweet treats in the mail. So if you have questions, go to rise25.com or email us at support@rise25.com.

I am super excited to see CJ Bruce. As I was saying, he’s CEO and partner at two prior agencies. He branched out to start his own food marketing agency, The Missing Ingredient, in 2016, and his team of 15 people provide digital marketing, paid media, influencer relations, AI services to growing food and beverage brands, and some of the current and past clients we mentioned includes Amy’s Kitchen, Sumo Citrus, Baskin-Robbins, Milk Bar, and many more.

And CJ, thanks for joining me.

CJ Bruce: 04:50

Thanks, Jeremy. Happy to be here.

Dr. Jeremy Weisz: 04:52

So I’m going to pull up your site here And just talk about The Missing Ingredient and what you do a little bit deeper.

CJ Bruce: 05:00

Awesome. So yeah, so like you said, we’re a food marketing agency. And so we really help food and beverage brands grow. And so a lot of it is, you know, driving awareness about the products, the benefits, how it fits into your lifestyle. And then moving people through that marketing funnel to consideration and ultimately purchase.

And we we work with brands both that sell D to C so direct to consumer or online via Amazon or other marketplaces as well as supporting retail sales. So when brands have national or regional distribution and need to get that foot traffic, drive the velocity in the store. We have our suite of services and playbook that really help scale those brands.

Dr. Jeremy Weisz: 05:42

So I’m curious, you know, why? Food and beverage. Right? I mean, there’s a lot of niches out there. I’m curious why you chose those.

CJ Bruce: 05:52

Yeah, that’s a great question. So I am personally very passionate about food and beverage and the you know, the brief history was when I set out to start the agency. So prior to this, you mentioned I have other agencies and we were essentially a vendor for really large brands. So I was working with Ikea and Airbnb and Gatorade and Ford and I well, that was exciting.

Dr. Jeremy Weisz: 06:15

What kind of are you doing with them? Like what were you doing with those primarily video.

CJ Bruce: 06:19

So we were doing viral video campaigns, video, SEO, early days, YouTube influencers. This is, you know, starting back in 2007, 2008 through around 2015, and then the taking that skill set. And I wanted to bring it to, you know, companies and organizations that I really cared about. So when I very first started the agency and we actually had a different name, it was working with, you know, anyone that was having a positive impact and that we could help scale that impact.

Dr. Jeremy Weisz: 06:47

And mission based companies.

CJ Bruce: 06:49

Exactly. And then a couple years in, we you know, about half the work had been food and beverage. And I was like, we need to focus more. And then we doubled down. And like I mentioned, I am personally passionate about it.

So from a health perspective, I think food has the potential to have some of the biggest impact on individuals, the planet. And it’s just so it’s fun. It’s fun visually. You get to eat the products, the clients that you work with, right? You get to eat the food.

Dr. Jeremy Weisz: 07:17

I would have a sign will work for food. Like, yeah, oh, you’re paying us to oh, you just had to send me a bunch of sumo citrus. It’s fine.

CJ Bruce: 07:25

Yeah. The samples, the samples alone help it. So. Yeah, I’m. And I’ve done my own food stuff.

I have my own food influencer brand. I’ve done some, you know, little catering things.

Dr. Jeremy Weisz: 07:35

So what is talk about that you’re a food influencer brand.

CJ Bruce: 07:39

Yeah. So it’s it’s it’s dormant now so you know don’t if you look out there it’s I’ve had to stop that to focus on the agency. But it was called vegetarian dude. And I was doing recipes and Ease and content and it’s, you know, still there on on Instagram and other channels. It is not active.

But that started from there. And then like I said, I was doing some pop ups. I used to live in LA and did a few pop up dinners, did some, you know, kind of catering at.

Dr. Jeremy Weisz: 08:06

Are you vegetarian.

CJ Bruce: 08:07

Backyard concerts? I’m pescatarian now. So it’s it’s evolved the the diet and eating has evolved vegetarian vegan pescatarian. So that’s yeah, that’s where I am today. But I love to cook.

I am a certified plant based chef also. So anyway, I go deep on the.

Dr. Jeremy Weisz: 08:25

I need to hire.

CJ Bruce: 08:25

You.

Dr. Jeremy Weisz: 08:28

It’s funny, I was funny because there’s and I don’t know if you’ve seen this before. Whenever I think of that vegetarian, I think of have you walked watch the YouTube JP Sears on YouTube videos before he’s got if meat eaters acted like vegetarians and it’s just a very funny, I don’t know, I found it hilarious.

CJ Bruce: 08:52

I haven’t seen.

Dr. Jeremy Weisz: 08:52

That. Maybe it offends some people, maybe not, I don’t know, but I’ll send it to you when we’re done. But it’s. It’s so funny. If meat eaters acted like vegetables.

Sorry. Not vegetarians. Vegans? If meat eaters acted like vegans, is the video?

