Latest / Imagine If with Doone Roisin | Health, Wealth & Wisdom for Women (formerly Female Startup Club Podcast) / Lizanne Falsetto on selling thinkThin® for $217 million & how she’s starting all over again with betterland foods™ to disrupt the future of food (part 1)

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Lizanne Falsetto on selling thinkThin® for $217 million & how she’s starting all over again with betterland foods™ to disrupt the future of food (part 1) · Imagine If with Doone Roisin | Health, Wealth & Wisdom for Women (formerly Female Startup Club Podcast)

• 0:00
  This is Lizanne Falsetto for Female Startup Club. Hello, it's Dune here, your host and hype girl. Today on the show, we're learning from Lizanne Falsetto, the founder of Think Thin and Betterland Foods.
• 0:23
  Lisanne began her entrepreneurial journey at her kitchen table, inspired both by a family recipe and a strong desire to solve a personal problem. On that table, the original Think Thin bar was created, a revolutionary product that would become one of the most sought after health foods on the market.
• 0:43
  Her original instinct for a clear market opportunity in health food evolved into a 20-year tenure as founder and CEO of one of the fastest growing health food brands in history and was eventually acquired for $217 million in 2015.
• 1:01
  Fast forward to 2020, as the pandemic disrupted life all over the world, she was intrigued by the influx of food scientists creating cleaner alternative proteins without the direct use of animals. These discoveries rekindled her entrepreneurial verve and led her to establish Betterland Foods, a new venture committed to creating craveable, delicious foods that are better for people and better for the planet.
• 1:27
  Now, there are just so many learnings and lessons woven into this episode, and I'm so excited to be able to share this inspiring conversation with you. If you love it as much as I did and you learned something from this, please do share it on Instagram, tagging us, or by leaving a review to help other ears find us. Let's get into this episode. This is Lizanne for Female Startup Club. Lizanne, hi. Welcome to the show. Hi.
• 1:54
  Thank you. It's so nice to be here with you. It's so nice to have you. I'm very excited about getting into the nitty gritty of the first brand that you built from scratch to a huge acquisition and especially what you're doing now with your new company, Round Two, so impressive, and what you're doing for the future of food.
• 2:16
  Where do you like to start this story? Because I kind of want to go like way back, way, way back, pre, like sometime in the 90s and kind of start there at the very beginning. Yeah.
• 2:26
  Sure, yes. I think starting in the 1990s takes us back, doesn't it? God, I can't believe how many years that is now. It's almost 30 years, 30 plus. So I really started my business, Think Thin, from a desire to have food that I could eat on the go. And back in the day when I was in the fashion industry, I had to travel a lot from location to location. And what I really realized is that food,
• 2:55
  gave me energy and it helped me stay focused. And I needed that through the jet lag and travel and being on top of my game. And so when I came back to the States in 1993, I'm from a big Italian family. So food was a very big part of my life. And I decided I'm gonna be a chef. So I got into the kitchen and I love to cook. It's my favorite thing to do. Even in a busy day, I would always hibernate into the kitchen with my glass of wine
• 3:24
  and just focus on the food, let everything go. And it brought me very much back to my childhood, kind of my comfort zone. And I started taking my grandmother's cookies. She had a brownie, beautiful brownie, and a beautiful peanut butter cookie. And I thought if I could pull out the sugar and add protein to this, I could possibly create a product that could be portable on the go, and people could eat it
• 3:53
  just to keep their energy up. So I started making these huge slabs of bars. And during that time, I was still modeling. And I would take them to the fashion shows, and I would throw them to the other girls and say, try this. What do you think? It got to the point where every night I was cooking in my kitchen, baking these two products, putting them in plastic bags. And that's when I realized,
• 4:23
  Mm-hmm. And so how did you get started in building a brand? How did you know what to do and what steps to take? Yeah, I didn't know what to do. I honestly didn't know that I was even creating a business, truly. It was so organic and so natural in the way that I...
