Building a Brand in a Competitive Market

In this episode, we chat with Gregory Vetter, a former insurance salesman turned successful entrepreneur and author of Undressed: The Unfiltered Story of My Failed American Dream and How It Led to Success. Gregory shares his inspiring journey from feeling unfulfilled in his insurance job to creating Tessemae's, a thriving salad dressing brand. His story highlights the importance of persistence, customer feedback, and embracing challenges, showing how one pivotal idea can transform a career.

Gregory’s entrepreneurial spark was ignited when someone stole his mother’s homemade salad dressing, prompting him to bottle and sell it. After securing a meeting with a local grocery store and using a hands-on sampling strategy, Tessemae's took off, selling 660 bottles in just five days. His approach, which focused on health-conscious ingredients and direct customer engagement, helped him stand out in a competitive market.

Today, Gregory operates several businesses, including a produce and manufacturing company and a brand accelerator, while mentoring aspiring entrepreneurs. His journey exemplifies the power of perseverance, creative marketing, and learning from both successes and setbacks. Gregory’s story is a powerful reminder that with resilience and an open mind, any entrepreneur can turn their passion into a thriving business.

About Gregory Vetter:

Gregory Vetter is a well established innovator and disruptor in the clean food movement. The oldest of the Vetter brothers, he had the brilliant idea of launching Tessemae’s after being inspired by his mother’s wildly popular homemade dressing recipe. What Gregory knew, and the American consumer base was soon to discover, was that the idea would soon resonate widely and give rise to an entirely new clean food category.

Gregory and his broader family, primarily brothers, Matt and Brian, cultivated the business and in a mere 5 years translated their vision into becoming the #1 organic salad dressing brand in the refrigerated space. The emergence of Tessemae’s paved the way for clean manufacturing on a mass scale by virtue of inventing the only gum-free dressing bottling process. Ultimately, that manufacturing process led to the creation of the “fresh condiment” category and, similarly, the first Whole30 approved bottled dressings and condiments in the nation.

With the wind clearly at their back, Gregory and his brothers launched Alta Fresh Food Company. Alta Fresh Food has since pioneered a better way to get great tasting salads to the masses through their innovative “master kitting” process and breakthrough R & R&D team. After their triumph as “Sam’s Club Supplier of the Year”, resulting from their “Master Kitting” process, Alta was propelled to the forefront of the fresh food solutions industry.

More recently, Gregory elected to take his lessons learned from his sustained success in the food industry and launched “Home Grown Brand Accelerator”. Home Grown was developed with a singular purpose in mind, “to empower the next generation of brands by making the “playbook” available to whomever had the desire to build the next great American brand.”

Winner of Inc. Magazines Entrepreneur of the Year award, Inc Magazines 35 under 35, EY Entrepreneur of the year finalist, TED talk speaker, Nielsen Design Impact Award for Packaging, And Sam's Club Supplier of the Year, Gregory spends his time with his wife and 4 children on

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Links Mentioned in this Episode:

Want to learn more? Check out Gregory Vetter website at https://www.gregoryvetter.com/

Check out Gregory Vetter on LinkedIn at https://www.linkedin.com/in/gregvetter/

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