How Smearcase Is Building the Future With Functional Frozen Indulgence

Fred Schonenberg
Today we’re joined by Joe Rotondo, founder of Smearcase, the brand behind FroCo, the frozen cottage cheese category. They’re delivering clean ingredients, real protein, and half the fat, without sacrificing a true ice-cream–like experience. 

This conversation was recorded at the 7th Real California Milk Accelerator Pitch Event on December 11th in Napa, California, where Smearcase was named the Grand Prize Winner, standing out in a highly competitive cohort of emerging dairy brands. 

Joe’s journey began in a Brooklyn kitchen, sparked by a marathon training run and a simple question: why wasn’t there a frozen dessert with low fat, real protein and clean ingredients? What started as an experiment with a tabletop Cuisinart has since grown into a fast-scaling brand preparing for nationwide expansion. 

In this episode, Joe shares what it takes to build and pitch a category-defining product, how partnership with the California Milk Advisory Board helped elevate product quality and scalability, and why values, relationships, and resilience are critical to building something that lasts. Let’s dive in. 

I'd love for you to talk about the journey over the past year. It's been really fun for everyone to follow him on LinkedIn. It is one of the most inspiring, real, authentic conversations on LinkedIn, because you actually tell it what it's like to be a founder, the good, the bad, the challenges. And it's been really fun to watch that, but then also see as you're getting bigger. 

So the logos that you're posting, hey, we're in this store, and it's like, oh, we're in a lot of those stores. It's very cool to watch. So I'd love just in your own words, how's the last year been for you?

Joe Rotondo
Yeah, first of all, thank you to the California farmers. Like, damn, without you guys, we wouldn't have milk to put into our FroCo. So just really grateful to the CMAB, to VentureFuel, just really grateful for the opportunity to not only compete in the competition, but also have the backing of an incredible team and network that we can rely on as a team to bounce ideas off of, have them advocate for us, they have our backs. 

With the help of the CMAB, they've partnered us with world class facilities that have not only helped us scale and expand, but have increased the quality of our products. And that is something that makes a great partnership. 

Fred Schonenberg
So maybe we'll go back to the origin briefly for anyone that maybe wasn't here last year. How did you come up with the idea for Frozen Cottage Sheets? And one of the judging criteria, right, was what's the unmet need? Was there something that motivated you to choose that product? And maybe talk about the origin story a little bit.

Joe Rotondo
Yeah, so I was training for a marathon. And after one of my toughest workouts, I was craving ice cream, which is so uncommon for me. I don't really have a sweet tooth, but I was just out of curiosity. I was looking for the ice cream that had the most amount of protein and the cleanest ingredient list, and I just couldn't find it. And I'm the type of person where if I can't find it, I'm going to do it myself.

So I started in my kitchen with my sister, with Drew, and we just started chopping it up, literally throwing things together to see what worked. It all came down to nutritional value. What ingredients can we put into this that all serve a specific purpose? And it started in my little Brooklyn kitchen with a little tabletop Cuisinart. 

The premise was clean ingredients, nutritional value, innovation, differentiation, and something that spoke to the consumer, spoke to the everyday athlete, spoke to the cottage cheese queen, spoke to the health-conscious parent to really just provide a healthier version of a frozen dessert. 

Fred Schonenberg
We see so many different founders. One of the things we always look for is that sort of lived experience where it was something you felt a need to change, which is really cool. Can you talk about maybe some of the hurdles that you've overcome this past year going from that idea, you're on the Cuisinart, now all of a sudden, a semifinal last year, and now you're out there in the world. What are some of the bumps that you go through as a founder?

Joe Rotondo
Yeah, you go through all the bumps. You're building the ship as you fly it. I think it's important to acknowledge that during the journey, during the obstacles, it comes down to how aligned you are with your values? I think what's important is that the CMAB shares a lot of my own personal values, and that's what makes them a great partner. And that's community, family-owned dairy farms, that's health, having nutritionally packed milk, and its sustainability. Knowing that what you're doing is not only good for the environment, but good for the people that you're serving.

People think you're crazy when you try to make cottage cheese ice cream. You know what I mean? You've got to be pretty delusional. But I always say, if we went to the moon, we could make cottage cheese ice cream. And at this point, I'm not sure if we went to the moon, but we damn as heck went and made cottage cheese ice cream. And so here we are.

