This year’s list highlights up-and-coming superstars from the worlds of restaurants, packaged food, alcohol and recipe creation.
By Chloe Sorvino, Maria Gracia Santillana Linares and Simone Melvin
Like many baseball players, Brian Waddick and Cole Schaefer grew up munching on sunflower seeds during Little League games. By the later innings, though, the dugout snack could get a bit, well, dull. So the duo, who met as roommates at the University of Minnesota in 2017, decided to spice up the treat with quirky flavors ranging from cinnamon churro to backyard BBQ.
They started by seasoning the seeds in their dorm and taste-testing them on their classmates. Inspired by positive campus feedback, the pair raised $60,000 from state grants and angel investors to build Smackin’. This year, revenue should top $20 million, up from $2 million in 2023, and their seeds are available at megaretailers like Walmart, Dick’s and 7-Eleven. Schaefer attributes the rapid growth in traditional retail to its more than 700,000 Gen Z social media followers.
“We took our online success and brought it into stores,” adds Waddick.
Waddick and Schaefer are just two of the standouts on the 2025 Forbes 30 Under 30 Food & Drink list, which highlights up-and-coming superstars from the worlds of restaurants, farming, packaged food, alcohol and recipe creation who have persevered despite the odds. There’s a better-for-you gum, a non-alcoholic aperitif, an agua fresca brand, a knife forger and a line of “hot girl” pickles for the Tik Tok set among the ranks. Their game-changing work should be watched.
Another stand-out? 29-year-old Vasu Goyal, who runs Dose Daily. He founded it for his grandfather, who struggled with cholesterol and liver issues. The immigrant from India, who’s now based in Miami, went to law school before pursuing entrepreneurship and became inspired to start Dose when he realized he could get more efficacious ingredients to people with health needs through a simple daily shot. His glass-bottled shots, filled with zinc, elderberry and ginger, are sold on Amazon, Sprouts, and other health-conscious retail locations, including the 1 Hotels. Goyal says Dose focuses on putting scientific knowledge to work and makes sure the company spends its money on clinical-level trials to support its products and the marketing behind them.
There’s also Gina Galvin, a 26-year-old who is putting a twist on the pretzel industry. In 2019, Galvin cofounded Stellar Snacks alongside their mother, an immigrant from France. As the branding visionary and chief creative officer, Galvin is behind the company’s fun flavors and packaging featuring original art from emerging artists. Stellar Snacks is now one of the fastest growing pretzel brands in America, with its products in retailers such as Kroger, Albertsons, Whole Foods and Sprouts. And the Carson City, Nevada-based brand has taken to the skies, now soaring on airlines including Southwest and Alaska Airlines. Stellar has raised capital from investors, small business administration loans, state grants and tax abatements, and has committed to investing $137 million over the next decade to develop a 434,000-square-foot pretzel bakery factory in Louisville, Kentucky. (It opened in November.)
From the competitive world of restaurants, there’s Annalee Schlossberg, who founded Bel-Fries in 2020 as she saw how a smart micro-restaurant concept could succeed in the tough post-Covid landscape of New York City. The thicker-cut and twice-fried Belgian fries and choice of 16 sauces continue to be popular, and since that first Lower East Side location, the 25-year-old entrepreneur has opened up 6 more locations, in addition to a food truck. Bel-Fries has doubled its revenue every year since opening and is expecting to hit $2.5 million in revenue in 2024.
In the spirits industry, check out Craftmix founded by Jake Tannenbaum: Its cocktail and mocktail mixers are packaged in pocket-sized packets for health conscious and sustainability focused consumers. Tannenbaum, 28, moved to Los Angeles and bartended while trying to figure out a business to start, when the concept for Craftmix dawned on him. After launching in 2019 with maxed out credit cards and batches made in Tannenbaum’s kitchen, within six months on Amazon, Craftmix grew to $10,00 in sales per month. Craftmix has since raised $2.4 million, including from a cofounder of Liquid IV. It is now sold across retailers like Walmart, Sprouts, Raleys as well as QVC, Amtrak trains and JetBlue flights worldwide. This year Craftmix is expected to bring in $8 million in annual revenue.
This year, there are also four creators on the list for the first time: Meredith Hayden, 28, Olivia Tiedemann, 27, Carly Shapiro, 28, and Madison Vitale, 29 (who are behind @Sistersnacking) and Tess Sinatro, 27. Combined, they have a total of 6.6 million Instagram followers and 4.5 million TikTok followers. Hayden, whose videos have amassed nearly 80 million likes on TikTok, skyrocketed to popularity showing the behind-the-scenes of her life as a private chef in the Hamptons. She has now expanded her food media enterprise, which goes by Wishbone Kitchen online, to include a 2025 cookbook, revenue-sharing partnerships with platforms like Etsy and long-form video content, which has fans calling her Gen Z’s Ina Garten.
That’s just a taste of the young food entrepreneurs who are building companies that will define 2025 and beyond.
To compile the 14th annual list, judges and Forbes reporters convened in-person to taste samples and discuss the candidates. Candidates were evaluated by a panel of judges featuring Under 30 list alumnae Molly Yeh, chef, cookbook author, restauranteur and cooking show host, and Samah Dada, cookbook author and content creator. There’s also Randall Lane, Forbes’ chief content officer, and Lee Brian Schrager, founder of the South Beach Wine & Food Festival.
To be considered for this year’s list, all candidates had to be under the age of 30 as of December 31, 2024, and never before named to a 30 Under 30 North America, Europe or Asia list.
This year’s Under 30 Food & Drink list was edited by Chloe Sorvino, Maria Gracia Santillana Linares and Simone Melvin. To view the full Food & Drink list, click here, and for all other Under 30 categories, click here.