Building a B2B Marketing Agency in the Coffee & Foodservice Space

Meet Sadie Renee: Co-founder at The Usual Company

May 29, 2025

Hey, it’s Alex!

This week, we're featuring Sadie Renee, the co-founder of The Usual Company, a specialized agency helping food and beverage brands with go-to-market strategies, particularly in the coffee and food service space.

We got into how her experience as VP of Oatly's Coffee Channel shaped her approach to partnerships, why baristas are secretly influencing food culture, and how she balances being a "die-hard realist" with her co-founder's "eternal optimist" mindset.

If you're running an agency, navigating the challenges of year one in business, or interested in the untapped potential of B2B partnerships, you'll find plenty of insights here.

Dive in below!

The Usual Company Quick Stats:

📅 Time in Business: 1 Year
👥 Number of Clients: 8
💀 Times She Almost Quit: Innumerable
🚀 Businesses Started Prior: 1

Background and experience...

Years ago, I started in a variety of hospitality positions, a lot of behind-the-barista work, and then moved into marketing and engagement strategy for cafés and other food and beverage brands.

I scaled a consumer-facing coffee crawl concept with a midwest marketing agency, The LAB, for several years, and had a lot of fun doing that. I also managed event logistics there, and built out a pretty robust sponsorship program tailored to the culture and business scene in each of those markets. I’m so grateful for everything I learned during that phase of my career - so many connections, so much skill building.

I started working for Oatly as their Pacific Northwest Market development manager in 2017. I was really lucky to work on a lot of different projects there.

I helped with the go-to-market strategy for their frozen dessert line and then came back to the coffee and food service side of things to build out their distribution network. I did a lot of sales and infrastructure management as we scaled, and got to work with so many talented people.

Ace Bertin helped immensely with that build, and joined The Usual as a Strategist not long after we launched.

My last role there was vice president of the Coffee Channel…

I took over that role from The Usual Company's co-founder, Bryan Harmer Hasho. He was actually employee number one in the US at Oatly. We had a wonderful time building up the Coffee Channel there together - never a dull moment.

Explanation of "the Coffee Channel"...

The 'Coffee Channel' was a novel thing during our time at Oatly.

Most CPG companies that have some sort of B2B strategy focus predominantly on retail — sometimes food service. We took a really unique approach to what most companies would consider food service, and were able to connect with a lot of barista communities.

I think the barista role has always been really influential, sometimes in a really overlooked way. There's been this rise of what's known as 'third wave' specialty coffee. Baristas really gave a platform to the care, dedication and craft of the drink, the sourcing of the coffee, and to the other ingredients that were being used.

That hadn't really been seen before, the kind of experience elevation you'd expect at high end cocktail bars or Michelin-starred restaurants — places that genuinely elevated the coffee drinking experience and highlighted how wonderful coffee can be.

With Oatly, we had baristas that were really excited about the product itself and promoting it, which was a really influential part of oat milk's success. The brand showed up in those markets in really authentic ways that supported localized barista communities.

Typically, you'll find that some of the best baristas in the city are good friends with the best bartenders in the city — or with the best chefs in the city. Even though they're not getting credit for it, baristas actually play a huge role in the culture of the food and beverage scene.

So, by focusing on those businesses and those communities as the first go to market point of activation, we were able to kind of open up a new channel, so to speak. I think that was a really unique way to open the market for a new product that shifted the alternative milk and dairy consumption category pretty significantly.

The jump from employment to entrepreneurship...

I think from our earliest days collaborating at Oatly, Bryan and I had a lot of work flow compatibility. We were both able to see things the other didn't, and provide good feedback loops for each other.

Our time at Oatly was so transformative. Bryan had a very diverse rise through the food and beverage world. He ran his own chain of coffee shops for a while. He's worked at a number of really interesting food and beverage establishments.

When we started, Oatly was a much different company than where we ended. And that is a standard marker for success in the corporate world — for a company to shift and evolve.