• 4:43
  walked the path of entrepreneurism. And what I learned through that process compared to where I'm at today is that I fell into building ThinkThin because it was meant to happen. I purposely launched Betterland Foods because I learned from that 30 years of building that brand
• 5:06
  what the food industry is about and how I could attack it on a different level of thinking. So I think through Think Thin, I took the steps to learn by, if I didn't know what I was gonna do, I hired a consultant to come in and teach me. And I always said it's Harvard for a day. So if it was about logistics or gas, how do I think about logistics and fuel?
• 5:33
  in relationship to transporting my product by truckloads. I would bring in a logistics expert for a day and I asked every question I could and I learned. So I always had Harvard for a day that would help me get to the next level if I didn't know what I was doing.
• 5:51
  I love that as a concept, Harvard for a day with your consultants. Very cool. Obviously, the landscape is so vastly different in the 90s, right? Like we don't have social media. Facebook doesn't exist. Instagram 100% doesn't exist. No one knows what TikTok is. How were you actually getting the word out there in those early years, like outside of these women that you knew through the modeling industry? Like how did you start to gain that traction where you were like, oh, I'm actually onto something here, like in a really big way?
• 6:20
  It's a great question because we didn't have internet. We didn't have immediate gratification. You couldn't get your message out into the hands of somebody that then could blast it out to a hundred thousand people like you can today, which is a pro and a con, I think in today's marketing world, I would do traditional PR. I would go to Barnes and Noble.
• 6:43
  I would sit down at a table and I would grab every magazine that I thought had an interconnection to food. And I would find the editor and I would send, at that time it was a Twix or a fax, or I would communicate through phone. I would call, and I used to call it dialing for dollars, you know, the old rotary phones.
• 7:10
  And you would say, hi, Lizanne, I created this product. Can I send you some? And then I started getting really creative. And on holidays, I would get little bouquets of flowers and I would put bars in them and I would send them to the buyer's desk. And at that point, I started to get a little more attention. I sampled the living daylights out of the product. If you have food that you're selling, you want it to be eaten so people understand what it drives.
• 7:39
  the energy level, the protein level, how it actually makes you feel. And so my campaign was around giving as many samples to as many buyers and people as possible, feeding them. And once they ate it, realized this is really good. This bar doesn't taste like a power bar, which was a great product, but it was for triathletes. It tasted really hard and chewy. You needed to run or
• 8:07
  or hike or do a triathlon for 25 miles. My product was a product that I wanted you to be able to eat to sustain your appetite, to give you energy. So I really used the dial for dollars and sampling concept when I started out.
• 8:25
  And was that primarily to get into retail stores? Like the business at this time, because the internet was really new then, right? Like, I don't know, do we even have websites at this point? I can't really remember. Just starting. You probably weren't born yet. I was born. I was definitely born. Okay. Well, you look so good. You're so young. That's great. How old are you? Thank you. I'm 32. Yeah. Good for you. Good for you. 33 this year, actually. 33.
• 8:55
  Oh, really? Does it feel weird to be 33? Yeah. It's funny. I love my 30s. I loved every 30s, 40s. I love my 50s. And I think that's the attitude that we should have when we're doing what we're doing. Age is only a number. And for me, when I look back in my 30s, it was really when I was building the crooks of my brand. And
• 9:23
  The way that I wanted to jump into retail was to focus on Whole Foods. I believed that my brand could halo natural in portability. And so I focused very much on Trader Joe's. And back then, that's when Trader Joe's had huge distribution. And I focused on Whole Foods. Two of the women from Trader Joe's, Annette Davidson,
• 9:49
  And EO Roof and Whole Foods were the two women that gave me my first break.
