Latest / Imagine If with Doone Roisin | Health, Wealth & Wisdom for Women (formerly Female Startup Club Podcast) / From a broken business model to 20,000 subscribers; 8-figure founder Nicole Centeno tells her Splendid Spoon journey (part 1)

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From a broken business model to 20,000 subscribers; 8-figure founder Nicole Centeno tells her Splendid Spoon journey (part 1) · Imagine If with Doone Roisin | Health, Wealth & Wisdom for Women (formerly Female Startup Club Podcast)

• 0:00
  This is Nicole Centeno for Female Startup Club.
• 0:12
  Welcome back to the show. It's Dune here, your host and hype girl. Today on the show, we're learning from Nicole Centeno, the founder of Splendid Spoon. In this episode, we're covering her journey of side hustle to eight-figure business, the challenges that the food industry faces today, and how to do a friends and family round. There is so much good stuff in here. I know you're going to love it.
• 0:36
  And remember that if you want a signed copy of my book this week and next week, I'm sending them out to anyone who creates a TikTok video about Female Startup Club. All you need to do is post the video on TikTok and slide into my inbox at hello at femalestartupclub.com. Have the best day and enjoy this episode. This is Nicole for Female Startup Club. Nicole, hi. Welcome to the Female Startup Club podcast. Hi. Thank you so much for having me.
• 1:05
  I'm so excited to learn about your story today. It's been quite the adventure. I know you started circa 2013 and you've been on this whirlwind ever since. Do you want to give us a little bit of an introduction to who you are and what the brand is for anyone who doesn't know yet? For sure. So I am Nicole Centeno. I'm the founder and co-CEO of a business called Splendid Spoon.
• 1:28
  And at Splendid Spoon, we believe that food is medicine and we create plant-based meals that are totally ready to eat, also really tasty and delicious. And our philosophy is that you can combine the best of convenience and taste and nutrition. That is our mission every day is to make plant-based eating easier and to help folks really build their own little plant-based moments every day, build habits one little bit at a time.
• 1:56
  So it's smoothies, grain bowls, noodle bowls, juices, shots, all different things that can help you eat better and feel nourished throughout the day.
• 2:06
  Sounds and looks so delicious. I feel like as well, the world has changed a lot, you know, from something like 2013 to now, we're in this moment where people really do care about eating more plant paste. We're more educated. We're more aware of what it means to have this kind of diet. But I'd love to go back to the early days. You know, it was a different time. What was going on in your world that was getting you interested in going down this route?
• 2:36
  Yeah. So, you know, my background is in nutrition and food. When I was in college, I studied biology. I worked in a lab, my independent studies were in a biochemistry lab, looking at the impact of the ketogenic diet and fasting on disease models like epilepsy. And so that's like the how of food has always been something that's very interesting to me.
• 3:04
  When I graduated, I did what lots of 20-somethings do and was like, I don't want to do anything with my major. And I ended up in a career in media in New York City, which was a place that I had always wanted to live. But felt after a couple of years, like really disconnected from my craft and what I loved and just felt very like disjointed with my work and my passions. So I went to culinary school.
• 3:30
  And studied at the French Culinary Institute and became really enamored with like the process of creating delicious food and feeding it to people. And slowly, and I always think this is like important for folks that are just starting out, like slowly started to kind of like test the waters of I have a day job, I have health insurance, I want to do something that's a lot more risky, like what's my comfort level with risk?
• 3:56
  And so I had pop ups on the side. I had a catering business. I did all sorts of like the side hustle for a couple of years. The classic side hustle. Yeah, classic side hustle. But when I became pregnant with my first son, Grover, who's now nine, I did have like a bit of a light bulb moment because I was.
