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🚀 Your Weekly Slice of UK Consumer Startups #28
Why Gen-Z packaging is overrated and how to stand out in crowded aisles 🤩
The Startup Slice
November 09, 2025 • Estimated Reading Time: 7 minutes
Hey 👋
This week we’ve been out lunching and spotting loads of startups in the wild. From restaurants to stadiums, startups and challengers are popping up across the on-trade.
For our Bitesize Playbook, we sat down with Andrea Kazan, founder of Good Mess, the baking brand shaking up an aisle untouched for nearly a century.
What we love about Andrea’s story is that she ignored packaging advice to blend in and instead backed her gut with stripped-back, doodle-led branding that breaks every category rule. Customers love it and it landed her a Whole Foods Market window display.
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💡 Bitesize Playbook: Andrea Kazan, Founder @ Good Mess
We’re super excited to chat with Andrea because the baking aisle hasn’t really changed in decades, and also her approach to packaging felt super refreshing. It’s a great reminder that you don’t always need to follow what everyone says you should do, sometimes backing your own vision is the real advantage.
Andrea’s window display at Whole Foods Market 🙌
For those who may not know, what is Good Mess and how did it all start?
Good Mess is the Betty Crocker of the 21st Century! We’re finally waking up the baking mix aisles with baking mixes that are good for your gut!
It all started after I got ill with an autoimmune disease, had to completely change my diet, and could not find anything in the baking category I could eat. So my mom started making her own recipes and Good Mess was born.
Your packaging breaks every “rule” in the baking aisle, muted colours, doodles instead of finished-product photos. What pushed you to take such an approach?
The baking mix aisle has been the same for decades! The category has been building on the same first products that were invented the 1920s. Every packaging since then has followed the same rules. But consumers have evolved - those who might buy baking mixes today are not the same customers that used to buy them then. I knew that the value proposition of our mixes was very different to what was on shelf and I wanted this to stand out - and what better way to stand out then to completely shift the rules of the game.
People who normally skip the baking mix aisle are picking up Good Mess. What has this taught you about brand differentiation in a crowded category?
Because a category is crowded it does not mean that it is serving your customers. Specially when a category is dominated by the giants of the food industry, it might actually be an opportunity to really have a look and think if the products on shelf are serving your ideal customers. If they are not, then it is a great opportunity to step in and to shake this category up. Differentiation here is the key - the product has to stand out in terms of its offering and value proposition. This becomes even more true as your challenger brand will inevitable be more expensive than the brands already on shelf who have the scale and the means to price at a much cheaper level.
Good Mess had a window display at Whole Foods and you’ve been focused on in-store sampling. How has sampling influenced awareness, trial, and customer feedback and what have you learned from being in Whole Foods?
Sampling has been so important for us! It is a great way to bring customers into your world but also an amazing opportunity to listen to their feedback. It has been key in bringing our mixes to those who do not venture into the baking aisle. When customers try the product and listen to the story, they get so excited about it.
Having done more than 50 sampling sessions now, I have learned so much about what customers want - from what they look for on the packaging to flavours. We are actually slightly uplifting the packaging thanks to their feedback, and also working on the new flavours that customers are asking for.
What's next for Good Mess?
We just launched into Planet Organic and we are also working hard on launching fun flavours that you would not currently find in the baking mix aisle. Stay tuned!
Sampling, sampling sampling! 🍰
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