• 9:55
  Annette Davidson sits on my board for a small foundation that I do for female entrepreneurs and has been my friend for 30 plus years. Think Thin is still on the shelf at Trader J's. Oh my God, that's so cool. Yeah. You build relationships with people that you're with and you work with. And that's another thing. You always want to be careful to never burn your bridges if there is an issue, especially when
• 10:23
  you know, it always comes back around. It always comes back around. So always watch the relationships and end them with professionalism. There's times I look back, even today, I never thought I'd be back in the food industry and I can go back to a buyer at Whole Foods and call them. And even though I had to spend a little more money on margin or distribution,
• 10:42
  We had that relationship, that trust with each other. So building relationships and keeping them solid is really important. But Whole Foods was the first take for me because they had the natural banner. They brought in this awareness that when you shopped at Whole Foods early on in Whole Foods career, everything that you bought was the best, the best blueberries, right? The best granola.
• 11:12
  Everything they did was really, really spectacular. And so I focused on Whole Foods and Trader Joe's. And that's how I built my business. I hired people to help me with sales and distribution because that's a difficult, difficult path. Retail is a game. It's a game. And you have to understand the margins of what it takes to get on the shelf.
• 11:38
  And then how hard it is to pull the product off the shelf. That's even more difficult. You can put your product on the shelf, but how do you pull it off? How do you get the consumers to understand? And I was creating a new category. I was number three back in the day. There's now 192 brands in the bar market. We sat in candy. Now, coincidentally, you look at where we're at today. I'm going after candy and I'm making my...
• 12:07
  my candy bars on nutrition bar equipment. And back in the 1990s, the late 1990s, I was making nutrition bars on candy equipment. So it's this weird path that I'm walking down that I, it's deja vu and deja vu and deja vu. It's really interesting to be in this place.
• 12:27
  It is really interesting. And I'm wondering, you know, when you're talking about getting product back off the shelf and having to educate the consumer and educate on this new category that you introduced that was also sitting in the candy section, you know, which probably had to change over at some point. How were you educating the consumer and reaching people outside of PR and kind of, you know, just getting that more awareness within the store? Consistent messaging. Consistent messaging.
• 12:54
  I learned early on that consistency to the consumer, when you have limited ways to get the voice out there,
• 13:04
  And I think even today, because you're immediate, to stay consistent, I was very consistent with 20 grams of protein, gluten-free, and sugar-free. Those were the three banners that my brand stood on. And even though we changed our outfit and our colors of our dresses, the wrappers and the boxes evolved over time with messaging, I always stayed true to
• 13:27
  20 grams of protein is what you need to eat in a day. And as we were looking at this category, when the buyers finally said, Whole Foods said, we're going to open up a category, a nutrition bar category. We're going to give you a four foot set, which is quite a small set. Maybe five or six brands could sit there with three or four SKUs per brand. So it's quite a small platform in the retail store.
• 13:51
  What they realized is even though our ring was under $3, which your penny profit at retail is not that high for a small volume ring, the demand of portability at that time was there. And buyers, consumers that were buyers that were walking the aisle were.
• 14:10
  wanted to have that product in their pocket or in their purse or in their desk. And so we were able to do a lot of promotions on box sales. So instead of individual, I would say, buy a box and get 20% off, put it in your pantry. So we were very much sticking to our messaging, 20 grams of protein, low sugar, gluten-free. Think was the first product that ever had gluten-free on it.
• 14:38
  And that was another hurdle because gluten now drives 22% of category growth. It has its own category at retail. Back then, people were like, wait, if you eat gluten, are they going to think you get sick to your stomach? There was a misunderstanding of allergens in relationship to food. And so that messaging was also very consistent.
• 15:02
  Buyers would say, take that off your wrapper. Don't have it on your wrapper. I said, no, no, let's give the consumer some time to realize that gluten is glue. I didn't like gluten. It made me feel bloated. I'm not a celiac, but I have sensitivity. And I truly believe that allergens within food
• 15:21
  are the wave of the future. People are starting to read labels. They understand that food could make them sick if they don't eat the right foods. And they're starting to listen to their bodies more. And I think the pandemic helped that process. So I stayed very consistent with my messaging. I did a lot of promotions to put the box in the pantry because then the mom, the son, the daughter, the dad, whoever wanted could grab it and go.
