Latest / Imagine If with Doone Roisin | Health, Wealth & Wisdom for Women (formerly Female Startup Club Podcast) / How to get from 30 mom ’n pop stores to 10,000 retailers including Whole Foods and Walmart with Pop & Bottles co-founder, Jash Mehta (Part 1)

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How to get from 30 mom ’n pop stores to 10,000 retailers including Whole Foods and Walmart with Pop & Bottles co-founder, Jash Mehta (Part 1) · Imagine If with Doone Roisin | Health, Wealth & Wisdom for Women (formerly Female Startup Club Podcast)

• 0:00
  This is Josh Mehta for Female Startup Club. Hello and welcome back to the show. It's Dune here, your host and hype girl. Today on the show, we're learning from Josh Mehta, founder of Pop and Bottle.
• 0:24
  Pop and Bottle was inspired when Josh and her close friend Blair made the move from London to California and had a meeting for their daily ritual, the morning latte. As coffee lovers who also prioritized health, the two friends asked themselves why nothing on the grocery store shelves met their standards. The clean label, dairy-free, no refined sugar, and organic.
• 0:50
  Josh co-founded Pop and Bottle from a genuine desire to create quality coffee and tea beverages that she wanted in her own life and make them available to the millions of people who share in her passion for clean, healthy, high-integrity products.
• 1:05
  In this episode, we talk through her early blueprint, which is still super relevant to today, and how she expanded from 30 stores to 100 stores, and then on to 10,000 stores. So if you're in the food and beverage industry, grab your pen and paper and settle in for an episode that is packed with so many valuable insights. Ah, I'm so excited for you.
• 1:30
  And today is your last chance to join us inside magic before we close the doors to founding members and go back to our regular pricing. It's inside magic that you can meet women like Jash and ask direct questions in an intimate setting.
• 1:45
  You can connect with other founders who are pre-launch or in the early stages of building their brand and access tons of resources and SOPs and frameworks that you can implement into your life and business today. So if you've been excited about joining us, go to femalestartupclub.com forward slash magic with a J. And when you sign up, you'll be prompted to book in your one-on-one call with me so I can get to know you better.
• 2:12
  But for now, let's get into this episode. This is Josh for Female Startup Club. Josh, hi. Welcome to the Female Startup Club podcast. Hi, dude. Thank you so much for having me. I'm excited to be here. I'm so excited to be here. You're tuning in from San Francisco today. What's it like? I am. Despite my English accent, I'm actually in San Francisco. I've been here for 10 years. It is cold, but still beautiful today.
• 2:39
  Still beautiful. Have you got any wins or oh shit moments that you want to share, vent, rant about? I'm sure I will as we get into this discussion, but no, it's a good day. It's the afternoon. It's a nice peaceful day. I have a great view outside my window and yeah, I'm excited to chat to you. Amazing. For anyone who might not know who you are yet, do you want to give us a little bit of an introduction into who you are and what the brand is?
• 3:08
  Yeah, absolutely. So I'm Josh Mehta. I'm CEO and co-founder of a organic plant-based latte brand called Pop and Bottle. We're available in the US in thousands of grocery stores like Whole Foods and Walmart and Sprouts. And we've been going for about seven years now. I started with my co-founder. And yeah, it's been a beautiful, challenging, interesting, fun, terrifying journey. And yeah, I love what I do.
• 3:37
  As it always is. It's a rollercoaster. So I'm told. It's a rollercoaster. So I've heard. As you know. As I know, yeah. Where do you like to start your story? I know you launched around 2015, but where does kind of the light bulb moment happen for you and your co-founder? And what is that early kind of moment into starting Pop and Bottle? Yeah. Um,
• 4:03
  It's so interesting looking back because I think in any journey you have these pivotal moments and we definitely had, you know, over the last seven years, we've definitely had several of them. And each one has kind of taken the business into a different trajectory. And so we started in 2015 in that bootstrapped, very organic, very steep learning curve. I mean, the learning curve is still steep, but it was very hands on back then.
