SOUND, SALIM NAJJAR: Better Bubbles

 The global sparkling water industry is valued at $29 billion with the majority of its customers under the age of 35. Given the rise of social media, taste alone is not enough to make it in this category. Brands have to appeal to the customer’s aesthetic with their packaging and branding. Co-Founder Salim Najjar, launched Sound, an organic sparkling water brand that caters to Millennials and Zoomers to provide them with a healthier alternative - no sweeteners and no fillers.

The story of how Sound got started is one that will go down in many books. Fun fact: Sound was originally born back in 2015 and has undergone many iterations as it pertains to its brand name and packaging design. However, the one variable that remained constant was the company’s commitment to taste, formulation, and values. 

We first heard about Sound via Erewhon in LA where we tried this magical drink and were immediately hooked by its beautiful packaging. Yes, you can drink Sound without having synesthesia. After numerous posts on Instagram, and creating organic UGC for this wonderful brand, we got connected to its Lebanese co-founder, Salim Najjar. Luckily, we were able to visit the Sound HQ in Venice, LA.

Co-founders Salim Najjar and Tommy Kelly were both mechanical engineers who worked at a nuclear power plant in LA. Salim was born and raised in upstate New York, Hudson Valley, and is first-generation Lebanese. “I grew up between two cultures. Every summer we would visit Lebanon”, says Salim. It is due to Salim’s cultural diversity and upbringing that unique flavor profiles such as cardamom and rose water would be introduced to the formulation of Sound. 

Priced at $30 for a case of 12 cans, Sound beverages include a range of caffeine levels to accommodate the various moments a customer wants to incorporate this drink into their life. Sound can be consumed early in the morning, during the day, at parties, or even before bedtime. It has a well-rounded, filling taste with tea and botanical extracts for flavoring. Our personal favorite flavor is grapefruit, lavender & ginger tea as well as tangerine, lemongrass & green tea.  

“From the onset, we wanted to use single-source organic extracts and do not use natural flavors.” 

What’s wrong with the term natural or artificial flavors? Nothing, other than it is ambiguous by definition and the industry uses the term as an umbrella to include several sub-ingredients without having to disclose what they are. “The cleanest ingredient you can have is an extract. However, when it comes to certain flavors, such as peach, a peach extract might not taste at all like the real peach flavor we all know and love. Due to our commitment to transparency, we had to kill one of our best-selling SKUs, White-tea ginger since we could not get the flavor profile right to match our core values.” 

Co-founders, Tommy Kelly (left) and Salim Najjar (right).

The Aha Moment

As a six-year-old company, Sound was born out of Tommy’s love for healthy teas and sparkling bubbles. “Tommy had just bought a soda stream at the time in 2013 and brew up some yerba matte and put it through the soda stream and voila, our first sparkling tea was born. He brought it into work for me to try because he knew that I was a health nut. At the time I had started to invest in a lot of businesses. I tried it and fell in love with the first sip. I told him, what do we need to do to get this going?” says Salim.

Originally launched in 2015 as SodTerra, the company has undergone many packaging iterations and brand reformations to get to where it is today. ”At the time everyone had told us that the name, SodTerra was a bad idea, but we were too stubborn to change it. It wasn’t until we got a lawsuit from DoTERRA that we investigated other naming options and came across Sound. Sound ingredients, sound business, and sounds good.”  For those wondering, Red Scout is the agency behind its rebrand that hit the market in March 2021.

SURROUND SOUND SYSTEM 

What do you call an event sponsored by Sound? Surround Sound! Unlike traditional beverage brands, Sound’s channels of distribution revolved around corporations. “For the first 5 years, 70% of our sales came from partnering with giant tech companies such as Google and Facebook to stock their employee pantry.” By targeting an aisle that wasn’t crowded, Sound was able to build momentum for its DTC orders. 

“We have not spent much money on marketing channels for the past six years. This was due to our corporate channel distribution strategy. All of our marketing has been organic, guerilla-style.” However, one particular partnership that really helped moved the needle was Kelly LeVeque, a celebrity nutritionist. Kelly works with Jessica Alba and Jessica Biel amongst others. “Kelly has posted about Sound on her social media and mentioned Sound on the Today Show. We have found that posts from experts yield the highest orders.” As a result, Sound has built out a network of doctors, and nutritionists to become brand advocates.

The Challenges

Like most companies, COVID has been a challenge for Sound. In addition, co-packing is also always a challenge. “The biggest challenge for any entrepreneur is your own mind. At the end of the day, our version of reality is created by our minds and if you can keep a positive mindset and perspective and have faith that the universe will give you what you need and is always working in your favor, the rest will unfold magically.” 

The Advice

A bio-hacker and daily meditator, Salim believes that “your mental state is a direct reflection of your business state.” Sound has raised $3.25 million life to date.

Salim shares his advice with us for those looking to launch a beverage brand:

• Always look at the bigger picture and don’t get stuck with tunnel vision.
  

• Approach each challenge as an opportunity to change something about your business.
  

• Publications recommended to check out, BevNet and Indie CPG.
  

Interested in partnering with Sound for an event or activation? Email us and we will put you in touch. You can also find Sound here and at Erewhon and Wholefoods in LA, Foxtrot is Dallas, Chicago, and DC. 

Photo courtesy of Sound. 

COSME, SANTIAGO PEREZ: Mexican Cuisine With a Contemporary Twist

When you think of where to find the best Mexican food, you may not think of New York City. However, Santiago Perez and his business partner sought to change that. Since launching Cosme in 2014, Santiago has created multiple modern havens of some of the finest Mexican food and culinary experiences to have ever arrived in New York City. 

Founder, Santiago Perez was always involved in hospitality one way or another since his younger days. In middle school, he started multiple tacos stands a year and sold tacos to his friends, which then carried over into him throwing eventful high school parties, and thus quickly learned that bringing people together really brought him joy and could be a full-time job. Although he studied chemical and industrial engineering in college and worked as a banker, he realized his true passion was culinary arts specific to his Mexican heritage. 

Founder, Santiago Perez above.

The Aha Moment

Born and raised in Mexico City with four siblings, Santiago grew up hosting a plethora of events for many friends, family members, etc., at least multiple times a week. Hospitality is second nature to him and what really started the company was his “passion for hospitality and making other people happy.” The Aha moment of Cosme came to him when he was in New York City with some friends at a famous Italian restaurant downtown, post a karaoke party. After a couple of drinks, Santiago started chatting with the waitstaff and bartenders, and they all said the same thing -- there was no good, authentic Mexican food that was also fused with modern elements. Santiago went home and furiously researched, noticing there was indeed a gap in the market for real, authentic Mexican food that could be categorized as upscale. 

“I saw many different elements of my Mexican heritage heavily misrepresented in the U.S., primarily in culinary, interior design, and hospitality. By putting all these different elements under one roof, Cosme was born.” - Santiago

Having grown up in Mexico City and having seen quality there for a smaller price point, Santiago knew this was a hurdle he had to overcome in order to build a reputable brand in New York City. He knew he couldn’t do this alone so he started thinking about famous chefs from his home country, and renowned Mexican chef Enrique Olvera came to mind. Enrique is considered a top chef in Mexico and partnering with him would be a dream come true, although Santiago knew it would be difficult to connect, he never gave up. Santiago showed up to Enrique’s flagship restaurant in Mexico City with a full presentation deck with even his face on the cover to hold his attention and developed rapport within a few meetings and a few bottles of mezcal. 

“We shared the same vision and got along really well, so over time we realized we wanted to work together.”  

After securing real estate space, the team stayed laser-focused on their vision and mission of bringing elevated Mexican cuisine to the public. When asked about marketing campaigns or investing in PR, Santiago said, “We believe the best marketing that we can do is word of mouth. If you focus on yourself, you perform better. So, focusing on our product and making sure we can execute at the highest quality will do the marketing itself. That is what we believe is more powerful than any alliance or influencer or celebrity.” However, Santiago also recalled that validation from one of the biggest celebrities from our time helped him confirm that bringing his vision to the U.S. was a real success. A few years ago, Barack and Michelle Obama and their team wanted to dine at his restaurant and insisted on dining at Cosme. Santiago and his team remembered making exceptions in the private dining room for the former President and First Lady, and ensured that they were well taken care of...as he does for all of his guests who dine at his restaurants. 

Damian Restaurant above.

“We believe in sharing our Mexican identity with pride. In order to do this, we cannot compromise on our values. We are always pushing for what is authentic and what represents our Mexican culture best.”

Ever since Cosme was born, Santiago and Enrique have slowly grown the brand by adding new restaurants and working most recently in the consumer products goods category to launch their own line of salsas. The team also owns the famous restaurant, Atla in trendy Noho, and in LA, they recently opened Damien which is a sibling to Cosme, and plan to build three more Atla’s in LA. Wohoo! 

Damian Restaurant above.

The Challenges

Cosme was born in 2012 and did not officially open its doors until 2014, but faced many obstacles and challenges along the way, specific to real estate. Santiago remembered trying to find a very large space with a kitchen and no landlord would take them. The team finally found something, but low and behold it was a crumbling, old strip club space. A big hurdle of this was that there were still remnants of the previous tenant scattered in the space and the kitchen had no gas. Ultimately it was sticking with their vision and creating something that we would be really proud of, that we knew wouldn’t exist anywhere outside of Mexico. The team all jumped in to make sure with the time and budget they had, they could translate their vision into reality, and really make the space their own with a sleek design and a lot of lighting and vegetation.  

Fast forward to the present day, COVID has presented its own unique set of challenges for any restaurant owner. As places shuttered, the team figured out how to shift their resources and energy to really reassess their long-term goals. “Our idea for consumer packaged goods came to life -- it is still in the early stages, and we don’t have the product yet, but we took time to really understand how fragile restaurants are in external environments, and in order to scale, we have to build new stores and products to get a much broader audience. COVID really enabled us to think outside of the box and outside of the four walls of the restaurant and outside of just the restaurant brand.” 

The Advice

Launching any business, especially a restaurant, takes a lot of effort and time, but most importantly, it takes a strong commitment to a clear vision. Santiago shares some of his learnings as a founder in the competitive hospitality industry: 

• “In the early stage, you need to have a lot of conviction of what you want to do because especially in the early stage there will be so many nos, people that challenge your vision, thoughts about more capital, and you really need to convince yourself you can push forward with your idea. Take care of yourself, or else it will be very difficult to show up and tackle your idea.”

• “You should have a very clear vision of how your idea will be different from others. Surround yourself with positive people who say yes instead of no. Have the right people around you.”Don’t underestimate the work that you’re going to need to put into it. Don’t underestimate the energy and time of what you need to invest in your idea. Also, don’t get too many partners involved -- everyone has opinions about the customers. Keep it as tight as possible, and stick to partners who share your vision.”

• “Draft a vision that you have for your business, write it down, frame it, and hang it in the office. Often as times change, and as you get busy with all the operations, you can lose your vision, so it’s always good to have the reminder in front of you.”
  

If you are in New York and feeling hungry, definitely stop by Cosme, or Atla to experience authentic Mexican food with a modern twist. 

Photo courtesy of Cosme.  

Written by Christina Chao. 

AGUA MAGICA, RAFAEL SHIN: Sipping With Purpose

You might have noticed that most tequila drinkers are making the switch over to mezcal this summer as palettes mature and novelty is celebrated. The US mezcal market is growing and is currently valued at $400 million. However, the high adoption of commercialized mezcal in cocktail drinks has led producers within the industry to cut corners and remove traditions when growing the agave crop. In hopes to preserve Mexican culture, specifically from Oaxaca, Rafael Shin launched Agua Magica, a premium mezcal to sip with intention. 

As recent mezcal drinkers, we got the chance to catch up with the founder of Agua Magica, Rafael Shin to chat about his love for Mexico, and boy does he love Oaxaca! Based in New York City, Rafael received his MBA from Wharton and graduated with classmates and friends who ended up launching companies such as Warby Parker, All Birds, and Harry’s. Talk about having some successful friends, eh?

The Childhood

Founder, Rafael Shin surrounded by agave in Oaxaca.

Born in Seoul, Korea, Rafael moved to Mexico City when he was one, and considers himself to be Mexican. At the time, his parents wanted to explore a new country and were doing a master’s in Philosophy and Latin American History in Mexico. Unlike his partners, Rafael ended up choosing banking as a career upon graduation. “I started my career in investment banking, then moved into consulting, and did equity research at Morgan Stanley for 7 years with a focus on consumer goods companies and spirits before quitting and deciding to jump into the unknown with mezcal. That was my aha moment, being able to see the growth of the mezcal spirit category from a financial perspective” says Rafael. 

