[Top Agency & Sweets and Snack Series] Food Marketing Secrets and AI Strategies With CJ Bruce

CJ Bruce is the Founder and CEO of The Missing Ingredient, a Sacramento-based food marketing agency that helps healthful and sustainable food and beverage brands grow. The agency specializes in performance marketing, paid media, influencer campaigns, and AI-driven strategies. Since 2016, CJ has led a team of 15, working with brands like Amy’s Kitchen, Sumo Citrus, Baskin-Robbins, and Milk Bar. A certified plant-based chef and former food influencer, he combines his passion for food and technology to help brands stand out, connect with consumers, and scale.

Here’s a glimpse of what you’ll learn:

• [5:10] CJ Bruce shares how The Missing Ingredient helps brands scale quickly
• [6:29] CJ’s experience creating viral videos for top global brands
• [13:24] How AI is transforming marketing strategies for agencies
• [17:26] Essential AI tools driving modern food marketing success
• [23:34] The secret behind creating truly viral video campaigns
• [34:58] Common influencer marketing mistakes and how to avoid them
• [41:19] How Sumo Citrus built a cult following using influencer campaigns
• [43:38] Clever tactics to rapidly grow an email list for food brands

In this episode…

What makes some food products stand out while others fade into obscurity? Why do certain brands go viral, gaining devoted fans almost overnight, while others never leave the shelves? Could the secret lie in the right mix of marketing creativity, influencer partnerships, and technology?

As noted by food marketing veteran CJ Bruce, the intersection of creative passion, tactical strategy, and AI integration defines the modern path to success. He highlights the importance of building genuine relationships with influencers rather than relying on one-off partnerships, creatively engaging consumers through contests, and leveraging digital workflows to scale brands quickly. By combining micro-influencer campaigns, viral video content, and AI-driven processes, even niche products can gain cult followings and achieve measurable growth. He emphasizes that balancing technology with authentic human connection is key to capturing attention in today’s fast-moving food landscape.

In this episode of the Inspired Insider Podcast, Dr. Jeremy Weisz sits down with CJ Bruce, Founder and CEO of The Missing Ingredient, to discuss mastering food and beverage brand growth in the digital era. They explore how CJ uses AI to streamline campaigns, the strategies behind viral influencer marketing, and how to tap into emerging food trends for rapid growth. CJ also shares practical tools and workflows that help brands scale while staying agile.

Resources mentioned in this episode:

• CJ Bruce on LinkedIn
• The Missing Ingredient
• Annie’s Homegrown
• Siete Foods
• Miyoko’s Creamery
• Oatly
• Siggi’s
• Vegetarian Dude
• ChatGPT
• Google Gemini
• Claude
• N8N
• Zapier
• Notion
• Slack
• Cursor
• IKEA
• Sumo Citrus
• Winter FancyFaire
• Summer Fancy Food Show
• Philosopher Foods
• Bread SRSLY
• Mochi Love
• Lil Bucks
• Natural Products Expo West
• Nosh at BevNET Live
• Newtopia
• Naturally Network
• Conscious Capitalism

Special mention:

• JP Sears on YouTube

Related episodes:

• “[Sweet and Snack Series] Growing a Brain and Body Nutrition Company With Will Nitze” on Inspired Insider Podcast
• “Mastering The Ancient Art of Jun Kombucha with Holly Lyman, Founder of Wild Tonic” on Inspired Insider Podcast
• “[Sweet and Snack Series] Healthy, Flavorful, All-Natural Chips From Chicken Breast With Jason Wright” on Inspired Insider Podcast
• “Why You Should Test Your Message with Daniel Harmon Co-Founder of Harmon Brothers” on Inspired Insider Podcast

Quotable moments:

• “Food can impact people, the planet — and it’s fun. You even get to eat what you work with.”
• “The best results come from ongoing partnerships — think of influencer marketing as relationships, not transactions.”
•  “AI doesn’t replace us; it works with us to boost creativity and efficiency.”
• “If you can build an engaged email list for citrus fruit, you can do it for anything.”
• “Continuous improvement is one of our core values — always test, learn, iterate, and evolve everything we do.”