• 4:26
  that was kind of phase one of the business. And then it kind of moved into the next phase where we had a few more resources, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. But I can start in the bootstrap phase because I think, I think that's the most interesting. Let's start there. We love that phase. Yeah. Yeah. And I can tell if I can kind of help start with, you know, why we, how we got into this and why we do what we do and what that looked like. So, you know, for me personally, I was coming at entrepreneurship from,
• 4:55
  the person who's only seen my mom being an entrepreneur my whole life. So, and I know, I know you have kind of a similar story. My mom was a kind of a big part of the role model that showed me what it was, what it looked like to have a female leader, a female business owner. So it always, I knew I had that entrepreneurship gene in me and I was coming to the table with that from a young age. But I just didn't know what that looked like. What was the business? Where did I want to spend my time? And there's a little bit of serendipity actually in the way we started. Um,
• 5:24
  I moved to San Francisco in my 20s for personal reasons. So it's a big move from London. And I moved to a city which was 80% tech scene, but actually the part that drew me in was not the tech industry, it was the food industry. And London being a big city, great food scene, but removed from kind of the agricultural farm to table aspect of food. And that's what I saw when I came to California.
• 5:52
  I arrived and suddenly there was all this beautiful farm to table eating that I was experiencing. You know, these beautiful California farmers markets where I was buying my produce. The grocery stores were these amazing health food stores, selling things I've never heard of. And it was just such an interesting kind of facet of California living that really captured me in. And it really started my interest in wellness and healthy eating. The serendipity of the story is that my co-founder, who was one of my best friends,
• 6:22
  happened to move to San Francisco for totally different reasons within six months of when I moved. So suddenly I arrived here, I'd left my career behind, and I had a space of time in kind of my career journey that was a break. And it was a forced break because I moved. But it was such a great time to just slow down and experience this new place, get to know it, explore my passions, and do it with a friend. He was a very good friend. And so...
• 6:50
  It started completely passion-based. We loved health and wellness. We started eating at these restaurants together. We started kind of jumping into a plant-based diet, seeing what that did to our bodies, how it felt, going to health food stores and understanding these ingredients and what they mean, watching documentaries. And yeah, it was just a kind of a really fun period of exploration. And then we would meet for coffee. We'd meet every day for coffee and talk about XYZ that we'd learn or XYZ that we were interested in.
• 7:20
  And suddenly we kind of realized that, you know, we've been putting wellness into every aspect of our lives and seeing how that felt. But this daily ritual that we loved, this daily activity that we did that was social, that we met, you know, it was community driven. We'd meet every day. It wasn't actually very healthy. And especially, you know, especially seven years ago when it was a lot harder to find great plant-based options and things.
• 7:49
  You know, you'd go for coffee and it would mostly be dairy. There's lots of added sugar in lattes. It was very hard to find organic coffee. It was very hard to find tea-based options. And suddenly we kind of had this moment where we wanted this ritual that we loved to just be more healthful. And we noticed that particularly in the grocery store space.
• 8:11
  So yes, you could go to your local coffee shop and craft something that was to your taste. But if you went to a grocery store, coffee in the grocery store was really about hypercaffeination. It was more energy. It wasn't about ritual. It wasn't about delight. It wasn't about wellness. And we just we we noticed that white space. And it was something we were doing every day. And that was really kind of a light bulb moment. We wanted to craft something that was delightful and delicious and helpful for us.
• 8:39
  and build a beautiful brand around it that was meaningful to us and meaningful to others. So that was really the moment that kind of started us on this journey. The reality of it is that we had no food background, no beverage background, no CPG background. My co-founder was from a design background. I had an operational business background. And so we were coming at this industry really naive. And I think that has definitely its benefits. It has its challenges.
• 9:10
  But it has its benefits. I think if we knew more, we maybe wouldn't have jumped into it. I thought you might not have started. Yeah, yeah, absolutely. So that's kind of how it started. And we really started small. We wanted to test the concept. We had no idea, did other people want this? Would they pay for it? Would they buy it twice? Would the decision maker in the grocery store, you know, I think this is a good idea. Would they make space on their shelves for it?
• 9:39
  And so there was a lot to learn and a lot to test. And our goal, so the first milestone really was just, let's figure out how to make this in a way that is commercially viable. And then let's get it into 20, 30 stores and see what happens. The process of selling it was us literally going to these little grocery stores, asking to speak to the manager or the buyer and saying, hey, this is what we make. We should be interested in this. What's your feedback? And...