With over 800 mezcal brands in the market, Rafael felt that he had a competitive advantage based on his childhood and research capabilities. “ I have been traveling to Oaxaca for over 32 years and every time I would go I would discover something new. It’s a very magical place. You have more than 90 dialects spoken and one-third of the population speak some sort of language. It is very untouched in many ways. The people have their own traditions, language, and economic system of how things should work. My best friend since the age of 8 also lives in Oaxaca” says Rafael. Fun fact: Rafael tried mezcal for the first time when he was 13. Chin, chin!

“The mission of our company is to redirect the growth of mezcal and preserve the local communities.” - Rafael Shin. 

Launched in May 2021, Agua Magica is a premium mezcal brand that wants to educate consumers on the heritage and traditions of mezcal drinking as well as on the people of Oaxaca. Priced at $65 for 750 ml, Agua Magica can be purchased online or found at specific specialty stores alongside restaurants such as Cosme and Atla. Some of their most popular marketing highlights include partnerships with Soho House Miami, LA, and NYC as well as focusing on liquor stores that have partnerships with Drizly. Their social media explores the untouched parts of Oaxaca and immerses users into its culture, making you feel like a local. 

It took the team over two years from ideation to launch and most of that time went into developing the brand, packaging, and taste. For those wondering, Mythology is the mastermind agency behind Agua Magica’s look and feel. “We wanted someone who understood the American market as most of the talent we used to develop the brand was from Mexico. We had a Mexican director, Mexican team, and needed someone to help us translate everything to be more digestible in both the US and Mexican market.” 

As for product development and taste, it took Rafael over 2 years to also find a producer and conduct market research. “I met between 80 to 90 producers in Oaxaca and tasted 4-5 different expressions per producer. I would bring back bottles from Mexico to NYC for my friends and have bartenders try it to offer feedback.” Rafael was able to raise a little over $3M from friends and family via a concept pitch deck, pre-product to support his dreams. 

“People have a perception that mezcal is too smoky, but that is not true.”

“Most of the mezcal in the US is smoky because it was introduced via cocktails and needed a way to differentiate itself from tequila. But, the reality of it is that mezcal is so diverse. There are more than 25 different species of agave you can use from nonsmoky to very smoky. We source our agave from the region of San Juan Del Rio in Oaxaca where the agave grows with a steep inclination that doesn’t let the rain accumulate. We use Espadin agave which takes 7-8 years to grow and Tobala agave which takes 15-16 years to grow. That is why it is hard for us to justify putting our mezcal in a cocktail because of the duration it takes to produce this specific type of agave.” 

Rafael wants to be able to recruit new consumers to the mezcal category. The ones who prefer to sip it on the rocks, discuss its history and notes while debating the philosophies of life. And the taste? Well, we were able to try it and define it as a smooth, sweet, not boring, but a well-rounded finish of goodness. Best recommended being drunk straight from the bottle! 

What’s Wrong With The Industry?

“How you drink mezcal has a huge impact on the farmers in Oaxaca and how the agave is grown. If you drink it in a cocktail and mix it with other ingredients, a bartender will want the cheapest mezcal in the market. This causes them to go to Oaxaca, shop for the cheapest mezcal which creates a price-war within producers which then causes a cascading effect for producers to cut corners, cheat and not care about preserving traditions. The more we drink mezcal in cocktails, the more commoditized the problem becomes.”  

“Conserving the community of Oaxaca and giving back to preserve their culture and language is of the highest importance to me.” Oaxaca produces some of the world’s best agave and it requires a premium price point. 

The Advice

For those looking to launch a spirit company, Rafael shares his advice with us.

• The gross margin for spirits typically ranges between 40%-70%.

• Put a lot of emphasis on research, design, product development, and distribution.

• Be humble and understand that you are going to be wrong many times.

• Culture is everything! Think about how you want to design your culture from day one.

• Always think about how you can add value to other people (investors, producers, customers) especially as it relates to sales.

• Best business book to read: Principals by Ray Dalio. It’s more of a mindset for life.
  

Support the traditions of Oaxaca and sip with intention, speak with confidence. Perfect for gifting, hosting, and seeming chic, Agua Magica can be purchased here. 

Photo courtesy of Agua Magica. 

Written by Alysha Malik. 

TACHE, ROXANA SAIDI: The Nut Milk Alternative

Healthy dairy alternatives are on the rise and it is anticipated that the market will reach over $35 USD billion by 2026. Almond and oat milk have seen increased popularity and interest, but there are other nut milks to discover as well. After traveling to Europe and being unable to get the right milk for her latte, Roxana Saidi launched Táche and is now paving the way with the latest milk alternative using a fan favorite nut: the pistachio. 

We talked to co-founder and CEO Roxana Saidi about her passion for pistachios that led to her creating Táche, closing her fundraising round, and managing a robust supply chain. 

Roxana was born in San Francisco to a serial entrepreneurial and engineer father, which gave her a leg up in the entrepreneurial world. In her household, terms like VC, startup, capital, and fundraising were all in her lexicon from a very young age. She learned early on what it meant to fundraise, what hard work and work ethic was, and what being an entrepreneur looked like. 

After graduating from CU Boulder with a marketing degree, she had pressure from her dad to pursue an MBA, however, she was more interested in choosing the path less taken and launched her own social media agency, Rx Social.

It wasn’t until a dairy detox and trip under belt to Paris with her family that Roxana was craving an almond milk latte, which unfortunately,  wasn't available in Europe at the time. She was also craving a more flavorful taste and was feeling nostalgic for pistachios since her father is Iranian and it is a common staple back home.

The Aha Moment

“We always have pistachios on hand in my household, they are just a staple in Middle Eastern households. So I thought I could try the idea of making pistachio milk myself because you’re almost guaranteed to have more flavorful experience than with almond milk,” said Roxana.

Fast forward to November 2020 and with five years in the making, Roxana launched Táche, a new nut milk alternative. Like many other businesses impacted by the pandemic, Táche is no different. It’s main channels of distribution include D2C and in-person stores like coffee shops. However, as you would have guessed it, Táche is leaning heavily towards the D2C model at the moment. 

Consumer Testing and Development

DIY! Roxana started tinkering with different pistachio milk recipes from DIY blogs in her studio kitchen, letting friends try her concoctions first. “The more people who tasted it, the more they loved it and said they would drink it by itself. That made me really think there’s a lot of potential here, so why doesn’t this product exist in the market?” Roxana said. After a profuse amount of research, Roxana found the answer to her questions regarding the difficulty to bring this product to life: the supply chain. 

But why the hype with pistachios you might be wondering? Pistachios are a premium nut, incredibly melatonin rich and full of antioxidants, some that even boost your eye health. They are a complete protein with all 9 amino acids, and are one of the healthiest foods on the market. “For generations, pistachios have always been a premium product at a higher price point than a lot of other nuts. So, if you can nail the supply chain of really high quality pistachios at an approachable price, you got it, but that is incredibly challenging to do,” Roxana said. 

Branding and naming were also two important pillars for a successful D2C company launch. Why the name? “Táche is the middle syllable of pistachio, and was the third name for the company. One of my pieces of advice I give every entrepreneur is to go to the USPTO (United States Patent and Trademark Office) first and research whether or not your name is available to be trademarked, Instagram should be second,” advised Roxana. As for the branding, Futura, an agency out of Mexico City is responsible for the memorable illustrations and clever artwork.

As the product progressed, the core customer base needed to be determined. Roxana believes that consumer development comes in three layers. Friends and family, skeptics of alternative milk and the experts - the baristas and coffee enthusiasts. It is important to target the skeptics or non-traditional customers as they provide brands with raw data that is vital for positioning. 

CEO Roxana and her co-founder, father.

“My sample size got really big because I came up with the idea in 2015, so fast forward to 2018-2019, I had hundreds of people sampling Táche. These included everyone from friends of friends, random people from hosted events, to me sneaking Táche into the NYC Coffee Festival two times...and from all of the feedback I’ve collected, it does not make sense to me how well it performs. I still struggle to find people who say I’m repulsed,” said Roxana. We agree too! Radiche was able to sample the goods, and we approved. Love, love, love! 

When it comes to ta ta ta…. The supply chain, Roxana found a great manufacturer in Canada, but required a high MOQ. Why Canada eh? “North America is really slow to pick up on Tetra Pak and aseptic manufacturing, there are very few manufacturers who can command very high minimum order quantities (MOQ), which ultimately prevents small startups from breaking into the market. Typically, these manufacturers command 100K units or more for the very first run so a company has to scale before launch,” Roxana said. 
Alas, Roxana was able to raise funding (right as the pandemic hit too) and garnered $1.1M from mentors and investors such as Gary Hirshberg, a legendary figure in the natural yogurt industry, and Kevin Huvane of CAA. 

The Pandemic and Business

While coffee shops closed their doors around NYC, D2C sales shot through the roof. “These products are good for 12 months unopened, so you can stock up on shelf stable almond milk or oat milk, and what we found was that these milk alternatives were one of the top three items alongside sanitizer and other necessities during the pandemic. This was one of our learnings -- that we had a product that was pandemic proof, and that shoppers were going out and buying it in huge numbers,” said Roxana. 

With so many consumers looking for alternative and healthier ways of consumption, this is a valuable time for a CPG brand to infiltrate into the market from a DTC level. Táche has also found that their customer base consists of many people leading an active and healthy lifestyle, people who care a lot about what they are consuming -- a trend that will continue during the pandemic and beyond.  

“In the last few weeks, unsweetened pistachio milk has sold almost as well as original pistachio milk, which really shows you people’s lifestyles and how they’re leading them, as well as what they care about consuming. The surprising part has actually been finding out that quite a number of our DTC customers are a bit older which is great and I just think that’s a natural result of shopping from home and shopping less in person. Our customer base is really all over the map from the mom to the young teenager, but the bottom line is caring about what is on the nutrition label, what we are putting in our bodies, and overall healthy eating,” Roxana said. 

The Advice

For those early-stage founders trying to tackle a product company, here is Roxana’s advice:

• As soon as you figure out a brand name, check with the trademark office first. Naming is important!

• Be assertive and trust your gut.

• When it comes to fundraising, don’t be afraid of raising a number that feels aggressive or intimidating. Talk yourself out of “making more with less.” My advice is to not be afraid of a big number. Ask for it.

• Be prepared to worry about things you never thought you would worry about, AKA the supply chain and container packaging.

• Come to work with a problem-solving mindset every day and expect things to go wrong.

Interested in trying Táche, while also giving back to the community? Purchase from the site and a portion will go to the Lower Eastside Girls Club, an organization that serves to empower young teenage girls in entrepreneurship and education. 

Photo courtesy of Tache. 

Written by Christina Chao. 

BEHAVE, MAYSSA CHEHATA: Guilt-Free Gummies

Candy is arguably the most nostalgic impulse buy for most adults. Sticky-sweet, super sour, or indulgent and chocolaty, your favorite confection instantly takes you back (if you ever grew out of your sweet tooth in the first place!) As a proud candy connoisseur with a business background to boot, Mayssa Chehata founded Behave. Launched this August with guilt-free gummy bears, Behave brings the fun back into candy for millennial consumers, keeping them low in sugar, but high on sweetness. 

“We want to bring in the grown-ups who don’t want to eat candy anymore. We’re trying to come into the space and say, ‘Hey, don't feel like you can't eat candy.’ Eat the whole bag and don't feel guilty. We have that cleaner product that you can feel good about.” - Mayssa

Since launching, Mayssa has been featured in Fast Company and as an expert in Adweek’s Brandweek event. She talked to RADICHE about her founder journey and thoughtful, brand-forward approach to spicing up sweets with Behave. 

Childhood and Background  

“If my parents gave me ten dollars I would buy something for a dollar and stash nine. I always saved and held onto it, and I’m still like that. I like to have my little nest egg.” - Mayssa

Mayssa was born and raised in Washington, D.C., and her family is originally from Tunisia, so a career in international development was on her radar from an early age. Like many millennials, her childhood enterprises included a bustling thrifting and reselling business where she relished in the thrill of earning quick cash. For undergrad, she set out to follow her dream of working for the Foreign Service with a degree in International Relations. A few years later and that dream had transformed into a path that led Mayssa to some of the world’s most iconic brands. She first found herself at the NFL through an internship in the league’s new international department.

“Even though the NFL is a huge company, that was my first taste of startup life and trying to build a brand internationally and build a business. That was my first taste of the hustle culture. I ended up taking a job with the NFL after college and that's what set me on this path in the business world,” Mayssa said. 

After the NFL she spent time working in partnerships at Uber, and went on to be an early employee (one of 13!) at Daily Harvest, her first foray into the food world and working on a physical product. Her last position working at a company other than her own was at SoulCycle, where she introduced an entirely new partnership program to the brand. 