CJ Bruce: 09:05

Yeah, I don’t I don’t get offended on any of it. Okay.

Dr. Jeremy Weisz: 09:08

So I’m just curious from a business perspective, when you decided to you’re like, we’re going to double down, right? We have most of our clients are in food and beverage. Is that a scary moment or are you thinking, well, we’re going to, you know, kind of not attract other people? What was your thought process there at that point? Because now it sounds obvious.

Maybe it seems obvious, but maybe at that point it wasn’t or was scary.

CJ Bruce: 09:32

Yeah, it’s a great question. So a few things led to it. One was my my general analysis of the business. We’d also gone through, you know, bid on multiple pitches. We’re just saying that we want to work with people who are having an impact wasn’t enough of a differentiator.

And then I’ll also give a shout out to Jason Swenk, who I joined his Agency, mastermind Group, for a period of time, and that was that was part of the learning that, you know, really was my key takeaway that came out of that was the need to focus. And then it was scary, though, because at the time we were working with many different kinds of brands. We had large projects that were not food and beverage. And so the idea of cutting off a certain part of the business to focus on something that was a little uncertain, it was a bit of a leap of faith. However, I was motivated and again digging into it myself and thinking through all of the benefits there.

Right? Part of the challenge when you’re a general purpose agency, you have to get onboarded and understand the industries and the nuances and all of that. And so being able to focus on one and where I’m already excited, interested, you know, trying snacks myself to me is a competitive advantage. And then we’ve seen that compound over the years as we’ve gone deeper and deeper and just better understand the whole ecosystem, not just the services that we provide, but actually the brands that we work with, all the challenges and opportunities and things they deal with outside of just our realm. Like makes everything we do better and helps us build better relationships.

Dr. Jeremy Weisz: 11:00

You know, CJ, I don’t know anyone growing up who’s who says themselves. I want to be an agency owner. And so I know you went to Arizona, studied communication things at that point in your life. What were you thinking you wanted to do?

CJ Bruce: 11:16

So film. I wanted to make movies. That’s really where it started for me. So I was a double major in film and political science. And the political science piece came shortly after I started, and that was just kind of personally trying to navigate that and understand that.

So it was also kind of the impact piece early on. Right. Well, how do you actually have an impact in the current system. So that was that was my goal. That’s what I went to school for.

And then that’s also I moved to LA right after that to get into the movie business, which I was in briefly doing visual effects and producing my own work. Yeah, it’s a lot of work. And, you know, the the film industry I think is also has just has a lot of challenges. Like it’s it’s very inefficient. Right.

It’s very old school and a lot of that didn’t totally connect with what I wanted in my life and my lifestyle. And I’ve always been a nerd. I’ve always been a computer nerd. I’ve always liked to try new technologies. And so, you know, evolving from that, I like to say like I used to, I came to make my own content.

And then it was, how do I get people to see this content that aren’t my friends and family? And that’s what got me into marketing. And then I realized I was better at getting people to see content than I was at making my own. And then that kind of turned me into the marketing side of things more.

Dr. Jeremy Weisz: 12:38

And I could also see how. Like you were, you actually were doing a lot of both, a combination of marketing and video for these big brands. So it’s kind of like the perfect combination of those skills.

CJ Bruce: 12:49

Yeah. And it still feels like that, the combination of the the technical and creative, which is just that’s what lights me up.

Dr. Jeremy Weisz: 12:56

I want to talk about AI. AI is always a hot topic. And you, I know, talk and utilize a lot of AI for and with your clients. Can you talk about that?

[Continue to Page 2]

CJ Bruce: 13:10

Yes. Big topic. A lot of pieces moving quickly. So we’ve been you know, we’ve been digging into AI for quite a while. And it really started even before the ChatGPT craze where, you know, machine learning and kind of back end AI that was happening within ad platforms. So meta and Google, right? They were already using AI. So we were figuring out, you know, how do we feed those systems with the right kinds of content and inputs to get better results for our clients?

And then since, you know, the GPT explosion. So coming forward to today. So we really there’s a few things that we look at. One is how do we incorporate AI in a way where it actually enhances the work and makes more things possible? And it’s not fully replacing the work.

So we think about a human in the loop workflow or going from human to AI to human. So that’s one key piece where our team, our strategists, we’re starting the process using AI to generate ideas, concepts, drafts. And then we’re iterating with AI. And then we’re doing that final pass to edit it. So that’s happening now where we have essentially, you know, kind of co-pilots is how you could think about it with the team to support as we’re executing.

And then more and more, we’re building in fully automated workflows that are possible with AI. So an example that we’re you know, we’re rolling out now is reporting that takes a lot of time for an agency to do a lot of clients, a lot of channels analyzing that. And so leveraging AI to actually do an initial pass on a reporting. And this isn’t something where it’s, you know, an individual person going in and putting something into ChatGPT. It’s actually custom software where it’s reading everything from an example like a client’s email account.

