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How a Canadian Bakery is Transforming Gluten-Free and the Vegan Industry · The Retail Podcast

• 0:09
  Hello and welcome back to the Retail Podcast.
• 0:11
  Now Molly Robbins, who you'll meet in a in a few seconds.
• 0:16
  I had the pleasure of meeting her at grocery shop, right.
• 0:19
  Yeah, if we get the right conference.
• 0:22
  So I had to before to reading Wally and I was really
• 0:26
  fascinated with her story and I asked Molly to come on to the
• 0:30
  show to to share her story, warts and all.
• 0:32
  I think, you know, having a open, honest conversation about
• 0:36
  being a female founder starts a new business and taking on the
• 0:40
  world of CPG. But Molly, what are you in your
• 0:45
  words? Tell us obviously you're you're
• 0:47
  the founder and owner of Molly Markets.
• 0:50
  You're based in Canada, but I'd love for you to sort of tell us
• 0:53
  a little bit about who you are and how you arrived at Molly
• 0:56
  Market. Molly Smart.
• 0:58
  Yeah, for sure. Thank you, Alex.
• 1:00
  It was so great meeting you in Vegas.
• 1:03
  It was fun and exciting conference and I definitely
• 1:06
  learned a lot and and love getting the chance to go to
• 1:09
  grocery shop every year. So it's really exciting to meet
• 1:11
  you because I think oftentimes like I'm working so hard in my
• 1:16
  office or with my team or behind the scenes and there's not a lot
• 1:19
  of opportunity to kind of be out there and share my story and how
• 1:22
  I got started and all that. So I own one retail location
• 1:26
  just north of Toronto. We sell gluten free and vegan
• 1:29
  baked goods along with other brands, other CPG brands that
• 1:33
  are mostly local to Canada, but some from the US and overseas as
• 1:38
  well. So anything that kind of fills
• 1:40
  the gaps within gluten free and vegan that isn't a baked good,
• 1:44
  we bring onto our shelves for our customers to enjoy as well.
• 1:47
  And this really came out of a dire need for myself being like
• 1:50
  a huge foodie and loving baking and loving cooking and all that.
• 1:54
  I was really sick in university and I found I was living, found
• 2:00
  out I was living in a mouldy apartment and started sort of
• 2:02
  researching why I was feeling that way.
• 2:04
  Who could I work with to figure out Getting kind of turned away
• 2:08
  by the traditional medical system and realised that I had a
• 2:11
  soy allergy and totally changed my diet from there.
• 2:15
  So after graduating university, I also developed chronic hives.
• 2:19
  My body was just kind of really sick and tired.
• 2:22
  All the, all the stuff it was throwing, being thrown and
• 2:27
  after, shortly after that, I enrolled in school for Holistic
• 2:31
  Nutrition and started working on a buyer at as a buyer at a local
• 2:35
  kind of contemporary convenience store that focused on healthy
• 2:38
  items as well. Yeah, that's kind of what the
• 2:41
  road that led me to wanting to send my own business.
• 2:44
  How was it like if we if we take yourself back and you're going
• 2:46
  through that journey, at what point of that do you think you
• 2:49
  know what the solution to my my medical treatment is to open up
• 2:53
  my own business? What?
• 2:54
  What? What?
• 2:55
  Are you just that way inclined? Is that your character?
• 2:58
  I think that might, I think that might be my character, but I
• 3:01
  felt really frustrated when I would like drive all around to
• 3:06
  different grocery stores. I would cross the border into
• 3:08
  the US and go to Whole Foods. Like I was obsessed with finding
• 3:11
  things that had really simple ingredients that I actually
• 3:14
  could understand. Because when I found out I
• 3:17
  couldn't eat soy, I thought I can't eat soy sauce.
• 3:19
  Like big deal. And then I realised soybean oil
• 3:22
  was such a big additive and so many foods, it's no matter what
• 3:26
  cuisine. So when I started realising what
• 3:29
  was in the like so-called food I was eating, I just got so
• 3:33
  grossed out and thought there has to be like some way to not
• 3:37
  make my entire diet like apples and carrot sticks and still have
• 3:41
  like cookies and brownies and pasta and like such delicious
• 3:45
  food. Because food is so emotional.