Action steps:

1. Stay ahead with AI: Explore and experiment with tools like ChatGPT, Claude, Notion AI, and workflow automation to streamline operations and boost creativity.
2. Build authentic influencer relationships: Focus on ongoing, genuine partnerships rather than one-off campaigns to drive engagement and brand advocacy.
3. Test, learn, and iterate: Run small experiments, analyze results, and refine strategies to maximize effectiveness and adapt to changing trends.
4. Leverage email lists: Nurture a direct audience channel with incentives like sweepstakes or exclusive content, even for retail-focused brands.
5. Network and follow trends: Attend industry events and trade shows to discover new insights, connect with partners, and stay plugged into the food and beverage sector.

Episode Transcript

Intro: 00:15

You are listening to Inspired Insider with your host, Dr. Jeremy Weisz.

Dr. Jeremy Weisz: 00:22

Dr. Jeremy Weisz here, Founder of InspiredInsider.com, where I talk with inspirational entrepreneurs and leaders. Today is no different. I’ve CJ Bruce Founder & CEO, The Missing Ingredient, and we’re going to go deep on that. And CJ, before I formally introduce you, I always like to point out other episodes of the podcast people should check out. And maybe you just share some of the brands you like. But because The Missing Ingredient is you can tell a health food and beverage companies with their marketing. And some of the ones I’ve had on IQBAR founder, I eat IQBAR. So I like to have the companies that I eat and like on the podcast to talk about it. That’s one of my favorites. 

I had the the founder of Wild Tonic Kombucha and that was a great one. I really love kombucha. There’s so many I don’t know. I mean, a protein bars, wild chips. I don’t know if you’ve had these before, the chicken or chicken chips. And people joke around when they call me like, what are you doing? Because I literally am always eating these chicken chips. They’re made of chicken breast, except they’re chips, so they’re healthier. They’re packed with protein. And I had the founder on after I like loved them the barbecue, the salt and vinegar ones. I don’t know. What are some of your favorites? We’ll go on with your intro, but some of your favorite brands that you like.

CJ Bruce: 01:42

So many brands, so many. I mean.

Dr. Jeremy Weisz: 01:44

The ones you actually snack on. Yeah. What do you snack on?

CJ Bruce: 01:47

Yeah, I think the I mean, Annie’s Homegrown comes to comes to mind, especially with the kids and getting again kind of the better for you comfort foods. Siete Foods I really like their, you know, their whole line on the chip side, but also their dips that they’ve that they’ve got.

Dr. Jeremy Weisz: 02:03

I haven’t seen their dips. I’ll check it out.

CJ Bruce: 02:06

Yeah. They’ve got a queso that’s pretty pretty solid. Miyoko’s on the on the plant based. 

Dr. Jeremy Weisz: 02:12

What is it called?

CJ Bruce: 02:13

Miyoko’s Miyoko’s Creamery. Yeah, they’re in northern California. Another really great brand. Yeah, I mean, Oatly just from a product. Plus the marketing perspective, I love the way that they’ve done all their, you know, marketing communications, copywriting. Really great in there. I mean, I could go I could go on and on, but those are something come to mind.

Dr. Jeremy Weisz: 02:34

One that stuck out on your site for me. I mean, there’s a lot because you have like healthier brands and things, but the Yooga because I am lactose intolerant. Talk about Yooga for a second.

CJ Bruce: 02:46

Yeah. So Yooga, unfortunately Yooga is no longer around, but it was a plant based yogurt. And so they had a yeah chia based. But there’s there are other good, good yogurt brands. Siggi’s. Actually, I like Siggi’s. They have a they have a dairy free line that’s got a good amount of protein and it’s just like a nice. Yeah, they did a really good job with that one. So that’s another go to in our house or Harmless Harvest, another dairy free yogurt brand that we we frequent.

Dr. Jeremy Weisz: 03:15

I love it. No, I, I’m making a grocery list as you’re talking so I appreciate that. So before I formally introduce CJ, this episode is brought to you by Rise25. At Rise25, we help businesses connect to their dream relationships and partnerships. We do that in a few ways. One, we’re an easy button for a company to launch and run a podcast. We do the strategy, accountability, and the full execution and production. Number two, we’re an easy button for a company’s gifting, so we make gifting and staying top of mind for clients. It could be partners, it could be prospects, it could be even staff. From a culture perspective, simple, easy and affordable. So you just send us the list of your addresses and we do everything else, so it’s not like a one off gift. It’s kind of like think three gifts a year for five years type of thing. And I don’t like getting like a pen or a mug. 