We felt like we had done really good work there, and were ready to take what we had learned to the next level: into the broader food and beverage space.

We were so incredibly lucky to work with so many amazing, talented, thoughtful, and kind humans during our time at Oatly, so much so that we left with such a strong network of industry folks, potential clients, potential customers, and industry influencers that were looking for ways to help drive the industry forward.

So — it was actually a really positive experience to be able to tap into some of those connections and build on the connections we already had.

It meant we had clients interested right off the bat, and we've been able to continue building on that throughout our first year.

As for the differences between reating self-imposed business goals feel different from corporate-mandated goals — it's pretty new for me.

Every job I've ever had, I always try to show up 110%, and be the best I can possibly be. One of the biggest lessons I learned Oatly is that there are so many things outside of your control. When I'm in a leadership position or if I'm working for someone in a leadership position, I take the responsibility that comes with that power really seriously, sometimes to a fault — because I'm often working hard to direct an outcome on something I don't always actually have the proper control over.

Since starting my own company, I've really tried to just control the ‘controllables.’

It's so cliche, but it's true.

I've learned a lot this year about how to balance my own workload and client expectations, and I want to continue doing that.

Niching down...

Go to market strategy and brand positioning are two of our top services offered — in the coffee and foodservice space, specifically.

For a lot of brands that have a consumer product, B2B partnerships often go unattended to or unnoticed. It has so much potential for really high marketing ROI, because it's typically a lower cost than flashy B2C campaigns or retail advertising or promotions. The power of B2B partnerships is something that we've always believed in and aim to help our clients maximize.

We offer a variety of customizable services as well, depending on the client and what they need. That might be consulting on any number of internal projects – with Bryan's background in innovation, we have a lot to offer on the product R&D side when it's coffee industry or foodservice industry specific.

We also work with companies who are at a variety of stages. For brands that are just starting out and have a product that has some promise but they don't have a lot of product market fit confirmed yet or they're not really sure where to start, we are often very useful to them, as well as companies who have built out their business in the retail space or on the D2C side and are recognizing how much potential the B2B side of things really holds.

We're able to come in at that point and help connect some of the dots.

We offer a variety of sales and marketing services that can be custom fit as well, like sales representation. We left Oatly with a large network of distribution contacts across North America and those are often local distributors that service the local food and beverage communities that I was speaking about earlier. Being able to continue building within that network holds a lot of generative power, so we find a lot of value for brands that we're representing in those spaces by plugging them into those channels.

Determining ICP…

My number one filter to gauge if a potential client is right for us tends to be this question: does this company or this idea have something useful to offer the industry? Obviously, that can be interpreted really broadly, but I'll give you an example:

Ghost Town Oats is a company that was founded by baristas. It's Black and queer-owned, and they started up in 2020 largely as a response to the influx of oat milk companies that weren't positioned for marginalized communities or parts of the consumer market that weren't as mainstream.

We've started working with them over the last couple of months, and I'm really excited to see how much community-level impact they have. Their model of community ownership has already been really powerful in catalyzing a lot of the barista attention that played a role in the rise of oat milk generally, and now feels like they have a brand that is made for the barista community, specifically.

Given what they're doing — how novel it is, and the kind of impact it can have — they're a really good example of the kind of client that we're looking to support and grow with.

Dividing work in a partnership and client challenges...

We've worked together for more than eight years now, so I think we have a really good understanding of each other's strengths and growth opportunities. Still — we've learned a lot this year, because it's very different operating as business partners when you're used to being co-workers.

I think we are still figuring a lot out, but we've had success in each of us leaning into our strengths.

We have a much clearer picture of what each of us can do very well, and are getting better at outsourcing the stuff that neither one of us is good at. I do think there's always value in improving your skills in areas that you don't excel in, but there's also a point where you kind of have to say,

“You know what? This is not my bag, and I need to focus on where I can be the most valuable and figure out what that means for other skill set areas that need to.”

I think I'm more detail oriented, so I take on a lot of the client admin management work.

He has an economics degree, so he comes in really handy on the accounting/finance side of things.