• 10:08
  And we learned a lot doing that. And so at that time, you're on this kind of forced break because you've moved. Are you also going back into the industry or are you kind of like, let's see how we go when you are actually starting this business full time with the intention of just sticking with it full time? Yeah, it's a great question. I was giving myself about six months to kind of figure out what life in California looked like for me. And so I think that's really in some ways important because I've been doing it.
• 10:39
  we're all on this treadmill, right? It's like, we're doing this, and then we're doing this, and we're doing this, and we want to be here by this age, and, you know, whatever that looks like. And it's rare that we intentionally take a break in our lives, and I think for those who do, it's so wise. But for me, it wasn't so intentional. It was kind of forced because I'd moved. But it gave me this, like, period of time to just slow down and really be intentional about what I wanted to do next. And for me, at the time, it was... The two options for me were, I'm going to go...
• 11:07
  join a company and kind of further my skillset and it was an exciting time to join tech and other things in San Francisco or it was like actually this is the perfect time to really think about if I do want to start a business and what that looked like for me and I gave myself a period of time to test and learn and take some shots on goal and see what happened and what landed and it was a very appropriate period of time to you know if things didn't
• 11:37
  My co-founder was not working in it. We had a great friendship, but maybe it wouldn't translate to a business friendship. It was just kind of a great time to test all of those things. And so, yeah, it was very open-ended. Like, let's try this. Let's see what happens. If we get to that next milestone, we'll keep going. And that has been the story of the last seven years.
• 11:56
  I love that. And just to further paint the picture, are you like making these products at home or are you immediately kind of, you found a commercial kitchen? Like what's the setup in those early bootstrapping moments? Yeah. Yeah. Let me paint, let me paint some color. Paint the picture. So at the beginning, we're doing all the R&D in my little apartment in San Francisco. And we bought a buy that makes it.
• 12:24
  the first investment we made is a thousand dollars in a Vitamix um you know our fancy blender and um that was that was kind of our big R&D purchase and wish I had one of those yeah love those they're great it still it still works it's still it's in the museum of P&B um and uh yeah it was at this point just the earliest form of an idea really um but we would you know
• 12:50
  We were making our homemade plant-based milks. We were literally making almond milk in our kitchen. We weren't selling it, but we were just doing all the R&D. And R&D is very basic at this point. And that's kind of how it started. We didn't go any further until we had an assemblance of a product that someone could taste, be it friends and family.
• 13:13
  someone could taste and just give us feedback. We did that for a little while until we had, I believe it was five different products that we had got to a point where we thought this is delicious. We love this. We have a recipe that we would buy at least every day. Let's see if it lands with others. I think it was Blair's birthday in that year that we decided to have a friends and family tasting. And we invited 30 of our close friends and family. We had to
• 13:37
  these big giant vats of lattes in different flavors. And we set them up, we made it look beautiful. And we had an iPad and a Google form, and we basically put together a questionnaire. Tell us what's your favorite. Tell us what you liked, what you didn't like. Would you buy the skin? How much would you pay? Just kind of basic questions to our audience of 30 friends. And in exchange, you know, come hang out with us. We'll serve you breakfast. We'll have a good time.
• 14:06
  We'll celebrate Blair's birthday, et cetera, et cetera. So that was kind of our first piece of feedback, our kind of first product trial, you know, in a safe environment with our friends. And then we use that to decide on three products. We're like, we have five that we love. We can't launch five. It takes too many resources, too expensive. Nobody's gonna give us five SKUs of shelf space in a grocery store.
• 14:29
  So let's use this exercise to pick the best three and really focus on those. So we use the results of our little mocked up survey and we landed on three that we loved and that had the best feedback. And that's kind of the R&D stage. Once we've gone from there, then it was really we had to learn about the regulation, the licensing. We got food service licensed ourselves.
• 14:51
  And then we found a commercial kitchen, not too far outside of San Francisco, where we could rent by the hour of the weekends and physically make the product ourselves. So what the working week looked like in those early days for us is Monday to Friday, we would sell, market, work on strategy, design packaging, like all of those great things. And then on the weekend,
• 15:17
  we would run production and we would work in the commercial kitchen, make the product. Mondays we would deliver everything and Tuesdays to Fridays we would do everything else.
