Charlotte Mostaed joins Catalina Snacks as Chief Marketing Officer effective October 2026, tasked with accelerating retail velocity and consumer acquisition for the Catalina Crunch portfolio at a moment when the brand has cleared 30,000 retail doors nationwide and is rolling out Snack Size Multipacks as a new format play.
Mostaed's appointment is a signal, not just a hire. Challenger food brands at this stage — past early retail traction but still building national household penetration — typically face a narrowing window to convert shelf presence into repeat purchase volume before category incumbents adjust. Bringing in a CMO who has navigated that exact inflection point matters.
The Health-Ade Playbook
Mostaed's most recent role was CMO at Health-Ade Kombucha, where she oversaw brand, e-commerce, DTC, consumer insights, innovation, media, and creative. During her tenure, the brand doubled revenue, expanded household penetration to millions of additional consumers, climbed to the No. 2 kombucha brand nationally, and was ultimately acquired by Generous Brands. Before Health-Ade, she held senior marketing roles at POM Wonderful and Procter & Gamble, building brand strategy and go-to-market programs for national and global portfolios. Ad Age named her to its 40 Under 40 class of 2023.
At Catalina Snacks, she will own brand and creative, category management, consumer insights, DTC, and omnichannel — essentially the full commercial marketing stack. That scope is notable. Operators and retail buyers should read it as a sign that Catalina Crunch intends to push harder on the DTC-to-retail feedback loop: using direct consumer data to sharpen category arguments with buyers and to justify incremental shelf space in the better-for-you snack aisle.
What Retail Buyers Should Watch
For grocery and specialty buyers currently carrying or evaluating Catalina Crunch, a CMO hire of this profile typically precedes a step-up in trade marketing investment, shopper marketing programs, and category sell-in narratives. Mostaed's background in consumer insights-led strategy suggests the brand will lean on data — purchase frequency, basket affinity, lapsed-buyer reactivation — to build the case for expanded placement. Brands that have executed this sequence well, Health-Ade among them, tend to negotiate from a stronger position at shelf-reset conversations.
For vendors in the better-for-you snack space — co-manufacturers, packaging suppliers, digital media agencies, and retail media networks — a new CMO at an aggressively growing brand typically triggers a review of incumbent agency relationships and media allocation within the first two quarters. The combination of DTC infrastructure and 30,000-door retail reach also makes Catalina Crunch an interesting test case for retail media and programmatic targeting strategies that bridge e-commerce and in-store conversion.
For operators in foodservice — grab-and-go buyers, hospitality procurement leads, and better-for-you snack program managers — the Snack Size Multipacks format warrants attention as the brand scales. As Catalina Crunch invests in consumer marketing behind the format, it becomes a lower-friction conversation for operators who need portion-controlled, better-for-you options that carry built-in consumer pull. The brand launch and retail readiness playbook Mostaed refined at Health-Ade translates directly to that foodservice channel argument.
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.