• 15:50
  Yeah, that's a really interesting point. And I can see exactly why that works. So amazing. We have like so much time to cover. So I want to kind of stick around those first, like decade, first 10 to 15 years when you were still bootstrapping the brand before you started to think about that strategic partnership and going down that funding path. In those 10, 15 years, what were the key kind of milestones that kept the business going forward, whether they were good or bad, but kind of
• 16:20
  in the journey, the big milestones? Well, I think that the biggest milestones were as the category was growing with large CPGs, Hershey's, Kraft, Nestle, people that are coming in dole, that are coming in with products. What I realized through that process is they have the dollars, but they don't have the soul.
• 16:45
  When you have a brand that's authentic to its message, it thrives. It almost grows on itself. And so it was very important to keep the messaging on point. It was also very important to have the right skew prioritization. In the nutrition bar category, there was flavor fatigue.
• 17:05
  And so we'd come out with a lemon or an orange. I had an orange flavored morning. I had a sugar donut flavor. I had French toast. We tried to constantly keep flavors, keeping them intact. So consumers weren't getting flavor fatigue. That was very important. The next step was moving from natural to mass and grocery.
• 17:29
  Retail at mass and grocery are extremely difficult because of the margins that they play. And some of the larger CPGs, the global brands could come in with a lower price point and disrupt the category. And so I had to be very on top of my game when it came to price point deal flow and
• 17:51
  how often I was on deal. And then how does my price from natural to mass to club, how does the margins work in each line of distribution?
• 18:04
  If anybody is in the food world, one thing I would say to you is make sure that you have your margins for mass grocery drug and club intact before you even go to market. Understand that different skew prioritization. Sometimes you'll have one with five bars or 10 bars or 12 bars. But competitive margin pull can really cause you a headache. And so that was something I learned is how to control my margin properly.
• 18:31
  how to make sure that in different categories, the price point was familiar to that consumer and not too under or too over a price. And then the next biggest thing was production. How do I make sure I can produce? And how do I diversify production?
• 18:49
  When you take one product and you lift that formula and give it to another manufacturer, it's never exact. It can never be exact because it's not made on the same equipment. Even if the ingredients are exact. It's like if I brought to you in your kitchen all the ingredients to make something, but yet your oven didn't work as well, right? That would cause a dynamic with that.
• 19:15
  So I think the journey of distribution, price point and production were a laser focus. And then for me, when I saw the different brands coming in, they were coming in with less of an amount of protein and proteins expensive.
• 19:38
  So my price point was being squeezed. So I had to adjust and really understand that if my messaging stayed on point, that 20 grams of protein is what your body can absorb in a meal, the consumer will catch up with that through education. But there was a timeframe where it was an investment spend in building a message that was consistent. And I think that was a difficult process too, because when a Clif Bar would come in,
• 20:08
  And they're just a cookie with very little protein. They had a ton of sugar, different platform. They tasted great, but they really weren't focused on functional energy like mine was. Their price point could be 99 cents when my price point was 269.
• 20:27
  And so what we had to do is we had to explain to the buyers that the penny profit that they made off of our product was higher than 10 Clif Bars that they were selling. But what retailers don't understand is their penny profit per store per pull. And so it was this growth of education for the retailer also in categories that are new.
• 20:50
  And that took some time to absorb. I think those were the hardest part. For me, I never ever went out for financing, didn't know how to do it, didn't even think about it. I financed my payables to my receivables by watching a 15 to 20% variance. I never went over a 15 to 20% on my payables to my receivables. So I was very focused on what goes out
• 21:18
  has to come in to pay what goes out. And so that was kind of the mathematical equation that I did until I ended up hiring a CFO, which was the best thing I ever did. And what kind of led you to that point where you were thinking, hey, I actually am going to go out and look for strategic partnership here to explore the idea of a sale and selling my business?