• 15:27
  What kind of like amount of money did you invest in that early stage to getting you to kind of like, you know, launch, I guess, where you have like those three products. You've kind of invested in the like the I don't know, the setup of the company, the hiring of the commercial kitchen, getting licensed, that kind of thing. Like if you had to put a ballpark figure on the investment. Yeah, it was about ten thousand dollars. So my co-founder and I both put about half of that in.
• 15:54
  And that was enough to get us on the ground, which might sound a lot to some, might sound not very much to others. For us, at the time, it was the amount that we were comfortable putting in to invest and really give it a little bit of a go, but that felt comfortable to us. And it was enough for us to invest in our first round of packaging, do the business startup costs, the licensing, the regulations,
• 16:21
  and produce our first round of products, essentially.
• 16:26
  And at that time, you were obviously kind of going into this with the idea that you would see how it goes, bootstrap the business, but at some point you raise money. And I don't want to skip ahead too far in the process, but for you, I think it's an interesting moment to talk about because a lot of people kind of want to raise straight out of the gate. They want to raise early on and go right into it and think that that's the answer. But
• 16:52
  Oftentimes bootstrapping it until you get to a point where you have to raise out of desperation or out of the need to scale or expand, you know, comes along. For you, were you ever thinking about raising at that point or what was that kind of like mental mindset around the bootstrapping to fundraising path?
• 17:13
  There's so many ways to do this. And when I look back, I don't know if we did it exactly right, but I also don't know if we were going to do it again, whether we do it differently. It was kind of the path we chose and it worked. We've got here, but it probably slowed things down for sure. So I think that's always the trade off. Resources always can help speed things up, but resources obviously come at a price. And so what is the right pace for you?
• 17:39
  and how much are you willing to give away in terms of equity or whatever it is to make that work. For us, going back to us not being from the industry and the naivety that we talked about,
• 17:54
  I don't think that we really knew what it looked like to do this in a way that was really expedited. You know, if I was doing it again, now I really understand. I've zoomed out enough that I know that if I was to zoom back in, I would know how to do things a lot faster and I understand how to scale things a lot faster. But at the time, we didn't know that. And it's really important to us to get our hands dirty and learn. So we weren't looking to raise out the gate because,
• 18:20
  we needed to have the confidence in ourselves and in the product to know that, you know, if we, before we go out and ask others to support this, we need to know what we're doing. We need to know that we have X amount of data, that we understand what this looks like, that we have some metrics to show, et cetera, et cetera. And that took a little bit of time. So we're bootstrapped for a period of time.
• 18:39
  But ultimately, it was also very apparent reasonably early on that we wouldn't really be able to be bootstrapped for that long unless we wanted this business to be very, very localised. I think if the ambitions were to do this kind of within a tight geography of San Francisco and do it in a very localised way, I think that we could have continued on that path. But I think there's a philosophical question that we had to ask us, which was, you know,
• 19:05
  Why are we doing this? What's the North Star? And if the North Star is to build this brand that touches a large geography of people, then we're gonna have to raise some capital. We're gonna need some support. And it's not a cheap business to build. When you really, you need scale in order to really build this out of geography that is meaningful.
• 19:33
  it was very apparent reasonably early that we would need to raise funding if that was the ambition. And it wasn't necessarily obvious to us that was the ambition day one. You know, it came with a few months of seeing the product sell, getting feedback and building our own confidence. You know, it's really the customer telling us, you should have bigger ambitions for this because actually we do want it. And then as we slowly increased our geography,
• 20:01
  it started to work in a bigger scale, in a bigger geography. And it's really been that process of feedback and those many successes that have given us the confidence to go a little bit broader in our ambition.
• 20:15
  Hmm. Gosh, I love that. And I think it's, you know, it's such an important point you touched on, which is you really do need to prove out your concept first in the market to get that metric and data kind of analysis so that you can then figure out what the North Star is and what you want to do with it. Because obviously if the market isn't ready for that product or it's not quite right, then you don't want to invest money kind of that can go down the drain when you need to jiggle things to, to prove it out.
