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Glen Powell has proven that he can hold it down as the star of blockbuster movies, from Twisters to Hit Man. But on October 3, in his hometown of Austin, he was holding down the grill at the parking lot of his local Walmart. Powell’s grill work was pulling double duty as promotion for his new TV comedy, Chad Powers, and for Smash Kitchen, his clean food brand, which launched at Walmart in April. The brand debuted with a suite of condiments including ketchup, mustard, mayonnaise, and barbecue sauce that look and taste on par with heritage brands but are made with all-organic ingredients. Priced from $1.97 to $4.97, they’re just pennies more expensive than their legacy competitors. After just six months on shelves, Smash Kitchen has lived up to its name, contending that its revenue is significantly outpacing that of legacy brands in the category, including Heinz, French’s, and Hellmann’s. On October 7, Smash Kitchen introduces a line of oilsextra-virgin olive oil, avocado oil, and coconut oilall priced from $4.97 to $15.97. [Photo: Smash Kitchen] Sales figures shared exclusively with Fast Company show that . . . Smash Kitchen has generated more than $10 million in sales since April, and is on track to top $20 million by the end of the year. As Powell told me from his home in Austinjust hours before slinging burgers for his neighborscooking oils are a crucial part of his broader goals for the brand. “The intention was always for us to take over the American pantry,” he says. Thanks to the brand’s bona fides, consumers becoming increasingly ingredient-conscious, and Walmart’s efforts to capture those consumers dollars, Powell is poised to become the leading man of the Walmart shopper’s basket. [Photo: Smash Kitchen] The right time for a challenger Smash Kitchen started with Powell’s interest in making organic food accessible to more people, but it took off when he met two veterans of popular consumer brands. With Sameer Mehta, cofounder of dog food brand Jinx, and Sean Kane, who helped launch celeb-led brands the Honest Co. (with Jessica Alba) and Hello Bello (with Kristen Bell and Dax Shepard), he settled on the idea of reformulating pantry basics. The trio decided to start with condiments, a $12 billion market, according to Mintel. And the timing couldn’t be better. Though the market is dominated by large legacy brands, data from Boston Consulting Group (BCG) shows big companiesthose with more than $1 billion in annual saleslost share by about 3% between 2020 and 2024. In the same timeframe, smaller condiment manufacturers, with revenue under $1 billion annually, have grown share by 2.2%, while private label has grown 0.9%. It’s happening at a time when BCG’s data shows growth flatlining in categories associated with heavy processing. But brands that have positioned themselves as focused on ingredients, like Kraft Heinz’s Primal Kitchen and Unilever’s Sir Kensington’s, tend to be sold at higher price points or in higher-end stores. Powell was determined to create products that contain better ingredients but are accessible to everyday Americans. “I didn’t grow up in a place where I was able to buy organic,” he says. “You buy what you can afford.” [Photo: Smash Kitchen] Expanding Smash Kitchens Range Now Smash Kitchen has entered the cooking oil aisle, and a market segment thats expected to reach $7.5 billion by 2028. The company has created an extra-virgin olive oil, an avocado oil, and a coconut oil, all free of artificial preservatives and flavors, all available in both traditional and spray bottles. As with condiments, Powell says price was a key consideration. “We spent time sourcing the best avocados and olives and coconuts,” he says. “But we’re trying to understand how to be as efficient as possible, to make sure we can get the best prices for the customer.” That’s where his cofounders Mehta and Kane bring their expertise at scaling cleaner products affordably (they also used their past experience with Walmart to snag the retailer as Smash Kitchen’s launch partner). With 4,500 U.S. stores and the accompanying logistics capabilities, Mehta says Walmart has “provided the scale for us to command a really great price.” Dan Frommer, retail expert and founder of The New Consumer, says launching at Walmart is not easy task. It requires a lot of capital for manufacturing inventory, as well as expertise in logistics to get products into stores and onto shelves. “Going from zero to Walmart’s scale is impossible for many brands,” Frommer says. “As a startup, you need to have deep pockets, as well as a very strong ground game.̶ [Photo: Smash Kitchen] Walmart’s evolution Meanwhile, Walmart has also focused on appealing to the changing tastes of U.S. consumers. The company just announced that it will eliminate synthetic dyes and other additives from all in-house brands by 2027. Last year it launched a new private-label brand called Bettergoods that is carefully calibrated to customers’ desires, including more organic ingredients. Many American consumers are cutting down on their household spending because of inflation and worries about the economy. Walmart has benefited from this trend, acquiring more customers with household incomes above $100,000 and $200,000 who may be opting to shop at the retailer instead of more expensive grocers like Whole Foods. “Walmart has done a really good job of making their assortment friendly to higher-income consumers,” Frommer says. “If you wanted healthy soda or snacks, you previously had to go to Whole Foods, but you can now get many of them at Walmart.” Still, these cleaner brands often cost more than legacy national brands. Smash Kitchen ketchup costs $3.97, while Heinz is $3.59. Smash Kitchens organic extra-virgin olive oil is priced