What did they send, what were the results? How does that compare to previous results? Making some recommendations, saving, you know, a couple hours of time per per client per week for each report. And that all being automatically done with AI. That then gets delivered to our email marketing manager to then add additional context and analysis.

So that’s a huge piece. And then also I’ll say one more thing. I could probably talk about this for the entire time, but I’ll say one more piece, which is, you know, we talked about being in digital marketing for a long time, and at the beginning for me, it was, you know, it was YouTube focused and it was this moment where it was just, you know, YouTube is an incredible platform. And now people can create content, distribute it anywhere to anyone, and it just opens up all these possibilities of people who used to, you know, that the amount of people who could advertise on TV was pretty small. You had to produce content that was expensive.

You had to get buy airtime that was expensive. All of a sudden, between digital cameras and then mobile phones and now YouTube and distribution, all those costs went down and content exploded. And I think the same thing is happening now with AI. It’s going to touch a lot of things. But one area that I think is exciting is software development or custom, you know, campaigns, custom apps where the cost to create those is dropping rapidly.

And that opens up the ability where all of a sudden now these things become capabilities that, you know, small to medium sized brands can actually take advantage of and, and build their own software and also build kind of marketing campaigns around custom sites and apps that wasn’t previously possible.

Dr. Jeremy Weisz: 16:35

Yeah. Let’s go a little deeper on that. Maybe, I don’t know, AI tools or tech stack in AI that you are looking at when it comes to those custom apps. I know I just got off an interview with Gezon for of Technology Rivers, and he was talking about anthropic and how he uses it to connect AI to different tools to give him, you know, so he uses an entry point. And I was saying that to you and you’re like, oh yeah, yeah, I know that.

And I was like, oh, this is like mind blowing. So I’m curious what what other types of tools tech in AI have you played with, heard of or used that people should check out?

CJ Bruce: 17:15

Yeah. So we’re using a number of tools. So we have the the core you know Google tools. So Gemini that’s built into Google Workspace. And so we’re using Gemini. We’re using nano banana which is to generate images also within the Google world video or video that’s there.

Video generator. So playing with that and you know kind of testing the limits. Like we don’t have a lot of that that’s running live in production yet. But we’re testing and playing with those. We have GPT, so we have GPT teams that we’re using.

So everybody on the team is on GPT. We have custom GPT that we’ve built for, you know, specific use cases also using Claude. So Claude is, you know, Anthropic’s version of GPT, it tends to be a little better at writing and a little better at code. And then we’ve started experimenting with Claude code, which is also from anthropic. And that’s really just kind of a mind blowing tool in my opinion.

It’s very technical. It’s not, you know, as easy as a chat interface, but it allows, you know, to just write code and actually develop and test and deploy custom software. And then another tool is N8N, which is a workflow automation tool. And so we we’ve been using Zapier, which is similar but different tool for a long time to kind of do these automations and then just takes it to a whole nother level. Then again, you can incorporate AI within those workflows.

And so we’re actively using that. And then I’d say those are those are the core tools. Sorry. One more core tool that I forgot to mention. It’s a big one for us is notion.

And so notion. We’ve you know, we’ve been on notion for a few years. We use it as a knowledge base. So all of our SOPs are in notion. All of our meeting notes go into notion.

But notion has a database structure. And then they have their AI notion AI, which is using some of these other models. But what’s nice about notion, because we have all of our information in there, and they have their enterprise search, which connects to our slack. It connects to our Google Calendar, our Gmail, that you can then access all of these different channels within one place. And so we can chat with notion AI.

And it has the context of the whole thing that we’re talking about, which is really powerful. and I’m just yeah, I’m a big believer in.

Dr. Jeremy Weisz: 19:39

It’s connected all your stuff. So like it really is context when you ask it a question or need data or something like that.

CJ Bruce: 19:45

Yes. Yeah. And the other piece that’s really nice about it is because it’s built around databases as the core infrastructure in notion that it allows you to build essentially your own custom applications in a very lightweight way. And so we have our, you know, our influencer contact database. So all of our food and beverage influencers we store in notion. And then we can query that we can run campaigns around that. The whole process is managed there.

And so it just creates this whole knowledge base and then allows us again to build these custom experiences on top of it in a very lightweight way. So big fan of notion as well.

Dr. Jeremy Weisz: 20:26

I’m wondering if. You heard or played around with cursor. I had someone on who’s very tech, seemed very technical, so when I pulled up he’s like, we use cursor for everything. Kind of like similar to how you were saying with cloud code, except they’re like, we do everything in cursor. I’m not sure. I’m curious for your take on that.

If you played around with that.

CJ Bruce: 20:46

I’ve played around with it a little bit. It’s interesting because so, you know, in my journey, like I mentioned, I’ve always been a nerd and I’ve been into into coding and programming. I wouldn’t consider myself a software engineer, but I had, you know, way back when I was 13, I got a book on C++ because I wanted to figure out how to write my own video games. Right. I want to make my own video games.