• 20:45
  Totally. Yeah. And it's really rare that you put something out in the world and you've nailed every single thing the first time around. Right. Like I think some people might be extraordinary at product and design thinking to be able to do that. But the reality is that you really need a bunch of touch points, a bunch of people to experience a product with different preferences or whatever it is to help you shape what is wanted of you in the world. And that's.
• 21:13
  It's really healthy, I think, to be open to pivoting in those early days. I think if you're too much of a perfectionist about that or you're too attached to that very first version that you made, the Vitamix in the kitchen, then there might be a missed opportunity. So giving yourself that time and being open to a potential pivot or the market guiding you, for us, was definitely really helpful.
• 21:38
  Was there a lot of change in the beginning based on the feedback? Like what were some of the things that people, you know, were telling you we need it to be this or we need it to be that? Yeah. Yes and no. I think one of the biggest ones that was probably the most transformative for our business was this idea of really zeroing in on,
• 22:02
  a few products that resonated the best. And so I kind of alluded to this in, you know, we had five recipes, we learned, we launched with three. That sounds very small, but it was actually very, very important when you're starting a small business and you have limited resources. But the biggest thing about that was not just, you know, which are the three that tastes best, but it was really helping us better understand what problem we were solving for the world or, you know, or, you know,
• 22:29
  for our friends or for our San Francisco community, whatever that was. And what we realized is, so I'll give a very specific example in our case. We had a selection of products that were coffee, tea and uncaffeinated. We loved all of them. We used them at different points of the day. But as we looked at some of the early data and got the early feedback, the ones that were resonating the best were the ones that were
• 22:56
  taking the place in someone's life of their coffee. You know, it was the caffeinated, ritualistic products of the bunch. And so that's where we started. And that really helped us zero in on the fact that, well, who are we? We're a latte brand. That's what we want to be. And that's what we want to do really, really well. And that's what we want to be known for.
• 23:15
  Zeroing in on that was very helpful. It was really helpful so that we could focus on a limited number of products. It was very helpful because we could very clearly articulate from a brand and marketing perspective what we were selling and what we were hoping to improve for someone's lives. And so that was an example of not necessarily a pivot, but a zooming in on one specific thing that we could be good at.
• 23:38
  Yes. Very clear messaging, very like similar target profile for who you're trying to reach, stacking your marketing. I totally get it. That's amazing. And so for you, I want to talk about that like early period, because you mentioned that in the beginning, you know, your goal was to kind of like get into 20 or 30 years.
• 23:57
  you know, mom and pop style shops, see how it's going. And the blueprint for that is, you know, from what I hear quite, you know, it's obvious you go and knock on everyone's doors, you get people to try your product, you get some orders in and rinse and repeat until you have those 30 stores.
• 24:14
  But from there, like the 30 stores, how do you get to like a thousand customers, whether that is directly through the website or whether that is, you know, more retailers? What's that next phase of expansion for you to get to that first thousand? If you had to summarize. So it's a great question. And it.
• 24:36
  you know, it was not linear, you know, it was like up and down. One thing for us, which is specific to our business, is at the time, our products were all perishable. We've expanded our portfolios since then, and that's a little different today. But back then, you know, we had a small selection of products and they were all perishable. So that actually, in some ways, did a little bit of focusing for us in terms of our channel strategy. So...
• 25:01
  We couldn't really sell online because it was a very perishable product we couldn't ship. So that ruled out. Directing consumer was taking off, but we couldn't be part of it because that was not something that fit our product. So we kind of were limited by the distribution that our perishable products enabled us to do. And that really meant focusing on grocery. And so that's what we did. We had our 30 stores of data. It was strong.
• 25:26
  And we used that data to then try and get the next 100 stores. And for us, the 30 stores, like you said, they were mom and pops, they were independents, maybe a two-chain store, a three-store, excuse me, a three-store chain. But it wasn't more than that. For us, the kind of next...
