After Matt Matros sold his caffeinated sparkling water brand Limitless to Keurig Dr Pepper (KDP) in 2020 – his second business to exit in the past 10 years – the serial entrepreneur wasn’t one to spend much time doing nothing. Now, Matros is looking to the backend of the food and beverage business with a trio of new ventures, including BrandRock, a specialized CPG insurance firm launching this month.
Matros told BevNET this week that he has partnered with ForceBrands founder Josh Wand and former Hu and Sir Kengsington’s CEO Mark Ramadan to launch BrandRock, an insurance agency specializing in protections for food and beverage companies. The firm has formed a joint venture with global insurance group Marsh McLennan to support the project, Matros said.
According to Matros, the inspiration for BrandRock came from his own experiences while scaling Limitless. In the leadup to the brand’s acquisition by KDP, Limitless was poised to launch in Walmart when a defect in its non-BPA cans resulted in the company losing around $2 million worth of product to leaks.
While Matros thought he had a strong insurance policy in place, he said he was shocked to discover that his plan did not cover manufacturing defects, and his agency suggested he sue or seek compensation from the manufacturer instead. Not wanting to enter costly litigation amid a major deal, Matros said he chose to eat the cost of the lost products.
With BrandRock, Matros and his partners are now aiming to provide specialized insurance policies for food and beverage makers that most insurance providers don’t cover, including stock throughput insurance, tail coverage, recall protection and more.
In the case of recall insurance, Matros suggested that while most insurers offer protections in the event of a recall they will only cover the costs of products already out in the market, while BrandRock will also offer customers coverage for PR and media spend, warehouse inventory and more.
“What’s missing from [most recall insurance] is what’s called ‘Rehabilitation of Brand’ insurance,” he said. “Money to pay for PR and marketing to help support the brand or tell the story around the brand. Or for the actual removal of the goods – the destroying of the product that’s not in distribution and actually sitting in your warehouse. These are exactly the issues that brand owners think they are insured for, but they’re not. So they find out the hard way.”
BrandRock is currently preparing to launch its website later this month and Matros said the firm will begin a larger promotional push around Expo East in September.
Matros isn’t the only former brandside food and beverage veteran getting into the insurance game. Chad Woolery, a former sales lead at brands like Sambazon, RIPE and Siete Family Foods, launched his own CPG-focused insurer in 2020 – SALT CPG – which offers services ranging from product liability and cyber breach protections to creating employee benefit packages.
But BrandRock is far from the only post-Limitless project Matros is juggling. He’s also advising brands preparing for exits of their own with his new firm M2 Advisors, which he launched in April, and has also come into affiliate marketing company Test Dryve as a co-founder.
Test Dryve was started with CPG Affiliate Partners CEO Krik Angacian and focuses on driving sampling and trial for D2C food and beverage brands. So far the firm has worked with companies like Tru Drinks, EBOOST, Magic Mind and Huron among others.
According to Matros, Test Dryve works with brands to develop online promotional deals targeting consumers who are more likely to become repeat customers. For example, Test Dryve may help develop and market an online sampling program where a beverage brand sells a single can for $1 in order to get trial with new consumers, with coupons and other promotional items included in the package.
Consumers willing to pay a discounted price to try a product, he suggested, are much more likely to later buy the product again. As well, the brand will now have the consumer’s email and other information for future marketing opportunities.
“The best way I like to describe it is picture Expo East or Expo West, where people just walk around munching and taking hundreds of samples,” he said. “Imagine if a brand said ‘I’ll give you a sample, but you gotta give me your email address first.’”
For Matros personally, he said his move to the backend side of CPG comes from both a want to help other entrepreneurs by providing services he lacked building brands, while also recognizing there was significant white space in the market.
“I think I can actually affect and help more entrepreneurs now than I ever could before,” he said. “It’s the old expression, you could be a gold miner or you could sell picks and shovels.”