R&D Radio: Travis Zissu from Scale Food Lab

The Startup CPG Podcast

Startup CPG

Startup, Food, Business, Beverage, Cpg, Entrepreneurship

4.9 • 642 Ratings

🗓️ 13 April 2026

⏱️ 31 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

In this episode of R&D Radio, hosted by Adam Yee, Adam sits down with Travis Zissu, founder of Scale Food Labs — an FDA-registered pilot food manufacturing facility in Golden, Colorado helping emerging brands turn benchtop formulas into scalable, production-ready products. With over a decade of food industry experience spanning culinary school at the CIA, GNT Natural Colors, and Chew Innovation, Travis has made it his mission to democratize the product development knowledge he's accumulated and make scalability a first principle, not an afterthought.

Travis walks through his end-to-end process — from ingredient sourcing and prototype development to consumer testing, pilot runs, and full production — and explains why discovering problems before you hit a manufacturer is worth far more than any single formula tweak. He also shares why 90% acceptance is the real launch threshold, and what founders get dangerously wrong when they fall in love with their home kitchen recipe.

He also dives into two standout client stories: a founder who came to Expo West with four vague ideas and left with a launched, distributor-ready hot-filled acidified product — and a farmer's market entrepreneur who went from buying spice jars at Whole Foods to opening a $12 million facility.

Listen in as they discuss:

Why sourcing from scalable suppliers must happen before you ever touch the bench
The danger of switching ingredient suppliers at scale — and the real cost of finding out too late
Why you'll never launch exactly what you made at home, and why that's okay
How Scale Food Labs stress tests pilots: turning up heat, skipping stirs, and pouring off at multiple intervals
Protein trends: the rise of animal-based protein, BLG (beta-lactoglobulin) whey, and a supply chain already running dry through 2027
Fiber as a parallel trend — and why GI distress is the thing that kills fiber-forward products
Cell-based meats: what it's actually like to taste cultured chicken, and why Travis is rooting hard for the category

Episode Links:
Travis Zissu – Founder, Scale Food Labs
🌐 Website: www.scalefoodlabs.com
🔗 LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/zissu

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Episode music by Super Fantastics

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Transcript

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0:00.0	Hey, friends, today I get to tell you about another awesome brand in the Redwood Capital Partners Consumer Fund.
0:07.7	You probably know them already. They're called Wild Wonder. It is a sparkling, prebiotic and probiotic drink that makes gut health actually taste amazing.
0:15.8	And it is my go-to when I'm washing down a sandwich at Airwam.
0:19.4	Wild Wonder was founded by Rosa Lee, inspired by the herbal
0:22.1	tonics her grandmother brewed while she was growing up in China. Rosa took those heritage-inspired
0:26.7	ingredients and reimagined them into a modern drink that's light, fruity, and refreshing, kind of like
0:31.8	it came straight from a California produce stand. Every can has five grams of fiber and one billion probiotics, so you get real
0:39.9	functional benefits without sacrificing flavor. Wild Wonder comes in fun creative flavors like
0:45.4	pink pomello limey, raspberry leachy, and strawberry passion. If you want to try it for yourself,
0:51.2	head to drinkwildwonder.com and grab a variety pack. You can use the
0:55.3	promo code, Startup CBG at checkout.
1:21.6	Working as a fully certified FDA facility does prevent us from doing certain things like saying, hey, here's this bottle, go have your friends and family try it.
1:29.4	Of course, we can give them the warning of all that. Try to make sure. We follow all the rules and regulations that we need to to still run as an FGA certified facility, but we try to make it as flexible as we can within the rules so that we
1:35.2	can be a place to play, a place to learn, a place to test.
1:39.2	Hey, everyone. This is Adam Yee, food scientists and podcast host of Startup CPG's new podcast section R&D Radio,
1:46.4	where you interview food scientists and product developers and what they do and how they can help you build your CPG business.
1:53.2	Today I'm joined by Travis Zuzu, founder of Scale Food Labs, to talk about his manufacturing facility
1:59.0	and how it's helping startups get into market.
2:02.4	Travis brings over a decade of food industry experience from culinary school at the CIA to roles at
2:07.4	GNT and Chew Innovation. And now he's focused on making product development scalable for
2:12.9	emerging brands from day one. We'll dig into ingredient sourcing, the protein and fiber trends shaping the
2:18.5	industry, of course, and what it really takes to go from bench to production. Scale Food Labs has
	...

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