• 25:44
  Ambition was to be in Whole Foods. It was, you know, a very important natural food store where we could get our products into kind of a 30 to 40 store regional launch and give us the opportunity to really test it at a wider market. And that would have been kind of the 100 store range. So it went from pitching individual stores one by one
• 26:06
  the buyers in the store, you walk through the door, you make an appointment and you drop off, you physically drop off product to then trying to get an appointment with Whole Foods corporate and get their attention and get that opportunity. And that was what took us to the hundred dollars. And the way that that happened is really just a lot of, a lot of reaching out, a lot of persistence. Finally, the forager in Whole Foods, there's a sort of a forager program where
• 26:34
  They look to promote locally produced products. And so we learned about this program. We fit the criteria and we met the local forager. And I still remember that meeting, going to their corporate office. It's very exciting. I'm very nervous. But we were authentic and they were looking for authentic stories. One of the missions of that program was,
• 26:56
  to support local food entrepreneurs. And that's exactly who we were. So we told our authentic story. He liked the taste of the product. He understood the right space that we were operating in and he didn't have anything that close to it in his stores. So he gave us a chance. And that took us to the 100th store mark, but really our first chain. And that gave our brand and our product legitimacy. And once we had that legitimacy, then suddenly we had
• 27:24
  a successful case study in a reputable, larger retailer that we could then take to others. And, you know, that was a billboard for us to be in Whole Foods. And that credibility and other people seeing it there, that helped open the doors to more conversations with other stores, with other grocery retailers. So that was definitely a tipping point.
• 27:49
  And is that in parallel where you kind of needed to raise capital? Because I imagine maybe 20 to 30 stores you can maybe manage, you know, on a very lean team, but scaling into a hundred is a lot. Yeah, totally. And like production changes significantly from being like you making it on the weekends to being like, we need to outsource this. Yeah, totally. No, you're exactly right. That was almost hand in hand.
• 28:17
  with that wider launch in Horfuss was the upsizing production situation. So we raised some capital and we were doing this kind of in parallel. So we were selling, raising money, producing on the weekends. You know, it was a lot, but it was exciting and we were seeing progress. So we kind of, we started raising capital.
• 28:39
  Our first small seed round, we were supported by friends and family and a few other investors. But it was enough to get us to that next hurdle of needing a bigger commercial kitchen where we ran production every day that we kind of owned and operated and where we could hire a production manager. Our first big hire was our production manager. I remember meeting another entrepreneur back then who was a few years ahead of us in the food space. And the biggest piece of advice she gave us is you need to both get yourself safe.
• 29:09
  out of the kitchen. You need to, if you're really going to scale this, you need to bring in someone who knows how to do that, do that really well so that you can really focus your time and attention to everything else. And that was such an important step for us to take. And we really needed capital in order to do that. So finding that right hire, finding commercial kitchen space that would work for us, that could really allow us to be, to grow for another year, year and a half.
• 29:35
  at least that started to inform those types of things starting to inform how much capital we wanted to raise and yeah we were doing these things simultaneously it wasn't sequential I would say so um I think that's an important thing to to know because had it been it would have been very difficult to make progress but we kind of needed to have confidence that okay we need to raise x we've got 20 percent of that committed so far
• 30:02
  But we don't have time to wait till we have the full 100. We need to keep going and taking steps in this direction. So there's a leap of faith and confidence that we will continue raising this, and we will raise this money while we do all of these things in parallel to secure the space, to secure the hire, et cetera, et cetera. So it was all kind of happening at the same time.
• 30:23
  And even more at the same time, I imagine that your marketing is also evolving from being, you know, pounding the pavement, door knocking to kind of how do we reach more people and get more attention and a spotlight on us? What were you doing marketing wise? Were you focusing on influencers or PR or paid ads? What was the kind of evolution on that side of things? Yeah. Sorry.
• 30:51
  This was very bootstrapped and we needed every, you know, the time, and even when we had some funding, we needed every dollar to go back into producing the product, working capital, investing in packaging, operating our kitchen. And so at the end of the day, there was very little left
• 31:11
  really invest in marketing in a very intentional way. And so it had to be quite bootstrapped and quite grassroots. But I think that that also was an absolute blessing. It gave us an opportunity to try different things and see what works and see what landed. But it also really added to the authenticity of the brand, which I think was really important. The one thing we knew, and we knew it to begin with, but it was really evident as we started to grow, was that in a world with,
• 31:41
  where you have very few marketing dollars, the best thing to invest in is your product. It's really hard to acquire new customers, but when you do, you want them to be repeat purchases and you want them to be advocates of your product. You want them to come back, you want them to spread the word. So making sure that the product is right, that the pricing is right, that the packaging is good and friendly and appropriate. Those are really, really important things to invest in.