“SoulCycle is a massive brand with the resources of a big company, but because everything had grown so fast there was an opportunity to go back and lay the groundwork for new business development and partnerships,” Mayssa said. “It’s not about who can pay the most money, it’s about who aligns with the brand and who the audience can benefit from. Make it integrated and organic.”

Over the course of her time innovating and transforming at these companies, Mayssa was going through her own evolution that served as the inspiration for Behave. 

The Aha Moment

“I was starting to reevaluate what I was eating and trying to eat cleaner, but the one thing I could never kick was candy and sugar. As a kid I felt like I had to hoard candy, and I think that carried over into adulthood. I had a very unhealthy relationship with candy and sweets, so as I was trying to eat cleaner, I started looking for better products across everything, like chickpea pasta or plant-based options. The one thing I couldn't find was candy.” - Mayssa 

In 2017, Mayssa started paying close attention to the candy aisle in the context of her own health and wellness. She found that when it came to candy, there were either traditional sugar-free products that were filled with artificial ingredients or all-natural options that lost the flavor and fun factor but often had even higher sugar content. There was nothing that fulfilled her sweet tooth but satisfied her discerning eye for healthier nutrition facts. While still at SoulCycle, she gave in to her craving to explore this problem as a business opportunity. 

“I started thinking about what it would take to create this product,” Mayssa said. “Step one was come up with the recipe and formula. I reached out to Elizabeth Falkner who is the celebrity chef who makes all of our candies and does the product development. I think the idea resonated with her because even though she's this world-renowned pastry chef, she really does believe in eating better, eating cleaner, in sugar reduction, sustainability, and responsible ingredient sourcing.”

Elizabeth Falkner, Chef above.

Mayssa and Elizabeth went through over 100 different flavor and formula iterations and found the right production partner to make the gummies. Good to know if you’re thinking of entering the candy space: co-packers in this industry have notoriously high MOQs for new products. Mayssa spent a lot of time attending trade shows, researching, and tapping into her network to find her co-manufacturer.

Product and Marketing

Behave’s first product is their signature gummy bears that have 3 grams of sugar, 90 calories, and 6 grams net carbs per pack, with absolutely zero compromise on flavor and fun. The bears come in sweet and sour varieties, and each bag contains lychee, passionfruit, and raspberry flavors.

“We’re not targeted towards kids and we’re not branded towards kids. We’re really branded toward an adult consumer and that thinking really played into the flavor selection as well. We could go more premium and elevated with the flavors and introduce things you don't normally find in the candy aisle. We’ve been getting such a great response already,” Mayssa said.

Launching during the COVID pandemic meant Behave had to retool their go-to-market strategy to lean away from retail and go full direct-to-consumer. Behave used a mix of traditional PR and influencer marketing to bring the brand to life through organic-feeling content from trusted sources. Mayssa is now slowly introducing the brand to select boutique retailers and sees Behave eventually existing on the shelf and in the checkout line where impulse purchases most often happen. 

“93% of US adults eat candy - what other product or what other market do you have where almost everybody eats it?” Mayssa said. “That's a stat I always lean into. There are a lot of people buying candy and we just need to find them and speak to them.”

The Advice

Mayssa has worked on inspiring brands and is now building one of her own. She shared her advice for anyone else blazing a trail in business:

• When you have something to add to the conversation, don’t be afraid to throw it in. What you have to say is valuable and you will be contributing to the conversation. Don’t be afraid to talk too much!
  

• Don't overthink things, just start doing. Figure out what is step one and get to step one, then figure out step two. Put one foot in front of the other.
  

• Break large projects into bite sized pieces while strategizing and planning.
  

• Connect with other founders in your space! Focus on founders six months to a year ahead of you so the challenges you are currently facing are still fresh to them.
  

Want to indulge in some gummy bears and feel zero guilt? Take a bite out of Behave.

Photo courtesy of Behave.

Written by Kendall Embs.

PROPER WILD, VINCENT BRADLEY: The Clean Energy Shot

The world expects a lot out of us humans, competing with machines. We strive to be better in every way but constantly need some sort of energy boost to keep up. Enter Proper Wild, a new line of clean energy shots by founder, Vincent Bradley. The shots, a newcomer in the rapidly growing nootropics market, estimated to be worth $5 billion by 2025 offer a healthier, cleaner, more sophisticated alternative to existing energy drink brands that are associated with music festivals and adrenaline junkies rather than meeting rooms. 

We caught up with the Founder and CEO, of Proper Wild, Vincent Bradley pre-pandemic to chat about why he started the company. Let’s rewind back to when President Obama signed the JOBS (Jumpstart Our Business Startups) Act into effect in 2012, private companies could suddenly raise capital in all-new ways and Vincent was paying close attention. With a tech investor friend and mentor, he started FlashFunders, a tech-enabled investment bank in L.A. that would hire a total of 50 employees and raise hundreds of millions of dollars for hundreds of companies. In an effort to keep up with the demands of this fast-paced business, Vincent started drinking caffeine religiously but wasn’t happy about it. “I was drinking coffee and it was no longer doing anything for me,” he says. “I was getting migraines and I was getting super jittery and it was hurting my stomach.” 

As an elite hockey player, Vincent had worked with a nutritionist, which gave him a lifelong awareness of what he was putting into his body. If he was going to enter the health and nutrition space, he was going to do it as cleanly (without preservatives and synthetics) and as efficiently as possible. “I'm very much about maximizing my day,” he says. “I’m really organized and very efficient and very process-oriented. But I started to realize that I wasn’t very efficient about what I was putting into my body. I started to think about healthy, organic, plant-based alternatives that could make us more efficient throughout the day.”

Proper Wild launched in 2018 as an all-day clean energy shot. They are competing against Red Bull, Monster, and 5 Hour Energy. The product comes in three flavors, blackberry, peach mango, and ginger, and are sold in packs of six for $3.99 a shot with only 25 calories! You also won’t find any preservatives or artificial sweeteners in the drink. Proper Wild is vegan, gluten-free, GMO-free, and dairy-free. 

“By talking to our customers, we've learned things that we didn't originally think were that important,” Vincent says.

When it comes to their target market, women actually make up the majority of their consumers by a small percentage. “We’ve gotten a lot of feedback like, ‘I feel embarrassed bringing a Red Bull or 5 Hour Energy or Monster into my office’ and 'other energy drinks really hurt my stomach.' These weren't any value props that we thought were that interesting, but the campaign copy that drastically lowered our CAC was around ‘the energy shot for adults.’ I won't use customer names, but we interviewed a customer who is very high up at the Federal Reserve Bank very early on who felt embarrassed bringing Red Bull into the office. He's 55 years old and he was like, ‘You know, your brand is definitely younger, but it feels much more credible to me.’”

Furthermore, Vincent tells us how “you need to have really engaging, creative, multiple landing pages; it's not about throwing money at paid ads”. “You need to throw money at paid in parallel with influencers, in parallel with content, in parallel with the press. You really have to take that approach to it and you have to be very, very, very driven because it's so easy to spend money in the wrong direction really quickly.”

The Product Creation Process

“Talking to people was really important to us. We looked at creating a powder, and pill. I didn’t feel comfortable taking pills or carrying pills around. I don’t like pills. Powders on the other hand are very time-consuming. You have to pour them and mix them. And then shots, you take them on the go. They work 20 to 30 percent faster than a pill or powder, and your body absorbs it at a much higher rate. We interviewed 5 to 10,000 customers over a 6 month period. We literally walked around SoHo, NYC, and would approach people on the street and be like hey, can I give you a dollar and ask you a couple of questions. We also gave out a $20 Amazon gift card for surveys and ran ads to collect emails for video interviews. We would walk users through our wireframes, product concepts, and just about anything. 

Vincent took it upon himself to navigate the production process and identify the flavor house and manufacturer he was going to work with. In fact, he even spent one week hanging out with them to learn the ins and outs. One of the challenges he faced was the shelf-stability of the active ingredients. “What we found out is that Rhodiola root and a lot of the actives such as mushrooms have no stability at a low pH. They burn off.” However, Vincent was able to solve this problem, making Proper Wild’s active ingredients truly efficacious. Fun fact: if you see a beverage that doesn’t have any preservatives in it, it is hot-filled.

The Childhood

Founder and CEO, Vincent Bradley.

If you ask Vincent where his industrious spirit comes from, he’ll launch into a story about his great-grandfather, “Black Bill” Tocco. “He came over on a ship from Sicily when he was 12 years old,” the story begins. “He became the largest bootlegger in the United States during prohibition in Detroit, and he was the head of the Detroit Mafia. My grandfather, ‘Black Jack’ Tocco, later took over for him. [Self-starting] is in my DNA.” Vincent has exercised his own entrepreneurialism since puberty when he founded Neighborhood Odd Jobs, surely making Grandpa Bill proud of what would come to be the racket of every young suburbanite’s dreams. As the 12-year-old CEO and founder of this venture, Vincent hired friends on his block to mow lawns and paint houses, raking in $30k during summer breaks. Though Vincent was born in Boston, the entrepreneur grew up primarily in Michigan—and it’s to this combination of locales that he attributes both his flat (what he calls “funky”) accent and his eventual pull to the East Coast, where he would later found Proper Wild, after years spent immersed in the L.A. tech scene.

Vincent attended the University of Michigan, pursuing an interdisciplinary degree that covered equal parts biological anthropology, entrepreneurship, economics, and art history. Of his academic pursuits, he says, “It was a very diverse background, which is kind of my skill set as an entrepreneur. Product, design, marketing, sales.” While in school, he found success setting up websites for small businesses including his mother’s private medical practice—a precursor to tech-heavy post-grad jobs including product marketing at Graphiq, where he learned how to grow tech teams while broadening his skills as a front-end engineer (talk about being a hustler!). But like most of our Makers, it would take Vincent another couple of software jobs—and one major failure with a would-be gaming site that raised $1 million but couldn’t get off the ground—before the bold leap into CPG with Proper Wild. 

The Advice

When one of his early ventures failed to take off, Vincent learned the hard way that strong businesses start with strong research and a clear sense of who you are and what you’re able to add to the market. That is why it is important to really get to know yourself via therapy, or reflection to truly understand your strengths as an individual. Rather than fine-tuning your weaknesses, you should double down on your strengths! In fact, as a boss, you should be hiring for your weaknesses. Vincent shares his advice for those looking to start a CPG brand with us:

• Before starting a business, take your time to figure out if that business has legs. Go talk to a ton of customers in the streets, via Facebook campaigns, or even with Kickstarter and Indiegogo. 

• Don’t micromanage! Hire smart people and let them do their thing. 

• Stay focused on your business, your initiatives, and track everything you are doing. Don’t chase a bunch of shiny objects and go in the wrong direction.

Proper Wild recently closed a $3M seed round and has grown over 600% since March 2020. They will be rolling out nationally into retail with 12,000 convenient stores in South Florida starting in November. Feeling the caffeine crash and want a little pick-me-up in your day? Shop Proper Wild here.

Photo courtesy of Proper Wild. 

GHIA, MELANIE MASARIN: Spirit Without The Booze

A new trend is taking the beverage industry by storm: the non-alcoholic liquids. As chronic conditions surge and consumers become more focused on bio-hacking and wellness, a large white space has opened up for branding and product development. Enter Ghia, a non-alcoholic aperitif, with a goal to appeal to the masses, and make a drink that can be remembered in the morning.

We were lucky to catch up with Melanie Masarin, Founder of Ghia, a non-alcoholic aperitif brand, to chat about her journey and product creation process. Melanie was born in France (bonjour!) and grew up in Lyon. Her father used to work in ceramics and her mother had a textile company that repurposes old linens. “My first job was at the age of 15 when I worked in a tobacco shop because you know, that’s what kids in France did”, says Melanie. 

Melanie went to Brown University and studied Economics and ended up working with American Eagle, followed by Dig Inn and Glossier. However, her love for hospitality dates back to college, when she worked in dining services at Brown. “I was an international student and needed an on-campus job and ended up becoming the general manager for dining services which has over 10 restaurants.”

The Aha Moment

“I was always interested in learning about food trends and what people want to eat. Back in 2013, I was going through my own personal journey at the time and was trying to figure out why people have different digestive issues and one thing that became very apparent was alcohol being painful for my system. It didn’t work for my body in general and I gave it up. I found myself always having to justify why I didn’t drink.” 

“After I left my role at Glossier, I was consulting for a couple of startups and still deciding on what to do next. I wanted to do something meaningful but knew I did not want to work in hospitality again. I ended up traveling to Milan and falling in love with the Aperol spritz. At the same time, I noticed that people I admired were starting to give up alcohol and this was becoming the new way.” After Melanie’s return, her friend encouraged her to take the leap of faith and start what is now known as Ghia (pronounced ghee-ah).  