• 4:19
  increasingly like busy and running around having a full-time job and trying to pursue a passion and being very determined to like find my path you know and then I was going to have bring another life into the world and have this other really huge responsibility um the idea of being a working parent felt like really daunting honestly I was like this is gonna be hard I had read somewhere that
• 4:48
  parents spend an additional 30 hours a week on childcare beyond like, you know, all the things that you need to do to take care of yourself and work and everything. And I was like, this is intense. Like, are people like aware of how intense this is? And that for me was like, well, what is foundational food? If I can make sure that my food is taken care of, if I can even go one step further, my food is like
• 5:16
  so nourishing and like great for me that it gives me more energy, prevents me from getting sick. Like that will really be a big help. That'll be like a huge lift in this next leg of the journey. So that was really the moment that splendid spoon was born. It was like this realization of all of the responsibilities that were going to be coming at me as a working parent. And I wanted to create a solution for, for how to take care of my eating habits.
• 5:45
  I love that. That's so cool and so important. My gosh. Yeah. What does it look like actually for you starting the business? Like I'm assuming you were still doing the side hustle thing, kind of like dabbling to get it started, but what's your kind of like day-to-day looking like at that time? How are you, you know, is it called Splendid Spoon at that time? Like, is there a name? Is this kind of like, you know, giving it to your friends? Paint the picture for me. Or us rather. Yeah.
• 6:12
  Yeah, so the early days, it was not called Splendid Spoon. After I graduated culinary school, I kind of like proclaimed, I was like, I am doing something in food. I don't know exactly what it is, but like, I'm gonna start just like doing it. And so I stagged, which is just like a French word for like an internship at restaurants. I did that at night, kind of realized I probably didn't wanna be a restaurant chef and that wasn't going to be a good path for me and like the balance that I had.
• 6:40
  Ultimately someday I haven't even gotten there now, nine years later, but like I knew that that was going to be too much. And so I started, I applied to be in what's called Smorgasburg, which is a flea market here in New York. And in that process, it kind of gave me a frame. It was like, what's the name of your business? Like, what do you create? Like, where do you create? And I was like, Oh, okay. Like this is my little roadmap. So I like created a name,
• 7:09
  it was a, it was a variation on a nickname that my boyfriend at the time had for me, he called me Coco Bean. And so he, the name of the business was Seabean, Seabean Goods. It's like a horrible, horrible name. Nobody could understand what we were saying. Nobody knew what it was. It's like a weird seaweed, but it did get like, it didn't make any sense. Um, but it gave us
• 7:32
  like a little platform to start building. And so that's what I built this little brand, this little platform, created a menu, determined like what my guardrails were going to be for what was there. I always had a healthy plant-based soup and a really hearty meat-oriented stew. And then I had like savory pastries because it came from my love of food.
• 7:59
  soup. I was like, you can make soup out of anything. I can go to the farmer's market. Like this is me cooking like I would at home, but for other people. And so that was the day to day was like, I was going into work. I would often bring a hiking backpack filled with like different little pint containers of soup for people to try. Eventually people started buying them for lunch. I love that. Yeah.
• 8:24
  I did end up getting into that flea market. So then it was like all my spare time was basically spent researching in the early stages and then just like jumping on. I was like, okay, Smorgasburg. Great. I'm going to do it. Are you cooking at home at this point or did you have to have a kitchen? I was cooking at home. When I got into Smorgasburg, I sprinted to find a commercial kitchen. Yeah.
• 8:46
  So the very first days, and this was all like weekend work or very early morning. So that was, you know, that was then the next shift was like, okay, you're in. When are you actually going to do this? So it was like very, very early morning. I found like a shawarma grill in my neighborhood that let me cook for them until they told, they like told me certain areas were vegan, but then I would see them like break their own rules and like grill a chicken cutlet on stuff. And I was like, oh no, I can't do this.
• 9:17
  Did you have to pay to like hire the kitchen from them? Yeah. I mean, like hardly anything. I mean, I was like in the tiniest, like one foot, but one foot, like footprint, just like slicing and putting into little like containers. It was very tight cooking conditions. And after the chicken situation, I went over to a pizza kitchen in my neighborhood that I had heard was very like founder friendly and had been more...