• 32:09
  That's a very, very important part of marketing. That really is stage one, I would say, of kind of what it took for us to be successful. So we invested everything we could in the product. You know, is the cap, I remember one time, we were just, we were not happy with the caps. They were hard to open, and they're creating some frustration.
• 32:31
  And we spent time investing money on fixing the cap to find something that was just like a lot more user-friendly and putting money there instead of putting it somewhere else because we knew that that was a really important part of the experience. So I'd say, yes, in the beginning days, really getting the product right, really getting the brand right. I alluded to this before, but we didn't have cash to put in paid ads or other things. But we did know that once our product lands on the shelf,
• 33:00
  That's a huge billboard for who we are. A customer takes seconds only, only seconds of attention. When they walk in a grocery store, the beverage aisles are particularly busy. And there's so many options and so many colors and so many things going on, so much messaging.
• 33:19
  How can we use that little bit of real estate that we're going to get no matter what, if we get into the store, how can we use that valuable piece of real estate to stand out above all else? And my co-founder had a design background. It was not a C4G design background, but it was a, and again, that was fantastic because she's not from the industry. So she kind of applied more of her fashion design background.
• 33:45
  with a food lens and our packaging, which was completely designed internally led by her, was so simple that it stood out where everyone else was shouting about their product. We were telling the customer, this is a very simple, clean product by the lack of messaging on the packaging and letting that simplicity really stand out. We picked really approachable pastel colors. We had really refined text.
• 34:15
  And it was an elegant, simple product inside and out. And the packaging really spoke volumes. It got the attention, it encouraged people to try, and the product was good enough that when they tried, they came back. And that was really the beginning of the flywheel that started to work for us.
• 34:32
  Once we had a little bit more capital to start to think about more of a comprehensive marketing plan, we leaned on it, leaned in on social media and Instagram in particular, which back then was really the, it was in its infancy in terms of how brands were using it. So it was not focused on paid advertising at the time as much. It was really about, you know, community voices, getting recommendations from friends and getting recommendations from kind of the early influences of the platforms.
• 35:03
  And we sent our product. We never paid. We couldn't afford to do that. But again, letting the products be for itself and having confidence in the product, we would send the product to wellness influencers. We'd write them ourselves.
• 35:16
  as part of kind of, again, the authenticity piece and build a relationship. But if they're interested in receiving some products, we'd send them some and hope that if they liked it, they would share it. And that started to create a little bit of flywheel, too. So those two things, the billboards in the store and the kind of authentic grassroots reach out. Those are the two things that we kind of leaned on in those early days to start to get the word out.
• 35:42
  Do you think that for anyone listening who might be in the food and beverage industry and they're following a similar blueprint because, you know, low kind of budget, bootstrapped, but knowing that the landscape has changed so much with social media, you know, everything is saturated. Every influencer is like promoting a million different products. If you were to start this same business tomorrow, again, on a low budget, you know,
• 36:06
  and you have those kind of first doors that you've already put in the hard, like pounding the pavement work, where would you kind of, what would you focus on as a channel today? Yeah, it's a really good question. I still think about this because even for us, as these platforms have become saturated, it becomes harder to do exactly that. And I think it's even harder if you're brand new, but it's hard even if you're a few years down the road. And,
• 36:34
  I think zooming out from that question, asking yourself, and I think I would ask myself, what's the community that we're trying to build and what's the most micro version of that? So when you don't have a large platform to reach everyone, how can you find a small platform but really go deep with a micro community? For us, you know, it's wellness, it's women, it's women.
• 36:57
  It's coffee, it's tea, it's mums who need a lot of coffee and really kind of drilling down to those micro communities. I think that a genuinely great product or service that is suited to a micro community that is solving a real problem will resonate and will break through the noise.
