How Gardencup Found Their Highest-Performing Ads Through Whitelisting 100+ Creator Partnerships using Refunnel

Gardencup is a US-based fresh food and healthy eating brand founded by Brad and Katie Savage in 2020. Operating in the consumer packaged goods (CPG) and meal subscription industry, Gardencup specializes in delivering fresh, ready-to-eat salads, bowls, and healthy snacks directly to customers’ doorsteps across the United States.

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Gardencup bootstrapped their growth from the ground up and are doing around $25 million in gross revenue. They are almost entirely direct-to-consumer via their Shopify website and do not yet have a presence in retail or on TikTok Shop, though retail expansion and new channels are part of the roadmap.

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Gardencup views content creators as a critical driver for the business, directly stating that top-performing ads often come from creators through whitelisting and UGC initiatives. The team believes that cultivating authentic relationships and elevating real voices is key to building trust and reach with new customers.

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We sat down with their team for a deep-dive case study, uncovering everything YOU might want to know before choosing a creator management platform.

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Who we talked with:
Ally Amory | Content & Community Manager @ Gardencup

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Before Refunnel:

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1. Manual, Spreadsheet-Heavy Workflow: Gardencup managed all creator operations through spreadsheets: tracking outreach, product seeding, and content delivery manually with help from external agencies. Ally described the system as "hard to keep track of," with data constantly out-of-date and scattered across different team members and agency partners.

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2. Disjointed Communication & Outreach: Finding creators meant manually sifting through Instagram, saving profiles to spreadsheets, then reaching out individually. Each accepted partnership triggered more spreadsheet updates and email chains to track shipping, deliverables, and posting schedules.

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3. Lack of Centralization & Historical Tracking: Creator relationships, campaign data, and content lived scattered across multiple spreadsheets and platforms with no central dashboard. This made tracking performance, managing partnerships, and identifying top performers nearly impossible and very time consuming.

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4. Content Chaos: With content flowing from in-house shoots, UGC creators, agencies, and partnerships, there was "no organization system in place" to house assets in one searchable repository risking valuable content getting lost.

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6. Missed Opportunities and Bandwidth Strain: Wrangling spreadsheets, manual outreach, and asset tracking consumed so much effort that Gardencup couldn't scale their program or test advanced strategies. As Ally put it: "bandwidth" was their biggest operational limiter.

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The result: Gardencup’s workflow was slow, scattered, and prevented the team from scaling creator partnerships or having any real-time visibility into the full spectrum of their content and influencer initiatives. Their operations continually ran into bottlenecks, missed follow-ups, and content tracking headaches.

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How They Used Refunnel:

Refunnel serves as Gardencup’s central hub for creator management, content library, campaign tracking, and organizing brand mentions letting their lean team streamline workflows, improve collaboration with external agencies, and consolidate the many moving pieces of their UGC and influencer programs into one always-up-to-date source of truth.

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3 Ways Gardencup is Using Refunnel

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1. Advanced Social Listening with Collections:

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Refunnel houses Gardencup’s full creator roster, incoming content, and collections segmented by creative source (UGC, Influencers, paid partnerships, and top performers).

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By grouping creators into dedicated collections, the team can quickly analyze performance data, locate high-engagement partners, and keep historical content organized.

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Ally emphasized as being “super helpful” for showing leadership which creators and campaigns are actually driving business results and building relationships with them.

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2. One-Click Whitelisting:

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Refunnel gives Gardencup one-click whitelisting: Ally manages all permissions, paid bonus tracking, and access to content directly in the platform.

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This makes it easy to ramp up the percentage of high-performing ads powered by creator handles, without the manual headaches or approval lag typical of older processes.

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Gardencup started running whitelisting ads around the summer or fall of 2025. Ally mentioned, “the results have been that they are our top performers in the account”. This means that ads run through creators’ accounts (whitelisting) have outperformed other ad types for the brand.

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When discussing why they pursued whitelisting, Ally said, “it increases reach on different platforms and it increases credibility in terms of customers trusting us when their handle is attached” 

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Gardencup's Creator-to-Whitelisting Workflow

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1. Content Sourcing: Gardencup sources UGC through external agencies (mass seeding/gifting) and in-house creator relationships. Agencies handle outreach, product seeding, and content briefs.

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2. Centralized Content Management: All creator content flows into Refunnel, organized by source (agency partner, campaign type) in collections, eliminating scattered spreadsheets.

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3. Whitelisting Opt-In: Creators who agree to whitelisting move into Refunnel's whitelisting workflow. Gardencup secures full content rights from agencies upfront.

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4. Creator Compensation: Whitelisting creators receive an upfront bonus plus a percentage of ad spend (performance-based incentive).

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5. Whitelisting Management: Ally manages all creator access and Meta whitelisting partnerships directly in Refunnel.

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6. Ad Activation: Cleared content launches as whitelisted ads, allowing Gardencup to run paid campaigns from creator handles at scale.

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3. Content Vault & Historical Performance Data:

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Unlike scattered files or pieces of content lost after 90 days on social media, Refunnel acts as a persistent library of every brand mention, post, and video, forever.

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Gardencup uses this to consolidate creative produced by agencies, in-house teams, and organic advocates, making it easy to identify repeat top performers, plan future recruitment, and instantly pull assets for new campaigns.

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In Ally ’s words: “I haven’t worked with another platform that easily does this. Being able to organize into different collections, see all content, and handle everything from gifting to whitelisting in one place, it’s a game-changer for a small team.”

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The Results

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Before Refunnel (Manual Era):‍
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• Difficult to prove to leadership which creators, campaigns, and content were actually driving results.
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• Difficult to keep spreadsheets up-to-date, track creator progress, and manage content output.
   
• The manual whitelisting process was so time-intensive that it became a barrier to scaling creator partnerships.

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After Refunnel:
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• Content is now efficiently organized into collections by paid creators, best performers, post type and more! 
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• Full visibility over creator performance, engagement, impressions, and seamless whitelisting, saving major operational time.
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• Top-performing Meta ads now come from whitelisted creator content managed and tracked within Refunnel.

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What this means:
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• Content production is now streamlined, with all brand mentions, licensing, and whitelisted ads managed in one platform.
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• The team now spends more time launching creative, building community, and scaling winning ads, instead of wrestling with fragmented data.
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• Gardencup's whitelisted creator ads are their #1 top performers, driving higher trust and reach.
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• Refunnel enabled the team to organize, evaluate, and re-engage high-performing creators, supporting long-term partnerships and growth.

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Each creator is now more productive, every piece of UGC is easier to deploy, and the chance of finding winning ads has never been higher.