• 9:46
  formal with like renting out their space. And so I was able to rent from them in the early mornings. So that was my life. I would get up at like sunrise, ride my bike over to the pizza kitchen, cook, or I would ride my bike to the farmer's market in Union Square and like ride back over the, it was like the early days were physical, physical labor.
• 10:10
  Mm-hmm. Lots of that hustle. You said earlier, you know, you tried a few different things. You were doing the side hustle for a number of years, I presume, until you kind of landed on the thing. How did you know this was the thing? How did you feel like, oh, I'm here. I've arrived. This is the thing I'm going to really, you know, dig deep into? Like when I decided like Splendid Spoon and sort of like the concept of healthier eating for working parents,
• 10:38
  I really believe strongly that like our emotions can guide us. If you're, if you let them, or if you don't have judgment around it, you know, like, I think there's a lot of opportunity for an emotional spark.
• 10:55
  to fuel you. Like the things that cause emotions are things that we care really, really, really deeply about. And at the end of the day, that's what I believe should be at the essence of any entrepreneurial vision is something that is going to be lit on fire, even when you're underwater. Like if that's the whole experience is feeling like you're,
• 11:18
  can't go on and or that every door has been shut or that like a storm on top of a storm has kind of like come upon you. And I think because I was becoming a parent, there was like, it's like birth, death, divorce, a move, like kind of traumatic experiences, I think can be very ripe for that spark and the beginning of something. Yeah, I love that. You lit up. Yeah. Yeah.
• 11:47
  So you are, you know, taking the soups to work, you're selling them to people there, you've got your kind of satellite kitchen, you're going to the smorgasbord market. What kind of happens? How does this evolve? What are people saying about the business? What happens next? So we weren't the most popular booth. Like we, I mean, we were like,
• 12:12
  this sort of homey kitchen vibe amongst like a lot of really cool, trendy things. And amongst a lot more like indulgent foods, I would say as well, you know, there was like ice cream cones or like a ramen burger or like really amazing Mexican paletas, like really wonderful, delicious, like high quality food experiences. But the primary focus was taste, not,
• 12:42
  nourishment and like health. What it did do though, was really crystallized for me who my core audience could be because it was very obvious who the loyalists were. It was families. Like it was other people's families. It was busy, like other entrepreneurial types who were like, Oh yeah, this is like, cause I had a little sign up. You could sign up for like a little weekly delivery as well. So the seeds for what would then become like,
• 13:11
  really critical like tentpole elements of Splendid Spoon were discovered in that process. So sea bean goods, like that was never going to be a success, but the experience and the ability to just experiment and be in contact with my environment, which is, that's how I learn. I'm not like going to go, I didn't go to business school and I would have failed if I had, like, that's not how I learn. So it was,
• 13:40
  immensely valuable as a learning stage. I read somewhere that at some point you realize, and I don't know if this was towards Seabene or if this was towards Splendid Spoon, you realize that your business model in general wasn't working. It was broken and you decided to pivot the business. What was that business model and like, how did you realize it wasn't working and what was that pivot? That's a three-part question. I'm sorry. No, that's okay. So when, so I,
• 14:07
  When I had that spark and realized like, okay, I'm actually going to focus on these people that are coming back to my booth over and over again, they're coming for the most helpful product. And I have this like light bulb moment with as I become a parent, I'm changing, I'm going to like relaunch this, this is actually a totally different business idea and a different brand. And so that was when Splendid Spoon was launched.