When it comes to its business model, Ghia is a D2C brand that wants to change the menu for non-alcoholic drinkers. They primarily sell online but plan on rolling out a strong B2B, restaurant program based on Melanie’s previous experience in hospitality. Melanie tells us how “it is important to be able to have a non-alcoholic drink wherever you go, not just from the comfort of your home.”

“It took us one year and 37 iterations to produce this product.”

Priced at $33, Ghia smells and looks like a vintage 70’s summer evening corked in a bottle. The beverage has no caffeine, no added sugars, no artificial flavors, and is vegan (for those wondering). When it comes to creating this masterpiece of a formula, Melanie took a very human-centric approach to product development by involving the community from day one. In order to get her flavor profile just right, she grouped 100 people together (friends of friends), including famous NYC restaurant King’s mocktail bartender to provide insight and feedback. “I knew I wanted certain tasting notes such as dry, bitter, and complex. However, I was not a sommelier and found it difficult to be able to translate my concept into a working product brief.” The community helped her do just that. 

“We did 1,000 glasses to taste in the past 6 months (January to March) before finalizing the formula. We sent out a survey, got samples, and hosted a little brunch. We had 200 bottles that were poured over those months and the feedback we received was that it was too bitter and people wanted it to be sweeter.” However, when it comes to sweeteners and sugars, most of these ingredients tend to be polarizing and hurt the lining of the stomach or cause IBS. But, Melanie was able to adjust the flavor profile and make it sweeter while keeping the bitter taste. And for some bonus points, the community also provided her with valuable insight on how they would use Ghia, stand-alone, or mixed in a drink. Tchin, tchin!  

The Challenges

Like most founders, Melanie found the production process to be a challenging task. Alcohol tends to be preservative, thus it was extremely challenging to find an alternative that would function in the same capacity. This was achieved by working with a formulator and a food chemist to oversee the batches of production and quality control. 

Melanie also had to push back her big launch scheduled for April 1 due to COVID and ended up doing a soft online launch on June 16, 2020. “The factory that made Ghia started to produce hand sanitizers for 3 months, and at the same time we were unable to get into a warehouse.” For a brand that originally revolved around a disco theme and joyful occasions, the current landscape didn’t make it seem relevant. Thus, the soft launch allowed Ghia to secretly enter the marketplace while making space for more important conversations online such as BLM. 

Why the Name?

“We really wanted to create a name that would be easy to pronounce in different languages and have an upbeat sound. It is also a reference to quality and excellence working together. It’s a fun four-letter word that sounds happy and we want the brand to spark joy.”

The Advice 

“When the pandemic hit, I was very worried about our relevance. A mentor of mine who is a friend’s dad from Brown messaged me and said that I should not react to the market, but take this time to think about life in general and whether or not this is what I want to be doing. I felt that if not this year, Ghia needs to exist in the world and create more joyful moments where people take care of themselves. I realized there was nothing else I would rather be doing.”

For those looking to build something, Melanie provides us with her advice to start a consumer-facing brand:

•  Think about how you can create a product that people will want to order over and over again. Investors care about the repeat purchase rate!

• Try to build a community from the beginning instead of acquiring buyers from ads online. This will help create brand affinity as good things take time.

• Place your product in the right places for consumer discovery.

• Don’t focus on growth too early, first build trust. 
  

Interested in sipping on a taste of Italy? Shop Ghia here and get 10% off when you mention code GHIALOVESRADICHE, valid until September 30, 2020. 

Photo courtesy of Ghia.

Written by Alysha Malik.

THE QI, LISA LI: Organic Flower Tea

Did you know that tea drinking dates back to 2732 BC when a Chinese emperor discovered the concept after some tea leaves blew into his boiling pot of water? It’s true. With a market size of $13 billion, tea is a global good today. But, the majority of teas do not provide customers with a unique experience, that of a flower blooming in your cup as you sip. Welcome, The Qi, an organic whole flower tea brand that is elevating the at-home drink.

Born in Yingkuo, on the coastal edge of North-East China, founder of The Qi, Lisa Li grew up drinking tea. “My mother was a single parent and worked full-time. She is the main source of my inspiration and told me that you have to make the best with what you have. As a result, my grandmother raised me and I grew up surrounded by many herbal remedies and treatments from a young age. Back then Ginseng wasn’t known as an adaptogen, but just as a regular old herb. The soups that we had were what most westerns would call bone broth today” says Lisa. 

Before the wellness trend hit the Western market, Lisa lived her life surrounded by traditional Chinese medicine as a way of life instead of a solution to a problem. At the age of 14, she moved to Vermont with her mother who opened up a dumpling restaurant. Lisa later attended Bentley University for undergrad and got a job in accounting, which she hated and eventually made her way to the fashion industry, working for Gucci after attending Parsons University.

“I was never an A+ student, like your stereotypical Asians. School was fine, but I never liked to learn from books.” 

Fast forward to 2017 and The Qi (pronounced the chee) was born. Qi means life force or life energy in Chinese. The Qi is an organic flower tea brand with food-grade quality. Customers can purchase 3 types of flowers: rose, lotus, and chrysanthemum alongside accessories such as glass mugs, glass pots, bamboo tongs, and more. The Qi wants to elevate your at-home tea drinking experience and takes design very seriously. 

The Aha Moment

 “I was feeling burnt out and wanted to start something in the tea category, having grown up around herbal remedies my entire life. I went on a trip to Shangri-la with my mother and found a remote village where 90% of Asia’s teas originate from. At the time I thought I wanted to launch a caffeinated tea brand rooted in green tea or black tea. However, I came across these roses that the locals drink as a tea and eat as a delicacy. I found the experience to be so transformative and beautiful that I felt a responsibility to share it with the world.” 

Tea is very similar to wine, in the sense that it is very complex. Lisa went out to set up her supply chain in this tiny village in China, near Tibet where the flowers grow 10,000 ft above sea level. Each flower sold on The Qi is sourced from a different farm. She was able to meet these farmers by attending the local flower market and developing a relationship. 

“By using third party testing we almost went broke and closed our doors before even opening, but the end result is worth all of the effort.”

The hardest obstacle Lisa faced was finding a farm that grew flowers that were edible and free of pesticide since many farms didn’t have the money for testing and obtaining official certifications. Lisa tells us how “you need to have food grade quality flowers with organic standard flower tisanes. The biggest surprise was learning what went into getting an organic certification. The flower tisane category doesn’t exist in the USDA directory, which meant that each flower had to have zero traces of pesticides for us to call it organic.” Fun fact: the pesticide threshold for caffeinated teas is below 0.5%.

“Many people buy our products as gifts.”

Functioning on a bootstrapped budget, Lisa engages in organic, grassroots level marketing. “We do a lot of giveaways, collaborations with influencers, and email sign-ups. I find that the digital advertising space gets very expensive, you need to pay to play and if you don’t have the budget, it is hard to get a good return.” 

Instead, The Qi has exhibited at tradeshows such as Shop Object to land successful retail partners such as Anthropologie and Bloomingdale. Pre-COVID majority of their sales were coming from these wholesale accounts, but now things have shifted towards their website with bigger margins (snaps). 

The Advice 

Every founder has their own advice for those looking to launch a business in this digital world we live in. Lisa mentions that:

• You should constantly manage your cashflow and prioritize what is truly important to move the needle forward.

• Invest in PR, but make sure whoever you hire has a track record as your money can go down a black hole very quickly with little returns. 

• Everything happens for a reason and nothing is by accident. You should be aware of your personal journey and the space this world holds for you. 

• You need to be extremely passionate about what you are doing as this will become your obsession for the next couple of years and you don’t want to get burnt out. 

Born on the leap year (Feb 29), Lisa tends to work seven days a week, but will take the day off bi-weekly to engage in cooking, playing with her dog in the park and reading. Her favorite brands consist of Nike, Patagonia, and Billie. 

If you are curious about the benefits of flower power or are looking for a great gift idea, shop The Qi here and mention “radiche15” for a 15% discount. 

Photo courtesy of The Qi. 

Written by Alysha Malik. 

SUNSCOOP, CARLI BLUM: Vegan Ice-Cream Becomes a Reality

In a recent study, more than 54% of the US population was reported to react positively to one or more allergens. As our population increasingly becomes more sensitive to what they are putting on and in their bodies, brands need to adapt and cater to new segments. Welcome, Sunscoop, a vegan, allergen-friendly ice-cream brand fulfilling your craving one flavor at a time.    

We caught up with Carli, Blum, the founder of Sunscoop, a vegan, plant-based, dairy-free ice cream brand. Yes, you read it correctly, dairy-free ice cream. As an ice cream lover myself I had to try out the product before interviewing Carli for this feature. The review? I absolutely loved it! Not only is Sunscoop the perfect match for those with IBS and other inflammatory conditions, but it is also low in calories and does not contain any refined sugars. Win, win, win! 

“I suffered from food allergies my whole life and realized that there was no one doing vegan, plant-based ice cream that was allergen-friendly, and tasted good”, says Carli. 

Having grown up in San Diego to a family of Doctors, Carli never imagined herself following the medical path. Instead, she took a more creative route and graduated from the Fashion Institute of Technology with a major in Marketing. It wasn’t until 2016 that Carli thought about launching an ice-cream company, but we’ll get into that shortly. Her early career involved working in the fashion industry as a stylist at Nordstrom. “School was never really my thing. I always got experience from working and was very creative in how I went about getting jobs. I literally walked in Nordstrom’s in LA and got myself a position as a wardrobe stylist. However, I quickly realized that fashion wasn’t my calling and that food was my purpose.”

The Aha Moment

Carli left fashion to go and find herself in Bali (like many of our other founders) in 2016. At this point she was building an app with the former editor of Lucky Magazine to recommend specialty items that match with your basic clothing. “We would partner with retailers to help you build your wardrobe with pieces you already owned. I was very successful from a sales perspective but found myself more interested in what women were eating versus what they were wearing. I left the company to explore Bali and was blown away by the plant-based options available. Given my allergies to soy, nuts, dairy, and gluten, I came across a vendor selling fresh coconut ice cream that I could finally indulge in. It was so exciting to finally be able to eat ice cream that I had an aha moment and wanted to bring this experience and product back to New York.”

“After doing some research, I discovered a woman out in Missouri who was sick and had to incorporate a plant-based diet into her life so she started selling coconut yogurt with cultured prebiotics at doctor offices and local food fairs.” 

Carli read about this woman in the news and convinced her to join forces by establishing a co packing relationship. “She jumped on board immediately. That’s how I produced my original product, which was a cold-pressed coconut cream soft serve.” Carli launched in 2017 under the brand name of Koku after raising $125,000. “I had a lot of people tell me I would never be able to do this because I did not have the operational skill set needed, but I was very determined to make this happen.” She hired a COO from a D2C consumer company who helped her hire talent, fundraise, and set up operations in the early days. However, they ended up splitting ways after a year and a half. 

On Testing the Idea

Instead of launching D2C, Carli wanted to gain traction and validate her business hypothesis. As a result, she launched Koku at Smogasburg during their 2017 summer fair (for those who don't know, Smogasburg is a food fair where all the foodies conjugate to experience new tastings). 

“We got published in Well + Good and sold out by 1 pm on the first day of the event! The next day we sold out by 3 pm and kept selling out week over week. Towards the end of Smogasburg, we were selling 700 cups a day and had two flavors, vanilla tart, and dark cacao.” Next stop, Sweetgreen! “I got invited to partner with Sweetgreen over the summer for their pop-ups in 6 locations.” 

Wanting to prove traction a step further, Carli launched a pop-up at Bowery Market for one week to gather additional feedback. “Buzzfeed covered us and from the PR video, it was very clear that we were creating something meaningful.” Fast forward to modern-day and Koku has been rebranded to Sunscoop due to trademark issues, but to also tell a better story and create a striking new identity. Sunscoop can be found in over 150+ stores across the Northeast, including all Whole Foods. Talk about nailing down their distribution strategy! 

“You can’t be everything to everyone.”

When it comes to the obstacles of launching a CPG company, it all comes down to your product and manufacturing. Carli tells us how she originally launched the product with raw honey and received a lot of feedback on customers wanting the product to be vegan. “We are now a hundred percent vegan.” In addition to product, Carli struggled with nailing down the manufacturing in the early days. “We had formulation challenges. I didn’t own the full recipe at first, big mistake! We also ran into a huge co-packing issue right before launching in Wholefoods and I had to find a new co-packer two weeks before our launch.” Luckily, she managed! 