• 21:42
  Well, honestly, I decided to go out in 2012 because I was going through a divorce. And it was really difficult when you build a business and you're going through an emotional hardship. We were together a long time.
• 22:03
  And many reasons why it didn't work out. But I think the hardest part was knowing that half my business that I worked so hard for was going to be split. And at that point, I realized I needed to put together a team of advisors.
• 22:21
  And I would say early on for a lot of entrepreneurs, make sure that you have your personal financial situation, especially if you get married during the process or you're married as you go through the process, so that you understand the ramifications down the line. Here in California, it's a 50-50 state.
• 22:40
  And so at that point, I had had an attorney who's still my attorney. He's been my attorney. We were just laughing yesterday, 32 years. My home office financial advisors have been with me for over 25 years. And I have a team that I can go to and feel excited.
• 22:59
  open, I trust them, I can bounce things off of them. I would advise every young entrepreneur to do that early. Make sure that's upfront. Understand your personal financial wherewithal. In 2012, for me, when I decided to fundraise, I did it because I
• 23:17
  I realized, A, the brand was really growing. People were starting to understand about protein. And in order for me to jump the hurdle of this large category, at this point, there was probably 55 brands. And I had started, I was number three. It changes, right? The competition is harder. So you have to spend more money to communicate your brand. And
• 23:41
  One of the good things about Think Thin was A, the name. I think it really hit people. Think Food for Thought was where we started. And then I added Thin. And about in 2006, I added Thin after Think. And what I loved about that concept was trademark and understanding trademarks. That's another very important part of a business is understanding how to manage your trademarks first.
• 24:09
  I had used Think as my main. And then after I had solidified that name, knowing I owned it, anything I put after it was an extra perk. So I had Think Thin. I had Think Green. I had Think Organic when I launched an organic bar. I had Think Protein. And it really helped me through that process. But in 2012, after...
• 24:34
  I had six different SKUs of products and it was sitting under this vitality banner. So one was for fruit and nut, one was for low carb, one was for satiating your weight. One was a fruit and nut organic product.
• 24:49
  What I realized is that I was focusing on too many subjects to the consumer and I was confusing them. And I had to pull back and make a decision. Do I let these five SKUs go and focus only on protein? And what I decided on was yes. And so from that point, I knew I had to raise money.
• 25:12
  I had to raise money because, A, I wanted to make sure that there was a clean, fair break with my divorce. And I was fair in negotiating that. And that I had money to move forward to help build my message and stay laser focused on protein.
• 25:34
  And so that's when I went out and I partnered with a VC who came in and actually bought my ex-husband out, put money into the business with me. And we then took it all the way to the final sale in 2015. My gosh. So the sale was, I read, $217 million. That's just totally bananas. Yeah.
• 25:55
  But I also read that you had someone, I think it was Hershey's, trying to acquire you for $54 million at some point in that time after you'd raised, and they flaked from the deal, which obviously worked out for the better. What happened? Yeah, it's such a good question because you want to talk about going to Harvard for a year. I, in 2004, I was,
• 26:21
  My brand was on fire at Whole Foods. And I remember sitting at this Expo West show in Anaheim and Whole Foods has this convention where they come in for a couple hours and they tell you, here's the category and they throw everything up on the screen. And I was sitting there and I remember the buyer saying, and Think Then is the number one product in demand. And I remember sitting back going, oh my God, I didn't even know that. I didn't realize that my product was a low carb product.
• 26:52
  It sat next to Dr. Atkins, but Dr. Atkins could not get into natural. And what a lot of the bigger CBGs want is to own some of the natural category, but yet their food doesn't have the right ingredients. And so Hershey saw that and they said, ah, I could pick up this amount of ACV in the natural category to be able to then grow my Hershey's brand. So they came after me.