• 3:48
  And when people gather, whether it's for like a BBQ or a dinner
• 3:51
  party or birthday, the person that's kind of sitting out in
• 3:54
  the corner having that, that like sad salad, as I call it, I
• 3:58
  always like just hated being that person.
• 4:00
  And then I hated seeing people feel that way as well.
• 4:04
  So I figured, I don't know, a little bit of like, I guess
• 4:07
  pandemic delusion being a help Yulon.
• 4:10
  I just thought like it made sense and and there was no one
• 4:15
  to tell me no because I hadn't seen that many people in a long
• 4:18
  time. So I just thought let's go for
• 4:21
  it. And the store actually was meant
• 4:22
  to be just kind of like a small retail outlet for other CPG
• 4:26
  brands. And as we kind of needed
• 4:29
  something to do to fill our time as it was slow to start, started
• 4:32
  playing around in the kitchen and what was supposed to be like
• 4:35
  1 batch of muffins a day became an entire bakery and wholesale
• 4:41
  business as well. So our products are now in about
• 4:44
  40 stores in the GTA greater trend area and just growing.
• 4:48
  So yeah, it's been really exciting.
• 4:51
  Your customers what? What type of customers do you
• 4:53
  have? Are they pure?
• 4:55
  Are they been? Do they suffer from the same
• 4:57
  things that you've suffered? And so they heard your story.
• 5:00
  What? Yeah, about your customers.
• 5:03
  Yeah. I mean, my customers are all
• 5:05
  amazing. They just really I find like
• 5:10
  believe in, in myself, in the product, whether they know me or
• 5:13
  not, whether they're a customer of our storefront or purchase
• 5:16
  our products at our partner retailers.
• 5:18
  I find when we started, it leaned a lot more heavily
• 5:22
  towards like celiac customers or customers with theory
• 5:25
  intolerances or just different food restrictions because it was
• 5:30
  like a place where they felt safe.
• 5:32
  But I think it's really turned into people want generally like
• 5:36
  things that are better for them, but no one is willing to give up
• 5:40
  taste. So we were able to really like
• 5:43
  with all of our recipes, ensure that everything delicious had
• 5:47
  great ingredients and was really genuinely better for you.
• 5:52
  I think where my frustration lay like in the grocery store aisles
• 5:56
  was finding a lot of things that were either gluten free or dairy
• 6:00
  free, or they were gluten free, but they had soy or like thing I
• 6:04
  didn't understand. And I, and I thought like, how
• 6:06
  hard can it be A little bit hard, I thought, but how hard
• 6:10
  can it be to create something that really appeals to a lot of
• 6:14
  people, whether they have a dietary restriction and allergy
• 6:16
  or they just want to feel like they're eating something
• 6:19
  nutritious, but they're still hitting that like that craving
• 6:24
  of a brownie. They don't need to eat our stuff
• 6:26
  and then go eat a real brownie later.
• 6:28
  Like they get that action at the same time.
• 6:31
  So another one of our main kind of core principles was when we
• 6:36
  started out, I had made a chocolate chunk cookie recipe
• 6:39
  adopted from from different recipes I had found on the
• 6:42
  Internet. And I would make so much of it
• 6:44
  at a time. And my mom would put it in the
• 6:46
  freezer and say, OK, like, well, we'll have it later.
• 6:49
  And she would eat them straight out of the freezer.
• 6:51
  There would be like super chewy because of the coconut oil we
• 6:54
  use in them and the almond butter.
• 6:55
  And it just made sense to me like to go to a bakery, you go
• 7:00
  every once in a while you get a box of Donuts or whatever it is
• 7:03
  and you feel like it's a race to the finish line to finish it.
• 7:06
  I'm the type of person who wants a sweet treat like every.
• 7:09
  I'm not even to say night like at most people during the day.
• 7:12
  So feel to have like that little nibble in the freezer.
• 7:16
  So all of our products are refrigerated and frozen and this
• 7:20
  allows us to have like absolutely no waste.
• 7:23
  Any sort of imperfections are created into samples for our in
• 7:27
  store customers or at our retail partner demos, but it allows
• 7:31
  people to like have this moment of like indulgence at any point
• 7:37
  of their day, any day of the week, wherever they really are
• 7:40
  and not be limited to just the excursions that they can have
• 7:44
  once in a while. My brain is racing in terms of
• 7:46
  which track do I because I've got 2 two sets of questions I
• 7:49
  want to ask more about At what point did you know when you set
• 7:53
  up Molly's Market where you focused on becoming a bakery or
• 7:57
  a retailer or a CPG brand or, you know, what was driving that?