The Advice

With over 6 unique flavors, 170 calories per serving, and a robust distribution strategy, Sunscoop can also be found online. Although the journey was a long one, Carli’s success can be attributed to having determination and manifesting your beliefs. Her advice for those looking to launch a food and beverage brand:

• Trademark your name right away!

• Learn how to slow down. It is critical to get things right, especially in the beginning. You only have one opportunity to impress customers. 

• Create market validation before fundraising by pilot testing and proving out the concept. Unless you previously worked at a high-growth startup, Investors will typically not fund your idea. 

• Be patient and do not hire too quickly.

• Manifest and visualize what success looks like for you and then turn that into a reality. 

• Follow Nosh for industry news on food and beverage. 

Looking to taste the future of ice-cream? Get 15% off and free shipping this month when you shop Sunscoop online. 

Photo courtesy of Sunscoop.

Written by Alysha Malik.
 

SMALLS, MATT MICHAELSON: The Purrfect Food

Have you ever felt marginalized as a cat person? The DTC pet space is booming, with fresh and nutritious dog food options that look better than some menu items at Sweetgreen. Cats, however, have been notoriously left out of the special place dogs have in the mainstream - and they like it that way. Sick of cats being the underdogs, Matt Michaelson created Smalls to bring healthy, real food to our smarter (and harder to please) furry friends. 

We talked to Matt about his journey as a young entrepreneur, through the DTC growth hacker world, to starting something on his own for the snarky, aloof outsiders in us all.

“It was always part of the family culture to look at the world through numbers and look at the world through money.” 

Matt grew up in Portland, Oregon, with parents who empowered him to see life through a business lens. Family dinners were spent discussing the efficiency of the restaurant, from staffing to traffic flow. At 15 he was looking at Excel models with his dad, seeing how money moved around (what kid wouldn’t want a peek at that?). With the mindset that bending the rules yields the best results which most disruptive founders share, Matt’s earliest scheme involved offering private lessons under the table to patrons of the sailing school where he worked as a teenager.

His first stab at an entrepreneurial venture was in college, where he was in the Northeastern University entrepreneurship program. The highly institutional “Boston Mindset” didn’t exactly spark Matt’s joy, so he started up an eCommerce business.

“There were these people who were building bikes out of bamboo and selling them for heaps of money to hip cyclists in the United States, but they weren’t really building a brand,” Matt said. “So I started buying a bunch of bikes, shipping them over and had a little eCommerce business selling these frames.”

Matt’s meant-to-be-a-founder ambition and wit didn’t always jive with his entrepreneurship co-op at Northeastern, and he was actually pseudo-fired from several placements during the program (*ahem* WeWork). Thanks to his tenacity, Matt met the founder of period-underwear startup Thinx (also previously featured on RADICHE) through a mutual connection at the MassChallenge accelerator, and pitched himself as an “unskilled general smart person with the energy to make stuff happen.” He ended up becoming Thinx’s second employee, an unpaid intern, and left two and a half years later as Head of Growth, having taken the company from zero to $30 million in revenue. 

While at Thinx, Matt redefined their eCommerce strategy and made them one of the first brands to drive traffic to press articles versus a shop page. Smart! When it comes to digital marketing, he defines it as “a fun game. It was like a casino, but also an opportunity to beat the system.” 

Matt became very skilled at predicting how much money would come out of ad spend and was able to find an ROI-positive strategy by breaking the rules and experimenting.

The Aha Moment

“I went into this internet wormhole like any entrepreneur, on page 10 of google search looking at weird blogs that haven’t been redesigned since 1999, and subreddits you’ve never heard of. I discovered this whole world of people who were feeding their pets home-cooked food, and raving about the difference it made.”

After leaving Thinx and freelancing for a few years, Matt was frustrated with the lack of opportunity to expand his skills once he moved from growth hacking to more general consulting. He knew it was finally time to dig in on starting something of his own. In late 2015 Matt barked up the right tree and began to consider the pet space - something ripe for eCommerce purrfection with a high lifetime value customer.

“When you look at the pet industry, there are whole micro-industries and micro-influencers for homemade pet food. Flags start going up - these products are genuinely healthier.”

Matt realized that this was the yard where he was going to play, and he immediately had his family switch to feeding their pets home-cooked food. “I don’t think I'm the right founder to start the millennial brand for ‘X’; I needed something that I could feel good about bringing into the world, outside of it being better designed and cool looking. With food you could see how it really made a difference for people,” Matt said. 

Matt worked with a recipe developer who was selling home-cooking recipes to people with sick pets and began sending his batches to friends with both cats and dogs. He got positive feedback from their first testers, with previously incurable health issues disappearing in several pets. Having grown up with both cats and dogs, Matt’s decision to focus on cats came from a place of appreciation for their misfit attitude, critical thinking, and independence.

“Dogs tend to get all the love in the startup world, and societally we consider them the norm. I always liked being a nonconformist, and an outlier,” Matt said. “It just felt right to go the other direction.” 

The Name

“The first kitchen we were working out of was in the Marcy Projects which is where Jay-Z and Biggie Smalls came up, and we also see cats as our smalls. They’re the little small weirdos that inspire our inner weirdo to come out more. So ‘Smalls’ felt like it hit those two things.” Matt said.

On Finding a Cofounder

From his experience in the startup world, Matt wanted a cofounder that he knew and trusted. He brought on Calvin Bohn, a childhood friend from Portland who would often help bounce ideas around and join in on brainstorming sessions.

“Calvin is someone who whenever we had disagreements we were great at conflict resolution. Our responsibilities started with me being on the demand side and him being supply side. I brought the customer and he brought the product - he even cooked it for a while!”

Over time Matt’s role has transitioned to managing people and being a sounding board, as many founders do.

Challenges

With an eye on customer economics, Matt realized that Smalls was initially missing out on a key opportunity to be more efficient. At first, the company sold just a frozen wet food option, and while 20% of their customers exclusively fed that food, the rest were still buying dry food from another source. Smalls decided to hit “paws” on any big marketing initiatives while they developed the right product mix. 

“We went out and developed all these dry food products and now we have a full range of budget-friendliness, dry food, and wet food,” Matt said.

When talking about future product line expansions, Smalls wants to lean into cats’ behavior and evolution of feeding in the wild, where cats are hunters and will eat 6-12 small meals a day.

“We’re likely to come out with some toys that you can put dry food in and hide around the house so cats can go and hunt for their food throughout the day, stimulating their hunter nature,” Matt said.

For now, Matt is focused on building a brand that celebrates and dignifies the feline way of life.

“I don't think anyone has really elevated cats or explored the idea of what cats stand for. You see all these kitschy things, but there is something really inspiring about cats. If Smalls can inspire you to celebrate your weirdness a little bit more and take the path less traveled, that's a cool impact to have.”

The Advice

From delivering baggies of cat food in a Zipcar to raising over $5 million in venture funding, Matt knows the bumps in the path to growing a business in the pet space. See his advice below:

• Be exploratory and open-minded about what your product should be.
  

• Hire a small team of quality people with experience in your industry or business model.
  

• Starting your own company is supposed to be hard, so don’t get discouraged or be afraid to reset!
  

Want the best food for your best friend? Visit Smalls and use the code “Radiche” for 50% off.

Photo courtesy of Smalls. 

Written by Kendall Embs.

ARTET, XANDER SHEPHERD: The High Rise

Put away your papers and pipes, people! If you’re ready to kick back with some THC, but aren’t feeling like you want to smoke that tumbleweed, perhaps a drink would be more your style? Looking to disrupt the THC category with new consumable formats, Artet is bringing the aperitif experience to a higher plane. Founded by Xander Shepherd with his cousins Max and Zach Spohler, this drink is on the high rise! 

In 2018, beverages made up only 6% of the total edible cannabis market in the US. The drinkables that are out there resemble everything from FourLoko-adjacent convenience store cans to beautifully branded sparkling water, and often just contain CBD. So what is the difference between CBD and THC you must be wondering? Both CBD and THC are cannabinoids that are derived from the marijuana plant. They even have the same chemical formula (21 carbon atoms, 30 hydrogen atoms, and two oxygen atoms). However, the main differences lie in the way the atoms are arranged, causing THC to be psychoactive unlike CBD and leading you to as Snoop Doop would be delighted to say, “get high”. 

Unlike other beverage companies, the founders of Artet,  Xander Shepherd, Max Spohler, and Zach Spohler are taking a new approach by incorporating THC into an aperitif. “[Cannabis] beverages exist but they way we’re doing it and talking about it doesn’t - the way we think about some of the drivers for someone who is cannabis curious, someone who wants to get into cannabis but wants a product that looks and behaves and feels like something they’ve consumed in their past that wasn’t cannabis-related,” Xander said. 

“It’s about bridging the gap between cannabis and the cocktail culture, with a better buzz of THC. To an extent we’re creating a sector,” Xander said. 

Since Artet’s launch in 2018, the brand has seen distribution throughout California (since they are only legally able to sell it there), and Xander, Max and Zach have been featured in Forbes. This new format for experiencing THC has opened doors for interactions with the mixologist community and all kinds of creative thinkers and drinkers.

“The real vision we have is owning this space between cannabis and cocktail culture, and we see the future of cannabis mixology being very bright. We want to focus on our flagship SKU and make sure everyone can enjoy the original product. After that we want to look at ways that different products, different cannabinoids, and different flavor profiles can create complements,” Zach said.

The gentlemen over at Artet feel that it is best to allow customers the optionality and creativity to create their own drink. Therefore, the packaging comes with a cap that can be used as a shot glass to measure and pour your own Artet. “We saw somebody the other day making a drink using gin, Aperol, Artet and some bitters. That’s not a recipe that we put into the world, that’s a recipe that someone made at home, with the things they had in their bar. That’s what’s exciting for us to see.” Max said.

The Challenges

Other than raising capital, state-by-state distribution has been a major challenge for the Artet gentlemen as they are operating under murky laws and gray zones. However, as major beverage players started to enter the cannabis sector, investors eventually came around to join the high times (both financially and literally). Max tells us that it was very important for the team to keep its focus during the early days of adoption as “half the people we pitched to thought we were out of our minds since the idea of drinking weed hadn’t gone mainstream yet!”. 

The Aha Moment

Xander, Max and Zach started tinkering with the idea of Artet back in 2015. “The aha moment came to us when we were hanging out one day and thought about what our future would look like 10 years from now. We always knew we would gather with our friends around a social drink, but it wasn’t alcohol, it was something else,” Zach said. 

What started out as R&D was the boys’ first attempt to invade their home kitchen. With an ingredient-forward approach, a few questionable experiments later and with the help of the almighty flavor experts and beverage scientists from the internet, Artet was born in 2018. So how does one feel after their first drink? It takes about 10 to 15 minutes to take effect after finishing your first glass. The founders describe the experience as an uplifting, social buzz that leaves you chatty and mildly high with no hangover! 

The Childhood 

Xander, Max, and Zach grew up in New York City, with a family whose work in the hospitality space created a sense of importance around meaningful moments and experiences rather than material possessions. With their grandmother’s travel agency and parents’ family businesses as inspiration, the entrepreneurial spirit manifested itself in early endeavors centered around creating joy for others. 

“I’ve always enjoyed creating things for other people,” Xander said. “In college, I produced a music festival that was partially funded by the school I went to, but a lot of it relied on us as a student group to fund it, build it out, and do everything from insurance to booking to travel logistics to ticket sales. [I was] running a team of 70 people as a 20-year-old, while also taking classes. Finding more excitement in the uncertainties of getting an artist to agree to the terms and show up and perform for everybody else, I found more value and excitement in that than my classes or my tests.”

Zach and Max also found their own ways to exercise their entrepreneurial tendencies before becoming founders. Zach created a platform that connected entrepreneurial communities on college campuses, and Max worked for a high-growth coconut water company that set him up with beverage innovation experience.

The Name

“Artet” is the mirror image of “Tetra,” the T in THC (or Tetrahydrocannabinol, try pronouncing that when you’re high). This backward way of looking at things seems appropriate for our out-of-the-box-thinking founders.

“We’re empowering everyone to hopefully one day become evangelists for our product.”

With the flagship product launched widely in California through several dispensaries and delivery services, including Kind Courier in San Francisco, and the Pottery and Tokr in LA, Xander works to grow the world of Artet.

“I’m very focused on how we show up in the world, how we tell our story, and how we present ourselves in order for there to be a reason for supply chain and sales,” Xander said “We see all of these things going hand in hand. That’s where a lot of my time is spent - making sure we are telling a very cohesive narrative, digitally, physically, in-store, with our partners.”

“I think Artet, in its final form, is an experience we really feel like the world deserves, and people can enjoy cannabis in the experience that we’re cultivating,” Max said.

