According to Snaxshot founder Andrea Hernández, the newsletter subscription platform Substack was like handmade sourdough bread in 2020; everyone was doing it.

So when she shouted into the online void, she never expected it would shout back. But her tweets during the pandemic about the new kids in the pantry aisle, such as non-alcoholic beverages, attracted a “cult” of CPG lovers; tens of thousands of subscribers tune into Hernández’s Substack for her candid, straight-shooter take on the food and beverage industry. And although she comes from 10+ years of marketing experience, her growth strategy is everything that would make CPG bigwigs cringe; she has committed to no advertising and no PR pitches while remaining community funded.

The self-titled “cult leader” of Snaxshot sat down with ADWEEK to talk the early beginnings of the now globally recognized Substack; the recipe for success behind her activations, like a séance to revive nostalgic snacks; and the present and future of the food and beverage industry.

Her words have been edited for length and clarity.

Curiosity started the Substack

[Snaxshot] is kind of me trying to undo my whole indoctrination into marketing and advertising. I was sitting in one of my advertising classes and I remember saying, “Wow, this kind of feels a villain origin story.” Like we’re trying to trick people into doing things. Which, in all fairness, that’s what [advertising] is. Even with numbers and data. Everything can be skewed and turned around. I used to work in PR, so I use my experience to become that filter.

The repositioning of non-alcoholic drinks was one of the things that made me go, “Oh. Why?” It was the first thing that I wrote about [for Snaxshot]. There’s nothing new about non-alcoholic drinks; they exist within a spectrum. These brands are starting to pick up on what made the alcohol industry so successful, which is making things sexy to the point where you can literally turn a depressant and associate it with happy hour. That’s all done through marketing. I was fascinated by the commodification of wellness, the “goopification” of all these things that feels like inherent human knowledge. Something that says “ginger is great for your immune system” but being slapped with pretty packaging and resold to you at a premium.