He's also an eternal optimist and I'm a die hard realist.

If shit really hits the fan, I'm always the one that's like, this is the end…

We have to recalibrate everything.

He's always much more level headed in those situations, so that's always a good counterbalance for me.

I think client sales expectations are a good example, too. His optimism is so useful for exploring things that other people would never consider possible. A lot of the success that we had at Oatly and a lot of the success that he had in his other roles at other companies is because of that optimism, and I think it's an incredibly valuable asset.

I will often come in with the cold, hard downside so that clients have a view into their best case scenario and their worst case scenario. Usually, it lands somewhere in the middle, and we've found that combo actually works really well.

I think it's important that you're not painting too rosy of a picture where there's client expectations involved. I always lean a little bit too pessimistic and that's not a good client communication approach either. So I think we have struck a really good balance this year on combining forces in that way and managing client expectations for the unknowns.

Client churn and challenges...

We've had two separate clients that have had quite large pivotal circumstances. With one, a regulatory change occurred two weeks into the contract — something totally outside of everyone's control.

From my perspective, the right thing to do in those scenarios is to try your best to show up as the most supportive partner you can be, given the circumstances. That's how I view client work. I'm coming on board as a partner — maybe just within specific parameters — but the goal is always to be providing support to them.

I think watching something that you've had a hand in building go in a difficult direction is always pretty painful.

But, it's just a part of life.

I always try to find specific lessons from those experiences and incorporate them into our operation.

I feel like that's a very cliche thing to say, but it's 100% true.

Even if it's external circumstances — economic pressures, political changes, etc. — there's always a lesson in there somewhere.

Even if it's a very small one.

And while we haven't had too many major issues to date, we had one client where the whole company folded and we lost a ton of money — and in the day-to-day of things being uncertain and client changes — navigating all of it can be overwhelming, so the idea that things may not work out really comes from just general overwhelm rather than a logical "oh this isn't going to work."

We've been in a lot of conversations with clients and prospective clients where the deliverable they're looking for is XYZ, and either the decision makers don't have an understanding of all the factors that need to come together to see that success happen, or there's just a misalignment in vision or how to execute.

For agencies, I think that's a really difficult line to walk — needing your bills paid, but upholding your integrity — but I really want to make sure that the clients I'm working with are in alignment on how we get things done, because that is ultimately where the success of the relationship lies.

Service changes forecasted for year two...

Year one has been so diverse — but we still have a lot of exciting work to do on systematizing some of those packaged offerings.

I've been tinkering with a brand ambassador structure for a couple clients.

It's been interesting to watch the rise of influencer stuff with other consumer companies — where they're offering affiliate links and that sort of thing. I would love to live in a world with better freelance compensation models for baristas who bring brands into their sphere of influence, so that's something we're working towards.

It's high ROI for the brand, so that's something that I think has a lot of potential to scale in a much bigger way for a number of our clients.

For some of our sales execution clients, we'll custom build a field team based on their goals and the kinds of industry connections that we have. I'm working on other ways to make that kind of model more accessible to brands that are just starting up and don't have the capital to invest in something at that scale yet.

Goal in 2025...

I think client work is always first and foremost with any agency.

That's definitely been true for us.

In 2024, I found myself deprioritizing our own marketing initiatives time and again in service of marketing initiatives for the brands that we're working with.

Generally, I feel that the success of an agency is a reflection of the client success that it services. I felt pretty good about that ramp so far this year.

I think taking a more visible position in the coffee and foodservice space and having more direct brand interaction with the folks who are driving the next wave of change is really important.

The coffee industry in particular has had a difficult time coming back from pandemic challenges like staffing and turnover, but I still believe the industry holds a lot of transformative and generative power to affect positive change in the broader food and beverage space.

I'd say that's probably the biggest goal: making sure we are connected with and serving as a resource to the folks that are making meaningful strides in driving change in the industry.

Business goals and challenges ahead...

I think the biggest goal I have specifically is maintaining a sustainable pace.