The Advice

When it comes to launching a beverage company, we’ve heard a thing or two. Check out the gentlemen's key takeaways below:

• Go slow and take your time formulating.
  
  

• Trust your gut and know that some things might not work out and that’s okay.
  
  

• The beverage industry is all about branding! Create something unique that speaks to a small segment before going mass.
  
  

Interested in sipping the future? Discover Artet here or email us to be put in touch with its founders. 

Photo courtesy of Artet.

Written by Kendall Embs.  

KIN, JEN BATCHELOR: The Underserved Drinker

The nightlife industry caters to only one type of audience: the alcoholic. For those who like to get jiggy with it under a sober conscious, your options are limited. From high sugary drinks to soda water with bitters in a boring glass, the bartender might as well give you a dunce hat to wear (hi everyone, it’s me, yup, not drinking tonight, don’t I seem fun?). It was this exact mindset that led Jen Batchelor to start Kin, a euphoric beverage company.    

Jen Batchelor grew up in Saudi Arabia to a father who was a bootlegger. “It was my first exposure to the entrepreneurial side in which my dad would brew his own moonshine, sidiki in our bathtub and became very interested in the distillation process. Growing up in this environment taught me what alcohol can do to bring communities together as well as what it can do to tear families apart.” 

“It took me a year of building Kin to realize the impact of my ancestry in the brand.”

“When it comes to success, my mother had a very defined American point of view on what it meant to be successful, purely based on Hollywood. I strived to check all of those boxes and suddenly hit a turning point in my life where I wasn’t happy and realized that the corporate life was not for me. I ended up launching my own social media consulting agency and partnering with hotels for branded experiences as well as building a network of fitness and wellness influencers. At this time SoulCycle was promoting the whole detox to retox regime and it reminded me of the yoyo diets in the ’80s. Why did we have to live life in such extremes?”

 On Finding a Co-Founder

Jen was introduced to former Soylent co-founder, Matthew Cauble by a mutual friend. (Tip: Go to as many entrepreneurial events as possible, you never know who you will meet). “We bonded over the wellness industry and how the drinking experience was broken. We wanted Kin to be about opening up a flow state and finding a new way to revel and #risewisely. We want to be at your local bar as well as something you gift when attending house parties.”

Matt took the lead on product development as Jen continued to build out the brand. (It took them 30 iterations of the product over 16 months to get it right!)  In the beginning, Jen ran social media herself for the first year until finding our good friend, Larissa May to help with strategy and growth. 

The Challenges

“Education has been our biggest challenge as no one is using the same ingredients as us.” Kin is a beverage that combines adaptogens, nootropics, and botanics. What are nootropics you might be wondering? Well, it’s been the big buzz word since 2018! Nootropics are supplements, drugs or substances that may improve cognitive function, particularly in memory, creativity or motivation. 

“I don’t trust liquor stores to tell our story right now and therefore we obtain new customers by hosting euphorics workshops and tasting events. This made us realize that people wanted our product delivered to their door which explains our distribution model of D2C.” 

“Look at everything you do from the perspective of the consumer.”

As a beverage company you need to can a feeling in order to set yourself apart from competitors. Kin is able to do this by hosting events and partnering with brands in similar spaces. “Social media continues to be the number one way to share organically and discover our brand. We did a happy hour at Glossier as well as an event with Bumble in the past. However, the real impact comes from when we chat with individuals one on one.”

Vogue has been Kin’s biggest advocate and the way they chose to tell Jen’s story has definitely had an influence on sales. Kin has never paid for any major press articles but has gotten it for free through Jen’s relationships and hustle. “If you’re looking to get press, the best way is to reach out directly to an editor and share your personal story alongside a fun tidbit that no one knows. This goes a long way! We then invite these editors to our events.” 

The Advice

We asked Jen if she had $100K how would she spend it. “I would spend 80% on building the framework, story, band, colors, and product. It is pretty cheap to hack a formula together, but for us, it is more important that the individual who chooses to not drink is seen.” Jen furthers comments on how if you are looking to start a company you should:

• Know that your unique perspective has the opportunity to change the world. We are going after the conscious creative. We were very intentional in making Kin a premium drink as we don’t want to appeal to 18-year-olds who are legally not allowed to drink alcohol.
  

• Don’t be a copy cat! I am not a fan of people incorporating CBD into their products as a business opportunity.
  

• Be unapologetic for who you are.
  

• Go out and create from a place of no ego.

Kin is looking to make a dent in the alcohol industry. If you are interested in experimenting with sobriety and being seen, shop their products here. Don’t forget to check their website for events as they host pretty rad experiences! 

Photo courtesy of Kin. 

Written by Alysha Malik.

HYDRANT, JOHN & JAI: The Dehydrated Economy

In an aisle where dehydration is often linked to diarrhea and infant related issues, co-founders John Sherwin and Jai Kim stirred up a new concoction, Hydrant that caters to adults in the health and wellness category. Or as we like to say, the cool aisle you would love to be caught in at WholeFoods!

America runs on Dunkin, or caffeine as most folks would refer to it as. In a sleep deprived world, 75% of Americans are dehydrated on a daily basis and resort to caffeine instead of water when they experience a headache, tiredness or need a mood boost. However, this is not the best solution for your body. We met up with our homeboys, John Sherwin and Jai Kim to discuss their journey leading up to the launch of Hydrant, an electrolyte powder for everyday use when water alone is not enough. 

“We want to bring an approachable, cool brand to this space and empower consumers with knowledge about hydration and health. Hydrant is a lifestyle brand - one that people turn to at the gym, in the office, and after the bars.”

If you take a look at the hydration solutions currently available, they all seem to be missing a core component: product-market fit. For example, let’s look at Gatorade, an electrolyte drink marketed to athletes and sports enthusiasts, but consumed by mainly hungover white-collared men riding the subway and occasionally burping the alphabets. Or Pedialyte, a formula created for infants who experience a loss of nutrients due to diarrhea, is consumed by those still learning their ABC’s. John tells us how “there was nothing in the aisle that adults could use as a go-to solution for increasing their health and wellness when it came to dehydration. Not to mention, most of these products contain more sugar than is necessary! From an ingredient standpoint, Hydrant has 2x sodium, 8x the potassium as well as an infusion of magnesium and zinc.” 

The Challenges

With production taking place in California, the biggest challenge for Hydrant has been bandwidth and speed. Jai tells us how “we have all of these plans that we share with investors, but the main challenge is to figure out the perfect product-market fit. You should never approach the whole market because then you are boring. Identifying who are your early adopters and focusing on a niche is key.” Jai also comments on how “the most painful dehydration used case occurs most frequently via the infamous hangover. So in a way that is where you want to be, but at the same time, the hangover space ends up being a tacky one linked to consumers feeling guilty. We want to be much more than just a hangover remedy.” 

The Partnership

Jai and John met through a mutual friend and “dated” for six months before establishing their roles as co-founders and officially launching in August 2018 (seeds of the company were planted back in January 2017). While John grew up in the UK, Jai grew up in Boston and as fate would have it, both boys would become interested in the same topic at the exact moment. Jai tells us how “I was exploring a similar space when I came across Hydrant and decided to drop out of Wharton’s MBA program and invest my remaining tuition into the company and join full time.” Talk about commitment, folks!

So who does what? Jai heads up business development and sales and given his past experience working in private equity, was able to use his connections to raise money for Hydrant, wohoo! Fun fact: he is also a partial owner in a liquid nitrogen ice-cream franchise in Korea. John, on the other hand, is your product guru, with a background in Biology and has worked for nanotechnology companies in the Valley, Silicon Valley that is. Fun fact: his front two teeth are fake, but his charisma is real!

The Advice

There is no right way to go about setting up a company. Everyone has their own path, but John and Jai share their wisdom with us on the following:

• Make sure you and your co-founder have complementary skill sets, a shared sense of humor and vibe. If you can’t become friends, you will be miserable.

• Don’t work with large consulting firms, find the freelancer!

• Make it easy for people to find you and contact you.

• Start your SEO early by creating a blog and publishing content before your production run.

• Be the first result on a google search!
  

Interested in trying out Hydrant and saying goodbye to your headaches, lack of energy, and mood swings? Mention promo code: RADICHE for a 20% discount here. Luckily, we tried out the product before writing this feature and have to say that it is a savior and actually cures those nasty hangovers if you are planning on drinking heavily. How to use: drink one pack of Hydrant right before falling asleep after a fun night out when you [typically] would have woken up with regrets, except this time you won’t regret your Hydrant purchase! For those who want to control the quality of their next day, click here. 

Photo courtesy of Hydrant.

Written by Alysha Malik.

HEATONIST, NOAH CHAIMBERG: The Hot Sauce Sommelier

We all have that one friend, whom, when asked what product they can’t live without, say hot sauce! In a post Spice Girls world, consumers are often left to the big retailers when searching for the perfect hot sauce, but rarely stumble upon Grandma’s infamous recipe! Alas, meet the Heatonist, a curated natural hot sauce store, located in Brooklyn, New York, where small farmers and consumer interests intersect. 

We met Noah Chaimberg, the founder of Heatonist over dinner a couple of months back in a lofty Brooklyn apartment to discuss his love for all things hot and how he got started. “I have always been dabbling in projects on the side and loved to cook. When I was 15, I would sell Pokemon posters on eBay and then at the age of 16, tried to sell Catamarans in Vermont. I had met a supplier from Canada and convinced him to let me lead the U.S. market.” Not too shabby for a young soul back in the day.  

The Aha Moment

However, Noah’s love affair with hot sauce bloomed over an evening brainstorming session with a friend. “I had been working in digital advertising for the past nine years, and it’s funny because looking back, I had majored in Marketing from Concordia University in Montreal, but NEVER wanted to work in advertising. I started out in search and then moved on to social media, display and data analytics. My clients consisted of Uniqlo, Mercedes, etc. but I was itching to start my own brand that I could have control over and execute the ideas that I wanted to. One evening, my friend and I were bouncing business ideas off this huge wall that I had converted into a whiteboard in my apartment and we were stuck on the word data. For some reason, I kept thinking of the word hot sauce as it relates to data and voila, Heatonist was born.”

So why does data relate to hot sauce you might be wondering? The Heatonist is a curator of the best hot sauces in the world, ranging from Japan, Sweden, New Zealand, and New York. All of the products are natural and free of artificial ingredients. They also occasionally engage in collaborations with small mom and pop owners to co-create their own limited edition products based on consumer feedback using data from the store. Fun fact: Noah also operates his own marketing consulting agency in the back of the Heatonist store.

Testing The Market

“I got an account with a hot sauce distributor and ordered a bunch of samples and would have friends come over to choose the ones they liked best. My friend initially told me about a sauce in Colorado that was owned by a brother and sister duo that wasn't available anywhere else, and from there I knew I was on to something. I started attending farmers markets, digging through online communities and noticed a craft brewing movement happening in hot sauce that no one was talking about. I decided to create my own hot sauce mobile with these products sourced from different vendors and sell at events back in October 2013. One year later, we launched our own website.”

“As a solo entrepreneur who is self-funded, logistics has been the biggest challenge when working in New York! You need to have the entrepreneurial attitude that you are going to figure it out somehow.” 

Priced between $8 - $12, you can find Heatonist products on their website, showcased on the famous YouTube show, Hot One’s or in their store, 121 Wythe Ave, Brooklyn. Noah’s advice for those looking to start something in the culinary space, “walk before you run. Figure out what you are doing and talk to as many people in the farmers market to get feedback on what they like and don’t like about it. Also, build your customer base before going into Whole Foods.” 

Photo courtesy of The Heatonist. 

PIPCORN, JEFF MARTIN: The Popcornist

As an avid popcorn lover, there is nothing worse than getting one stuck in your teeth. We have all been there when the search for the toothpick is on! Alas, a pioneer is discovered. He who believes that no kernel shall get caught in the traps of the dentine. He goes by the name of Jeff Martin, and sails the entrepreneurial sea “salt” by the name of Pipcorn. 

If you have seen Shark Tank or the Oprah show, then you must have noticed siblings Jeff and Jen Martin debuting their popcorn collection on live TV. Former Bentley alumni, we caught up with Jeff at his WeWork office in Brooklyn to discuss popcorn, his early childhood and life hacks for making it on to Shark Tank. 

“I think that when you grow a business and start a business, it is a lot of building and taking apart of things to find the best approach.”

