Presence Marketing’s Bill Weiland Shares ‘Bankable Trends’ at MAHA Institute Launch in D.C.

These comments by Presence Marketing’s founder and CEO were transcribed by Steven Hoffman, of Compass Natural Marketing, for Presence’s June 2025 newsletter.

Bill Weiland, Founder and CEO of Presence Marketing, was called to Washington, D.C., on May 15 to speak as part of a full-day symposium presented by the MAHA Institute, a new organization dedicated to changing and championing federal policies and initiatives related to nutritious food, safe and sustainable agriculture, and health freedom, inspired by Robert F. Kennedy, Jr.’s MAHA movement. Bill spoke on a panel that also featured Bill Moses, founder of Kevita and Flying Embers; Daniel Fabricant, Ph.D., CEO of the Natural Products Association; and Steve Bullock, CEO of PerfectRx.

To view a recording of the full-day MAHA Institute event, visit here. Bill Weiland’s panel presentation begins at the 7:18:48 mark. Here, below, is a complete transcript of Bill’s remarks at the event.

Hello everybody, I’m Bill Weiland. I have been in the natural products industry for 46 years and a CEO for 35 years. My company is Presence Marketing. We represent natural and organic brands to conventional grocery stores and natural foods stores. But we’ve become ultra-influential in the food business, and I’ll give you some great examples.

First of all, to simplify our business, we’re building brands. We’ve built iconic brands for many years like Amy’s Kitchen, Clif Bar, Go Macro, Traditional Medicinals Teas. We work on services like innovation and product optimization. We’re also financiers — we write checks small and large, and we have all kinds of partners: angel investors, banks, venture capital groups, etc., so we raise serious capital for emerging and existing natural and organic brands.

Presence Marketing founder and CEO Bill Weiland at the MAHA Institute launch. (Photo courtesy of MAHA Institute)

I have been doing a report for 11 years I affectionately call “Bankable Trends” (with the Presence Marketing logo I consider the second most popular swoosh in America!). But I promised 11 years ago that I would never call one incorrectly and guess what, I’m batting a thousand. I can tell you what’s going to hit and what’s not. Let’s talk a little bit real quickly about what’s not. Crickets are not the next sushi; crickets are the next bug. Nobody’s eating ‘effin’ bugs, OK? 

I’ll tell you what else people don’t want: lab food. Precision fermentation, no chance. Bio-identical dairy, no way. Cell-based meat? The cell ain’t gonna sell, and I promise you all of that is 100% accurate.

So, 11 years ago I called the collagen and bone broth trend. People are like, Bill, what the ‘H-E-double-hockey-sticks’ are you even talking about? What is this stuff? There was nothing in the channel except Grayslake Gelatin, right? And I said, well look, if you want to build muscle you eat steak, you eat chicken, you eat beans, you eat nuts — those amino acids will rebuild muscle tissue.

But if you want different benefits like bright taut skin, really high-level joint health as you age, great digestion, you need those amino acids around the joint of an animal. You can’t replicate those anywhere in nature. Glutamine, proline, glycine, alanine, arginine — very difficult to get. So, we went then and invested in and built brands like Bonafide Restorative Bone Broth, Vital Proteins, and Ancient Nutrition (we worked with Jordan Rubin and his team).

At the same time, 11 years ago we called ‘grain free.’ We always know the ‘why.’ Grain free — think about it. You capture the gluten free customer, you capture the customer who understands ‘anti-nutrients.’ You know, the phytic acid in grains, the lectins in beans, legumes and other vegetation, and how they bind with nutrients on a molecular level and make them inaccessible in the gut. So, grain free, the biggest percentage of sales is just people who say, ‘Hey, I don’t want a carbohydrate bomb. I want my cracker or tortilla to be calories of consequence.’

Let’s talk about seed oils and animal fats, now. So, we got after seed oils 15 years ago. We have a great partner in Boulder Canyon. We kept getting distribution, but their stuff kept getting discontinued when we got further and further away from Boulder. And I said guys, your canola, your safflower, your sunflower — I’ve got an idea. Let’s go with three platforms: coconut, olive, avocado — let’s build under those three higher value oils. Business has exploded and now they’re the number one chip in the country, many hundreds of millions of dollars, untold numbers of jobs and influence, and they’re retrofitting all products, now going completely seed oil free. Bobo’s came and saw me 10 years ago… I said use butter or coconut oil. They chose coconut oil. They were a small little business, cottage industry. Now, headed towards $200 million and killing it.

