Hosted by President Keren Novack, the podcast draws on Curion’s 50+ years of product testing expertise to decode what actually drives consumer behavior — and what it takes to win on shelf.
Curion, a leading consumer insights and product testing firm, with more than 50 years of experience, announced the launch of Behind the Shelf, a new podcast hosted by company President Keren Novack.
The show is designed for brand leaders, product developers, and marketers who want to understand the forces behind consumer purchasing decisions, not just the trends. The interviews will delve into the science, strategy, and hard-won experience that determine whether a product survives its first year on shelf.
New episodes of Behind the Shelf launched June 24, 2026, on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, and YouTube.
A Resource Built for the Realities of Modern CPG
The consumer-packaged goods industry generates enormous volumes of data, research, and opinion. What has been harder to find is a dedicated platform where practitioners — founders, brand builders, and category leaders — speak candidly about what actually happens behind the shelf: the product development decisions, retail economics, and consumer behavior dynamics that marketing campaigns rarely surface.
Behind the Shelf fills that gap. Each episode pairs Novack’s background in consumer research and product insights with guests who have operated at the intersection of product quality, retail strategy, and real consumer behavior. The format moves past trend-driven conversation to examine the mechanics of product success: taste, trust, repeat purchase, shelf economics, and the gap between what consumers say they want and what they actually buy.
“This podcast is built around a question that drives everything we do at Curion: what happens behind the shelf that determines whether a product wins before it ever gets there. We have the research and the experience. Behind the Shelf is how we bring that expertise into the conversations brand leaders are already having.”
Inaugural Episodes Feature Founders at the Forefront of Consumer Behavior
The first three episodes of Behind the Shelf feature founders who have built category-defining consumer brands by putting product experience and consumer insight ahead of conventional wisdom.
Episode 1: Jason Burke, Founder & CEO, The New Primal
Jason Burke grew New Primal from a homemade jerky recipe into a brand sold in more than 10,000 stores nationwide. In this episode, Burke and Novack examine why taste consistently outperforms health claims as a driver of repeat purchase, how familiar flavor profiles create the consumer on ramp that enables successful product innovation, and why emerging brands that expand distribution before building deep retail velocity often lose the shelf space they worked to earn.
Episode 2: Maggie Schmieder, Founder, Bitty Balm
Maggie Schmieder launched Bitty Balm in February 2024 and hand-formulates every product in her clean beauty line. Within her first year, 55 percent of monthly sales came from repeat customers — a figure that reflects her approach to brand building through genuine relationships rather than paid acquisition. Schmieder and Novack discuss why age-based demographic targeting limited her initial reach, how direct consumer relationships outperform conventional marketing spend in crowded categories, and why simplicity is becoming a meaningful form of innovation as ingredient scrutiny increases across the beauty industry.
Episode 3: Jacob Trumbull, Founder, Roaring Fork Mill
Jacob Trumbull founded Roaring Fork Mill after studying behavioral science, environmental systems, and regenerative agriculture. His work examines the gap between stated consumer preferences and actual purchase behavior — a disconnect with significant implications for brands investing in better-for-you positioning. Trumbull and Novack explore why accessibility consistently outperform education as a driver of behavior change, how choice architecture and shelf placement influence consumer decisions before a product is ever picked up, and why the regenerative organic certification category is becoming a meaningful differentiator as organic claims face growing skepticism.
Insights for Brand Leaders
Behind the Shelf is directed at the professionals responsible for product development, brand strategy, consumer marketing, and retail growth. At a time when better-for-you categories are crowded, consumer trust is difficult to earn and easy to lose, and shelf economics favor brands that have built genuine loyalty over those chasing velocity, the podcast offers a practical resource grounded in both research and operational experience.
Each episode is designed to be immediately applicable — not a recitation of industry data, but a direct conversation about the decisions brand leaders face and the frameworks that help them make better ones.