• 27:22
  I did a year of due diligence. I actually even moved my entire business to Nevada, became a Nevada resident for three years, which I think was the crook of my divorce. I was laser focused on the business, traveling back and forth, and you can only be back in the States a certain amount of time. And it was very stressful. I had two young kids with me, babies,
• 27:48
  And I went through due diligence with Hershey's for a year. They would fly me out in their jet. They'd fly me back to their corporate office. They'd come back and they'd take me to their R&D labs. It was a really interesting process. And what I learned through that process is that the larger corporations were
• 28:13
  food companies want to invest in the younger entrepreneurs because we think outside the box or not in the box. We don't have to go through so many layers to get things approved. And innovation comes from the younger entrepreneurial blood. And they wanted to understand how I created this nutrition bar with protein, without sugar,
• 28:38
  And how I stayed on the track of the communication, they came in with an offer, 54 million was the exact number. And I remember it was seven days before the money was supposed to drop into the account. And I got a call from the financial banker who said, are you sitting down?
• 28:59
  And I said, oh no, what happened? And he said, Dr. Atkins slipped in New York and hit his head. And now there's lawsuits about net effective carbs. So what had happened is, is Dr. Atkins did not have the proper FDA approval to label anything net effective carb. Low carb was based off of the net effective carb. And so my packaging had that on it. And Hershey saw it coming down the line.
• 29:29
  through SPIN's Mentel Nielsen data and said, this is a risk. And they were right. The whole category blew up. It took me weeks to get over that. And then I had relocated back to Angela. And the lesson, so the lesson, what is the lesson learned? The lesson learned is that any time that you go into a trend and you follow that trend, and there's long-term trends and short-term trends,
• 29:57
  make sure that the trend is approved through the process of the FDA, the food regulatory systems, because, um,
• 30:07
  I didn't catch that. I rode the wave thinking that Atkins, who was at that point, I don't know, 500 million, they were selling so much product. They had a vast array of different products to offer for the low carb community. People were losing weight. Their bodies were going into ketosis, but it all worked except for the fact that there was lawsuits at the end of it. So at that point,
• 30:37
  every single grocer, every single retailer said, you have to change your wrappers out. You have to pull everything off the shelf. So I went through six months of not having product from a $33 million brand that had huge distribution in Walmart, all the way down CVS to drug, even into Costco. And I had to completely revamp my brand. It was probably one of the hardest times in my life.
• 31:06
  I relocated back from Nevada to LA. I realized that if you're living in LA, you live here for a reason. So you pay the taxes. I learned that very quickly, not to relocate just because of that. I did it legally and I did it the right path, but the stress on the body and the energy was just tough. And so it took me...
• 31:31
  Close to three years to revamp. And that's when I started staying extremely focused on protein. I had a few other bars. I had the organic and the fruit product because I was afraid that I might trend towards one trend to micro instead of having more of a variety of a brand.
• 31:54
  But the lessons were really valuable to me. And I also learned that if you ever put your company up for sale, it's very difficult to run the business and go through due diligence. And so this time around, when I sold in 2015, we brought in a VP company.
• 32:14
  that actually came in as CEO and I was able to do due diligence on the backend and focus on that. And she ran the business to keep the numbers up and it was the smartest thing, but I learned that, right? I had to make a mistake to learn it. So what,
• 32:31
  One of the things I always say is I don't know how many times I hit the wall and bruised my forehead. But what I realized as an entrepreneur was to make that left or that right turn and hold yourself high to I can make mistakes, but I can move quick. You know, if you're going to fail quick and know that you failed and learn from that journey and move forward.
• 32:54
  Wow, gosh. And I mean, obviously worked out so much more amazing from that mistake in the Hershey's kind of drama. But wow, like that's a big one. How did you feel after you sold the business? I read that you left the business. You kind of like were out of it. What were you doing when you like woke up the next morning? Like it would be such a strange transition after you've spent, you know, decades of your life building this company. Yeah.