Fred Schonenberg
Oh my god. I did not see that coming. That was great. I remember first hearing of your product. I was like, what is it? It's frozen cottage cheese? Why do we need that in the world? And I had cottage cheese as the only dairy product that I don't love. And you're like, just try it. And it was unbelievable. It was your peanut butter flavor, and it was just fantastic. 

How do you get over that hurdle? When I would assume consumers, maybe obviously cottage cheese is exploding and doing really well, but frozen cottage cheese didn’t exist to my knowledge at that point. So how do you get over that with buyers and consumers?

Joe Rotondo
I think people love that shock factor. There's a certain virality to like, oh my gosh, this is cottage cheese. I can't believe it. I never would have thought. But I think our generation, cottage cheese can only make so many comebacks. It's made countless comebacks, right? But I think this one's here to stay because our generation knows the health benefits of cottage cheese, but they don't want to eat it out of the tub. They want it in a different form factor, and they love that novelty.

So I think with social media doing its thing of consumer education, cottage cheese ice cream wasn't really a foreign concept because customers were already doing it with the Ninja Creamy. They were putting cottage cheese and making pancakes or bread. And we leveraged social media doing that education for us, and it made the experience a little less frictionless.

So when we're demoing in Whole Foods and we say, hey, would you like to try some high protein ice cream and it's made with cottage cheese? Customers know like, oh, it's protein. Oh, it's cottage cheese. And they're like, wow, this makes so much sense. And I think that onboarding is much smoother because of the power of social media and the power of people just sharing, oh, I tried this recipe. You should try it too. I tried this new product, and they're sharing it on the internet.

Fred Schonenberg
I was wondering if you could talk a little bit about the idea of a cohort. And one of the things we thought about as we created this program was we wanted to have a group of founders together because you can lean on each other and you have shared experiences, even if you're in different categories or different levels of experience. Can you talk about that and maybe how that cohort effect has helped you?

Joe Rotondo
Yeah, what's cool, Drew and I, after every single presenter today, we were like, wow, I'm so glad that we're not going against them. This was an incredible cohort. They really packed a punch. And honestly, you guys should all be really proud of yourselves for capitalizing on this opportunity and showing up for yourself. I really honor that. 

Entrepreneurship isn't easy. It's a tough road. You're going to get punched in the face. You're going to be challenged. But I think having founders along with you, they just understand the journey. They understand the trials and tribulations and the adversity. What's cool is we first met our cohort at UC Davis back in August, and we had a weekend together and we really all bonded. 

And now we have group chats today with a lot of the founders and we're sharing war stories. We're getting advice and feedback. We're immersing ourselves in the community. And to this day, we can lean on each other because, one, we went through this experience together. We had a lot of bonding experiences. We had team dinners. You're going on field trips. And then you have the pitch competition. You're all working on something individually, but collectively you're coming together and putting on a great event and you get to try each other's product. 

But I think it's nice to have a different perspective of the brand and a different perspective of founders. And when you come together and just share that experience, something special really happens. Humans come together when you're doing something difficult. And it's just so primitive that you just bond over good food. That's what just makes us us. I think it's a special experience we all get to share together.

Fred Schonenberg
One of the questions I have, so you got a giant check. My first question is, how do you get that through TSA?

Joe Rotondo
I'll tell you, Fred.

Fred Schonenberg
Look, I'm very interested. As I was handing it to you, I'm like, how do you get this in a suitcase? What happens to these checks after we give them to you? But my serious question is, how do you plan to use the funds in terms of growing the business?

Joe Rotondo
A lot of founders today alluded to it in their presentations. A lot of it's going to go towards marketing. We're launching Nationwide and Sprouts at the end of February. And it's an incredible opportunity for us. And it's going to be an incredible challenge for us. As a new brand, we need to build awareness. We need to drive trial. So we're going to use these funds to spread the word about our FroCo, onboard new customers, drive existing and new customers to Sprouts. 

Then a portion of it will go towards R&D. We want to expand our portfolio. We want to expand our flavors. We want to get into novelties. Drew and I are going to make a road trip and visit some Sprouts in California. And I feel very blessed to say this, that it's not our first rodeo, taking this check through TSA. We're growing a collection of big checks. We won in Utopia, another pitch competition. And Blake's in the audience. Blake, we use the same exact pitch that we use for CMAB. I have it muscle memorized. We've done about five pitch competitions. 