If you walk into Whole Foods, then you might have noticed the brown wholesome looking bags of popcorn displayed amongst a sea of shiny, colorful competitors. An aesthetic like no other, Pipcorn is known for its organic ingredients (they don’t use truffle oil, but real truffle), 6-month shelf life (due to using real olive oil) and smaller sized kernels. “Most salty snacks such as popcorn are all made with very similar ingredients, repackaged in a different bag. We wanted to focus on the kernel and the quality of the corn that is sourced from a small family farm in Indiana. So, for us, it was very important to create a natural look and feel before customers even open the bag.” 

“It’s okay to say no to an opportunity if it’s not right.”

When proposed with great business deals, most entrepreneurs would say yes. However, Jeff has learned from experience that sometimes taking on an opportunity when your brand is not ready can hinder sales and your reputation in the market. “When we got into Whole Foods we were originally in four stores and had doubled over time. Our biggest break was getting into the Whole Foods Columbus Circle location as they wanted to create a large display for our brand by the register. They bought 100 cases from us on a daily basis. Unfortunately, we were not ready for that kind of demand and did not have all of the supplies needed. As a result, it cost us an arm and a leg to meet our production deadlines. Saying yes at the wrong time can be detrimental!” 

The Marketing

Unlike Whole Foods, Pipcorn’s greatest account has been with Bed Bath & Beyond. “It’s a different business model where we don’t have to promote four times a year.” Other distribution channels include Marshalls, Fresh Direct and TJ’s in order to tap into a different demographic. 

When it comes to PR and growth, instead of doing things the traditional way, Jeff Martin took his business to the Sharks. “Shark Tank contributed the most to our top line sales growth. Even though we were also on the Oprah show and our website crashed due to the visitors we received, Shark Tank beat that by a factor of 15. Plus, the re-airs for the show has helped sales a lot!”  

Jeff also looked towards partnering with local and niche influencers in various categories such as fitness. “Often times we don’t compensate influencers, but just provide them with free product to share with their friends.” 

Other forms of marketing channels include participating in events, brand partnerships (with like-minded CPG brands), sample giving as well as collaborating with subscription boxes for office snacks. “The subscription box model has allowed us to get exposure to thousands of employees who then buy the brand in their leisure time.”

“Popcorn has always been in some weird way, a part of me.”

Born in NY, Jeff is one of four siblings. “There was always a buddy to hang out with growing up, but I was definitely the wilder one.” Since the age of 10, he was selling popcorn to his siblings in his house or as he liked to call it the “popcorn bar bedroom!” 

“I ended up working at UBS Investment Bank in the consumer products and retail group after graduating from Bentley University in 2007. However, I got laid off and no one was hiring so I ended up working with a tech startup in the music industry. I learned how to pitch a business idea with the founder of the company and looking back, getting laid off was the best thing to have ever happened to me!” 

Fast forward to 2012, the seeds of Pipcorn were planted when Jeff helped Jenn move apartments in Chicago and the two siblings were left hungry surrounded by boxes in an empty apartment with nothing to eat. “We opened a bag of kernels she had received from a farmer and were instantly in agreement that this was the best popcorn we had ever had! It had so much flavor and didn’t get stuck in your teeth.” 

The Advice For Getting on Shark Tank:

• Stand your ground and get what your company needs.

• Have confidence in your ability to tell your story and sell your product. “The Sharks know that the exposure of the show is worth a lot so they will beat you down and tell you that you are a cockroach.”

• Sharks don’t invest in products, they invest in people!

“We went on Shark Tank for the exposure, relationship and the deal more than the money. We have considered that as an angel round for us and haven’t done a traditional Series A due to the sales we received from the show. Our next step is to find a strategic investor with industry experience to take us to the next level.” If this sounds like you, please email us to be put in touch with Jeff. 

Feeling hungry? Head on over to your local Whole Foods, Bed Bath & Beyond or shop online to try out Pipcorn. Or if you’re feeling adventurous and want to pop your own kernels at home, remember the 3- second rule for precision (if you don’t hear a pop every three seconds, then the batch is done!) Happy snacking. 

Photo courtesy of Pipcorn. 

HARVEST & REVEL, SARA ELISE: The Wellness Warrior

In an age of technology, never-ending plans and hard hustle, we are constantly looking to get away from the everyday madness. While some of us find this escape in running or reading a book or picnicking in the park, others find it within balsamic braised brussel sprouts. Yes, that is a dish and a former financier turned into a culinary entrepreneur after finding her mind, body and soul alignment through it. Meet the founder of Harvest & Revel and co-founder of Blind Seed, Sara Elise!

Sara Elise was born in Maryland and brought up across various cities on the East Coast. A 2011 graduate from Georgetown University, Sara majored in Finance and Marketing. Having interned at Credit Suisse for two years, she found herself working in Private Wealth Management doing equity research for three years post-graduation.

Pencil skirts, cool stilettos and a great salary were all the perks of working within the financial services sector. Yet, Sara was miserable! The 40+ hours spent on doing something that she didn’t enjoy eventually caught up to her. "When I was growing up, I was told that going to business school would open up many doors for me. But after graduating and while working a "great" job, I still didn't feel great. I was eating badly, engaging in self-destructive behavior and not dealing with how I was feeling. I just kept going, without thinking about how my behavior was impacting my life overall."

Her aha-moment in healing herself eventually led to the creation of a gourmet catering company, Harvest & Revel (formerly known as Bed Stuy Kitchen) in 2012 and more recently, Blind Seed, a brand that hosts 360 degree wellness retreats in the greater NY region.

“Everyone should always be seeking something. Out of the seeking, come the best things.”

With an urge to slow down time (and get her sanity back) while working in finance, Sara started cooking. Besides having a grandfather who was once a sous-chef and cooking up some appetizers for family dinners, Sara learned culinary arts through researching the market (literally). She would visit different food markets and learn about raw ingredients, which she would then use to concoct some delicious recipes. “In this endeavor, I started to discover how certain foods affected my body. I became more self-aware and wanted to share it with others.”

This led to “Seasonal Tasting Events” held at her apartment in Bed Stuy. The first intimate dinner with 15 of her friends took place in 2012. “The response was overwhelming and the energy that people had to try new dishes got me excited.” Voilà, a few requests to host events pushed Sara to start her own catering company that would focus on using fresh, seasonal ingredients for an elegant farm-to-table experience.

“It is a big deal for me to feel completely aligned in my mind, body and in what I’m doing.”

Harvest & Revel was originally called Bed Stuy Kitchen because Sara sourced her ingredients from different gardens in Bed Stuy, Brooklyn and cooked out of her Bed Stuy apartment kitchen. About a year into starting the company, Sara brought on a business partner and Culinary Director and later, officially quit her full-time gig at Credit Suisse to scale Harvest & Revel. In 2016, her and her partner agreed to change the company name to Harvest & Revel. The name was inspired by the essence of what they were doing - using ingredients that came from the earth to create revelry and celebratory moments.

Six months into starting the company, Sara brought on a business partner (now the Culinary Director) and officially quit her full-time gig at Credit Suisse to scale Harvest & Revel. Today, the company consists of about 15 employees and has clients all over New York City with private chef work in The Hamptons and wedding catering in upstate New York. Catering services start at an average $65 per person.

 “Through Blind Seed, we want to give people access to their full alignment so that when they are back at the office, they can tap into that feeling.”

If you think transitioning from finance to food central wasn’t enough, Sara decided to take it a step further in her story of helping others find their perfect balance. In summer of 2017, she partnered with Tara Aura, a yoga teacher and co-founder of famous cold-pressed watermelon beverage, WTRML WTR to create Blind Seed.

Inspired by the zen proverb, “the seed never sees the tree,” Blind Seed was born from a serendipitous conversation between Sara and Tara. Tara wanted to create a day long and weekend retreat with yoga, meditation, good food and some sort of an educational component. It was a no-brainer that Sara would come on board to manage the food aspect. The first four-day retreat took place in Rhinebeck, NY in June 2017 and more have continued to introduce mindful wellbeing into people's’ lives. 

The Advice

Recently highlighted as a top, young innovator in the NY food scene by Jarry Mag, Sara counts some of the most renowned chefs and culinary experts as her mentors and has a learned a thing or two from them. Her biggest advice? “Many people want to be entrepreneurs, and I'm not discouraging that! But leaving your job to immediately go into entrepreneurship is not always the best plan. It’s smart to do things that provide financial stability and security WHILE engaging in the things that make you happy. In other words, quitting a full-time job as soon as you have a business idea is not always the best mindset; sometimes it's best to first develop a financial security plan and follow it.”

Thinking you need a break from the rat race or just need a soulful meal at your next birthday party? Book your next retreat with Blind Seed here or your next event catering through Harvest & Revel here. Have a collaboration idea for Sara? Drop us a note and we’ll put you in touch!

Photo courtesy of Sara Elise.

LITTLE SPOON, LISA BARNETT: The First Bite

We live in a world full of innovation. Yet, certain categories have remained undisrupted since the early 1900’s. You might be wondering where this innovation could lie? Sometimes, it’s within a beating heart inside your stomach, waiting to be born. Co-Founder of Little Spoon, Lisa Barnett is disrupting the baby food industry by reinventing its ingredients because, well, your baby’s food shouldn't be older than your baby. 

We are born into this world and are left alone to figure out life. But did you know, that the nutrition we get during our first few years is critical to our motor and cognitive development? Yes, a little bit of help in our yesteryears could have a great effect on our tomorrow’s. Gregarious, amicable and adorable co-founder and CMO, Lisa Barnett tells us how she likes to think out loud and make magic out of any situation. “I am a firm believer in the value a non-expert can bring to the table to shake things up” and that is exactly what she is doing in the baby food market with Little Spoon. 

“Entrepreneurs are not more comfortable with risk. They are just better at evaluating the risk profile and going off to try something different because they have a big belief in themselves.”

After working on the idea for over two years, Little Spoon launched in the fall of 2017 with a distinct marketing position. “We worked with a team of pediatricians and nutritionists to develop a personalized blueprint to identify what nutrients a baby needs at each stage of their development. By collecting information about where your baby is in their developmental phase, we evolve our meal plan as they grow from the ages of 4 to 15 months.” How cool is that?

Little Spoon works with fresh, organic ingredients that are cold pressed to neutralize the harmful bacteria and preserve active nutrients for up to two weeks. Their flavors range from carrot, apple, ginger, chia, mango and coconut milk. “This is why if you look at the coloring of our food, it depicts the right hue shade based on its active ingredients.” For those who didn’t know, shelf stabilized food products tend to kill important nutrients during the process, essentially leaving us with not much value.  

Despite their kick-ass recipes, the team didn’t stop there. Lisa & co also looked into disrupting the packaging in this space by creating a spoon that is attached to the lid and can snap off. “This was done very intentionally. We spent 6 months designing our packaging because we know that your baby is going through its motor development stage as they start to eat human food and we wanted to help strengthen that hand-eye coordination and encourage touch and feel interactions for your young ones.”

“It’s not about thinking outside the box. It’s about thinking from an entirely different box. This is where innovation happens.”

A 2011 graduate of University of Pennsylvania with a major in Marketing and Communications, Lisa grew up in a house where the one commonality everyone shared was the ability to hustle. Upon graduation, she worked at BCG in the brands and consumer space until moving on to work with Estee Lauder at a time when direct to consumer brands (Warby Parker) were starting to worry the retail industry and disrupt their distribution channels. “I started talking to all of these D2C start-ups to understand the best approach for an e-commerce strategy and ended up loving the entrepreneurial world and going back to Wharton for Business School.” Lisa later dabbled in the VC world until she got recruited by her college friend and co-founder, Ben to come onboard and work on Little Spoon with the other two founders, Angela and Michelle. 

“It was challenging to enter a space that hasn’t been touched since the early 1900’s by Gerber.” 

As a new brand disrupting the industry, the main challenge is to educate consumers. Primarily, Britney Spears who has been commenting on this sector since the early 1990’s by saying oh baby, baby how was I supposed to know? That something wasn’t right here? Well, now you shall know! 

It took Little Spoon one year to set up their supply chain and procedures as everything needed to be thoroughly checked because “if you are just following the guidelines, you are not innovating enough.” However, Lisa’s main challenge has been the ability to prioritize time. 

“There are so many choices you have to make every minute about your business. For me, the main one being, how do I spend my time? What should I be prioritizing? As an entrepreneur, we tend to see all of this opportunity, but being able to focus is key rather than trying to do everything at once.” Fun fact: Lisa was a cross country runner in college and believes that her training from running paid off by enabling her to keep her focus, maintain her hustle and always have a vision. 

The Advice

• Never work in isolation. If you have co-founders, you should be speaking daily about how to prioritize tasks.

• Set short-term, medium-term and long-term goals based on the biggest issues to combat.

• As an entrepreneur, you are going to receive a lot of no’s. Don’t listen to the outside world and rely on yourself and your team to help spearhead critical decisions.