And let’s talk about how we’re building animal fat. This brand Masa is a proper tortilla chip cooked in beef fat. Incredible. You eat chips, you go to a Mexican restaurant, it’s kind of a gut bomb. I’m eating the plain flavor, scooping ceviche, scooping beef tartar — these are real food calories. You guys gotta try it!

I have another one here — we’re launching the first ancestral protein bar, Prima. This bar has grass fed collagen, grass fed whey, grass fed tallow, organic honey, simple ingredients. You eat one, you feel like Tarzan. We’ve got a brand called Somos, a Mexican food company that came to visit us recently at the affectionately named ‘Billagio,’ where we host meetings in Chicago. I told them if you want to build a big food company, launch refried beans cooked in tallow. Two SKUs are coming; they’ll be here for us to taste in 35 days; we’re going to launch them this calendar year. And then I’ve got a young couple of chefs — one of them is local here, Jesse & Ben’s — doing frozen french fries in either plant oils that are higher value or beef tallow.

Then just a quick primer on regenerative agriculture — my numbers, and I usually make my numbers — always, to be fair — I’m saying 18 years to 10% of all U.S. farmland will be farmed regeneratively. 

That is the path that I see us on right now. Blocking and tackling with a little extra juice.

Also, I just want you to know that we’ve been acquired by a group called Platform. These guys are tremendous. It’s still business as usual for Presence Marketing except it feels like a little ‘Elonesque’ rocket fuel has been injected into us. But we’re gonna fight the good fight here long term, keep putting jobs on the board, keep influencing the quality of products — organic, natural — and I promise you we will have hundreds and hundreds of SKUs in the next three years launched that will be high quality beef and bison tallow based — no vegetable oils — duck fat (schmaltz!) or chicken fat and pork lard. So, we’ll continue doing our jobs. We are grateful to be here and continue to support the mission.

And here’s what I want to say to our friends across the aisle: This is such a layup. Don’t fight us on this one, Democrats. I’ll tell you this, this train is coming and you have two choices. Get on board or get out of the way. Let’s go MAHA.

Is Cell Cultured Meat Safe for Humans and the Environment?

This article first appeared in Presence Marketing’s September 2023 newsletter.

By Steven Hoffman

Now that two California-based companies, Upside Foods and Good Meat, have received approval by the FDA and USDA to sell their lab-grown chicken products in restaurants before going full retail, the U.S. joins two other countries, Singapore and Israel, as the first to allow commercialization of cell cultured meat products.

What do natural channel industry members need to know about this new and controversial technology?

One thing seems certain: cell cultured meat, derived from and produced with biological materials sourced from animals, is not vegan. Few think it’s natural and many question whether it’s humane or safe for consumers to eat, at least in its present iteration. Despite being touted by such chefs as José Andrés, some experts question whether lab-grown chicken is even chicken. The ability to scale, along with potentially significant environmental impacts and production costs, are also top concerns for industry and consumers alike.

“We know that one company is using genetic engineering to create and immortalize chicken fibroblast and/or myoblast cell lines. They select for cells that they can bulk up in a suspension culture. However, growth factors used in the suspension culture may come from sera sourced from bovine, pig or other animal sources,” Michael Hansen, Ph.D., Senior Scientist with Consumer Reports, told Presence News.

“If you’re buying chicken, you need to know if it was made with bovine or pork materials. How will consumers and those that follow special diets know if it’s not labeled?” Hansen asked. “Restaurants do not have to label.”

Countering cruelty free claims made by marketers of cell cultured meat, Hansen added, “The notion that this is cruelty free? They’re using fetal bovine serum derived from slaughtered cattle. They are, in fact, using a lot of material from animals. Let me be straight up clear: they are not cruelty free.”

In addition, Hansen raised concerns about the nutritional quality of the meat produced using cell culture technology. “Nutritionally, normal cholesterol levels in ground chicken average 45.4 mg/dL. However, cholesterol levels were reported five to 10 times higher in lab-grown, cell cultured chicken products,” he pointed out.

Safety, too, is a major point of concern for Hansen, who has been sharing his scientific expertise with Consumer Reports for more than 20 years. “People haven’t eaten these kinds of things before. We don’t know the downside and there have been no adequate health or safety studies conducted, to date.”

Josh Tetrick, CEO of Eat Just and Cofounder of Good Meat, feels differently about the safety of his cell cultured chicken product.

“So how do we do it?” Tetrick explained in an April 2022 interview with The Venture podcast. “We start with a cell. And we can get that cell from an egg, from a fresh piece of meat, or from a biopsy of an animal, so we don’t need billions of farmed animals anymore. Then we identify nutrients to feed the cell, since we need our own version of feed. And it’s not that different. It’s amino acids, vitamins, and minerals—stuff that enables our cell to grow. And then we scale up and manufacture it in a stainless-steel vessel called a bioreactor that looks like something you’d see in a microbrewery.

