THEIR STORY
Legit Queso is the product of Chef Kiersten Bartlett, a serial entrepreneur who traveled from Kansas City to Napa Valley and built a brand around a simple conviction: everyone loves queso, but most of it is made with ingredients you’d rather not think about. Legit Queso is the alternative. Real cheese, fresh spinach, fire-roasted tomatoes, no preservatives, and sustainable grab-and-go packaging that doesn’t involve styrofoam.
The lineup covers three flavors: the original Queso Dip, a bold Buffalo Style Queso built on American and jalapeno cheeses with buffalo spices, and a Queso Mac that puts elbow macaroni in the mix for something more substantial. All three come in starter and party sizes, all ship cold with gel packs via next-day air, and all can be frozen for up to a year without losing anything.
The product had earned its place at local Napa Valley markets, specialty grocers, and wine country retailers. The next step was getting it into the distribution infrastructure that would let it compete at a national level.
THE CHALLENGE
The premium refrigerated dip category is one of the harder retail pitches to make. The product can’t sit on a standard ambient shelf, which limits placement options and adds cold chain logistics to every step of the process. Most buyers default to established brands that have proven refrigerated velocity. Getting a new product into that set requires a specific kind of retail argument and a distribution infrastructure that can actually support it.
Legit Queso had everything the product needed: a genuinely differentiated recipe, strong local market traction, a founder story with real personality, and packaging built for modern retail. What it needed was a partner who could open the right doors at the right retailers for a refrigerated SKU, and who understood the distribution side well enough to build the backend before the front end fell apart.
THE SOLUTION
We approached the Legit Queso retail strategy in two tracks running simultaneously: securing the right first retail partner to establish market proof, and building the distribution infrastructure that would allow the brand to scale beyond a single account.
On distribution, we established Legit Queso with UNFI, one of the largest natural and specialty food distributors in the country. UNFI is the backbone for getting a food brand into independent natural grocers, specialty chains, and regional accounts at scale. Being established there means the brand can move faster when retail conversations close, because the logistics are already in place.
For the first retail placement, we targeted GoPuff based on its reach into the exactly the on-demand, grab-and-go snacking consumer that Legit Queso is built for. GoPuff’s customer buys for immediacy and experience, which matches the brand’s heat-and-eat format and bold product personality. The placement sets a first-mover proof point in on-demand retail while additional traditional retail accounts are being lined up.
THE RESULTS
Legit Queso is launching on GoPuff in late June, marking the brand’s first national retail placement. UNFI distribution is established and operational, giving the brand the distribution backbone it needs to move quickly as additional retail accounts come online. The retail expansion is actively underway.
