New Primal – Revenue Is Vanity: The Hard Truth About Scaling CPG

What if the fastest way to grow was walking away from $15 million in sales?

Rose Hamilton, CEO of Compass Rose Ventures and co-host of The Story of a Brand Show, sits down with Jason Burke, Founder and CEO of New Primal, for a masterclass on commercial discipline. Jason shares his evolution from Googling “how to make beef jerky” without any food manufacturing background to building a CPG powerhouse — and how New Primal cut 36 products down to a focused core, shifted from an impulse snack to a high-velocity lunchbox staple, and learned that revenue without healthy margins is just noise.

This is not a top-line growth story. It’s a margin and focus story.

The $15 million cut. How eliminating profitable yet complex SKUs and categories actually unlocked faster overall growth.

The hidden tax of complexity. Why adding “one more SKU” taxes management bandwidth, operations, and capital far more than founders realize.

Top-line vanity vs. enterprise value. Shifting away from chasing rapid top-line revenue to building a sustainable, margin-accretive business model.

Listening to consumer behavior. How feedback from parents led to pivoting into mini meat sticks and capturing the expanding kids’ lunchbox market.

The retailer reality check. What a brand truly owes the shelf after getting authorized, and why distribution without demand is a dangerous trap.

Founder discipline. Why the hardest part of scaling is learning to stop inventing new products and start mastering the core.

Join us in listening to this episode for one of the most disciplined CPG conversations the show has produced. Rose and Jason cover SKU rationalization, margin discipline, retail reality, and what it really takes to build a durable food brand without falling into the top-line-vanity trap.

For more on New Primal visit: https://newprimal.com/