So founders, know your pitch. Get it down and use that when you're talking to investors, when you're talking to retailers, when you're doing another pitch. But to take a big check through the TSA, it goes just like your suitcase. They're going to scan it. Make sure there's no metal. And then the flight attendants are very nice enough to put it in their coat closet. There's a video on our social media of our first check. We'll make another one. So the next winner, when you need to take your check home, you'll know how to do it.

Fred Schonenberg
That would be an absolutely great video. You definitely should do that. For anyone that wasn't here last year, your presentations, the two of you, it’s so dynamic. There was so much charisma. Even if anyone hadn't tried the product yet, they wanted to. I will say as the organizer of the event, I was a little nervous. 

You guys were like wild cards and you went up there and you just crushed it. Do you find that, I mean, I would see you guys winning pitch competitions because of that. How does that translate when you're in a buyer's office? Are you able to bring that level of personality? Because you guys both have so much personality and it's now, for me, it's in that brand. When I see the pint, I think of the two of you. How do you translate that in more one-to-one meetings?

Joe Rotondo
Yeah, thanks Fred. Everybody's different, but at the end of the day, you're doing business with people. I'm not in the business of ice cream. I'm in the business of relationships. I want to do business with people that I genuinely value, who value what we bring to the table, but also they value our success and we value their success. I want to make those buyers look good that they're taking an early bet on a brand. 

There’re some buyers who just want to know what the numbers are and will I make money? And then there's other buyers who we can have a genuine conversation and collaborate with and they're willing to help us build our brand and they're willing to take a bet on us because they see that we're humans behind the brand and this is how we're choosing to make a living. We know that for them, their job might be on the line for performance. I think just approaching it through a relationship context just lays a really strong foundation for a working business relationship.

Fred Schonenberg
Very cool. I was just looking back at the founders in the back of the room. You guys, if you have a question, raise your hand and anybody in the audience, because I want to make sure you have in here, you might as well. Yes, please.

Audience 1:
I love how you keep your value. So, I'm not an enterpriser, is it smooth or is it hard to get the sales to come?

Joe Rotondo
Yeah, great question. I know we built a lot of suspense by not having the product here, which was on purpose. So, when we're in Sprouts next year, you could go purchase a pint. But yes, it is blended. It is blended smooth. It's creamy. It reads like ice cream. It reads like ice cream and that was integral for us.

Again, that's the biggest hurdle for customers wanting to enjoy the nutritional benefits of cottage cheese and that's where I was at. I started to get the ick, but now I can enjoy it in a novel way, still get the nutritional benefits, but enjoy it as the dessert, if you will, of ice cream and that's what customers really enjoy. 

Audience 2:
[inaudible question]

Joe Rotondo
How much do you love it? Man, you got to love the game. You just have to love the game. You on your tough days, again, you need to be so aligned with your values and your mission. I am so emotionally tied to my product because I was solving my own need, right? Just like you, right? 

So, I think remember the difficult days, because there will be difficult days. There will be many of them. Remember why you're doing it and how tied are you to your mission because if you are so lockstep with that, nothing can stop you. 

Fred Schonenberg
It's funny. I think Mark Zuckerberg said that being an entrepreneur is like waking up each morning and getting punched in the face and then doing it again the next morning and the next morning with no end in sight and enjoying that.

Joe Rotondo
Mike Tyson, everybody has a plan until they get punched in the face.

Fred Schonenberg
Yeah, and it happens a lot in entrepreneurship. I'm curious if anyone else in the audience has any questions. I have a few more, but just as I started to open it up there. Yes, ma’am. Somewhere else.

Joe Rotondo
Tony, I remember you said that we're throwing a party for the first $100 million brand and Tony, I'm holding you to it. So, bet on this horse, baby.

Fred Schonenberg
So, out of curiosity though, when you look at the business, I've always found as an entrepreneur, it's easy to see sort of the end, like the big, big, this is my North Star, but then you have to break it down into more tangible steps. Where do you see maybe in the next year?