at $8.97 for a 16.9-ounce bottle, while Walmart’s in-house brand costs $7.36. But the newcomers success suggests that its prices are not cost-prohibitive. “For core consumers, this is an affordable upgrade,” says Melody Richard, Walmart’s SVP of Pantry. “And for higher-income customers, these are much more affordable prices than they’re used to paying elsewhere.” [Photo: Smash Kitchen] The Celebrity Brand Playbook Call it (Paul) Newman’s law of celebrity brands: For every celebrity brand with a dedicated celebrity founder, like Newman’s Own, there is at least one that just slaps a celeb likeness or endorsement on some white-label products. Kanewho partnered with Alba, then Bell and Shepard, on new brandssays Powell takes his role as cofounder seriously. Powell has taken a particular interest in taste-testing the products. “Growing up in middle America, a lot of my friends and family assumed that organic food just doesn’t taste as good,” Powell says. “I’m trying to show that foods that are good for you can also taste great.” But Powell’s biggest asset to the brand is his enormous platform. It can be hard for new brands to break out in a crowded market. Powell is prominently featured in posters on Walmart endcaps featuring Smash Kitchen products, and he promotes the products in videos across social media, including one in which he’s a “condiment sommelier.” “We’re really fortunate to have somebody like Glen who has a microphone neither of us have,” Mehta says. “He’s on track with culture and social media. We don’t just need shelf space at a big retailer, we need a microphone to tell the story of what it means to be a clean, organic label.” Kane says his work launching brands with celebrities has taught him that that their long-term success depends on being able to stand on their own. For instance, the Honest Co. continues to do well even though Alba stepped away from the role of chief creative officer last year. “The smart thing to do is to use the celebrity for the first year or two as a launch mechanism,” says Frommer. “Ultimately, people are only going to keep buying them over and over if they like the product and if they serve a purpose in their life.” That is certainly Powells hopethat the brand stands on its own, and that people continue to buy Smash Kitchen products because they love them, not because of the companys famous founder. “This is why I’m not putting my face on the bottle,” he says.
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At the beginning of this year, a climate tech startup called CarbonCapture was ready to break ground on its first commercial pilot at a site in Arizona. But the project is now about to open 2,700 miles away, in Alberta, Canada. The company started considering new locations shortly after the inauguration, as the political climate around climate projects quickly changed. We were looking for regions where we felt we could get support for deployment, says CarbonCapture CEO Adrian Corless. Canada was an obvious choice given the existence of good government programs and incentives that are there. [Photo: CarbonCapture] CarbonCapture makes modular direct air capture technology (DAC), units that remove CO2 from the air. In late March, reports came out that the Department of Energy (DOE) was considering cancelling grants for two other large DAC projects, including one in Louisiana that involved the company. By the end of May, by the time the DOE’s Office of Clean Energy Demonstrations announced that it was cancelling $3.7 billion in other grants, the startup had already signed an agreement with Deep Sky Alpha, a facility in Canada that is simultaneously deploying and testing multiple direct air capture projects to help the industry grow. The startup had already self-funded its planned project in Arizona and built the modules for the site. Because it didnt rely on government funding for the project, it could have moved forward in the U.S. But it saw that it would be harder to move from the pilot to later commercial projects in Arizona. Now, it’s planning to build its first full commercial project in Canada as well. (The company wouldn’t disclose the cost for either project.) [Photo: CarbonCapture] We just didnt see a pathway in the U.S. to be able to show that linkage between doing a commercial pilot, starting to generate [carbon dioxide removal] credits and selling them, and then being able to raise the capital for something thats much larger, Corless says. Canada offers an investment tax credit of 60% for direct air capture equipment, plus an additional 12% for projects in Alberta, the heart of Canadas oil and gas industry. The country also has strong support for R&D and first-of-a-kind deployments for early-stage companies, and multiple programs supporting climate tech specifically. The Canada Growth Fund, for example, is a $15 billion fund designed to advance decarbonization. And while Mark Carney, Canadas prime minister, has taken steps backward on climate policy, hes also said that he wants the country to be the worlds leading energy superpower both for conventional energy and clean energy. The situation in the U.S. is very different. Trump recently called climate change a con job in a speech to the United Nations. When Chris Wright, the energy secretary, recently canceled another $13 billion for renewable energy projects, he said, if you cant rock on your own after 33 years, maybe thats not a business thats going places, despite the fact that fossil fuels have gotten subsidies from the U.S. for three times as long. Fossil fuel subsidies are now nearly $35 billion a year, or as much as $760 billion if you include health and environmental costs. Direct air capture tech arguably hasnt been hit quite as hard as other forms of climate tech, like offshore wind power. When the