• 8:03
  And then there's the part of me that wants to unpack like the
• 8:06
  ingredients and is it healthier for you and, and what that's
• 8:10
  look like? Which way, which one do you want
• 8:12
  to? I'll give you the choice.
• 8:13
  You want to focus on the story about the how and why and your
• 8:18
  hurdles of overcoming because you're not on social media,
• 8:21
  right? Or you are, but there's not a
• 8:23
  lot of you on TikTok or something.
• 8:25
  No, we don't have TikTok. I just hired someone to help me
• 8:28
  with that. So they're starting a couple
• 8:30
  weeks, but I'm one of those people who is really shy behind
• 8:34
  camera but can meet a new person in real life and like hit it off
• 8:38
  instantly. So it's interesting.
• 8:40
  I had heard, I love the podcast How I Built This.
• 8:43
  And I had listened to the story about Tate's Bake Shop and I
• 8:46
  remember Kathleen King saying. For you started your own
• 8:50
  business. So it's actually like, well into
• 8:53
  it. I just listen to it.
• 8:55
  I think I was like on the way to Expo S or something and I was
• 8:57
  driving and I needed something to listen to.
• 9:00
  Which said because her business was quite seasoned, she was
• 9:03
  based in the Hamptons. When she went into Manhattan
• 9:06
  after every summer, she would go into all the really high end
• 9:10
  grocery stores and walk in with her cookies.
• 9:12
  And some would say, like, my mom makes better cookies or like,
• 9:16
  these are whatever, like kind of like, And then some people would
• 9:19
  be like, these are the best things I've ever had.
• 9:20
  And she said I was so confident in my cookies more so than
• 9:25
  myself that like I knew they were wrong.
• 9:27
  If they didn't like them, I knew they were wrong.
• 9:29
  And I like 100% feel that way. I'm, I'm so confident in our
• 9:33
  products and our offering. And I think we've really
• 9:36
  mastered what, what we put into our ingredients and how they
• 9:41
  taste and how we kind of show up to our customers.
• 9:45
  And then sometimes there's not enough time for, for me, but
• 9:48
  I'm, I'm trying to work on a balance as well.
• 9:50
  But to answer your, your first question about was this supposed
• 9:53
  to be a CPG brand versus retail? Like this was absolutely
• 9:57
  supposed to just be like a small retail store in my hometown with
• 10:01
  me behind the cash desk every single day.
• 10:04
  I'll like for the rest of my life.
• 10:05
  And it's been a while since I've since I've been behind there.
• 10:09
  It's it's my favourite thing to do, but there are a lot of
• 10:13
  obviously things that need to be done to grow the business and to
• 10:16
  manage my incredible team which has been growing a lot recently.
• 10:20
  And is it, sorry, a bakery, a coffee shop or grocery?
• 10:23
  What? What?
• 10:24
  What type of store is it? I would kind of like mix them
• 10:27
  all together. We're most like, pardon A.
• 10:32
  Hangout space, you can have a coffee there.
• 10:35
  No, you're not allowed to stay inside you don't have seating
• 10:39
  inside we have a big backyard with lots of picnic tables.
• 10:42
  We have some seats on our front porch, have coffee to go, but
• 10:46
  are the way that we sell our baked goods typically is in
• 10:48
  larger packs for enjoying at home.
• 10:51
  And we don't sell like produce or meat or things like that, but
• 10:55
  more our own baked goods. And then we have like a few
• 10:58
  freezers full of our own stuff. And we have great brands like
• 11:02
  jovial pasta, lots of like chip brands like CFA and other local
• 11:08
  brands that kind of fill the gap in terms of someone's like
• 11:11
  gluten free or just more like mindful diet of just trying to
• 11:14
  eat real food and and make sure that it tastes good.
• 11:18
  Do you only just make muffins? It's like, well, what's the
• 11:21
  range? What's the range of products
• 11:23
  that? You yeah.
• 11:24
  So in our store we make about 60 different baked goods on
• 11:27
  rotation based on some seasonal flavours as well.