• 14:29
  From there, I assumed that my biggest distribution, even though I had these like little subscription elements, like local folks that I would bike over to and drop off food, I really assumed that my scaling opportunity would be through wholesale distribution with like grocery stores, brick and mortar retail. Right. So people like picking it up on the go to take home at the end of the day. Exactly. Like grab and go from the Whole Foods refrigerated section or like a partnership with
• 14:57
  you know, any number of different grocery stores. And it really did not work. I had always had this vision of, like, lots of variety and lots of different ways for people to explore and enjoy healthful foods, because that's,
• 15:17
  what I believe helps people to adhere to like new things is like some, you find something that feels unique to you, uniquely like tasty and delightful to you. And you need a decent amount of variety to do that. But the grocery model is such that you test things out with like maybe two or three SKUs, two or three different flavors. And you're basically paying for space on the grocery store shelf. And yeah,
• 15:46
  if it moves fast enough or faster than like the closest competitor in your space, then you've won that position and you can continue to build it out. But I knew that I wasn't going to be able to win anyone with like one skew because my product was really more of a system than it was like the most amazing butternut turmeric soup. It was never about like a one skew, like killer skew experience. It was always about,
• 16:16
  like a holistic system that you could integrate how you needed to in your life. And are you in a lot of retail kind of Whole Foods style places at this point? Is this how you're realizing this? So we got, it is interesting. Like we got one big account right at the beginning when I was watching Splendid's Food, when I was still pregnant with Grover.
• 16:38
  we landed an account called Fresh Direct, which in New York is a very big online grocer. They say it's the equivalent of like eight to 10 Whole Foods. So it's like part, you know, it's like part of a region. Oh, okay. Right. It's huge. Yeah. Like it's really big. And that at the time I was like, oh, this is the signal that like I'm onto something because it's working here. Yeah.
• 17:01
  But I just kept getting the door shut in my face with other retailers because the experience is so different when you're competing with lots of different SKUs in a retail environment versus in an online experience. You're being presented with, you know, it's a smaller selection generally in an online experience or was definitely at the time. And so.
• 17:26
  I wasn't able to get any of the big accounts. I could get like a couple of like the small accounts, but then it meant letting go of my vision of a philosophy for habit formation and like building lasting nourishment in your life. And I just wasn't really, I wasn't willing to do that. So we pivoted toward that very tiny part of the business that was subscription. Yeah.
• 17:56
  And put a little bit of money into Facebook marketing, which at the time was like still fairly nascent. And we were able to start scaling. And, you know, that's when I realized that the opportunity was not winning like one zip code. It was in reaching my customer in similar like states, you know, like similar people all over the United States.
• 18:25
  So it actually like opened up the opportunity and opened up the landscape really significantly. What year are we talking like? How long into the business journey were you when you kind of have these realizations? That was in... And you're starting to cut your big retailer. Yeah, that was in 2016. And we didn't cut the big retailer. I mean, they were still a meaningful part of the business as we were scaling the online business. But the online business like quickly surpassed that online retailer.
• 18:55
  yeah, the online retailer is like a very, very tiny part of our business now. Wow. That's so interesting. Yeah. And so in that kind of, you know, 2016-ish period, were you primarily then growing just through Facebook ads and word of mouth? Was that the kind of like two mechanisms? Yeah, it was press, storytelling,
• 19:26
  We, well, we haven't talked about the money piece yet, but you kind of touched on, you needed to invest a little bit to kind of build up that D to C side of the business. How were you approaching working capital in the beginning? And what's kind of the way that you were thinking about funding in the future and that direction in the future? Yeah. I, in the very beginning, like, you know, when I was still pregnant and like,
• 19:50
  really had no idea what I was doing. I actually went to lunch with someone who's become like a friend and was an early mentor. And he asked me what my cogs were. And I was like, what are cogs? And he was like, I was just like, your cost of goods sold. I was like, I literally have no idea what you're talking about. And he was like, you know, like the cost of the food, the cost of the labor. I was like, Oh, okay. Yeah. Okay.
• 20:16
  And he was like, well, what's your margin? I was like, I have no idea. You're speaking like Greek to me. What are you talking about? And he just like took a napkin. I wish I still had this napkin. And he was like, your margin is like you're selling price less your cogs. And I was like, oh, yeah, like, obviously, how else am I going to pay my bills? And he's like, yeah, that's called cash flow. And yeah.