I was like, oh, I need to learn how to program. So I’ve dabbled a lot. And when I had the YouTube agency, I built like a very simple tool to estimate how much people were spending on their YouTube ads or if this YouTube content was like, truly viral, or if it was promoted with ads.

Dr. Jeremy Weisz: 21:23

Yeah, totally. I’ve done. Yeah.

CJ Bruce: 21:26

But so I think if I long way to answer your question, my experience with cursor is like if I was if I was a true developer, a software engineer using a coding interface, which is, you know, what cursor is or you like, you write your code and then you’re working with AI to build it as well. I could see the value there and how that would be awesome and you’d be able to dig in. What I like about Cloud Code is I, I don’t know the code, right? I don’t know that much about code. I just tell Claude, hey, I want to build this thing and I want it to do this.

Okay? Claude goes and builds it, and then I check it. I tell it what went wrong or what else I want to change. And it goes and does it. So that’s where, you know, I think there’s some difference.

And again, I wouldn’t say I’m an expert on exactly how that piece of it works. But it’s there’s a lot a lot of nuance and a lot of it is being, I think, evolving in real time as well.

Dr. Jeremy Weisz: 22:20

You mentioned CJ viral video. And so I’d love to hear, you know, I remember when I had I had one of the Harmon brothers, I don’t know if you guys, you’ve heard of their stuff on the podcast. and it was shocking. Maybe it shouldn’t have been shocking to me, but you know, it wasn’t actually viral. Like they spent millions of dollars on ads and then it starts going viral.

So I’m wondering what when you analyzed truly, you were analyzing viral videos. They didn’t put millions of dollars behind it because then it picks up steam and it becomes the virality, obviously, you know, increases because of that. What were some of the things people were doing or that you saw to actually a true viral video will define right now as there was no paid ads behind it. It just went viral somehow. I don’t know if it was like, maybe it’s luck, I don’t know, but what were some of the elements maybe you found across videos?

Right. Because you’re doing it for these brands to that is part of the the viral secret sauce I guess.

CJ Bruce: 23:24

Yeah. I think they’re luck is a component for sure. I think some other and a lot of the, you know, a lot of the pieces would have paid behind it. There’s also I would I would draw a distinction to just how much paid. So there could be a little bit of paid versus, you know, it’s all paid.

Dr. Jeremy Weisz: 23:40

You spend 100 bucks versus $1 million. It’s a big difference.

CJ Bruce: 23:43

Yeah, yeah. So you spend right? You spend, you know, $100 to get to get a little bit of viewership initially to show the social proof. And then that helps to drive it. So there’s something about that with momentum. And you see this with social followers as well.

Right. Like 0 to 10 K on Instagram is the hardest to get to. Right? Once you get to 100 K going up, it starts to scale faster. But so I think that, you know, timing is a big piece.

So and like the strategy up front right. Those are key elements. So one example of a viral video that we that we worked on with Ikea and this is maybe dating myself here, but they had a apple right. Apple has their annual event in September. Right.

And app. And they always had these videos kind of introducing the new products and and all of that. And so part of the strategy with Ikea, they have a their catalogue that comes out. And so they you know, it’s the Apple Mac book, right? I think that’s how it’s positioned.

So it was Ikea book book because it was actually a physical book. And so they shot a piece that was acting as if it was a new Apple product being launched, but it was just the Ikea catalog that was coming out. Right. And then released that like two weeks before the Apple event. And then this, to answer your question, I’m like helping it go viral.

It was a PR play. So then we reached out to a bunch of publications with this piece of content. Everybody’s looking to write something about Apple. People love to read things about Apple. It gets clicks so that all these publications picked up what Ikea was doing.

And then that, you know, that sparked it, that gave it the social proof. There’s a little bit of pain again, just like there were some views on the video when we pitched it. And that helped it helped it go. So that was a big piece working with talent also. So having a celebrity in there always helps.

Having influencers in there always helps us tapping into trends as well. So and that connects with the timing. So like right like more moving it up to today. So like viral video trends. So like an example that we did previously with with Sumo Citrus one of our clients where they had a this is yeah TikTok trends with some of the trends you described.

Dr. Jeremy Weisz: 25:51

I was going to say, you know. It’s it’s I don’t know, one of my daughters saw some video about Dubai chocolate. Right. And yeah.

I’m sure pistachio cream has gone through the roof in the past year or something because she’s like, oh, let’s make it. Okay. So we bought the, the whatever shredded thing, phyllo dough. We bought the, you know, lots of chocolate. We brought the, you know, plant based pistachio cream so I can eat it.

And because I’m lactose intolerant and and we’ve I’ve gotten who knows like ten jars of this stuff in the past like couple of months. And that was from seeing something through TikTok. I don’t she doesn’t even have TikTok, actually. So but it started on TikTok, so it’s huge.