• 11:31
  And then in with our wholesale partners, we did used to offer
• 11:34
  like a larger format like we do in the store of packs of like
• 11:38
  four or six of our brownies and cookies.
• 11:41
  But we found that people really liked wanted an option of a
• 11:45
  single serve item. So we launched our single serve
• 11:48
  baked goods in, I believe February of this year to have
• 11:52
  that option for smaller grocery stores, cafes, juice shops,
• 11:56
  offices, to be able to have that snack and have it also be
• 12:00
  allergen friendly. And but when you go into a
• 12:03
  coffee shop and something says gluten friendly or like made in
• 12:06
  the same kitchen that other things have been made and we
• 12:09
  want to just figure that that person feel safe eating it.
• 12:12
  So I have the products tested for gluten as well, but we have
• 12:16
  6 skews in wholesale. So we have our chocolate chunk
• 12:19
  cookie which is our best seller, our breakfast cookie which does
• 12:23
  really well in cafes cuz it's a great morning treat.
• 12:28
  And then our double chocolate cookie with we use Vancouver sea
• 12:33
  salt on top. So that's really good if you
• 12:34
  like. And then we have our brownie
• 12:37
  that's made with Kashi butter. It's really good.
• 12:39
  It's really fudgy. I love warming it up and putting
• 12:42
  vanilla ice cream on it. And, and our Mojo bar, which is
• 12:46
  like a mix between a Twix and then the Naimo bar, we actually
• 12:50
  launched it as a Twix bar. And then my sister who's a
• 12:53
  lawyer called me the day we launched into our biggest
• 12:55
  retailer, which was our first retailer.
• 12:58
  And it was like, you definitely can't call that Twix in like
• 13:01
  public. Like you could do it at the
• 13:03
  store, but you can't do it out there.
• 13:05
  So what is? It called now.
• 13:09
  It's called a Mojo Bar A. Mojo.
• 13:11
  Yeah, kind of like translates to magic.
• 13:15
  And then our last few is our peanut butter cups.
• 13:18
  So they come in like a pack of two.
• 13:20
  It's like too many peanut butter cups.
• 13:22
  So you can share with someone or you can have them all to
• 13:24
  yourself. But yeah, we, we wanted to
• 13:27
  provide like enough selection that people weren't kind of
• 13:30
  getting bored of the same thing, but not too many products that
• 13:34
  it kind of got lost and there was just like a million options
• 13:37
  to choose from, from our range. Hopefully in the next year or
• 13:40
  so, we'll add some more items or some limited edition seasonal
• 13:44
  specials for our retail partners as well.
• 13:47
  But just trying to kind of get, get going and and build some
• 13:51
  strong retail relationships. And so are you looking for
• 13:55
  expansion into the US or you prefer to expand within Canada?
• 14:00
  I mean, to be fair, I guess the US still Canada in terms of the
• 14:04
  expansion is a different market, right?
• 14:06
  Yeah, it's a really different market. the US is so massive.
• 14:11
  I think a lot of brands do focus on the US if they're able to
• 14:15
  scale at the, I guess rate and size, maybe they work with a Co
• 14:21
  Packer or they have investment backing or something like that.
• 14:25
  But US is such a big market and there's so much competition,
• 14:29
  especially in in markets like California and New York.
• 14:32
  So well, I'd love to be in the US and we get asked quite a bit.
• 14:37
  I'd really want to focus on our local area within like a few
• 14:41
  hours of us. I think we have done, you know,
• 14:44
  a decent job of, of trying to be in every little pocket so far.
• 14:48
  But we really want to go deep. Like especially within the
• 14:51
  Toronto community. It's such a local, like all the
• 14:54
  shops are just so into supporting local and it feels
• 14:57
  like you have like all these friends around you.
• 15:00
  Like when I look on my shelves at the store, instead of seeing
• 15:04
  like for example, Lake and Oak Tea, which is a, a tea brand
• 15:06
  from Hamilton, which is about an hour away from us, I see the,
• 15:10
  the founder Meredith's face kind of thing.
• 15:12
  So I want that to be how, how other CPG founders and how, how
• 15:16
  consumers see our product as well.
• 15:18
  Like really knowing who the person is or the people are
• 15:21
  behind things and maintaining quality.
