The Appointment
Catalina Snacks, the Indianapolis-based maker of Catalina Crunch better-for-you cereals and snacks, has named Charlotte Mostaed as Chief Marketing Officer, effective immediately. Mostaed steps into the role as the brand crosses 30,000 retail doors — a distribution milestone that underscores both the brand's rapid scaling and the commercial challenge ahead.
Her Track Record
Mostaed arrives from Health-Ade Kombucha, where as CMO she led brand marketing, e-commerce, direct-to-consumer, consumer insights, innovation, media, and creative. During her tenure, she helped double the company's revenue by expanding household penetration to millions of additional consumers, lifting Health-Ade to the No. 2 position in the U.S. kombucha category. She also built what the company describes as a repeatable growth engine that helped position Health-Ade for its subsequent acquisition by Generous Brands. Earlier in her career, Mostaed held senior marketing roles at POM Wonderful and Procter & Gamble, where she led brand strategy, innovation, and go-to-market programs for major national and global labels. She was named to Ad Age's 40 Under 40 class of 2023.
In her new role, Mostaed will oversee brand and creative, category management, consumer insights, direct-to-consumer, and omnichannel strategy — a broad mandate that spans both the company's growing retail footprint and its own digital channels.
Why It Matters
The hire signals that Catalina Snacks is shifting from pure distribution growth into a more sophisticated brand-building phase. The company recently launched Snack Size Multipacks, expanding beyond its core Protein Cereal into formats designed to capture impulse and on-the-go occasions — a strategic move that mirrors wider trends in the better-for-you snack category. Competing effectively at 30,000 doors requires not only shelf presence but consistent consumer pull, the kind of demand Mostaed engineered at Health-Ade.
"As we scale beyond 30,000 retail doors and continue to expand our portfolio, we need a marketer who's built this kind of growth engine before — and that's exactly what she did at Health-Ade," said Doug Behrens, Chief Executive Officer of Catalina Snacks. "She has a rare ability to turn consumer insight into brand momentum."
Mostaed framed the opportunity in terms of audience expansion rather than consolidation. "There's so much potential to take Catalina Crunch even further," she said, citing brand storytelling and reaching new consumer segments as near-term priorities.
For the broader better-for-you snacking segment, the appointment illustrates a recurring playbook among challenger brands: recruit executives who have already navigated the transition from cult-favorite status to mainstream retail scale. The executive hiring trend in food and beverage reflects growing investor and board pressure on emerging brands to professionalize their marketing functions ahead of potential exits or capital raises. Catalina Snacks, founded in 2018 by Krishna Kaliannan, has not disclosed current revenue figures or funding status, but its retail footprint puts it firmly in the mid-market challenger tier where marketing efficiency becomes a primary competitive lever.
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.