• 37:17
  even in an increasingly noisier world. And sometimes I think just looking at that landscape and finding those grassroots opportunities to connect with that audience, I think they still exist. And again, going back to the point I made earlier, which is that sometimes having less resources actually is a good thing. When you have a lot of resources, you might choose to do things bigger and broader. When you have less resources,
• 37:45
  you take it down to the most simplest form, those three products, that small community, that small geography, whatever it is. And I think that that still exists today. If it's a, whether it's something in person or online, blogger communities, newsletter communities, in-person wellness events, all of these types of things, where there's still connections being made and people are looking for, you know, still great products that suit their lives.
• 38:13
  I think the opportunity still exists. Absolutely. Absolutely. Gosh, for anyone in the food and beverage industry, what would your kind of key piece of advice be? Great question. So many things come to mind, but one is just a little bit more philosophical and that's,
• 38:39
  Every industry is tough and food and beverage is no different. Margins are tight. They're often perishable. There's large startup costs sometimes. It's just, it's a hard road. And one thing that has been really helpful to me, and I think this applies to not just food and beverage, it applies to a lot of different industries, is
• 39:01
  But I know that we wouldn't have got here today if it weren't for this is just having the support system to kind of get you through the journey. And for me, I had my co-founder, but not just my co-founder. I built a network of people that could help fill in the gaps where I didn't know what I was doing in this industry.
• 39:21
  great other founders who had been there and were willing to have a coffee with me, industry people who probably felt sorry for us and were willing to listen to, give us some advice, give us an introduction to someone.
• 39:37
  whatever that support system, you look at your skillset, you look at the resources you have, and thinking about where the gaps are and figuring out how to supplement those gaps with support. So for me, I had a lot of kind of mental support in having a co-founder. When you're having a bad day, they're having a good day. They pull you through and vice versa. But then also kind of the knowledge gaps.
• 40:02
  finding those right people to kind of plug those in. I think that that's really important. It can feel very lonely,
• 40:08
  being an entrepreneur, any kind of entrepreneur. But it doesn't have to be. And I think in today's day, more than ever, there's just so much support out there if you prioritize creating that support system, that support network. When you're wearing so many hats, that can sometimes take the back seat. But it's something so worth prioritizing because that's likely the thing that kind of gets you to that next place, is just having that support network to get you there.
• 40:34
  Mm. Absolutely. For anyone listening, we, we do have a private network for founders called magic with a J you should come and check it out. Shameless plug. Where is the business today? What like paint the picture? What has it grown into? How many retailers are you stocked in? You know, who's on the team? What can you shout about? What's coming up? Yeah. Um, we have a long way to go, but, um, I think that's always the case. Um,
• 41:03
  But I'm super proud of where we are today. I don't think me seven years ago would have quite imagined being here. So I think that there's a lot to be proud of. I think there's still a huge way to go and every day is a new challenge. But yeah, I'm very proud of our team. There's 12 of us, which is,
• 41:22
  It might sound tiny, but it's a lot more than two of us. Yeah. And it speaks a little bit to our culture because we're a small lean team and we've just chosen to stay lean as much as we can.
• 41:37
  we all know each other, we all work together really well and it really does feel like a family and so that's culturally something that's been important to us. But yeah, we're 12 people, we're in about 10,000 grocery stores across the US, we're distributed nationally, we have great partnerships with large retailers like Walmart and Whole Foods and Aldi and Sprouts and still our bread and butter which is our amazing company
• 42:04
  early supporters of independent stores that helped us really kind of grow and scale. We have three different product lines now. We started with one, added several skis across the journey. Now we have three different product lines. So you'll find us in lots of different parts of the grocery store. And we're kind of continuing to just scratch the surface. I think that's the exciting thing is that I touched on this before, but
• 42:31
  this is a long journey and you just get caught to hitting the next milestone. And so while I'm super proud of where we are today, there's just so much ahead. And I think that it's exciting to continue on this road. I'm still learning a lot. And now I just have the pleasure of doing it with, supported by a group of team members who also have a lot more industry knowledge than I did when I started this journey. I love that for you. Gosh, what a journey. Exciting.
• 43:03
  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.
• 43:27
  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.
• 43:50
  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.
• 44:06
  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.
• 44:30
  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.
• 44:53
  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.