• 20:40
  I started very early on to realize like, I just have no language for, I did not have any of the business language. I had a lot of instincts. Like I knew I had developed like really favorable terms with fresh direct where they paid me before I needed to pay anybody else. So I knew to like ask for things. I knew where I needed to get to. I didn't have like the language or the model in my head though. Um,
• 21:09
  to explain that I knew these things to anybody else, which is like pretty important, especially if you're going to raise capital. Yeah. So how did you learn this? I feel like there's probably so many people listening being like, shit, I don't know what my cogs are. Like, I don't, I don't know what my profit margin is. Yeah. I had no idea. It's fine. You probably do. You just don't have the words for it. And that's, I think something that's really important for women to understand. Like we all have really amazing instincts. Like we do know where we're going.
• 21:39
  We don't speak the same, not all, I mean, some women do, of course, but like, I did not speak business language. I still am like learning business language every day, honestly. Like, it's just like any other system. There are like codes of conduct and language and jargon that help people act more quickly and more efficiently because everyone becomes fluent in that same system.
• 22:05
  I had zero. I was at like ground level. And so I reached out to my friend who was at a great business school. That's very entrepreneurial, the Stanford Business School. And I was like, what do you do when you have to raise capital? And like, what does the financial model look like? And I did what people do still today. Like I Googled a lot of stuff and I leaned on him to...
• 22:34
  really like crystallize the stuff that was most important. Like, he was like, it's all about like the magic of the pitch. It's about you and confidence in you because the reality is, and investors know this, but they'll never tell you this early stage, like you can make a model look like anything. And that took a while for me to really like understand. I was like, why would
• 23:00
  isn't going to happen. I like didn't understand. I was like, that doesn't make any sense. And he was like, but that's what it is. Like we make models, we do our best. And like most entrepreneurs are going to make a model that is way more optimistic than what's actually going to happen. And investors just know that they're fluent in that. So what they're actually buying is you, they're betting on you being able to figure shit out. And yeah,
• 23:26
  he sent me a bunch of pitch decks and I just like use, I kind of like took mixed and matched what I thought would work for us. It was not good, but it was good enough for me to believe in it to bring to, like, I started reaching out to friends and family and like, and by friends and family, I mean, nobody in my family, but that's what they call it around. It's like, who do you know? It's like, who do you know that could invest?
• 23:57
  $1,000. Right, right. I have two follow-up questions. First of all, actually, I'll just start with one. What was the magic in your pitch in hindsight? I've been told this before. I think it's that I'm very passionate. Like I'm very passionate about what I believe in. And I think that was the most powerful part of it. In the early stages, it was like people were
• 24:26
  had conviction that I would do, I would, I would keep trying. What was the thing that led you to being like, I'm going to go down the route of raising capital and then go in this route of like VC. What was that kind of, you know, not choosing to bootstrap it and raise me or like go and get debt and those kinds of things from a bank, maybe that decision-making process.
• 24:51
  In the early days, it was the signal from that first wholesale account, Fresh Direct. That was a really big signal for me because I then did start to have a model that people understood. It was like, oh, you have this much product going through this known retailer. You're executing. It's popular. I had some metrics around how popular it was versus their other similar products, which at the time were all just soups.
• 25:22
  And I had a story. It was like that I had the key pieces to convince someone like I can make this bigger. You know, and I think I didn't again, I didn't have the language around like, oh, this is scalable. You know, I was just like, this is something people need. I am reaching people in a major city. There are more of them. Like, obviously, they're all over the country. And I've figured out a distribution system that exists.
• 25:50
  in other areas also. So honestly, it was more like that when the two different worlds start to become really close together, it was like my mission was always gonna be the same. It was just like feeding more people and getting more people to like try plant-based every day and fall in love with good food. That was like a no brainer and so easy. But what was interesting was as I did that,
• 26:19
  the external world started to actually like pay attention more. And when I would have conversations at like, you know, networking is so, this is why networking is so powerful, I think as an entrepreneur. And again, like I'm such an environmental learner, like going to networking events and sharing stories about where I was in my process and people being like, Oh, that's like a big deal. And like, how are you, how are you doing that? Like, and what does your team look like?
