The Checkout: Joe Rotondo, Founder of Smearcase

Welcome to The Checkout 🛒

A series exploring how the next generation of CPG brands are being built, from first batches to first listings.

The high-protein ice cream market is sitting at nearly $3 billion in 2026 and climbing - over 65% of US adults now actively seek protein-rich food products. The freezer aisle has responded with whey, casein, and pea protein in every configuration. What it hadn't produced, until now, was cottage cheese ice cream. Cottage cheese sales have risen roughly 17% annually for the past two years, jumping another 14.3% in 2025 to reach 746.6 million pints. The ingredient is everywhere. The ice cream didn't exist. Joe built it anyway.

Smearcase is the world's first cottage cheese ice cream. It's already on shelves at Whole Foods and Sprouts. And this week, Joe secured his first institutional investor. I spoke to him about owning a category he invented, why the incumbents missed it, and what it feels like to be the OG before the imitators arrive.
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You invented the first cottage cheese ice cream and this week secured your first institutional investor, what's your personal priority outside of 1,000 doors?

Thank you. It has to be creating a moat. Keeping ourselves established as the founder of the frozen cottage cheese category we've created. 1,000 doors are important, but making sure we continue to taste amazing and listen to our customers. Retail and growth matter, but we need to hold the position we've established as the standard. The OG. Any future imitators, any future products, will be compared against Smearcase. With the institutional investor, I'm excited. I'm looking forward to getting to work.

You went from zero to Whole Foods and Sprouts in under a year. What did you learn about the retailer conversation that you wish you'd known earlier?

Honestly it was just a great market fit at the right time. This is what people are asking retailers for, the demand exists, so retailers are looking for a supplier. When they sample Smearcase, they love the taste, they love the flavour. You can't fake that conversation. The product does the work.

Cottage cheese has been in American fridges for decades. Kraft, Daisy, Dean Foods, none of them made this. Why do you think the incumbents missed it?

Because they're too slow and they're not on the ground. They're not listening to what everyday people are looking for. Too corporate. Things take too long. When you're optimising for the existing portfolio, you don't have the peripheral vision to see what's forming right beside you.

Smearcase has a very distinct visual identity and the name alone can be a bit polarising. How early did you invest in design, and should CPG founders prioritise it before they've proven product-market fit, or after?

First - I'm glad the name Smearcase is polarising. It's the German word for cottage cheese, and we live in an attention economy. I also didn’t want it to feel like another personal, founder-led ice cream name, Joe’s, or anything in that lane. I wanted the brand to have its own point of view. I'm glad it makes someone look twice, that it forces a point of view. I love branding. I love brands and brand design. We designed in-house, and what you see on the packaging now is what it looked like from day one.

What's in your cart right now?

I'm actually a perimeter shopper, probably not the most typical CPG founder in that way. I eat fresh produce, I love the Ancestral ground beef blend, and I love Good Culture. Good Culture is educating our consumer for us. They've led the way on cottage cheese's repositioning and that benefits the whole category. Sourmilk, Painterland Sisters, Force of Nature those are on rotation weekly.

What are you reading or watching right now? Has your reference pool changed since you started building?

I go out in nature. A long walk, total isolation, real time to think. That's genuinely where I get my best ideas. No podcast, no screen. Just enough space to put things together properly.

Tell me about your first hire.

I'm the only employee, technically. I have a co-founder — if that counts as a first hire — and a social media person who's 19. They just know. I'm 31, I'm not old, but they are genuinely exceptional. Social media was a priority from the start. They know exactly what people want to see.

You dropped other projects overnight to build this. How has building Smearcase changed you?

I love to work hard, I love to be challenged, I love wearing all the hats. I find it exhilarating. I've never been more exhausted in my life — and I've never been more fulfilled. The thing I've learned is that you can make money doing anything you want. I worked in corporate. I built a denim brand. And I'm lucky to be in America, where being an entrepreneur means you have access to speed. That's not nothing. Right now, we're focused on expanding our flavour profiles (we only have three)  and we're staying true to what got us here: helping people live a healthy life.

Where should we eat in Brooklyn right now?

Lucali
Frankies 457
The Commerce Inn

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