We have a lot of projects launching that I'm really excited about, and I'm an overachiever by nature, so my approach is always to put in 150% and ride the adrenaline until it dries up.

That's a hard lesson to learn when it doesn't work, and I'm currently learning it.

So, with that being the case, I think it’s all about finding reasonable ways to pace out those projects while managing cash flow implications, client pipeline implications, subcontractor team bandwidth, and our own bandwidth.

It can feel like a very precarious puzzle, but I think sustainable pacing is probably my number one personal goal so that I have the time to personally recharge and not burn out.

Honestly, we have so many client projects and inbound clients that I am so excited about, and that I think have a ton of potential to be really impactful. But, with that, you have all the boring stuff on the back end that has to be taken care of.

Managing subcontractor paperwork, cash flow, and all the other realities of running a business while also finding time to recharge is the classic challenge, and we're experiencing it.

I also think there's a lot of unknowns for the food and beverage industry specifically.

The way we eat has undergone so many shifts — a lot of them for the worse — in the last couple of decades, and that's kind of why we do this.

We would love to see the food system move into a more sustainable place, climate-wise, human-health-wise. I think there's so, so many things that need to be addressed there, and there's a lot of reasons to have hope, but, balancing those goals in the day-to-day and helping clients who also have that as part of their company vision is tough.

Balancing all of those pieces is what I feel will be our biggest challenge in 2025.

Long term vision...

As someone who measures results on outcomes — I'm very data driven — I have learned to embrace the fact that I'm not really sure where it will go. There are a lot of different directions that The Usual Company could go, but given that the reason we're doing this is so embedded in affecting positive change in the food and beverage space, there are so many ways it could evolve.

That's been another hard lesson for me, personally: learning to hold onto those possible outcomes a little bit more loosely instead of fixating on one specific direction. I know that's counter to how a lot of people might build a business, but it's working for us so far, so we're gonna continue to follow these different threads as we go, as opposed to being locked into one outcome.

Resources that have helped the business...

Social media is the best tool we use — not because we're using social media to promote what we do (we could certainly be better at that!), but because it's a great window into what's happening in the industry.

I think it is incredible that I can sit in my home in New York and understand at a really granular level what's happening in the restaurant scene in Los Angeles, in Seattle, or Kansas City — so I lean on that really heavily.

Also, it comes with a powerful ability to actually connect with people. Email is one thing, but when I'm shooting them an Instagram message, I think it's a bit more personal.

Don't get me wrong, there are so many things I hate about social media, but it is really powerful as a business tool.

Notion — huge shout out to Notion. We run so much of the brain of our company, and all of our task management and a lot of our client activation and planning work in Notion. Huge fan.

I'm absolutely a Google user. No Microsoft for me — I love the G suite.

But the other thing that comes to mind are people. That's also kind of a cliche answer, but our relationships are the whole business. The thing that makes our industry so special and powerful is the relationships.

I see so many people go into business with strangers and I think that is so incredibly brave. Hats off to them, because it's a lot harder that way. Being able to lean on my network for insights and support has made all the difference.

On self-doubt and work-life balance...

I think I carry a somewhat irrational fear of things not working out.

I'm a die hard realist and a pessimist at times.

I want things to be done really well.
I want the company to succeed.
I want my clients to succeed.

And we have so many signs that we're on the right path, that things are going the way they're supposed to.

I try to think about the bigger picture and this is something Bryan's much better at than me.

The other thing I'll say about him is he loves home run swings.

He's always looking for the bigger win, even if it's a little tougher to get there.

He said something really early on in our partnership on work life balance:

I will view my life as having had good work-life balance, even if I have a period where I'm just working non stop and then I have a period where I'm really not working much at all versus every 24 hour period or every week needing to be really balanced.

And I think that's more of the approach that we take as well.

We're okay with things being incredibly dynamic and hectic, if it's followed by a period of recalibration – that approach means we can ebb and flow with client needs and the realities of life with more ease.

That’s it for this issue!

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