“And that’s how we make meat. That’s the process we used to make meat that’s served in Singapore today. That’s the process that we’ll be using as we build out larger facilities in North America, Singapore, and elsewhere. It’s cleaner, so there is little to no risk of salmonella, E. coli, fecal contamination, or other zoonotic diseases. Ultimately, we think it will be more efficient. The goal is to get below the cost of conventionally produced chicken,” Tetrick told The Venture.

“Because as proud as I am about launching with a handful of restaurants, that’s not the point. The point is to get to a world where the vast majority of meat consumed doesn’t require the need to slaughter an animal, cut down a tree, use antibiotics, or accelerate zoonotic disease. We’ve got to get to that world. And we’re only going to get to that world when we figure out a way to manufacture at scale. And we’re only going to get to scale when we figure out how to engineer this unprecedented bioreactor. And that’s why we’re putting so much energy into figuring it out,” Tetrick added.

“Yes, but what’s in the feed stock for the nutrient medium in which such products are grown?” natural products industry veteran and retail specialist Errol Schweizer asked.

“Billions of dollars of speculative investment have flowed into this space. The volumes of cell cultured meat needed to turn a profit for investors will necessitate millions of pounds or gallons of nutrient mix annually,” Schweizer said. “Will the feed stock be derived from cheap, plentiful but chemical-laden by-products of GMO agriculture, particularly soy and corn?

“And what are the environmental and health impacts of these feedstock raw materials? The industry will need to figure out how to dispose of the biological waste as a result of this process, as well. And because a lot of companies don’t want regulatory scrutiny beyond what already exists in the food industry, it’s going to take a lot of public pressure to get stronger labeling and federal oversight measures in place,” Schweizer told Presence News.

Max Goldberg, Founder of Organic Insider, questions the environmental benefits of cell cultured meat. “This is a very risky, unproven and highly processed food technology, and research published in May from the University of California at Davis shows that cultivated meat could emit up to 25 times more carbon dioxide equivalents than conventional beef. Yet, is anyone the least bit surprised? This is the classic playbook from the GMO industry – sell the public and investors on a great story but fail to deliver on the promises. Furthermore, no one has any idea of the possible unintended side effects of consuming this novel food product,” he told Presence News.

At the end of the day, will consumers accept such products? According to an international research group led by Ashkan Pakseresht from Novia University of Applied Sciences in Finland, consumer studies indicated at least seven factors affecting consumer acceptance of culture meat products: public awareness, risk-benefit perception, ethical and environmental concerns, emotions, personal factors, product properties, and availability of meat alternatives.

“Like any new food, the ultimate success of cultured meat depends on consumer acceptance,” the researchers said. “Environmental and ethical concerns stimulate a desire to preserve the environment and encourage consumers to accept more sustainable food production systems. However, it was surprising to learn that ethical and environmental concerns prompted consumers to be willing to pay a premium price for purchasing meat substitute (e.g., plant-based substitutes), but not necessarily cultured meat. The results indicated that the environmental advantages alone do not seem to be a strong motivation to compensate for perceived risks (or disgust impulse) of this novel technology,” Pakseresht told Food Navigator.

How will these products be presented to the public? According to Food Republic, a major hurdle has been determining how to label lab-grown meat in a way that would be transparent for consumers. “After a long process that has included debate and public feedback, the USDA has ruled that the lab-grown chicken will be labeled “cell-cultivated,” the magazine reported in June 2023.

“The USDA’s approval of our label marks a major step forward towards our goal of creating a more humane and sustainable food system,” said Dr. Uma Valeti, CEO and Founder of Upside Foods, in a press release about the decision.

At the end of the day, will grocers, distributors and others dedicated to the healthy lifestyles market and the natural retail channel be willing to sell cell cultured meat? As Bill Weiland, Co-founder of Presence Marketing, puts it, “We prefer to sell plant-based meat, not meat made in a plant.”

Steven Hoffman is Managing Director of Compass Natural, providing public relations, brand marketing, social media, and strategic business development services to natural, organic, sustainable and hemp/CBD products businesses. Compass Natural serves in PR and programming for NoCo Hemp Expo and Southern Hemp Expo, and Hoffman serves as Editor of the weekly Let’s Talk Hemp Newsletter, published by We Are for Better Alternatives. Contact steve@compassnaturalmarketing.com.