• 15:24
  So we've totally like self funded the business and kind of
• 15:27
  used our retail shop to fund our CPG brand because it's, it's
• 15:32
  expensive. It's, it's a lot yet to get
• 15:35
  things going to do demos and all that.
• 15:37
  And at the end of the day, I think there's so many products
• 15:40
  out there that kind of fill a gap that the taste is second.
• 15:44
  And we really want the taste to be first.
• 15:46
  So by manufacturing in house, we've been able to keep
• 15:50
  consistency with the taste and the quality of ingredients by
• 15:54
  working with like our local suppliers.
• 15:56
  And, and I get, I get a little scared, a little bit scared of
• 15:59
  scaling too big because I don't want anyone to taste it and be
• 16:03
  like, it used to be better last year or they use it or they,
• 16:07
  they added this preservative to be on the shelf.
• 16:09
  So we'll always be in the fridge or freezer.
• 16:12
  I'm I'm pretty big sickler about that.
• 16:14
  OK. And then are you, are you, is
• 16:16
  there an ECOM part of your business?
• 16:18
  Do you? Do you?
• 16:19
  Do you ship to people? There's not really right now.
• 16:22
  Like it's almost like it's a secret that you can buy stuff
• 16:25
  from us online. You're in the process with
• 16:29
  working with an incredible web site developer that we just met
• 16:33
  a couple of months ago and her and her team are just kind of in
• 16:37
  the middle of updating our website and doing like a full
• 16:41
  refresh so that it's not right now it's like hard to shop on
• 16:45
  our website. Like I feel bad for customers
• 16:47
  because their their cart will just like empty randomly.
• 16:50
  So we should have our ecom ready for the end of November and.
• 16:55
  Can people can buy online? They like can buy online, but
• 16:59
  it's like challenging. It's I built the website myself
• 17:04
  like in 20. No, I'm not, although we met at
• 17:07
  a tech conference, I'm not a tech person.
• 17:11
  Yeah. So ecom is like a huge part of
• 17:13
  our goals for 2025. And that will be like our focus
• 17:18
  is it is expanding our wholesale reach, really like getting our
• 17:22
  e-commerce going for the first time.
• 17:24
  And then I always say I'll never open another store, but we've
• 17:27
  been looking a little bit at new locations, be a little bit
• 17:31
  closer to the hustle and bustle of Toronto.
• 17:34
  So we'll. See, that was cool.
• 17:35
  Yeah. I, I guess this is where all
• 17:37
  founders, you get pulled in so many different directions,
• 17:40
  right? Which one gets the majority of
• 17:42
  your focus? And I, I think that's a a trick.
• 17:45
  OK, as we come into sort of the the final part of the show, if
• 17:49
  there is one thing you could have done differently, or if you
• 17:53
  go back to a younger version of you and give that younger, I
• 17:57
  mean, Jesus, you're young anyway, but it's like a younger,
• 18:01
  younger version of you and give yourself some friendly advice.
• 18:05
  What would that be? Oh.
• 18:06
  That's so tough. I, I definitely am still working
• 18:09
  on my like work life balance and especially like owning like a
• 18:15
  very holistic business where I'm always preaching to people like
• 18:19
  about balance and about, you know, nourishing your body and
• 18:22
  things like that. There's definitely times where I
• 18:24
  like look up from the computer and it's 11:00 at night and I
• 18:27
  have to be in the store at 7:00 in the morning to send out
• 18:30
  deliveries. So I definitely think give
• 18:32
  yourself a little bit of grace. And I think I guess rather than
• 18:36
  something I'd forgive myself for, I think I've become a lot
• 18:39
  better of a people manager than I used to be.
• 18:41
  I used to have that like as we've talked about before, like
• 18:44
  imposter syndrome, feeling like I guess everything that anyone
• 18:49
  was doing for me in any capacity of the business was kind of like
• 18:51
  volunteer. And I like owe them like my
• 18:54
  heart and soul in exchange for their help.