CJ Bruce: 26:40

Yeah, yeah. I think and that’s a you know, that was just on that trend. Even I was at the the Winter fancy fair show in by the Specialty Food Association in San Diego just the other week. And you know, Dubai chocolate is everywhere, right? Everywhere. So many Dubai chocolate this, that, the other thing.

And there’s some, you know, food service. There’s a giant container of, you know, the pistachio chocolate cream.

You go to Sumo Citrus.

Dr. Jeremy Weisz: 27:06

We should come with a sumo citrus Dubai that would not go together.

CJ Bruce: 27:09

But but yeah. Maybe. Maybe chocolate covered sumo citrus with a little sea salt is one of them.

Dr. Jeremy Weisz: 27:15

There you go.

CJ Bruce: 27:16

Popular recipes.

Dr. Jeremy Weisz: 27:17

Really? Oh, nice.

CJ Bruce: 27:20

Yeah. So that’s so. Yeah. Food trends starting on on TikTok. And then that scaling into actual, You know, sales and people making the product. And then that turning into product development, right.

All of those things happen. And then just one thing I want to circle back with the viral video for sumo. So like TikTok trend that’s totally random seeming, which was this trend of me as a baby. This is a couple years ago, but it was the basic idea was like people were showing their kids like a ridiculous video and telling them that it was them as a baby, and they were like, oh yeah, I remember that, you know? And I was just like, totally over the top.

It was very funny. And then, you know, we we pitched and ran something like that for sumo, and it ended up getting over a million views organically. And it was one of those conversations where like, yeah, this seems weird. You don’t know why, but this is happening. But we need to we should try and take advantage of this, right?

And turn it around, produced it. And then those are the results.

Dr. Jeremy Weisz: 28:21

Yeah. It’s a weird trend that you hop on. You mentioned you mentioned the winter fancy fair. Talk about maybe some of the interesting products, brands, people that you came across.

CJ Bruce: 28:35

Yeah, there were a lot at the show. I think the I’d say some of the maybe talk about, you know, some of the trends and things there. Dubai chocolate was definitely, you know, definitely a thing. Protein maxing still a thing. You know, just like protein in everything they slap protein.

Dr. Jeremy Weisz: 28:51

I’m seeing that everywhere. Yeah. Totally.

CJ Bruce: 28:54

So you’re like, okay.

Dr. Jeremy Weisz: 28:55

All these name brands like Cheerios now has like a protein is a protein. I don’t even know if they changed the ingredients, but it just says protein.

CJ Bruce: 29:03

Yeah, that’s you see that too, right. So it’s gluten free. It’s like, well, it’s always been gluten free, right. We’re going to talk about it, you know. And then fiber is you know, fiber is kind of up and coming where there’s a lot of products with, you know, calling out the fiber content and fiber being the new protein and trying to push that.

So I think that, you know, those are interesting trends to see for sure. Come through the show. And then I think the this interesting push to this tension with AI. So we talked a lot about, you know, the technical side and the benefits of that all, all the, you know, all those shifts that are happening. And at the same time, we’re seeing, you know, people want more human connection.

There’s some skepticism around AI. And then how does that relate to food? And so the, you know, the experience of eating and sharing that. And how do you convey that? And, you know, where do brands lie with, you know, their usage of AI or not?

It was definitely a topic of conversation that, you know, that came up a lot at the show as well.

Dr. Jeremy Weisz: 30:01

Is it more of a trade show or are there speakers? How does it work?

CJ Bruce: 30:05

There are. There is some speaking more of a trade show, though. It’s mostly, you know, the main, main thing for me at least is, you know, walking the floor brands are exhibiting and then it’s, it’s, you know, really like buyers and distributors. So like distribution and retail. That’s what the brands are mainly looking for.

But there’s also some, you know, some connections, some education. So like a trend panel for example. And marketplaces where people can, you know, showcase and try try the product, tasting a lot of food. Yeah, it’s a fun, fun show. And the specialty food association, they have that and they have the the Winter Fancy Food show or, sorry, the summer fancy food show that’s in New York.

Dr. Jeremy Weisz: 30:47

Any any brand stick out to you? I’m looking if you’re watching the video here, you know the you know, there’s a summer fancy food show, the winter fancy food, fancy fair. Any interesting brands that you thought were cool?

CJ Bruce: 31:02

Yeah, there were a number of brands. I know, there’s so many. So I’ll say there was a pure beverage company, so that was one. So they had a, a soda, which was a about half the sugar of a normal soda. What was so there’s a lot of, you know, low soda product or, sorry, low sugar sodas that are out there.

What I liked about their theirs was that it was it was real sugar. So it was just half the amount, but it was cane sugar. But there weren’t any artificial sweeteners in the mix.

