John Lawson vividly remembers the moment a butter yellow ice cream truck first turned up in New York’s Tribeca neighborhood in 2008. Ben Van Leeuwen had just launched his eponymous ice cream brand with his brother Pete and now ex-wife Laura O’Neill.
At the time, Lawson managed the Whole Foods Market store in Tribeca. After sampling the ice creams and “nerding out” on “a very specific Italian pistachio,” he recalls begging Van Leeuwen to expand his new venture into grocery retail. Though it was early days, Lawson could see the potential beyond scoops. Three months later, Van Leeuwen pints appeared on a shelf. Today you can find them in more than a quarter of all supermarkets across the country.
Lawson is now one of just nine buyers responsible for scouting local and emerging brands for more than 500 Whole Foods locations in the US. As a 20-year veteran of the industry, he’s amassed an encyclopedic knowledge of what ingredients, product names, package design, and price points appeal to consumers.
Grocery buyers like Lawson can wield outsized influence over what we eat. They decide what millions of consumers add to their carts at more than 45,500 supermarkets across the US—and their choices can turn an unknown brand into a household name overnight. I spent one fall afternoon trailing Lawson to see what makes an item shelf-worthy in his eyes.
Our day started at the Whole Foods in Gowanus, Brooklyn. From the moment we meet, Lawson is bursting with facts about the coffee, condiments, tortillas, and hummus lining the shelves, which he can’t help but straighten up as we pass by. He casually rattles off the years that each product launched, in what stores, and when they expanded nationally. “It’s like going to a party,” he says. “I have to introduce you to all my friends.”
If you’re not Kraft, Heinz, or Coca-Cola, breaking into this industry is hard (though, according to Lawson, staying in stores is even harder). He estimates receiving between 50 to 100 cold pitches from hopeful entrepreneurs each month. For every newcomer that gets in, dozens are passed over.
Picking out future winners is “an art, not a science,” says Lawson. This keen, curatorial sense is what made Lawson something of a kingmaker in his field, introducing local darlings like Family Farmstead Dairy and Jalapa Jar to the masses. He would never solely rely on data from leading industry resources like Nielson and SPINS; coaxing a founder to position its brand in a certain way takes time and dedication. It’s also essential if retailers want to remain relevant with consumers who can now choose between more shopping outlets than ever.
The odds of discovering the next Siete Foods or Poppi—which were acquired for over $1 billion each by Pepsico this year—are low. Lawson estimates just 10 percent achieve this level of success. But tastemakers like Lawson aren’t necessarily hunting for that kind of unicorn anyway. One of his favorite brands, The White Moustache—a hand-strained Persian-style yogurt made in Brooklyn—has zero plans to expand beyond stores in New York City and a few surrounding suburbs. It’s still a big win for a Whole Foods looking to stay plugged into what’s happening locally. On a personal level, Lawson feels a deep sense of fulfillment any time a local brand develops a loyal fan base that’s large enough to sustain the business.
“Every category is competitive,” explains Lawson later that morning during our tour of La Rossi Pizza’s manufacturing facility at the Brooklyn Navy Yard. As founder Martina Rossi Kenworthy knows, capturing a buyer’s attention is a crucial first step. Rossi Kenworthy spotted Lawson at the 2022 at Cherry Bombe’s Jubilee, an annual conference centering women in the food industry. Lawson happened to be helping friends build marketing displays, but Rossi Kentworthy was determined to jump on the opportunity. “I’m not leaving the event without John tasting my pizza,” she recalls telling herself.
Her frozen pies stood out to Lawson, in part because the woman-owned company would be a welcome addition to “a traditionally male-dominated industry,” he says. Over the next two years, he consulted with Rossi Kenworthy to get the pizzas and packaging ready for their in-store launch last summer, and he continues to remain intimately involved in the company’s success. Most recently, after seeing a sales gap between the margherita and veggie pizzas, Lawson advised rebranding the ‘veggie’ pie to ‘mushroom cheddar spinach,’ which he calls “a much more delicious-sounding name.” For Lawson, such small adjustments can dramatically alter a product's performance.
It’s not an unusual scenario. Lawson put 102,000 miles on his hybrid car in three years, mostly while visiting suppliers. He prefers “to actually be on the ground and see what people are doing.” Oftentimes, he ends up leaving them with the same advice: find ways to communicate “all the cool things about the product… on your package without writing 10 paragraphs of text.”
Though he doesn’t work directly with Van Leeuwen these days (he oversees brands that are in 50 stores or fewer), Lawson remains tight with the team, arranging a visit to the newly minted scoop shop/innovation lab in Greenpoint, Brooklyn 10 days before its grand opening. We sampled recent releases (like zerbinati melon and Malört ice creams) and confidential works-in-progress while discussing the difficulties of sourcing Italian pistachios at scale, before traveling across the East River to Kalustyan’s, the legendary New York specialty food shop.
There, co-owner Aziz Osmani welcomed Lawson with the warmth of an old friend and walked us through a fraction of the store’s goods, sourced from more than 60 countries across six continents. “We don’t want to keep things you can get in any supermarket,” says Osmani. In fact, in recent years Kalustyan’s started jarring and selling its own store-brand simmer sauces and plans to launch a line of chutneys in the near future (which, naturally, Lawson is looking to bring to Whole Foods shelves).
For professionals like Lawson, it can be hard to find a fresh take on frozen pizza or jarred sauce. There are some 11,700 other supermarket and grocery store buyers in the US who all read similar food trend reports and data sets, or attend the same trade shows, where companies shell out thousands of dollars to showcase their products. Retailer giants like Kroger, Target, Walmart, and Whole Foods are increasingly turning to accelerator programs to discover exciting new brands before they hit mainstream. Through these initiatives, small businesses receive mentorship directly from buyers, secure funding, and gain retail placement. And major companies like Chobani and Mars have also offered similar opportunities for several years. This altruistic approach may seem surprising in an industry with razor-thin margins, but it’s also a way for buyers to build relationships with promising founders from day one.
For his part, Lawson has recently taken his role in fostering emerging talent to the next level. In December 2023, he joined the board of Naturally New York, a nonprofit organization that connects food entrepreneurs with industry professionals, and moderated the panel at a Jersey City event the night we met. Dozens of new founders came out to hear from the panelists and vie for Lawson’s attention.
Long after the panel ended, I watched Lawson holding court surrounded by hopeful founders. As David Yu, cofounder of wellness gummies brand Reprise Health put it, “In our universe, he’s a celebrity.” But Lawson waves off the attention, shifting the spotlight back to his friends on the shelves. As he expressed on a video call a few days later: “So many of the suppliers in our area are doing amazing things. The opportunity to get out and be in the field is a real privilege in this role.”