Joe Rotondo
Yeah, to answer your question, I believe that Smearcase will be a household name in 10 years. It's going to be in every freezer. It's going to be a generational product. Kids are currently growing up eating Smearcase.Parents feel confident in our product that's healthy and good enough for them to feed it to their children. So, I'm excited to see the legacy of the brand continue to get passed down. 

A year from now, we're going to be nationwide in Sprouts. A year from now, it'll be December end of 2026. Hopefully we'll do another serious round of fundraising and we'll be able to announce another sort of major expansion. And we want to continue to innovate in flavors and bring the best possible eating experience to our customers, but then also innovate beyond the pint. So, in novelties and bars, we want to go toe-to-toe with legacy brands out there and just continue to deliver that nutritional value to our customers.

Fred Schonenberg
One of the questions I have, I got you next, is around this idea of constraint and focus. It's always hard giving entrepreneurs advice because you're like, think big, and by the way, focus. And it's like, wait a second, those are against each other sometimes. How do you maintain that constraint and focus? You could launch novelties. I'm sure there's more retailers that'd be interested in taking you all right now, but you want to make sure you're successful in sprouts. How do you throttle yourself from full speed while still maintaining that growth?

Joe Rotondo
That's the beautiful dance of entrepreneurship. It's a dogfight. It's a fast-paced, live-action, 4D chess match where you're in the weeds, and then you have to take time to zoom out and gain perspective and see a bird's-eye view of it. And then you got to realign and then dive back in. 

I think that's where being an entrepreneur, you have this freedom of nobody, it's on you, right? Your back's against the wall. You got to figure it out. So you're in charge of holding yourself accountable. I think I just take long walks with no phone and no headphones and just zone out right up Quentin Street, Fred. Fred and I are neighbors, guys.

Fred Schonenberg
Drew, do you go on long walks also or do you leave alone?

Drew DiSpirito
We went back on the long run to actually go to Coney Pelt. 

Fred Schonenberg
Yeah, long-distance relationship. There was a question in the back, yeah.

Audience 3:
[inaudible question]

Joe Rotondo
Yeah, great question. I love this question. What the heck is Smearcase? The whole reason why we named it is for you to ask that question, right? Smearcase literally means cottage cheese in German. It's Schmierkäse. So it's an ode to our not-so-secret ingredient. 

And to us, we wanted to name it something that was different from what's on the shelf, right? You have Ben and Jerry's. It's all first names. You have Ben and Jerry's, Alex, Nick's, Jenny's, Haagen-Dazs. So we wanted to name something that was bold. It was action-worthy. It said functional. It says protein to tell our customers, this isn't a dessert. This is a nutritional value that you can have at any time of day, breakfast, lunch, and dinner.

We call our product FroCo, frozen cottage cheese, right? So you have ice cream, you have frozen yogurt, FroYo, you have plant-based alternatives, and now you finally have frozen cottage cheese. So the brand name is Smearcase. The product is FroCo, and that allows us the versatility to expand outside of the freezer aisle.

Fred Schonenberg
Very cool. And I would say on the bold ideas, you guys walk this line really well of making bold decisions. So the fact that you're like, yeah, I'm going to name it that so that people ask me about it. And I remember last year, part of your pitch was around, you were going to be protein dealers. And I was like, no, no, no, that's a terrible idea. That sounds so risky. And you're like, no, no, it'll be fine, Fred. I was like, all right, we'll see. And it was awesome, right? But I love that you guys have that self-confidence and you take risks. With building the business, it has virality, right? People want to talk about it.

Joe Rotondo
Yeah. You got to give people something to talk about. People love your new protein dealer. They're like, wow, that's catchy. It's fun. It's not serious, right? Yeah. 

Fred Schonenberg
Yeah, it's great. John Tello.

Audience 4:
Yeah, congratulations, first of all. Thank you. You've been on three covers the last year. [inaudible question]

Joe Rotondo
Yeah, we've been very fortunate enough to get a lot of industry recognition. We were featured in Men's Health. We were nominated as one of the best dairy foods of 2025 by Dairy Foods. So really fortunate to have the industry recognition. And the customers, it's just universally loved. As soon as they try it, they're shocked like, wow, I can't believe this is cottage cheese. I can't believe this is healthy ice cream. And we do a ton of store demos, getting in front of customers, putting in their mouths and spreading the word in New York. 

And I think once people try it, they recognize that they can seamlessly transition from your classic vanilla pint to our FroCo and still get that eating experience while getting the functional nutritional value.