Dr. Jeremy Weisz: 31:35

I don’t even want to know. Like, I buy, like, ice, you know? And if someone asked me, I look, it’s like a paragraph of ingredients and I’m like, I like the taste. I’m like, I should not be drinking this, probably, but I do like the taste. So I get.

CJ Bruce: 31:51

It. You know, I I’ll have a Diet Coke here and there.

Dr. Jeremy Weisz: 31:55

This is one of my favorites.

CJ Bruce: 31:56

Bitchin sauce.

Dr. Jeremy Weisz: 31:57

Bitchin sauce is one of my favorites here I can see oh. So good. Yeah. Anyway, so that was that was one that you liked. Any others?

CJ Bruce: 32:06

Yeah, there’s a bunch. I’ll throw out a smaller one. Philosopher Foods. They had a product called Gut Nuts. So this is a small.

Dr. Jeremy Weisz: 32:14

I don’t know, someone around the.

CJ Bruce: 32:17

Probiotic. Probiotic nuts. Yeah.

Dr. Jeremy Weisz: 32:19

Yeah, yeah, I get it. It’s just. Yeah. Anyways.

CJ Bruce: 32:24

Bread Srsly? Actually, that you had on that list too. Probiotic nuts. Delicious.

Great flavor Bread Srsly, it’s a gluten free bread. They have they’re they’re cinnamon raisin especially is really.

Dr. Jeremy Weisz: 32:37

I’m like a 13.

CJ Bruce: 32:38

Year.

Dr. Jeremy Weisz: 32:38

Old boy. You know I laugh at those things. I support you, but yeah. So here you protein popcorn. Right.

That’s like. Any others that stick out.

CJ Bruce: 32:54

Let’s see. Yeah. Mochi love.

Dr. Jeremy Weisz: 32:55

Mochi. I saw that one. What is that?

CJ Bruce: 32:57

Yeah. Mochi. Love. So there are these delicious, like, cream filled mochi. So it’s refrigerated product.

It’s really high end. They source it from France. And so it’s like a two pack really, really delicious product. They’re also in Northern California. So that was another fun one.

And then let’s see some other fun names here Lil Bucks. It’s like a fun again fun name. I’m spinning them off of my head. I’m not on your list here, but they’re buckwheat snacks. So just yummy.

Crunchy again. Better kind of in the better for you category.

Dr. Jeremy Weisz: 33:38

And one one thing that stuck out you mentioned with the viral videos part CJ is and when I was looking at your website, the services part right, I know you do a lot of things. You do social media, do influencer marketing, Google ads, email marketing, SEO content, Amazon ads. I thought it was interesting. The Instacart ads, I don’t even think of that. Okay, yeah, that makes sense.

Instacart ads. Walmart. There’s so much here. AI consulting, AI workflow. One thing that stuck out was the and you mentioned with the viral video, which is the influencer marketing, right?

And I’m curious because like I think of that as far as like partnerships is the highest leverage thing. I think that a lot of business can do, and that is probably helps people put this on steroids, right? So maybe talk about some of the things you’ve seen, maybe mistakes people make with influencer marketing because there’s a lot that goes into it. Even like when I was reading through the description here, I mean, we’re talking about talent sourcing, contract negotiation, content direction, campaign management, content license. There’s so much here.

What are some mistakes people make with when they’re thinking about influencer marketing?

CJ Bruce: 34:46

Yeah that’s a great question. The so a few of the most common mistakes people make with influencer marketing I would say one is being too transactional. So that’s that’s a big one right? We we really frame it up internally as influencer relations. And you’re building relationships right. These are people.

It’s not someone you just pay for a post and then it’s very cold. So you just get better results all around and actually building the relationships. Another one is thinking about it as one and done. It really the best results come from repeated posts and ongoing partnership relationship. And I equate this to, you know, media buying like the the old adage in media buying right.

You’re looking at reach and frequency right. How many people are you reaching and how often are they seeing your ads? Think about influencer partnerships in the same way, right? When an influencer posts only a small percentage, you know 5 to 10% of their audience is going to see that post. You need to continually post to see more of them, their content, be seen by more of their audience.

They get to know your brand better. The content gets better. It builds up over time. So that’s that’s a key piece. I think another piece is just focusing or another, you know, mistake people make is just focusing on follower count so people can have a million followers and have no engagement.

And so really thinking about, you know, we see the sweet spot more with micro influencers where they have a more engaged following. They’re excited to work with brands and you get better results overall. And so thinking about that from like, well, is this truly going to get the engagement that we want and not just show a big number and then thinking about, you know, engaging with the influencers as well. So like when somebody posts for you, it’s not just, okay, let’s wait and see. You know, watch the money roll in, right.

Like go and engage with them. So comment on their posts, reply to people who are commenting to their posts. Right. And that whole back and forth.

Dr. Jeremy Weisz: 36:45

I don’t know if it’s not a laziness, but I think people just don’t think of it because like, I’ll post about someone on LinkedIn. It’s literally all about their company, nothing about me. And then the person doesn’t like it, share it, comment on it. So I literally will text them, hey, why are you being lazy? Like this is literally about you go and like and comment.