One Big Beautiful Bill gutted other funding, from tax credits for EVs to solar panels, it left in place some credits that facilities can earn for capturing carbon as they operate. But the Department of Energy recently cut multiple grants that would have helped new DAC projects get built. One of the large projects CarbonCapture was supportingthe Louisiana facility previously under review, called Project Cypresslost funding, and the company just received official notice of its cancellation. Corless says that the startup is still carefully watching what happens in D.C.and the company still hasn’t made any announcements about whether it might move its whole company, not just particular projects. Right now, it’s headquartered in L.A. with around 50 employees. It also has a small factory for its equipment in Arizona, next to the site where it had planned to build its first carbon capture facility. [Photo: CarbonCapture] Moving the first project to Canada happened quickly. Five weeks ago, the site in Alberta was an empty field. Four weeks ago, the company shipped the modules it had built in Arizna to Canada. Construction crews have been finishing the final touches, and the company plans to begin commissioning the system next week. Deep Sky Alpha already had some key infrastructure in place, including access to solar power to run the equipment. The pilot will ultimately be able to capture 2,000 tons of CO2 a year, which will be buried underground. It’s possible that other companies might follow CarbonCapture’s move. “I think that there definitely are going to be several companies that are looking at the same data that we’re looking at,” Corless says. “And I think that it’s not lost on the Canadian government that they have an opportunity as well to step up and potentially take a leadership role in this space, which the U.S. has really owned for the last five years.” “The U.S. does have a real advantage, even without DOE support,” says Erin Burns, director at the nonprofit Carbon180. “But its very likely that uncertainty around DOE programs will weaken that edge. Some projects will move abroad. Some that might have thrived here will not. Others will achieve only a fraction of their potential. Each outcome is a setback on its own. Together they add up to millions, possibly billions, in lost investment and slower American innovation.”
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E-Commerce
Were more than half a decade removed from pandemic lockdownswhen remote work profoundly upended the 9-to-5yet the preference for workday flexibility endures, a new report shows. According to the recently released ninth annual State of Hybrid Work report from Owl Labs, a video conference tech company, 65% of workers are interested in a concept the report refers to as microshifting: structured flexibility with short, nonlinear work blocks matched to your energy, duties, or productivity. In other words: breaking up your work shift into a bunch of tiny ones. Perhaps you log on at 6 a.m. to get a head start, then take a break for a midmorning Pilates class before clocking back on to finish the days tasks. Or maybe you pause in the afternoon to do the school run or take the dog out, shifting your final work block into the evening, when the madness has settled down. Like similar methods, such as timeboxing or the Pomodoro technique, microshifting rethinks the flow of a traditional workday, zeroing in on when the individual feels most productive. Rather than being chained to a desk for eight hours each day, microshifting breaks up the slog into short concentrated bursts of productivity. Blast through your inbox, or go head-down on a project, and around that balance personal responsibilities and life events that crop up without notice. The new report shows that microshifting has proven particularly popular among Gen Zers and millennials, with nearly 7 in 10 reporting that they would prefer such an approach at work. Its widely accepted that productivity cannot be measured simply by hours clocked. Research on attention spans and productivity has shown that using shorter, intentional work intervals helps sustain energy, prevents cognitive fatigue, and sharpens focus. Workplaces arent as rigid and structured as they once were, Kickresume cofounder and CEO Peter Duris told Fast Company. Flexibility is one of the most common and sought-after perks in a job, whether thats having the option to work from home or working flexible hours. In fact, Owl Labs found that employees were prepared to give up 9% of their annual salary for flexible working hours (and 8% for a four-day workweek). Microshifting is a great way for employees to balance their personal responsibilities alongside work, Duris said. If you have the option to work microshifts, it could be worth discussing with your manager. This may be especially game-changing for parents or carers. Rather than an opportunity to slack off, look at microshifts like mini work sprints. If you give it a try, digital scheduling tools and productivity apps like Focus Friend can stop you from feeling scatterbrained and keep you focused and on track while divvying up the day. Start by figuring out when you are most productive and tackle your high-priority tasks then. If youre a morning person, get to work right away and schedule your low-priority tasks for when your productivity levels wane in the afternoon. If youre a night owl, get your workout classes or errands out of the way first, then lock in for the evening grind. Its always a good idea to get as acquainted as possible with your productivity styleat least until the next business buzzword gets coined and makes you rethink everything again.
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E-Commerce
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