Morgan Zanotti isn't your typical food industry mogul. Before co-founding Primal Kitchen and selling it to Kraft Heinz for $200 million, she was living the surf bum dream in South America.
Watch/Listen: YouTube | Apple Podcasts | Spotify | RSS Feed
Join Bora Celik as he chats with Morgan Zanotti, the Co-founder of Primal Kitchen.
"I spent 315 hours on a bus everywhere from Buenos Aires to Ushuaia," Morgan recalls. "I lived in Mexico, Costa Rica, learned how to surf in Ecuador, just kind of did the vagabond thing for two and a half years."
But that wanderlust sparked something unexpected - a passion for clean eating that would shape her future.
"I met a girl from California who turned me on to this cleanse," Morgan says. "It just kind of kicked me off on this almost personal obsession with hacking my own health."
That obsession led her to Mark Sisson, a health blogger "doing paleo before paleo was cool." When Mark mentioned wanting to start a food company, Morgan jumped at the chance.
Their first product? Avocado oil mayonnaise.
"We ran our first run of 18,000 jars," Morgan says. "We were like, if we sell this out in a year, that would be good. We sold it out online in one week."
That lightning-fast success was just the beginning. Morgan and Mark expanded into salad dressings, bars, and other condiments - always sticking to their clean ingredient philosophy.
"No seed oils, no added sugar," Morgan explains. "We were the first people to put avocado oil in a condiment."
Their timing was perfect. The paleo movement was exploding, and health-conscious consumers were hungry for cleaner options. Primal Kitchen rode that wave all the way to a $200 million acquisition by Kraft Heinz just four years after launch.
But it wasn't all smooth sailing. Morgan remembers the stress of rapid expansion:
"We launched the mayonnaise in February. By December, we rolled out a bar, a bottle of avocado oil, and two salad dressings. I would highly recommend not doing that with one person. I was incredibly stressed out."
Looking back, Morgan credits their success to a few key factors:
- Being early adopters of Instagram marketing
- Partnering with up-and-coming online retailer Thrive Market
- Focusing on retail fundamentals like promotional calendars
She also emphasizes the importance of having a clear exit strategy from day one:
"We knew we wanted to sell it one day," Morgan says. "I think that was actually really helpful for us because we made business decisions backwards based off what the end goal was."
Now, Morgan's embarking on a new adventure - a protein-infused sparkling water called Waay. She's applying lessons learned from Primal Kitchen, like the importance of starting small:
"I'm a big fan of who can make my product with the smallest MOQ (minimum order quantity)," she explains.
But she's also tackling new challenges, like estate planning and finding the right advisors:
"I ran into a legal issue already and talked to four different lawyers and got four entirely different opinions," Morgan says. "Figuring out who are the right people to have around the table is definitely where I'm at right now."
As for aspiring food entrepreneurs, Morgan's advice is refreshingly straightforward:
"You gotta talk to people," she insists. "It's just like a never-ending game of 'Can you help me? If not, do you know who can?'"
From surf bum to condiment queen to beverage innovator, Morgan Zanotti's journey proves that sometimes the most unexpected paths lead to the sweetest success - or in her case, the cleanest mayo.
Help build the opportunity economy for creators and brands. Request your invite at collabs.io