You know, I’m like, go engage with it. We just created a piece of marketing for you. So it’s like the same thing. It’s like it’s obvious it’s already done. It’s out there now, you know, propel it somehow.

CJ Bruce: 37:17

Yeah, absolutely. So doing that and planning for that, right. It’s like you need to allocate resources to that. Like we’ll do that on behalf of clients. But sometimes clients, you know, you have an in-house social team.

You need to be ready to do that, not just what’s happening on your channel, but also anybody who’s talking about you.

Dr. Jeremy Weisz: 37:34

And you help will identify these kind of Micro-influencers. I remember I was talking to someone and they said they sold more books on a very small podcast appearance, like small audience than they did on the Today show. Right? Like you were talking about engagement versus, you know, having a huge reach, right? Do you help people kind of identify these micro-influencers within their niche?

CJ Bruce: 38:00

Yeah, absolutely. And so we have, you know, we have our own database. We always do custom research for every client. And so we put together a brief on, you know, what are the key points that we want them to talk about. What type of audience are we trying to reach. Right.

What type of content are we trying to create? And then based on that, that executes our research. So again starting with our core database. And then we go beyond that to build a list for the client. And then we handle the whole process.

So we’re reaching out. We’re vetting both in terms of their their engagement the type of content that they make the the budget, making sure all of that fits. And then we narrow it down to the key influencers we want to work with. And then the content production, managing that whole aspect. And then also the once it’s posted, right, analyzing what worked and what didn’t work, what were the results we saw.

And this is another connected to this point on the mistakes people make. And kind of connects to the one off is, you know, again, drawing parallels to paid media where people know that, okay, I gotta spend money to learn and I’m going to iterate and see what the results were and then make changes. Thinking about this in the same way, like somebody you, an influencer creates a piece of content. Maybe it doesn’t perform as well as you thought it would. Don’t just write that off.

It’s like, well, dig into it a little more. Right. What what was the format of the content? What were they talking about? What was the hook in the content?

So iterating and evolving that and sometimes you don’t know what’s going to perform until it goes up. Right. So we might start with the.

Dr. Jeremy Weisz: 39:29

Test.

CJ Bruce: 39:30

Couple work. Then you go deeper. So yeah it’s always test and learn is core. You know continuous improvement is one of our core values. So we apply that internally externally everything we do.

Dr. Jeremy Weisz: 39:42

You mentioned you know sumo citrus and some bits and pieces here. But I kind of want to break it down a little bit about what are all the things you you did with them. Because it seems like a very, to me like a hard campaign to like promote something like a fruit like this, like how do you measure it? Like someone goes to the grocery store and gets it, I don’t know. So when you first start working with them, where did they where did you start?

Like what were some of the things you were doing with them?

CJ Bruce: 40:09

So the very beginning. We you know, it starts with strategy. So it was really, you know, where where are you selling the product? What are the goals for the brand and the organization understanding what existing capabilities they had and they had they had recently rebranded and new packaging. Right. And it was like the mission was really how do we how do we grow the brand? How do we really drive true brand awareness and adoption for Sumo Citrus and then working within the budget constraints again, the key distribution, and then coming up with a strategy to begin that growth.

And so that that was where it started. And it was heavily, you know, digital social influencer component from the beginning. And part of that came from, you know, they already had some start to a following on, on Instagram, and they had had a couple influencers talk about.

Dr. Jeremy Weisz: 41:00

Like. What kind of influencers are talking about, like sumo citrus products.

CJ Bruce: 41:04

A lot. Like chefs.

Dr. Jeremy Weisz: 41:06

Or I don’t I’m just trying to.

CJ Bruce: 41:07

Visualize much more broad. So the one of the first one big ones was Ava Chen, who she’s more like the fashion lifestyle side. And so she would.

Dr. Jeremy Weisz: 41:17

As you could see from me, that’s not I’m not a fashion person, so maybe I need to follow her. Maybe. Yeah.

CJ Bruce: 41:25

But posting things like, you know, this is like her outfit of the day and she’s got a sumo citrus, right? Or like, here are my shoes for the day, and sumo citrus is a part of that. But really it had it had a core cult following. That was that was something from the beginning that people who knew it loved it. So I, you know, I went I told a friend that I was working on Sumo citrus and he was immediately like, you’re working on Sumo citrus?

I love sumo citrus. It’s like, I haven’t even tried it yet.

Dr. Jeremy Weisz: 41:47

Like I’m doing my job.

CJ Bruce: 41:49

Yeah, but that reaction, you know, happens again and again and again. And so, you know, you can you can fast forward me seeing now like where we are today. So we’re currently in sumo citrus season. It’s a 2026 season. And we have you know there’s out-of-home ads that we’re managing.

We have TV connected TV.

