Go-to-Market Strategy
Founding and leading an international consumer brand from concept to national retail — setting the strategy, building the team and partnerships, and owning the commercial outcome end to end.
01 — Overview
Churriño began as a founder-led challenger brand in a food category with no shortage of history and almost no brand differentiation. I built and led it end to end — identity, retail strategy, commercial operations — on a fraction of a category incumbent's budget, and grew it into a national retail presence with two consecutive entertainment partnerships alongside Disney Theatrical.
02 — Business Challenge
Churriño entered a category crowded with legacy players and near-zero brand differentiation. The product was excellent; the brand, at the outset, had no name recognition, no distribution leverage, and a launch budget a fraction of category incumbents. Most food and beverage launches spend their budget trying to be noticed. I made the decision to spend Churriño's budget trying to be believed instead — a bet that a low-differentiation category would reward a brand willing to look like it had already won, before it had sold a single unit.
03 — Opportunity
Category incumbents competed on shelf presence and price; none owned a point of view. That left an opening for Churriño to compete on identity first, rather than following incumbents into a price-and-distribution fight it couldn't win — building a brand with enough of a stance that buyers would credit it with permission, not just flavor.
04 — Research
A category audit, competitive shelf analysis, and direct consumer interviews I ran surfaced a shared insight: buyers wanted permission to feel good about an indulgent purchase. That became the brand's central emotional territory — joy without apology — and the evidence behind the decision to lead with identity rather than price.
05 — Strategy
I positioned Churriño not as a snack, but as a small, deliberate ritual — built for a generation that reads packaging like a magazine cover. The strategic call was to prioritize packaging and identity as the brand's primary acquisition channel, ahead of paid media, given the budget I had to work with and the leverage a distinctive shelf presence could generate for free.
“On a crowded shelf, the product doesn't get judged first. The brand does.”
Nick Farkas
06 — Creative Direction
The identity system — wordmark, color, packaging structure, and photographic language — was a leadership decision before it was a design one: stand out on a crowded shelf through restraint rather than noise. One confident palette, hand-lettered warmth, and product photography built to do the selling on its own, so the brand never had to raise its voice to be noticed.
07 — Execution
As founder, I was accountable for every function the strategy depended on — the design and production partners building the identity system, the buyers I negotiated retail terms with directly, and the licensing relationship with the Segerstrom Center for the Arts and Disney Theatrical that became the brand's entertainment partnership. None of those functions were free to operate on their own logic; product, packaging, retail, and partnerships all answered to the same brand decision, because a founder-led brand doesn't have the luxury of departments quietly disagreeing with each other.
08 — Marketing Rollout
No paid media budget to speak of — creator relationships, retail activation, and a cross-brand collaboration, sequenced as one 90-day plan.
Detail work — the texture and the mess are the point.
Retail experience design — expanding Churriño beyond the box into a destination.
A cross-brand collaboration with Higher Education Skincare — sweets and self-care, paired for a younger audience already fluent in both.
Entertainment Partnerships
Landing Disney Theatrical wasn't a warm introduction — it was a case built from nothing. I negotiated the licensing terms directly with the Segerstrom Center for the Arts marketing team, then built the sales strategy, the cobranded menu, and the in-theater activations that made the partnership worth renewing.
Chapter One — 2023
Disney Theatrical × Churriño — Frozen the Musical.
The pitch: a limited-edition, IP-inspired menu that turned a theater lobby into a photo-worthy extension of the show itself. The call was to build two cobranded flavors — a caramel "Churro Maniac" and a blue-raspberry "Snow Queen" — priced and packaged as a true limited run, sold exclusively for the length of the Segerstrom engagement.
Beyond the menu, the deal included live activations inside the Segerstrom Theater in Costa Mesa — lobby sampling before curtain, a branded photo moment timed to intermission, and a social campaign built around an Instagram ticket giveaway that pulled the show's audience directly into Churriño's own following, rather than renting the venue's marketing for a weekend.
Instagram campaign creative and in-lobby signage — the Segerstrom Center run.
Chapter Two — 2024
Disney Theatrical × Churriño — The Lion King.
Frozen performed well enough that Segerstrom and Disney Theatrical brought Churriño back the following year for The Lion King — this time as a returning partner, not a new pitch. The menu expanded to "Circle of Life" churros and a "Hakuna Matata" milkshake, and the approval process moved faster the second time, because the relationship — and the playbook behind it — were already proven.
The Lion King campaign menu — the second consecutive touring engagement Churriño was invited back for.
A single-campaign win is a placement. A renewal is a relationship. Being asked back for a second touring production — with a faster approval cycle and a bigger menu — is the clearest evidence that the partnership was built to last beyond one activation.
09 — Business Results
3x
Sell-Through vs. Category Average
12
Retail Doors at Launch
90 Days
To Positive Reorder Signal
The reorder signal mattered more than the launch sales — it was the first proof that the brand decision, not a promotional push, was what was driving demand.
10 — Lessons Learned
Building Churriño without a budget to hide behind taught me that constraint is a strategy tool, not an excuse. When there's no money to paper over an unclear brand decision, the decision has to be right the first time — and everyone around you has to understand it well enough to make it right without you in the room.
It also reframed how I think about partnerships. Disney Theatrical didn't say yes because Churriño had leverage — it said yes because I brought a case built on someone else's terms, not mine. Every partnership since has started from that same question: what does the other side need to be true before they say yes, and how do I build toward that, rather than toward what's easiest for me to pitch.
The deepest lesson was about ownership. As a founder, there's no function to hand a problem off to — creative, retail, partnerships, and operations all eventually land on the same desk. That experience is what makes me distrustful of leadership that hides behind org charts, and it's the same instinct I've since applied leading marketing inside a 300-person organization: make the brand decision first, and let every function serve it.
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