So usually these are food related items that people are excited to open and eat because I like to get food right. And so for me, the number one thing in my life is relationships. So I always want to give to my best relationships. And I found no better way to profile the people and companies I admire on the podcast and to send them sweet treats in the mail. So if you have questions, go to Rise25.com or email us at [email protected]. I am super excited to see CJ Bruce. As I was saying, he’s CEO and partner at two prior agencies. He branched out to start his own food marketing agency, The Missing Ingredient, in 2016, and his team of 15 people provide digital marketing, paid media, influencer relations, AI services to growing food and beverage brands, and some of the current and past clients we mentioned include Amy’s Kitchen, Sumo Citrus, Baskin Robbins, Milk Bar and many more. And CJ, thanks for joining me.

CJ Bruce: 05:01

Thanks, Jeremy. Happy to be here.

Dr. Jeremy Weisz: 05:02

So I’m going to pull up your site here. And just talk about The Missing Ingredient and what you do a little bit deeper.

CJ Bruce: 05:10

Awesome. So yeah so like you said we’re food marketing agency. And so we really help food and beverage brands grow. And so a lot of it is, you know, driving awareness about the products, the benefits, how it fits into your lifestyle and then moving people through that marketing funnel to consideration and ultimately purchase. And we we work with brands both that sell D to C so direct to consumer or online via Amazon or other marketplaces as well as supporting retail sales. So when brands have national or regional distribution and need to get that foot traffic, drive the velocity in the store. We have our suite of services and playbook that really help scale those brands.

Dr. Jeremy Weisz: 05:52

So I’m curious, you know, why food and beverage. Right? I mean, there’s a lot of niches out there. I’m curious why you chose those.

CJ Bruce: 06:03

Yeah, that’s a great question. So I personally very passionate about food and beverage and the you know, the brief history was when I set out to start the agency. So prior to this, you mentioned I have other agencies and we were essentially a vendor for really large brands. So I was working with, you know, Ikea and Airbnb and Gatorade and Ford and well, that was exciting.

Dr. Jeremy Weisz: 06:25

What were you doing with them? Like what were you doing with those?

CJ Bruce: 06:29

Primarily video. So we were doing viral video campaigns, video, SEO, early days, YouTube influencers. This was, you know, starting back in 2007, 2008 through around 2015, and then the taking that skill set. And I wanted to bring it to, you know, companies and organizations that I really cared about. So when I very first started the agency and we actually had a different name, it was working with, you know, anyone that was having a positive impact and that we could help scale that impact.

Dr. Jeremy Weisz: 06:58

Mission based companies.

CJ Bruce: 06:59

Exactly. And then a couple years in, we you know, about half the work had been food and beverage. And I was like, we need to focus more. And then we doubled down. And like I mentioned, I am personally passionate about it. So from a health perspective, I think food has the potential to have some of the biggest impact on individuals, the planet. And it’s just so it’s fun. It’s fun visually. You get to eat the products, the clients that you work with, right? You get to eat the food.

Dr. Jeremy Weisz: 07:27

I would have a sign will work for food. Like, yeah, oh, you’re paying us to oh, you just had to send me a bunch of sumo citrus. It’s fine.

CJ Bruce: 07:35

Yeah. The samples, the samples alone help it. So. Yeah, I’m. And I’ve done my own food stuff. I have my own food influencer brand. I’ve done some, you know, little catering things.

Dr. Jeremy Weisz: 07:46

So what is talking about that you’re a food influencer brand.

CJ Bruce: 07:49

Yeah. So it’s it’s it’s dormant now so you know don’t if you look out there it’s I’ve had to stop that to focus on the agency. But it was called Vegetarian Dude. And I was doing recipes and content and it’s, you know, it’s still there on, on Instagram and other channels. It is not active.

But that started from there. And then like I said, I was doing some pop ups. I used to live in LA and did a few pop up dinners, did some, you know, kind of catering at.

Dr. Jeremy Weisz: 08:16

Are you vegetarian backyard concerts?

