Why Justine Doiron’s “Not Sponsored” Series Means Everything to a Small Brand

So earlier this week — actually last Sunday — I was walking to every Whole Foods I could within walking distance, checking stock and coordinating reorders with my distributor and merchandiser after the usual weekend out-of-stock rush.

It was one of those 75-degree New York Sundays we won’t have many more of this year.

On my walk back from Tribeca Whole Foods, along the West Side Highway at sunset, it hit me: I had spent all of Sunday working. Alone. But at the same time, I knew there was so much to be grateful for — for my life, my little job, my little company. So I posted a raw, honest TikTok. That was my therapy. The comments were so sweet and supportive and I didn’t feel that alone anymore.

Why am I telling you this?

While I was on TikTok trying to upload that video (which, for me, takes about two hours), I suddenly noticed a wave of new followers. Since I’m definitely not smooth on TikTok, I had no idea what was happening.

Then — bless her — Delaney tagged me in a comment: “Ilay, you’re going to love this”

And I cried.

Justine Doiron — aka Justine Snacks — had posted a whole video about BEZI.

If you don’t know her: Justine Doiron is the definition of warm, grounded food inspiration. A home chef turned The New York Times best seller cookbook author whose videos make you feel like your friend is cooking for you (and yapping at the same time) in her Brooklyn apartment. She makes everything feel elevated and doable, to her mere 2.3M followers on TikTok (and 1.2M on Instagram)

We met a few weeks ago at a cheese trade show. It was near the end of the day, I was exhausted, but still chatting with people because I genuinely love it. Then suddenly, Justine and a friend stopped by.

She said, “What if I told you I don’t like labneh?”

Inside, I was thrilled. Because I do best when I’m challenged — and I trust my little product with my whole heart. So I said, “Please try this.”

The rest is history. She tried it, and said, “Wait… this is actually really good.”

I had zero expectations after that. I mean, KitchenAid sponsors her (as they should). Meanwhile I’m over here stressing about overspending $200. I can’t afford 1% of a Justine. So I just said, “Please give me feedback on the product — I’ll send you infinite amount of labneh.” And that was it.

She posted one story from that trade show. I gained 100 followers overnight. I was beyond grateful.

Then she spotted BEZI in her local store — one of the same ones I personally sold into with my backpack — and she posted again. I was like “ She remembers me!” which was great to see her really liking the product.

But when she went on to make a whole video — a full recipe — and included BEZI in her Not Sponsored series and says BEZI inspired her to create this series?!
I cried — right there in the middle of the West Side Highway, where I honestly was thinking that I was completely alone in this journey of building BEZI.

If I weren’t in food CPG, I probably would’ve just thought, “Oh, free advertising.”
But it’s not just that.

This job is lonely. Entrepreneurship is lonely. But when it comes to food? It also becomes vulnerable.

This is what I mean by that: Every single BEZI you see on a grocery shelf is a little separate performance I put out to the world. It’s not like an app or a service I can control at all times — it’s perishable, touchable, and food is deeply personal. Labneh is something I grew up with — BEZI is what I turned that into something new, born from my Turkish roots and shaped by my New York home.

Hot Honey Labneh didn’t exist anywhere before it existed in my kitchen. There was no strategist or food scientist. Just a gut feeling. That’s vulnerable.

Secondly, majority of the things in the CPG world is pay-to-play. And when there’s massive funding available the $100,000 marketing service becomes “normal” — for brands making under $1M in revenue. For us, that’s thousands of labnehs we’d have to sell just to break even on one campaign. And because we’re bootstrapped, we simply can’t play in that arena.

I’m not saying those $100K spends don’t work — I’m sure they do, in the long run.
But I can’t operate in the long run.
Most small bootstrapped food brands can’t.

So when someone like Justine takes the time to share your product “not sponsored,” it means the world — because it shows that BEZI is out there purely because of the work we’ve done and the product itself. It wasn’t paid for, pitched, or pushed — it was chosen.

It’s a quiet kind of validation, from someone I deeply respect — proof that our little, bootstrapped company might actually have a real chance.

It feels like the biggest kid in school taking the smallest kid by the hand and saying, “You belong here too.”

So Justine Doiron — thank you, from the bottom of my heart.
Thank you for giving this tiny, bootstrapped brand a real shot next to the giants.

And to our community reading this — thank you, always. Every BEZI you buy, every friend you tell, is our biggest chance to keep doing what we do and love.

I could’ve just reposted Justine’s video.
But I believe it deserved a bigger story than that.

Always
Live Laugh Labneh,
Ilay