• 33:22
  I felt lonely. You know, I felt lonely. I felt worthless. Felt like I, I, I, my identity was about what I did and striving every day to work and how I did that. I, I realized that I was a workaholic. I was a workaholic.
• 33:47
  And I love what I do. I don't do it for the money. I do it because I want to make a change in the food system. And I also realized that I needed to put more balance in my life. And so how do I put more balance in my life learning that...
• 34:05
  you can be able to take a day off and it's good for you to do that. And so I learned a lot through the process, but I did have a come to Jesus meeting with who am I and what am I doing? And, and now what's next. And I remember I was being interviewed. It was a vanity fair interview and the woman that was interviewing me, and this is like 48 hours after I sold and I was still in shock. She said to me, so what's next?
• 34:36
  And I paused and said, wait, you're asking me what's next? I haven't even gotten, I'm so hung over from the last 20 years of building this business. What's next is sleep. I have no idea what's next. They put that on you to the point where you then put it on your shoulder saying, I got to do something else because I'm not doing anything. I'm not adding value. And I would say that to anybody that's looking at selling their business, be ready to
• 35:05
  mentally and spiritually and emotionally before you sell your business. Do the work. Understand that your value with this brand and the goal of selling it is an incredible success, but it doesn't identify who you are as a human being.
• 35:21
  I think that's really important. But when you're type A, which I am, and I love to work, I love to stay creative in my brain. It makes me happy. But I can also take a day and go lay by the beach or be with my kids and take a hike and a walk during the day and not feel guilty now. So I understand better.
• 35:45
  how to put it in perspective. And I think it's because I'm older too. It's a different way of thinking when you're older, but that was a really big lesson for me. Yeah, absolutely. I can imagine. Wow, what a journey. Let's talk about Betterland Food. Let's talk about your new business. What kind of inspired you to get started again and go for round two? And why you landed on products with cow-free milk?
• 36:14
  Yes, the COVID baby. So this is right before COVID hit. And I have to tell you, my kids thought I was crazy through COVID. In January, when I was watching what was happening with COVID, and this is right at the peak, I was telling people, we're going to shut down. This is going to shut the world down. I kept saying, you're paranoid, Lizanne. I said, no, I'm telling you, this is so big and out of control that
• 36:43
  There has to be a way to shut yourself indoors. And I don't know, something just told me that it was going to go bad. I even sold a lot of stock at that point. And really, we didn't know about COVID until March or April when it was coming through. And so what I started to do was focus on what was happening in the commodity market and
• 37:06
  alternative proteins are really interesting what's happening. And you think about whey protein, soy protein, hemp protein at that point, you know, cannabis was, was being legalized. How does hemp protein help with building muscle? And I started really researching
• 37:25
  about fermentation proteins without the cow. And then I started focusing on the planet. I have a small orchard here where I live and I have avocado trees. And I started to understand water and soil a lot more.
• 37:42
  And through COVID, I would start to manage my water and how much per tree and how many avocados I'm getting per tree. And I started to realize through that process the respect for farmers. And so their sustainable side of this business came in.
• 38:01
  As I was walking through this journey of managing the orchard, because I couldn't have a lot of people on the property with COVID and I had to make sure that I was able to keep my trees alive. So I did a lot of research there. So simultaneously, as I was looking at the proteins and the alternative protein space, I was also understanding what the farmers are going through in today's world and the planet and how you don't know where water's coming from. We're in a major drought here.
• 38:28
  I mean, right now, the almond industry is in very big trouble. They have a 10% allowance that was just taken from them on water because to grow one almond takes one gallon of water.