• 26:48
  And those were the questions that led me. It was questions around like team and how much bigger and what is your real vision? Like, where do you want to be in three years? When I started to take those questions, I took those questions seriously and I would write them down and try and answer them. And then it became clear like, well, I can't just do this hand to mouth. Like, if I want to open up another account, I'm going to need a person to help me.
• 27:16
  if I want to scale into, if I want to double my volume, I'm going to need a new way of making the product. Like I'm either going to have to hire out a whole new kitchen staff or I'm going to have to do what people in the food industry often do, which is co-manufacture. And so that's when like the knitting together really started to happen. And I was like, okay, okay,
• 27:43
  Now I actually feel like I do have the pieces to create a plan and have the courage to say, like, I want this to be bigger and I need help. And the main way to get that help is through capital.
• 27:58
  You know, when you were saying you started going through the process of doing a friends and family round, I know there's a lot of people listening who might also be in that kind of position. And I'm wondering for you if you could kind of dig in a little bit to like, how do you value your business in that early stage of doing a friends and family round where it's obviously people that you know and things like that?
• 28:18
  How much capital do you try and raise from that round? And like, what's the starting point? And also maybe, I don't know if you're happy to share this, but like, where were you revenue wise in those, that early time?
• 28:31
  The earliest time I was like a hundred thousand dollars in revenue or something like that. Um, even less, I think like 60 to a hundred thousand dollars in revenue, which I was like, this is amazing. Yeah. I was like, if I can make twice this and like pay myself $50,000 to pay a nanny, like I made it. I was like, every step of the way, I'm like, I've made it everyone. I'm like, this is great. Um, yeah.
• 28:58
  Yeah, exactly. But sorry, your question was about like how I like what was the process of the friends and family? Yeah. Like how do you value it? How do you decide like how much money you need to get going? Like the numbers piece? It's very, it's very tricky. Putting your hand up in the wind. Yeah, exactly. It is kind of like that, though. I mean, pick up.
• 29:25
  a point in the future that is not so distant. Like three years is what people typically say. And I do think that's a good exercise. Like where do you want this business to be in three years? And then you walk backwards. How are you going to get there? It's a crazy hard exercise. Like, and that is part of the art of being an entrepreneur is you have to fucking make it up.
• 29:54
  You're like, I'm just gonna make I think it'll be this way. Um, and that's, again, where like, those key sort of elements that I mentioned earlier, like the passion, the traction, a little bit of like, track record, you know, it's helpful, because I have a food product, people can actually taste the product, right? Like,
• 30:15
  Then you come back to that and you're like, okay, I'm going to sell them with this story and I'm going to show them where I'm going and try to keep it as simple as possible of like, I have this account. I'm going to have, I'm going to, anytime you can do a multiplier, like this is what I've built. This is where I'm going. It's like, I'm going to multiply this in this way. This is what it's going to take.
• 30:41
  For me to create, then what you're doing is saying, I need resources to create the system that can be the multiplier. And I need time to build that system so that I can actually be the multiplier. Like that to me is in essence, what raising venture capital is all about is convincing people that you're worth investing in to build a system that will work to be more efficient than what exists.
• 31:09
  now. Yeah. Switch on more levers to add fuel to the fire. You've already got something proven. Now, how do you scale it? Yeah. But at the end of the day, in those early days, it again comes back to your product. Yeah.
• 31:23
  your passion, and your attraction, you know, like, it just always will come back to that. So I think that's something that I would have reminded my younger self is like, put together the model, come up with like, you know, you're gonna go from $100,000 to $1 million, it's 10x in three years. And like,
• 31:42
  know that it doesn't have to be perfect. Know that the people sitting on the other side of the table absolutely know that no matter what kind of posturing or nonsense they're saying to try and like push your confidence and trust that like those key elements that are not measurable, attraction is measurable, but like the passion and the product it's like in the early days,
• 32:08
  It has to just kind of stand on its own. And so for the valuation side of things, are you saying that multiplier is like if you had done $100,000 in revenue, then your valuation would be a million dollars. And that's kind of like what you're telling people. You're going to also make that amount of revenue. Or is it the multiplier that you'll make a million dollars in three years? Yeah, I mean, I was talking about making a million dollars in three years and I'm just making these numbers up right now.
