3 – Way Better Snacks (sprouted grain snacks): Runaway success story

With revenues going from zero to “north of $20m​” in the first three years, the growth of sprouted grain snacks brand Way Better Snacks has been "phenomenal​", said Dr Richardson.

The brainchild of Jim Breen, who left his role as VP of sales at Hain Celestial in 2010, Way Better Snacks recently secured an injection of capital from private equity firm Alliance Consumer Growth.

While there are still people with no background in the industry that have a eureka moment and go on to make megabucks, Breen is one of a new breed of entrepreneurs that has proved able to leverage his experience, contacts and negotiating skills and build a health & wellness brand much more rapidly, said Dr Richardson.

As Bai5 has also demonstrated, the success of Way Better Snacks also shows that some new health and wellness brands can scale up very rapidly in the conventional channel now without necessarily spending years 'proving themselves' in the natural channel first, he said.