Meet the team
Jai Development is a founder-led food and beverage consulting team based in New York City. Some of us have founded and scaled our own CPG brands; others bring deep formulation, manufacturing, and supply chain experience.
Founder & CEO
Matt founded JAI Development in 2018 after a decade in the food and beverage industry: starting as an editorial intern at Saveur, training as a chef, running a private fine-dining catering company across the Hamptons and Manhattan, and earning a Master's in Food Studies at NYU. In 2015 he launched Brooklyn Mate, the borough's first organic carbonated yerba mate beverage, and ran it for nine years. He learned the operational reality of CPG from the inside.
Building Brooklyn Mate taught him what most founders learn the hard way: that great products fail when the supply chain breaks, when a co-packer ghosts a week before a run, when the formula a lab handed off can't actually be scaled. He founded JAI to be the partner he wished he'd had. Formulation and production operations under one roof. Named accountability. End-to-end ownership.
JAI is built on three principles: founder-led work over agency layers, end-to-end ownership across formulation and production, and a real partnership that lasts beyond launch. Matt leads kickoffs personally and stays close to clients through the work. Eight years in, JAI has developed more than 300 products for over 100 brands.
"I built JAI to be the partner I needed when I was a founder." Matt Wallace
The team
Founder & CEO
Matt founded JAI Development in 2018, after launching Brooklyn Mate, the borough's first organic carbonated yerba mate. Matt holds a Master's in Food Studies from NYU and has spent eight years running JAI, staying hands-on with every client engagement.
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Chief Growth Officer
Anshu has spent 25 years building businesses at the intersection of food and technology, including as CEO of Minna Sparkling Tea, co-founder of The Chaat Company, and founder of the AI-driven retail platform Shelf Surfer. Anshu studied engineering at Tufts.
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Lab Manager
Aaron brings more than 15 years developing and commercializing beverages, with deep expertise in non-alcoholic and functional drinks. Aaron trained at the New England Culinary Institute, holds six patents in fluid atomization and scent technology, and has won gold and platinum medals at the LA Spirit Awards for recent soda and spritz formulations.
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Director of Operations
Chi brings CPG R&D and operational scale across national brands. Chi was Director of Manufacturing at Simply, Principal R&D Chef at Chew, and Head Chocolatier for K+M at the Thomas Keller Restaurant Group, with culinary and pastry training from ICE.
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Operations Lead
Jamie has built a career inside beverage and food co-manufacturers, including five years at Ninth Planet Beverage Solutions running client relationships through blending, canning, and full-line QC, and time as Copack Sales Manager at Hudson River Foods. Having sat on the manufacturer's side of the table, Jamie brings a rare insider read on how co-packers price, schedule, and run a line.
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Formulator
Tushika is an R&D scientist focused on beverage formulation, plant-based proteins, and emulsion science. Tushika earned an MS in Food Science from UMass Amherst in the McClements Lab, is PCQI certified, and built a chemometric NIR spectroscopy model for whey-protein emulsions.
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Formulator
Katrina formulates protein drinks, functional beverages, and ready-to-mix powders. Katrina trained in food science at Penn State with hands-on sensory evaluation, including two years in the campus Sensory Evaluation Center and an FSQA internship at PepsiCo.
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Operations Manager & Sourcing Specialist
Mark runs operations management and ingredient and packaging sourcing at JAI, drawing on a background that includes working inside co-packers. Mark owns supplier relationships, ingredient procurement, and the day-to-day logistics that keep production runs on schedule.
How we work together
There's a difference between a consultancy and a team. JAI acts like your in-house team. We sit in the same room with you, provide our true opinions about your products, and celebrate your product launch like it's our own. We hire people who've shipped products before, then we let them do their best work, together.
What we believe
The principles behind every formula, every production run, and every founder we work with.
01
We don't win unless you do. Every formula, every run, every COGS line, every shelf placement. If you aren't selling, we haven't done our job.
02
We pick the founders we believe in. We build for them like the product is our own.
03
The CPG consulting market is full of decks-and-walk-away firms. JAI isn't one of them. We stay through every run after launch.
04
If a formula isn't ready, we'll tell you. If the COGS don't add up, we'll tell you. We'd rather lose a project than ship a product that won't survive retail.
05
Brands win on great products. Great products win on the discipline behind them. We obsess over the discipline so you can tell the story.
06
We don't take on more work than we can do well. Every JAI engagement gets the full team, the full standard, and the full follow-through.
Featured case study
Formulation + Production Ops · Non-alc beverage
11
SKUs formulated
4
Co-manufacturers
30%
COGS reduction
Curious Elixirs turned an unscalable brewed recipe into a non-alcoholic category leader that has scaled past $50M in revenue. JAI has formulated each of their 11 SKUs and run the brand's production operations across 4 co-packers since 2018. The partnership has resulted in a 30% blended COGS reduction, as well as rapid revenue growth.
Read the case study →A 30-minute call with Matt, our CEO, is the fastest way to scope what you're building.
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