• 18:56
  You think like really having clearly defined roles with
• 19:00
  everyone that you work with, whether it's like an external
• 19:02
  bookkeeper or accountant or your team or with retail partners,
• 19:07
  just having like boundaries and having things really clear is
• 19:11
  great. But at the same time, I guess
• 19:13
  something that I think has been really amazing for me is rather
• 19:18
  than looking at someone as like their job title, as just looking
• 19:21
  at them as just another person. And I think it makes it so much
• 19:25
  easier to connect with people. And I've created some of my my
• 19:29
  closest friendships through people that I've worked with on
• 19:32
  the retail side, with the grocery stores and cafes that
• 19:36
  we're in that are now like the closest, some of the closest
• 19:38
  people in my life. But when you look at their title
• 19:41
  on say LinkedIn or something, you're like, I could never even
• 19:44
  call them. So just kind of breaking down
• 19:46
  those walls and, and really asking for help.
• 19:49
  I've found a lot of great, like informal mentors in the
• 19:53
  industry, especially in CPG that I'll call and ask like, Hey,
• 19:57
  what do you think of this design?
• 19:59
  And when we were launching our new single serve packaging, I
• 20:02
  was going to put a window on it. And one of my friends who owns a
• 20:05
  very successful pancake mix company.
• 20:08
  It was like, there's going to be chocolate smudge all over that
• 20:11
  window. It looks so bad and no one's
• 20:14
  going to buy it. And literally in 15 seconds of
• 20:17
  him telling me that he's like take, he's like, go get nice
• 20:21
  photos taken of it and put just like a nice photo on the front.
• 20:23
  And of course, my sister's a professional photographer.
• 20:26
  So we got to work the next day and submitted our packaging
• 20:30
  shortly after. And it's definitely one of the
• 20:32
  things that we're most complimented on.
• 20:33
  So I think like taking people's advice and allowing people in
• 20:37
  rather than trying to do everything yourself.
• 20:39
  I still obviously need to work on that too, but people are
• 20:43
  there to help and people are experts and things that you're
• 20:46
  not. So except the help because
• 20:50
  people are going to stop offering after a while if you
• 20:52
  keep I. Think you don't need it, right.
• 20:54
  So they don't want to bother you.
• 20:55
  So it makes sense. Yeah.
• 20:57
  Listen, I think I fundamentally believe that there's a need for
• 21:01
  your product in every country that I've been to because there
• 21:05
  are so many people that are unserved because I, I always
• 21:09
  think, you know, I have it in my own family.
• 21:11
  You may be gluten intolerant, but then when you're dairy
• 21:14
  intolerant, it sort of narrow, really narrows down what you can
• 21:17
  have. And as you said, people say, oh,
• 21:19
  it's, it's, it's friendly to gluten.
• 21:21
  It may have dairy and I'm actually consequences.
• 21:24
  So you talked about your consequences about hives, but
• 21:27
  there's loads of unfortunate, you know, it's uncomfortable for
• 21:30
  people when they eat the wrong thing.
• 21:32
  And in the UK we've had some really horror stories of, you
• 21:36
  know, unfortunate fatalities from nut allergies or things
• 21:40
  that have contaminated food. So I do think it's it's
• 21:44
  something that will continue to grow.
• 21:45
  So I expect to see you in somewhere in a Target or Walmart
• 21:49
  in a in a couple of years. Yeah, yeah.
• 21:51
  Never say never. You know, I think that the most
• 21:54
  important thing is exactly what you said, like being able to to
• 21:57
  meet people where they are and have that option for people
• 22:00
  because there is someone in every family or in every friend
• 22:03
  group that does need this type of thing or whatever for
• 22:07
  whatever reason they may be. It doesn't matter really, but I
• 22:12
  think so many more people need it then then people realise and
• 22:16
  having that option really goes a long way.
• 22:18
  And I think I've seen that first hand where customers will come
• 22:21
  in and say, oh, I bought this pack of brownies because my so
• 22:24
  and so is gluten free. And they were just so happy and,
• 22:27
  and just felt so much more comfortable at my house and felt
• 22:30
  like they, they put their bag of snacks they brought with them,
• 22:33
  they put away and just enjoyed what we had to offer them.
• 22:35
  So I think that that sense of belonging and and emotional
• 22:39
  piece to it is, is really what it kind of comes down to.
• 22:43
  Yeah, that's fantastic. Molly.
• 22:44
  Thank you so much for carving some time out in your busy day
• 22:48
  and being with us. I really appreciate it.
• 22:50
  Thank you so much for having me.