CJ Bruce: 08:19

I’m pescatarian now. So it’s it’s evolved the the diet and eating has evolved vegetarian vegan pescatarian. So that’s yeah, that’s where I am today. But I love to cook. I am a certified plant based chef also. So anyway, I go deep on the.

Dr. Jeremy Weisz: 08:35

I need to hire you.

Dr. Jeremy Weisz: 08:39

It’s funny. That was funny because there’s and I don’t know if you’ve seen this before. Whenever I think of that vegetarian I think of have you walk watch the YouTube JP Sears YouTube videos before he’s got if meat eaters acted like vegetarians. And it’s just a very funny, I don’t know, I found it hilarious.

CJ Bruce: 09:02

I haven’t seen that.

Dr. Jeremy Weisz: 09:03

Maybe it offends some people, maybe not, I don’t know, but I’ll send it to you when we’re done. But it’s it’s so funny if meat eaters acted like vegetables. Sorry. Not vegetarians.

Vegans. If meat eaters acted like vegans, is the video.

CJ Bruce: 09:16

Yeah, I don’t I don’t get offended on any of it. Okay.

Dr. Jeremy Weisz: 09:19

So I’m just curious from a business perspective, when you decided to you’re like, we’re going to double down, right? We have most of our clients are in food and beverage. Is that a scary moment? Are you thinking, well, we’re going to, you know, kind of not attract other people? What was your thought process there at that point? Because now it sounds obvious. Maybe it seems obvious, but maybe at that point it wasn’t or it was scary.

CJ Bruce: 09:43

Yeah, it’s a great question. So a few things led to it. One was my my general analysis of the business. We’d also gone through, you know, bid on multiple pitches. We’re just saying that we want to work with people who are having an impact. Wasn’t enough of a differentiator. And then I’ll also give a shout out to Jason Swank, who I joined his agency, mastermind Group, for a period of time, and that was that was part of the learning that, you know, really was my key takeaway that came out of that was the need to focus. And then it was scary, though, because at the time we were working with many different kinds of brands. We had large projects that were not food and beverage. And so the idea of cutting off a certain part of the business to focus on something that was a little uncertain, it was a bit of a leap of faith. 

However, I was motivated and again digging into it myself and thinking through all of the benefits there. Right? Part of the challenge when you’re a general purpose agency, you have to get onboarded and understand the industries and the nuances and all of that. And so being able to focus on one and where I’m already excited, interested, you know, trying snacks myself to me is a competitive advantage. And then we’ve seen that compound over the years as we’ve gone deeper and deeper and just better understand the whole ecosystem, not just the services that we provide, but actually the brands that we work with, all the challenges and opportunities and things they deal with outside of just our realm, like makes everything we do better and helps us build better relationships.

Dr. Jeremy Weisz: 11:10

You know, CJ, I don’t know anyone growing up who’s who says themselves. I want to be an agency owner. And so I know you went to Arizona, studied communication things at that point in your life. What were you thinking you wanted to do so film?

CJ Bruce: 11:28

I wanted to make movies. That’s really where it started for me. So I was a double major in film and political science, and the political science piece came shortly after I started, and that was just kind of personally trying to navigate that and understand that. So that was also kind of the impact piece early on. Right. Well, how do you actually have an impact in the current system. So that was my goal. That’s what I went to school for. And that’s also I moved to LA right after that to get into the movie business, which I was in briefly doing, you know, visual effects and producing my own work. Yeah, it’s a lot of work. And, you know, the film industry, I think, also has just has a lot of challenges. 

Like it is, it’s very inefficient. Right. It’s very old school. And a lot of that didn’t totally connect with what I wanted in my life and my lifestyle. And I’ve always been a nerd. I’ve always been a computer nerd. I’ve always liked to try new technologies. And so, you know, evolving from that, I like to say like I used to, I came to make my own content. And then it was, how do I get people to see this content that aren’t my friends and family? And that’s what got me into marketing. And then I realized I was better at getting people to see content than I wasn’t making my own. And then that kind of turned me into the marketing side of things more.

Dr. Jeremy Weisz: 12:48

And I could also see how like you were, you actually were doing a lot of both the combination of marketing and video for these big brands. So it’s kind of like the perfect combination of those skills.

CJ Bruce: 12:59

Yeah. And it still feels like that, the combination of the technical and creative, which is just that’s what lights me up.

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