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Moon Cheese

From zero to ~$30M a year. We took Moon Cheese from concept to 25,000+ retail doors, including every Starbucks in North America, plus Costco, Target, Whole Foods, and Kroger. Strategy, design, go-to-market, sales. The whole thing. An 8+ year partnership that built a category.

~$30MA year at peak
25,000+Retail doors
EveryStarbucks in N. America

Brand Packaging Marketing Go-to-Market Sales Distribution

Moon Cheese product lineup across flavors

Brief

Name, brand, market, and sell an entirely new food product
Get the product listed in grocery stores across the USA & Canada

Our Role

Brand strategy and creative direction
In-house design and packaging execution
Product procurement & consumer testing
Sales and go-to-market strategy
Broker and distribution network management

Results

~$30M in annual revenue at peak
25,000+ retail doors, including every Starbucks in North America
Costco, Target, Whole Foods, Kroger, and more
Nationwide distribution in ~4 years
Called back to turn it around when it stalled
Category-defining snack brand

Spearheading a new snack category

EnWave Corporation approached us with a novel food product, "it's just cheese!", that uses their patented technology. Our task: figure out if and how it could be commercialized. We took control of the entire project.

We researched product viability and retail positioning. We developed the name and branding strategy and executed the visual identity in-house. We established pricing, packaging formats, flavors, and suppliers. After proving Moon Cheese was a memorable brand, we registered trademarks, set up SKUs, and appointed sales brokers.

Our direction shaped every aspect of the brand. We gave critical feedback at every stage, aligned stakeholders, and drove the project from concept to shelf. We built Moon Cheese to a ~$30M-a-year peak and 25,000+ doors, including every Starbucks in North America. That growth wasn't passive. It ran on velocity: the Starbucks checkout lane and the Costco club business we landed, not just a big door count.

Then they called us back

What started as a commercialization project became an 8+ year relationship. We stepped back at the peak. Under new hands, the growth stalled. Different priorities, heavier overhead, and a young brand can't carry that for long.

So they called us back to steady it. More than once. After one of those cycles, we wrote a better contract.

Years and an ownership change later, Moon Cheese is still on the shelf. That's the part we're proud of.

"Slant was integral to the successful development of an appropriate in-depth branding strategy for our dried cheese snack product. We came to them with the goal of exemplifying the fact that our product is just cheese, that's it. Slant utilized our product's unique characteristics to develop effective messaging, packaging and an online marketing strategy to ensure that consumers recognized our product as being all-natural, 100% cheese via a memorable concept."

Brent Charleton CEO (former VP Corporate Development), EnWave Corporation