The Hire
Catalina Snacks, the Indianapolis-based better-for-you cereal and snack brand, has named Charlotte Mostaed as Chief Marketing Officer, bringing in a challenger-brand veteran to lead commercial and consumer strategy as the company's retail footprint tops 30,000 doors nationwide.
Mostaed arrives from Health-Ade Kombucha, where as CMO she helped double revenue and expand household penetration to millions of additional consumers — growth that elevated Health-Ade to the No. 2 kombucha brand nationally and positioned the company for its acquisition by Generous Brands. Earlier in her career she held senior marketing roles at POM Wonderful and Procter & Gamble, leading brand strategy, innovation, and go-to-market programs across national and global portfolios. Ad Age named her to its 40 Under 40 class in 2023.
Scope of Role
In her new role, Mostaed will oversee brand and creative, category management, consumer insights, direct-to-consumer, and broader omnichannel efforts. The mandate aligns with Catalina Crunch's current expansion push, which includes the recently launched Snack Size Multipacks and ongoing flavor and format development across its Protein Cereal, Protein Snack Mix, Chocolate Cookie Bars, and Protein Granola lines — all positioned as lower-sugar, higher-protein alternatives in the competitive better-for-you snack set.
"Charlotte joins us at exactly the right moment," said Doug Behrens, CEO of Catalina Snacks. "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."
Market Context
The appointment underscores the intensifying competition for shelf space and consumer attention in the better-for-you snacking segment, where brands must balance retail velocity at mass, grocery, and specialty channels with a direct-to-consumer business that can sustain margin and brand equity. For Catalina Crunch, clearing 30,000 distribution points is a meaningful scale threshold — one that typically demands more sophisticated category management and consumer-insights infrastructure to defend placement and drive turns.
The broader snack and cereal category has seen sustained pressure on legacy brands from high-protein, low-sugar challengers, a dynamic that has benefited emerging players with clear nutritional positioning. Mostaed's experience translating consumer insight into measurable household penetration gains — the core metric retailers and distributors track when evaluating challenger brands — is directly applicable to Catalina's next growth phase. Her omnichannel fluency also matters as the brand navigates the tension between e-commerce and brick-and-mortar velocity, a balance that shapes retail buyers' decisions across grocery and specialty channels.
For operators and buyers tracking the better-for-you snack supply chain, Catalina Crunch's continued portfolio expansion into multipacks and convenience formats signals a deliberate move into higher-frequency, on-the-go consumption occasions — a daypart play that broadens its addressable market beyond the morning cereal set.
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.