Audience 5:
I want to say as a dairy farmer, right, I would add the awesome opportunity to go back and gain. This is what we would have to do at Dairy Farmer Dixie maybe, right? There's a few of us here in the room that support this organization. And this is exactly why we do it. One of the main reasons that we do it, we have an amazing spokesperson on our behalf that has created an amazing product that many of us have. 

And I know we met back the day, what, a year ago, right, Lee Davis. And we just, it's just fun to see this. We produced the product. You guys had the innovation and the insight. And that's why Deere and FDR paid you guys to create these amazing products. It's just going to need an amazing spokesperson with the duties that they just brought it. It's the people and the relationship behind the products.

And why we do it is that we love to partner with people like yourself, that you can also tell our story that we have an amazing product that we produce on our farms. Then that and picking that product and making awesome products that we all taste right now. Ones in the past and the ones in the future. And we're looking literally by your Julius, we are looking for that magic to bonnet that next pair, like that net, they leave a patient that helps you guys. That also helps us, um, you know, Armo post and get in this hall, like that beat all the music, right out to the world. [inaudible statement]

Joe Rotondo
And I think again, it comes down to values. It comes down to relationships and it comes down to like, it's just love, like pure love of, of what you're doing and that, and it speaks, right? Like the love you put in as farmers is, it creates the best possible environment for the cows, right. Creates the best possible dairy for us. Um, and I, yeah, it's this community in this room, like we're all here for the same reason, right. 

It's to provide value to customers. It's to provide value to families. And the only way to do that is together. So yeah, we're incredibly grateful to the CMAB, to the farmers and to everybody here. So thank you guys so much.

Fred Schonenberg
Yeah. And I'll say one thing too, that was pretty cool. Uh, different, different industry, different clients asked me as we were, we were talking about doing something for them. Uh, do we need to put something in the contract to make sure that the startups talk nicely about our industry on social media? And I said, what? Like, no, I don't think we should write that in. That seems a little weird. Like, well, you must do it with the CMAB program. 

I said, why? And they said, they mentioned Smearcase. They're like… we always see Smearcase talking about how great CMAB is and the industry, like that's clearly written into a contract or part of winning. And I was like, no, it's about authenticity. Like they gave love to you. You talk about it. We never policed that. Right. And so I think that speaks to the heart of this is trying to find these breakthrough opportunities, but when you help people, they then tend to talk about you a little bit. So it was pretty cool.

Audience 6: 
[inaudible question]

Joe Rotondo
Yeah, we have three customers that we focus on one, the everyday athlete, the gym bro, he goes to the gym, loves protein. We'll do anything for the protein. Well, so what's interesting is like, that's like me, right. I was designing for myself. So I was like, all right, duh. Like I can't be the only one experiencing this problem, but we also had other theses, right. 

We had the collagen queen, the hot yoga girl, the Pilates girl. She loves cottage cheese. She loves collagen. She has a group chat sharing viral recipes. She has emerged as our top customer, right? So it's allowed us to think like, okay, how can we speak to her even more so and double down on that narrative.

Then the third is the health conscious parent, the soccer mom, maybe she is a collagen queen. Maybe she's married to an everyday athlete and they're shopping for themselves, but they're also shopping for their children, right? They want to have healthier options for their kids and provide that to them. 

So those are our core. That's where we're focused. Like we, by speaking to everybody, you speak to nobody. So we're, we're laser focused on them and we're finding them in sprouts, in whole foods and, and on like, you know, on the coast, those metropolitan areas, but we know that GLP one is also on the rise, right? So they're looking for higher protein goods, lower sugar options. They're bullish on the cottage cheese and protein trends. 

So I think over time, like right now we are a premium product. We're $9.99 on the shelf, but we want to find ways to solve for that middle of the country customer to bring our FroCo to the masses. Um, but we're laser focused on the natural channel and where our customer is right now.

Fred Schonenberg
Thanks for listening to the VentureFuel Visionaries Podcast. To learn more about Smearcase, visit www.smearcase.com. For more changemaker stories, check out www.VentureFuel.net or follow us on LinkedIn. If you enjoyed this episode, be sure to subscribe wherever you get your podcasts. As a note, portions of this podcast were produced using AI. See you next time.