March 19, 2026 | The Product Manager’s Journal
The Take
Your product is lying to you if you’ve never visited the source.
As a product manager, understanding the product manager supply chain transparency is crucial for building trust with consumers.
Next week I’m flying to Tuscany to meet the farmers who grow our spices.
This isn’t a trade show. It’s not a Zoom call with a distributor. I’m talking about actual dirt-under-your-fingernails, walk-the-rows, taste-it-off-the-plant visits with the people who do the work.
Why does this matter beyond the Instagram content? Most product people build their entire understanding of the supply chain from a spreadsheet, and I was guilty of this fact for most of my career. For example, the supplier sends samples. You approve them. Product ships. You never see where the thing actually comes from. And you call that transparency? I don’t think so. You’re just trusting a middleman and hoping for the best.
Next week’s journey will deepen my understanding of product manager supply chain transparency.
When I left corporate PM to build Trevean Spice, I made one rule for myself: if I can’t explain where every ingredient comes from (not in marketing copy, but in actual conversation), then I don’t deserve to sell it. The NFC tags on our packaging aren’t a gimmick. They’re an accountability mechanism. And accountability starts with showing up.
If you’re building a product and you haven’t touched the raw material, talked to the person who makes it, or visited the place it comes from, you’re guessing. Product people who guess eventually get surprised.
Pack your bags. Visit the source.
From the Trenches
This week has been all about finalizing the Italy itinerary. I have three farms to visit in Tuscany, two conversations about saffron sourcing, and one very long layover I plan to spend outlining Q3 product priorities for Trevean. I also quietly hit a milestone: the blog now has 70+ published posts, and the email capture infrastructure is fully live. Small numbers, but the foundation is solid. Now it’s about driving people to it.
Spice Route Signal
Your spices aren’t just making your food taste better. They’re making you healthier.
My good friend Madhumita Srikanth discussed the benefits of spices and transparency. One question led to another, and eventually she asked if Trevean Spice would ever expand into teas (well, maybe, yes, one day), with a discussion on the health benefits teas offer. When I noticed this week’s new research showing that everyday kitchen herbs (basil, dill, oregano) offer measurable health benefits that go well beyond flavor. It made me think about how transparency and health go hand in hand. Basil, for example, is rich in flavonoids and polyphenols that help reduce inflammation and may help prevent heart disease. Dill can lower LDL cholesterol and aid digestion. Oregano has potent antimicrobial properties that science is only beginning to take seriously.
Here’s what bugs me about this conversation. Most of the industry treats “health benefits” as a label claim. Slap “antioxidant-rich” on the jar and move on. But if your oregano has been sitting in a warehouse for 18 months, irradiated and blended from six different origins, how much of that benefit is actually reaching the consumer?
This is why sourcing transparency and health are the same conversation. When you know where your spice comes from (or tea for that matter), when it was harvested, and how it was handled, you’re not just buying flavor. You’re buying potency. That’s a Trevean principle, and it’s why I’m heading to Tuscany next week to see it firsthand.
[Source: “Beyond flavor: Science reveals the potent health benefits of common herbs like basil, dill, and oregano” (NaturalNews, March 18, 2026)]
Framework Flash: The Product Onion
Most businesses build from the outside in. Here’s why that’s backwards.
The Product Onion is a layered approach to building products, and the layers matter:
Core → Pain → Solution → Experience → Brand
Start with the real customer pain (the core), not the marketing (the outer layer). Most startups do it backwards. They pick a brand identity, design an experience, then work inward, hoping to find a problem that fits. The Product Onion forces you to start ugly, with the raw, uncomfortable problem your customer actually has, and build outward from there.
At Trevean, the core wasn’t “premium spices.” It was this: people don’t trust what’s in their food and have no way to verify it. Everything (the NFC tags, the sourcing transparency, the farmer stories) grew outward from that core.
Try it. Write down what you think your product is. Now peel it back. What’s the pain underneath the pain? That’s your real product.
→ Read the full Product Onion breakdown on The Product Manager’s Journal
The Toolkit
This week’s pick: The Mom Test by Rob Fitzpatrick
If you’re about to have any conversation with a customer, supplier, or partner, read this first. Fitzpatrick’s core argument is that people will lie to you to be nice, so stop asking questions that invite lying. Instead of “Do you think this is a good idea?” try “When’s the last time you had this problem, and what did you do about it?”
I’m re-reading it before my trip to Tuscany because farmer conversations are customer conversations. The frameworks are the same. It’s about 90 pages. You’ll finish it on a flight.
That’s the Rack
Thanks for reading Issue #1. I’m Dan Blizinski, founder of Trevean Spice and the person behind The Product Manager’s Journal, where I write about PM frameworks that come from actually building things, not just theorizing about them.
New here? Grab the free Startup PM Toolkit, five frameworks I actually use, not just talk about.
What’s one thing you’re wrestling with this week? Hit reply. I read every one.
The PM’s Spice Rack is published weekly on The Product Manager’s Journal and on LinkedIn. Subscribe to get it in your inbox.