• 32:31
  Um, and, but I think we could continue with that exercise, right? Like say you're at a hundred thousand dollars, you say you're going to 10 X in three years to a million dollars. You have your plan of how you're going to do that and the dollars that you need to get there. And then you look at the industry and what the multipliers are in your space. And yeah, it could be three X what that future revenue is. It could be 10 X what that future revenue is. If you're in a software business, it's going to be 10 X.
• 33:00
  If you're in a food business, it's going to be two to three X. And I don't know enough about some of the other categories, but like, you know, you look at it, you look at some of the industry, um, do the Google and see what the industry is telling you. The other thing I will say is that when you're early, early raising, you know, like you're going to raise on a convertible note, which means that you take the cash as debt, um,
• 33:28
  This is only if you're going the VC route, but, or like, you know, friends and family, you can raise on a convertible note easily if you're not taking any VC capital. And what that, just what that means is like, you take it as debt. So it's, you're not actually giving any equity to anyone. Basically it's everyone's agreeing, like we're not going to value the company today.
• 33:52
  You know, and like, that's the little bit of breathing room that the convertible note gives you is like, you're not going to value the company today. We're going to base the value on three years from now, which is when we'll raise like the actual venture capital round, we will price the company. And we're saying that the company is going to be worth really like, we're going to get our hit our highest milestone. Yeah.
• 34:18
  but I'm going to give it to you at this. And that's when then like kind of the deal and negotiation comes through. But in those early conversations, I think it's more, I think it's so much more important to find your earliest like fan girls and fan kids who are just going to stand by you or proud to invest in you instead of like buying another fancy car or like,
• 34:46
  going on a like really fancy vacation. Like you want the people who are aligned with you and your, your mission and your vision for what you're building.
• 34:58
  Yeah, absolutely. Having the right people around you who are going to be a cheerleader ongoing for sure. I love that. Yeah. So you have recently closed a 12 million series B round and you've been doing all the things. When you look back over, you know, you had those early years and kind of getting the traction and everything like that, but then you've obviously switched into the VC route. You've kind of
• 35:22
  scaled it up, what would you say have been the most pivotal moments in growing the company to today where you've been able to close that round and kind of shoot for the next? Starting each new category has always been really pivotal for us. Like at the end of the day, we are known for our food. And so every time we've launched a new category, um, and broadened our menu, that has been really huge for the business.
• 35:51
  and for the brand and how people view us and how the investor community views us. So, you know, going from like, we had like a soup and a soup cleanse was like sort of the earliest days and moving into breakfast and smoothies and then moving into grain bowls and all of the different ways that we have grown the ecosystem of the food product has been really, really powerful.
• 36:18
  Like being able to meet the customer wherever they need you, wherever they want you in their like food journey. Yeah, exactly. Got it. Cool. I love that. When you think about, you know, the last few years, what are the main kind of challenges that people face in the food industry or in that kind of like delivery, fresh food industry? It's super competitive. You know, food is competitive by nature. It's like something...
• 36:47
  we think about food like 2000 times a day and make like seven different food choices. Is that true? Is that a realistic statistic? Yeah, actually. Oh my God. I can't remember the exact number, but it is in the, it's in the thousands. It's like, yeah, we think about food and food choices and it's something like over the course of the year, it's actually adds up to about a month of time is spent thinking about food and food choices. Wow. Yeah. Yeah.
• 37:14
  Because that was, this is a tangent, but that was something that I thought about a lot when starting Splendid Spoon. I was like, what if you didn't have to think about what you were eating? You just trusted it. I would love that. I think about food so much. Yeah. And I hate the conversation of like, what am I going to have for dinner tonight? I hate it. My husband and I are like, we're tired. We don't want to think about what we're going to have for dinner tonight and go through this discussion every single day. Every single day. Yeah, exactly. Exactly.