Dr. Jeremy Weisz: 42:08

Wow.

CJ Bruce: 42:09

We grew their whole email marketing program from zero, right? There was no email, which is another, you know, piece. People are often they think about, you know, we sell at retail. Like why would we build an email list? It’s obvious for DTC.

Yeah, but there’s a ton of value in having one. You’re owning your own data, right? And as you get people on that list, the cost for you to communicate with those people continuously over time is much lower than the cost to continue to reach people with paid media every time. And then we start to enrich the data. We can survey the list, we understand who they are, where they are, and so that the value there really grows over time.

And we can target those subscribers with ads across all channels. So people come in and now we have a core list that we could target that across any ad platform. So that’s been a big piece.

Dr. Jeremy Weisz: 42:57

And I’m going to just talk about the email piece for a second, because that my question was going to be, how do you entice someone to sign up for an email for a sumo citrus product? Right. And I’m looking okay. Makes sense. Like I’m looking here, which is okay.

There’s recipes that would entice them. Branded swag entices them. Is there anything that surprised you on what will entice someone to join an email list to pursue a citrus?

CJ Bruce: 43:26

Yeah, I think the I don’t know if it surprised me, but I think the, you know, one of the biggest drivers is running sweepstakes and contests, right? People love to win stuff.

Dr. Jeremy Weisz: 43:37

And so like a lifetime supply of citrus, like, what’s the what what’s the sweet.

CJ Bruce: 43:41

So actually, you know, one of the best performing things has been win free sumo citrus for the season. So we run that. That’s a preseason. So we ran that in December. Right.

You sign up for the email list and there’s other things you can do to get extra entries right that drive some virality. And then you have a chance to win. You know, basically we send you a box of sumo citrus every month in season. So that’s great, right? And then and then we do larger, you know, kind of different interest targeted sweepstakes during the season.

So this year, right now we’re running a joyride sweepstakes, which is basically getting a your like winter vacation. Right? So it’s a large it’s $10,000 in like a winter vacation sumo citrus sweepstakes. And we’re we’re also that’s paired with a mobile tour we’re doing where we are going to be at multiple locations at ski resorts through throughout ski season. So obviously it’s winter time.

Sumo citrus is a winter fruit. It pairs with the ski snowboard activity community. And so that’s kind of you know, how we’re doing that across channels, right? But that type of sweepstakes, it drives an interested audience. People sign up again for a chance to win.

And then we you know, we measure. Yeah. Obviously some of those people sign up just for the chance and then they bounce. And but over time what you start to build because people are engaged. We clean the list of people who don’t engage, and then we get, you know, we get comments like to your point earlier, I’m on a list for a citrus fruit, you know, and somebody I don’t know how I got on this list for this citrus fruit, but I just got this great email and somebody posts that on Instagram.

So it’s, you know, if you could do it for citrus fruit, you could do it for anything.

Dr. Jeremy Weisz: 45:28

That’s what I exactly I was thinking, it’s like, if you could do this for citrus, like you could, you could do this for any type of product. KH first of all, I have one last question before I ask it. I just want to point people to check out The Missing Ingredient com to learn more. You can check them out there. My last question is just you mentioned some events.

I’m curious, what are your some of your favorite events that you have attended that you want to attend in the space? What are some of those?

CJ Bruce: 45:57

Yeah, I think so. We talked about the winter fancy fair. I think other things coming up Expo West is, you know, the Natural Products Expo. That’s probably the biggest show. So that one’s coming up.

In the past, I’ve attended Nosh and Nosh Live and Bevnet live. So Nosh being the kind of natural food side and Bevnet being the beverage side, that’s been great. I want to attend Newtopia, which is in I was in Boulder at least last year, so that’s kind of a smaller show, a little more intimate show would be interested in that. The the summer fancy food show as well. And then the another one I’ll call out is naturally network.

So naturally network has chapters across the country. And so I’m a member of the naturally NorCal. There’s naturally San Diego that did some stuff with the Winter fancy fair. So those are kind of like regional chapters, and they do their own smaller events and groups that I think are really great.

Dr. Jeremy Weisz: 46:55

And conscious capitalism. I don’t know if it still is a conference. It had a conference, I think it does. And you were involved with that too, right?

CJ Bruce: 47:04

Yeah. When I was in LA, I was on the board of the CLA, Conscious Capitalism LA chapter. And so we did a number of local events. I do have a larger, you know, national event as well, and I was on the board as co-president in my last year there, which was, which was a challenging it was Covid hit. And so then, you know, our whole thing was around in-person events and connecting people.

And so there was a lot of pivoting and, you know, moving dynamically to, to fit that. But yeah, the conscious capitalism community is definitely, definitely another one to check out.

Dr. Jeremy Weisz: 47:39

Love it. CJ everyone check out themissingingredient.com. Check out more episodes of the podcast. We’ll see you next time. CJ, thanks so much.

Outro: 47:48

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