Charlotte Mostaed, the marketer credited with propelling Health-Ade Kombucha to the No. 2 position in its category, is joining Catalina Snacks as Chief Marketing Officer, the Indianapolis-based better-for-you brand announced. The hire lands as Catalina Crunch pushes past 30,000 retail doors and expands its SKU lineup with new Snack Size Multipacks — a format built for impulse adjacencies and club-channel cross-sell.
The Hire's Retail Stakes
Mostaed takes ownership of a broad mandate at Catalina Snacks: brand and creative, category management, consumer insights, direct-to-consumer, and omnichannel marketing. For a challenger brand at 30,000 doors, the category-management portfolio is particularly significant — at that door count, Catalina Crunch is actively competing for planogram real estate against entrenched national brands in the better-for-you cereal and snack aisle, where velocity and turn rate data increasingly drive shelf reset decisions.
At Health-Ade, Mostaed helped double revenue by expanding household penetration to millions of incremental consumers, building out e-commerce and DTC infrastructure and sharpening the brand's media and creative engine. That growth trajectory ultimately positioned Health-Ade for its acquisition by Generous Brands. "She has a rare ability to turn consumer insight into brand momentum," said Doug Behrens, CEO of Catalina Snacks. "I'm confident she'll help us accelerate our growth, strengthen our connection and expand Catalina's audiences."
Category Context
The better-for-you cereal segment has become one of the more contested planogram battles in center-store grocery. Private-label high-protein and low-sugar cereals have gained shelf presence at mass and club channels, pressuring branded players on price-per-ounce comparisons. For national and emerging brands alike, household penetration and repeat-purchase velocity — not just distribution door count — are increasingly the metrics retailers scrutinize at annual resets. Mostaed's track record of building consumer-insight-led growth engines is directly relevant: at the challenger-brand stage, converting trial into loyalty is the difference between earning expanded TDP and losing shelf space to a store brand or a better-funded competitor.
Before Health-Ade, Mostaed held senior marketing roles at POM Wonderful and Procter & Gamble, giving her experience spanning both emerging CPG and large-scale national brand go-to-market strategy. She was named to Ad Age's 40 Under 40 in 2023. "There's so much potential to take Catalina Crunch even further," Mostaed said, "and I'm thrilled to help shape the next chapter of the brand."
What Retailers Should Watch
Catalina Crunch's Snack Size Multipack launch signals a deliberate move into multi-pack and club-channel formats — a logical adjacency play for a brand with strong DTC roots that needs to grow basket size and repeat rate in brick-and-mortar. For category managers, the combination of a new portfolio format and a CMO with a proven household-penetration playbook suggests Catalina will be pushing for expanded end-cap and in-store display support at key retail partners heading into 2027 planogram cycles.
The brand's product lineup — Protein Cereal, Protein Snack Mix, Chocolate Cookie Bars, Protein Granola, and the new Snack Size Multipacks — positions it across multiple dayparts and store sections, from breakfast to snack aisles, an important factor for retailers evaluating TDP allocation in a crowded better-for-you set. For more on how better-for-you brands are competing in center-store and the broader snack and cereal category trends shaping 2027 reset decisions, see our ongoing coverage.
Written by Michael Politz, Author of Guide to Restaurant Success: The Proven Process for Starting Any Restaurant Business From Scratch to Success (ISBN: 978-1-119-66896-1), Founder of Food & Beverage Magazine, the leading online magazine and resource in the industry. Designer of the Bluetooth logo and recognized in Entrepreneur Magazine's "Top 40 Under 40" for founding American Wholesale Floral, Politz is also the Co-founder of the Proof Awards and the CPG Awards and a partner in numerous consumer brands across the food and beverage sector.