• 37:43
  So challenges in the food industry. Oh my God. Yeah. It's very competitive and it's very operationally complex. Like making food is complicated. It spoils, like it goes bad. Like people, all, all of the metrics for flavor are wrapped up in each individual's like emotional experience and personal history with food. Like
• 38:07
  So it's really challenging when you're first starting out. You don't have any of that data from your customers to identify what's a winner and what's not and be consistent, right? Like making something awesome once is easy. Making something awesome millions of times is really hard. So I think that those, like the consistency, the complexity of food, and then
• 38:35
  in especially our space, we call it like the sea of sameness. Like it kind of, a lot of it really looks the same. And so how do you really differentiate? How do you create a unique position for yourself? And how do you tell that story so people know that it's always uniquely you when they see teal or when they see a certain font or when they see, you know, that noodle bowl that they loved?
• 39:00
  Mm-hmm. Absolutely. Gosh. Is there anything that you wish someone told you before you were starting out that you can share with our audience today? That I wish someone had told me early. I mean, I wish if I could go back and talk to myself,
• 39:31
  And, you know, knowing what your boundaries are is like really, really important. When you get derailed with trying to accommodate other people or trying to like make other people, make everyone happy in the entrepreneurial world, it can be like a death spiral because time is so precious. Do you have an example? What do you mean? I mean, I was tempted early on to go into...
• 39:59
  Yeah, this is I've told this example before, but there was a company that wanted to do wholesale with me and wanted me to be the manufacturer when I knew I was never going to I knew I was going to outsource my manufacturing eventually. But it was like low hanging fruit. It was another like fourth out is like a $4,000 account at a time when like, that was huge. Yeah.
• 40:21
  And they asked me to be their manufacturer and it would be like co-branded and all this stuff. And I should have said no. I knew that that was not the path that I was going. I knew that was not the direction for the business. But I was tempted by like a potentially easy account.
• 40:41
  Yeah. And when you need the money. Yeah. Yeah. When you need the money. And I also wanted to like I wanted to work with these people. I thought I was like, oh, like this would be maybe this maybe this is like the right. And that's a really big challenge as an entrepreneur. But having the courage to say no.
• 41:01
  is powerful. Yeah. And I think it's something that takes practice, like figuring out what your North star is and trying to like block out all the other stuff that comes to you that is kind of cool and, you know, sounds like it could be great, but it takes your focus away from that North star versus towards it. It's a tough one. I think we all kind of struggle with that and, you know, have to weave the path that you eventually get to the North star. That's great. Yep.
• 41:32
  Hey, it's June here. Thanks for listening to this amazing episode of the Female Startup Club podcast. If you're a fan of the show and want even more of the good stuff, I'd recommend checking out femalestartupclub.com where you can subscribe to our free newsletter. We send it out weekly covering female founder business news, insights and learnings in D2C, and interesting business resources.
• 41:57
  And if you're a founder building an e-commerce brand, you can join our private network of entrepreneurs called Hype Club at femalestartupclub.com forward slash Hype Club. We have guests from the show joining us for intimate Ask Me Anythings, expert workshops, and a group of totally amazing, like-minded women building the future of D2C brands.
• 42:19
  As always, please do subscribe, rate and review the show and post your favorite episodes to Instagram stories. I am beyond grateful when you do that. Thank you.
• 42:35
  Hey, it's June here. Thanks for listening to this amazing episode of the Female Startup Club podcast. If you're a fan of the show and want even more of the good stuff, I'd recommend checking out femalestartupclub.com where you can subscribe to our free newsletter. We send it out weekly covering female founder business news, insights and learnings in D2C, and interesting business resources.
• 43:00
  And if you're a founder building an e-commerce brand, you can join our private network of entrepreneurs called Hype Club at femalestartupclub.com forward slash Hype Club. We have guests from the show joining us for intimate Ask Me Anythings, expert workshops, and a group of totally amazing, like-minded women building the future of D2C brands.
• 43:22
  As always, please do subscribe, rate and review the show and post your favorite episodes to Instagram stories. I am beyond grateful when you do that.