Interested in meeting Lisa? She thrives on bringing people together and exposing individuals to new experiences they normally would not encounter. Email us and we can put you in touch. Oh, and don't forget to mention promo code: radiche for $20 off your order. 

Photo courtesy of Little Spoon. 

DANG FOODS, VINCENT K: The Chip Tale

Besides Thai iced tea, delicious pad Thai and lavish destination weddings, there is a whole lot of Thai-ism that us, Westerners, are deprived of. To expose our taste buds to South East Asia and transport us worlds away, Vincent Kitirattragarn created Dang Foods, based on his mother’s recipe and love for one key ingredient: coconut. 

Vincent Kitirattragarn, besides having the coolest last name ever (pronounced as kit-i-ratt-ra-garn), is the Founder and CEO of Dang Foods. Best known for their tasty chips backed by Thai recipes and concocted with globally-inspired goodness, Dang Foods can be found everywhere (from airports to convenient stores to our favorite NYC spot, Public Hotels to most likely on your kitchen counter). 

With a range of flavored toasted coconut chips, sticky rice chips and onion chips, priced at $3.99 per pack, Dang Foods is challenging the traditional snack industry with 100% natural ingredients. 

Vincent, with Thai roots, grew up in Manhattan, New York. Upon graduating from Cornell University with a double degree in Bio-Engineering and Engineering Management in 2006, he found himself working for the City of New York, helping them invest in greener products. His next gig on the science team at Good Guide, founded by a Berkeley professor to catalogue different ingredients and consumer goods in the market, may have been the early inklings in starting his own food brand.

The Aha-Moment

In fact, Vincent has always had a serious passion for food. “My friends used to mock me because I would come to them with lollipops to try. I traveled back to Thailand quite often and had thought about what we sell over there that we don’t over here in the U.S.”

While Thai iced tea and pad Thai are at the center of Thai food experience here, Vincent wanted to elevate this using authentic ingredients. So, his first attempt included pop up restaurants in San Francisco, where he would experiment dishes and see what people enjoyed. Two pop-ups later, Vincent caught himself cooking his mother’s recipe of miang kum, a Northern Thai lettuce wrap with shredded coconut. As he fondly reminisces, “We bought some coconut from the grocery store and toasted it, as per the instructions. My roommate (and eventually other friends) just started snacking on this on its own.” Realizing this newfound #snackvention, Vincent called up his brother, who was at the time visiting Thailand, to pick up a few things. The rest was history. 

“Coconut chips were our first product and helped us establish ourselves as an innovative brand.”

Dang Foods officially launched in 2012 after a year of packaging, market research and testing at trade shows. The brand name pays homage to Vincent’s mother (it’s her name) and because the chips are synonymously that darn good!

As a certified B-corp company, all Dang Foods’ better-for-you snacks are made in Thailand and are Non-GMO Project Verified, gluten-free, dairy-free and cholesterol-free, with the majority being vegan and good sources of fiber. What started as a by-chance success story in Vincent’s kitchen has turned into a booming business within five years, while being distributed across 10,000 stores nationwide, including Whole Foods, Kroger and Target. 

The Business Model

Like any other CPG brand, Vincent faced many challenges when it came to selecting the right partners overseas. “In the beginning, we weren’t as experienced. We started buying from a supplier and found out later that they were the middlemen, not the manufacturer.” To be sure this wouldn’t happen again, Vincent asked his cousin (who lived in Thailand) to check on any future partners. “Having someone there to personally check on the shipment and find out as much as possible was incredibly helpful in optimizing our sourcing.” Lesson: Keep your family close!

Beyond cross-border confusion, Vincent and the team have grown the company through word-of-mouth marketing, sampling, in-store demos and social media campaigning. “The most important thing about food is the eyeballs and how people taste it so we really focused on our distribution strategy.” Their breakthrough moment came when reps from Safeway tried their product at a trade show and instantly invited them to 1,000 of their stores. It was also this moment when Vincent’s brother officially left his Big Four accounting job and joined Dang Foods.

The Learnings

In building a product-driven business, Vincent has learned a few things. His first piece of advice? “Don’t go into the food industry! It’s a very tough market and one must really nail the 4Ps of marketing, not just the product, to succeed.” But if you must follow your foodie dreams like Vincent has, here are some tips:

• Margins are razor thin so focus on optimizing the product and packaging. Indeed, Dang Foods’ success can be catered to their eye-catchy packaging.

• Know the category you are going into, including regional preferences and trends.

• Know your customer.

• Start small and nail every aspect of the business before you scale it.

Recently adding an award-winning product, Coconut Crunch Sticky-rice Chips to its portfolio, Dang Foods is on its way to launch in a major coffee chain by January 2018 (any guesses who the chain could be?). In the meantime, shop their products here and thank us for your new hot dang snack addiction later. 

Photo courtesy of Dang Foods.

TACHE, ADITI MALHOTRA: The Sweet Touch

There is something magical in meeting individuals who find their calling at an early age. While most of us experiment with different paths, these folks are the ones sprinting down the finish line, checking off their bucket lists and inspiring everyone around them, or as we like to say #radiching. We were lucky to be introduced to a chocolate maven and Founder of Tache Artisan Chocolate, Aditi Malhotra, who was not only listed on Forbes 30 Under 30 but was also the winner of Zagat’s 30 Under 30 Award. If you like spices and chocolate, then this story is for you. #Foodies

Aditi Malhotra grew up in a family surrounded by hospitality and food. Her grandfather actually opened up a restaurant back in the 70’s in New York. When she wasn’t doing her homework, Aditi was waitressing and hosting guests at her family’s business. “My father always used to say you need to know both the front of the house as well as the back of the house in order to be successful.” As a result, she enrolled in Gilon Hospitality School in Switzerland (obviously). 

“I remember peeling 10,000 pickles and my finger got locked for the next two days. That was when I knew I wanted to be involved with food for the rest of my life.” 

“During college, I moved home 6 months shy of graduating and decided to finish my degree in NYC. However, little did I know that all of my credits wouldn’t transfer over and I would have to enroll at the French Culinary Institute. This is where I learnt how to be disciplined and cook food for thousands of people at a time.” 

The Early Seeds

Opportunities come knocking in the weirdest forms. It is important to be able to recognize when one is at your doorstep dressed up as an older man with a white beard (not Santa Claus). “My father owned a couple of bakeries in the city and his business partner wanted to open a chocolate shop in NYC and was looking for a partner. My father turned down the deal, but I decided to step in and became 25% owner alongside Christian Vautier.” For those who don’t know, Christian is a renowned chocolatier.  

Aditi traveled to Chennai, India to learn the inner workings of a chocolatier and how to best utilize the equipment. For the curious souls, we got a brief 101 on this industry and its lingo:

Trailing: A word associated to a cooking interview in which your skills and hand usage are judged. 

Blooming: A word associated to the white layer that forms on top of chocolate (no, it’s not fungus). This occurs when sugar and cocoa butter fat rises, typically due to storing chocolate in the fridge. It is advised to store your chocolate in a cool dry place or on your kitchen counter (if you have great self-control). 

Tempering machine: Looks like a big chocolate fountain that sets your chocolate to the right temperature for molding and dipping without the chocolate losing its shine. 

Chocolate: A sweet, brown food prepared from cacao seeds. It’s seasoned production controls the livelihood of the farmers producing it, which is why fair trade is extremely important. Mostly craved during Valentine's Day and Christmas. Loved by all, except dogs. 

Going into business as the only American with two elder gentlemen, everything was under Aditi’s name when it came to legal paperwork. The team decided to call the store Christian Vautier Concept and opened their doors in 2012. “Christian had a shop in Japan under the same name, so we wanted to leverage its brand equity.” However, after 3 months of business, the partners were disappointed by the ROI and wanted to pull out. “I could either declare bankruptcy because we were $400K in debt or I could take over the debt, change the name overnight, rebrand the store and launch a new concept. I decided to go with the latter.” 

The Name

Tache is known as smudge in french. Always being in the kitchen, Aditi relates her brand to the cute chocolate smudges on her apron and feels that life is best lived outside of the edges. 

The Marketing

After switching the store concept and brand, Tache is now Aditi’s baby and she is finally out of debt as of last year (congrats!). All of her PR and marketing is done in-house and she partners with a lot of fashion brands, artists, and designers for in-store events to increase foot traffic. 

Aditi also decided to kick up the menu a couple of gears by taking inspiration from her worldly travels and Indian heritage. Today, Tache is known as a chocolate store that blends unconventional spices with shades of chocolate. Her favorite ingredient? Thai Truffle. Tache is now transitioning into a culinary academy for customers where you can indulge in chocolate making classes and take home all of your creations. Priced between $8 to $72 for a bag, Aditi caters to all demographics. 

The Advice

• Don’t be scared to do what you love

• Try to find a mentor to seek advice from

• Find a niche and make it your own

When asked the best way to acquire new customers, Aditi thoroughly endorses sampling. Interested in trying the unique Tache creations? RSVP to our upcoming Beauty Sleep event where you can try one, two or three (don’t worry, we won’t tell). 

Photo courtesy of Tache.

THE FARMER'S DOG, JOHNATHAN REGEV: The Green Tail

As a pet owner, you will notice certain buzzwords when it comes to choosing a good source of protein for your furry friend. Healthy coat, strong bones, and real chicken are phrases us, pet parents, are familiar with but do we really know the fluff behind them? On a mission to save pets nationwide and bring back the pro in protein, Jonathan Regev, co-founded The Farmer’s Dog to provide a clean, healthy way of eating for your pet, hassle-free. 

If you haven’t watched a couple of documentaries on the pet food industry, we encourage you to highly do so (it will blow your mind). Not only are large companies sugar coating the ingredients they use in pet food, but half of that stuff isn’t even real food! As a result, we see dogs with medical problems they shouldn’t have due to their diet. It was this exact problem that co-founder Brett Podolsky encountered with his dog, Jada, before launching The Farmer’s Dog. 

“Back in the early days, I was crashing at Brett’s house and remember watching him cook raw food for Jada every day to try and battle her health issues. Brett worked closely with his vet to create a high protein, high vitamin infused diet that would surely enough, solve all of Jada’s problems. I was looking at this whole situation from an outsider's perspective and thinking that Brett was crazy! However, I understood and saw the effect this diet had on Jada and realized how my own dogs had passed away due to what they ate.”

And so, the seeds were planted for what would later become an online subscription-based dog food service. Similar to Jada’s story, scientists have discovered the multiple benefits adopting a healthy diet can do for one’s lifespan. Fun fact: Steve Jobs’ actually lived longer due to his vegetable and fruit diet.

“We launched in July 2016 and wanted to make sure that we provided customers with the right experience, making it seamless so that people don’t have to worry about re-ordering the food right when it is running out.”

When it comes to creating an online business, it is important to launch in beta mode first to work out the kinks. As a Business major from the University of California, Berkeley, Jonathan ended up working at Rocket Internet overseas for a couple of years before rekindling with Brett in Tel Aviv and ending up on his couch. “During my time at Rocket Internet, they had launched Hello Fresh, which is similar to the Blue Apron model and now, our current business strategy. So, I was very familiar with this landscape and felt comfortable starting a similar business”. 

How It Works

“Depending on the size of your dog, we send weekly portioned food. Smaller dogs have a longer duration between re-orders since we optimize for fridge space, freezer space, and fulfillment cost. We also realized that dogs are the perfect subscription customer. Fun fact: there are more dogs in the USA than babies! “Once you get above a certain price point for food, it makes much more sense to order premium food directly from a vendor than purchasing via retail due to the high mark-ups.” As a result, to keep prices competitive, Jonathan does not want to enter retail. 

“It’s not about paying influencers, it is about keeping the authenticity in tack.” 

For Jonathan, it is really important that The Farmer’s Dog remains authentic. Therefore, partnerships and influencer strategies need to be organic or synergistic. Some of their bigger partnerships include the Outdoor Voices dog walk, vet educational programs to refer new customers, word of mouth marketing, visiting dog parks and digital marketing.  

The Advice

Jonathan has learned a thing or two about being an entrepreneur and doing things right:

• Follow your gut.

• Do interesting things, don’t stay on the path that is set out for you by society.

• Seek out things that you can connect with.

• Do things you are good at and find meaning in them. If you are lucky enough, they will materialize.

Priced as low as $13 a week, Jonathan wants to make The Farmer’s Dog more affordable than its competitors. “We don’t want to take people's intelligence for granted. We try to be very authentic and don’t use any marketing buzzwords or fluff” (except for when Jada is on camera). Sign up here to become a conscious parent, reduce your health bills and receive unlimited puppy love. 

Photo courtesy of The Farmer’s Dog.