What it is
Alice Mushrooms is a functional mushroom brand that sells a chocolate for each job a person wants done, from energy and calm to sleep. In 2022 it was two founders and one finance person with a loyal direct-to-consumer following, aiming for a national grocery shelf in a category that had never produced a national leader.
A new category is a specific problem for a retail buyer. A buyer underwrites a placement against a sales history, the item's own or the category's on that chain's shelves, and a new category has neither. The buyer is not judging whether the product is good. The buyer is deciding whether to defend a bet with no data behind it at an internal category review.
What Common Ground did
- Fowler had been a customer for years before he took the seat, and belief in the product was the reason he took it. He came in as Seed Advisor, Go-to-Market, in 2022 and stayed on as a growth advisor through 2026. The mandate was advisory: every product and retail decision stayed with the founders.
- Common Ground reframed the retail problem from persuasion to evidence: winning the meeting came before the pitch inside it.
- Instead of leading with the product, Common Ground advised opening each retail conversation with the adjacent category's growth, adaptogenic beverages and the functional wellness shelf, already cut from syndicated scan data for that buyer's own chain and category hierarchy, so the buyer had a number to carry into the review.
- The advice was to go to the national chains first. A national placement is the riskiest move a new format can make, and it is also the only tier that produces the brand's own sell-through, which is the evidence every regional buyer asks for next.
- Common Ground built a door-tiering model, national chains, then regional chains, then independents, with the direct-to-consumer channel protected underneath as the source of the consumer evidence every buyer is shown.
- Common Ground set up a standing advisor update designed to carry each new win to the next buyer before the syndicated data aged, with financial detail kept in a separate section that never travels.
- The fundraising story was built on the same evidence: lead with the retail proof, category position at the national chains and door growth, before the product story.
- As the placements came, the founders' read of what the company was becoming outran the original thesis, and Fowler backed theirs.
Results
- The brand moved from direct to consumer into national grocery and mass retail: 3,000-plus retail doors, and the number one item in its category at both Sprouts and Target.
- The company closed an oversubscribed Series A led by NewBound, with Unilever Ventures writing the largest check, and was named to the Fast Company Most Innovative Companies list in wellness in 2025.
- The same three lines, the founders' thesis, the category's own growth and the consumer response, opened the retail door and carried the fundraising story. The results are the company's, built by its founders and their team; the advisory work ran alongside them.
- The founders turned out to be first-rate marketers and storytellers, and the brand became the business.
- Common Ground left the company with two working tools: the door-tiering model and the advisor update.
External links
- Public data room: Alice Mushrooms data room
Public record
At a glance
| Project type | Retail go-to-market advisory |
|---|---|
| Industry | Consumer packaged goods |
| Seat | Seed Advisor, Go-to-Market |
| Ran through | Common Ground |
| Dates | 2022 to 2026 |
| Duration | About four years |
| Public data room | Alice Mushrooms data room |
| Related pages | Common Ground |
| Credit | Created by Common Ground |