Twice in two weeks, award-winning actress and lifestyle guru Gwyneth Paltrow has featured Top Seedz crackers and seeds on her social media pages.
43North startup Top Seedz has a famous fan: Gwyneth Paltrow
Natalie Brophy,
Updated
Celebrities are just like us – they're fans of Buffalo-grown cracker company Top Seedz.
Paltrow first mentioned Top Seedz on the TikTok account of her wellness and lifestyle brand Goop.
Following a trend of users showing off their snack drawers, the short video shows Paltrow wearing a multicolored dress with the caption, "Show your boss, then show her snack drawer." Paltrow then grabs the camera and pans to her snack cabinet. Nestled among the jars of nuts, bags of tortilla chips and dried fruit is a bag of Top Seedz Maple Magic roasted seeds.
Top Seedz founder Rebecca Brady said she was excited when she learned Paltrow had shared that Top Seedz was part of her snack drawer. After Paltrow posted the video, Top Seedz reached out to Paltrow's team and sent her a variety of Top Seedz products to try, Brady said.
Then, on Wednesday, Paltrow featured the Top Seedz goodies on her Instagram story with the caption, "@topseedz I can't live without you (another AMAZING women owned business) #wellnesswednesday."
Watch now: Gwyneth Paltrow features Top Seedz on her Instagram
When Brady saw the post, she called her team members and "everyone was just screaming."
"When someone, regardless of who they are, posts and says, 'You got to try these crackers' or 'I love these crackers' or 'I love these seeds,' it's a success," Brady said.
A worker seals up plastic containers of crackers before putting them inside their cardboard sleeves for final shipping inside the Top Seedz production facility.
Paltrow has nearly 8 million Instagram followers and the Goop TikTok account has more than 103,000, so the posts essentially amounted to a TopSeedz advertisement that reached a big potential audience.
After Paltrow's latest post, the Top Seedz Instagram account got around 100 new followers and Brady said there was an uptick in people ordering from the company's website for the first time.
Brady spends very little money advertising her products, relying on the quality of her crackers and seeds, great customer service and word of mouth recommendations. But she did recently hire a marketing manager who has done a good job leveraging the exposure from Paltrow, Brady said.
Top Seedz's marketing manager had the idea to make a video copying Paltrow's featuring Brady showing off her own snack drawer.
The attention from Paltrow makes Brady think back to the early days of Top Seedz when it was just her friends and family buying her products. Still, five years later and after winning the 43North startup competition in 2021, Brady sometimes still can't believe people who don't personally know her buy Top Seedz.
"When I'm in the supermarket and I see crackers in people's trolleys that I don't know, I'm really still kind of gobsmacked," said Brady, who is from New Zealand. "It still gives me a buzz when I see them in someone's cart and think, 'Wow. People are really buying them.' I mean, of course they are but when you see it or hear it, it's just very, very fun."
A date stamp is placed on each label inside the Top Seedz production facility in Cheektowaga.
Brady built Top Seedz in Western New York and is in the process of looking for a larger manufacturing space in the area. Top Seedz products are available online and in grocery stores like Wegmans, Tops, Whole Foods and Erewhon. Recently, all 100-plus Wegmans locations across the country started stocking Top Seedz in the cracker aisles.
"It's just funny to think that (Paltrow) even knows Top Seedz," Brady said.
