Christina Appleton

While other people go to the grocery store, Christina literally grew up in one. She is a fourth-generation grocer who lived above her family’s store. The original Appleton’s Market was a Mom ‘n’ Pop grocery store founded by her great-grandparents in small-town Michigan. Passed down through the generations, the store was her home – riding her tricycle through the aisles and building paper-towel forts. It’s where she fell in love with food, and it forever shaped her career. Once she graduated from Northwestern, she worked at General Mills in brand management, working on brands from Trix cereal to Green Giant vegetables. After attending Harvard Business School she moved to Los Angeles and worked in entertainment before catching the startup bug and making her way back into CPG by joining healthy e-tailer Thrive Market. Focusing on better-for-you products quickly became her passion. She created her own business to help make everyone's lives a little bit easier and a little bit healthier – which was the birth of her Appleton's Market.