• 38:41
  And so we're getting the squeeze in the food industry that's coming into play. And through that tension comes out white stars. And I find the Perfect Day protein, the brand is called Perfect Day. It's a fermentation process protein. It is made by two young millennials, very bright, Ryan and Paramel, and
• 39:06
  I decided to reach out to Perfect Day and fill out a form online. And they immediately got back to me the next day. And that started the relationship. And they asked me to create a nutrition bar with their Perfect Day protein. And when you think about their protein, it's a whey protein that is cloned through a fermentation process.
• 39:36
  than what a cow whey casing protein is. They removed the microflora and they created this beautiful fluffy protein that blends well, you can mix it. It made beautiful nougat in the nutrition bar. And
• 39:55
  I started talking to them through this process and said, send me some more protein. Let me play with it. So I went back in my kitchen, which is so interesting. Back to the kitchen. It's exactly where it was my favorite place as a child was my grandmother. It's exactly where I went with Think Thin. And now it's exactly where I'm at with Betterland. So it's almost like,
• 40:20
  started making nutrition bars, but I wanted them to be candy. So I took Snickers and Milky Way and all five of the top candies and,
• 40:33
  and went back to perfect day and said, I will use your protein, but I want to disrupt candy. So that was the first part. Candy is an 80-year-old category. What you eat in the candy aisle, keep in mind, 80 years. So every ingredient that's put in that product, which is why it tastes so good and it's addictive, is horrible for you. Too much sugar, palm kernel oil, and
• 40:57
  Not enough protein, not enough fiber, no vitamins whatsoever. And so I thought, you know what? I'll flip candy on its head. I started there when I was in Think Thin back in the day. They had me next to Panda Licorice. Why not go back? So that's where I started. Then I started playing with the protein in my blender.
• 41:16
  And that's when I realized that this could be something. And I reached out to Bill Picard, who's my president at Betterland Foods. He's one of the smartest R&D operational heads that I've worked with. And I walked him through the process of what I wanted to do. And he said, you know, we could make a milk out of that. So that's when we started playing with the idea of bringing a cow-free milk into the world.
• 41:46
  When you think about where we're at with human health and the largest commodity, which is dairy, the carbon imprint, the planet, what is next? And I truly believe that the fermentation, precision fermentation of proteins and soon to be saturated fats is the wave of the future.
• 42:12
  It is ingredients that will help the planet, but not compromise on taste. And consumers are smart. They want something that tastes good. They want something that's good for them. And the bonus that it's good for the planet is just an extra pat on the back right now. But I do believe in the future, people will be supporting the planet and what's happening. The millennials today are smart. Their hands are in it.
• 42:41
  They support brands that support sustainability.
• 42:46
  But when I think about milk, I think about being a child. I had milk three times a day with my meals. Drink your milk with your eggs. And then at lunch, have your peanut butter sandwich with your milk. But I don't like almond milk and oat milk. It doesn't bake well. It doesn't froth. It's not thick. It has no shelf life. It's not good for the environment. What are Betterland cow-free milk
• 43:13
  does is, is it gives you protein, calcium, gives you more protein than milk. It gives you calcium equal to gives you all the vitamins and supplements, and it takes away the cow and it doesn't compromise taste. And so this brand for me is, is a legacy brand. This is where I want to be able to say in the next three to five years that the 870 million people that are starving around the world
• 43:42
  can actually be able to have enough food because we can produce enough to be able to help them thrive, especially mothers with children that can't even breastfeed because they're hungry. There's a whole conversation around that that just is frightening. Nobody should be hungry and nobody should be cold. Those are the two things that I truly believe. So if I can make a slight difference by helping people
• 44:11
  have something that they can drink and eat and, and cook with and play with and feel good about that. That's probably the biggest legacy I can leave on the planet.
• 44:23
  That's amazing. What a vision. And it's so true. Milk is really in everything. Every cake mix, everything you buy in the supermarket, yogurt, cheese, cakes, whatever, like it's all got milk in it. It is one of those really big problems that needs to be solved in a really massive way, a really massive way. It's really exciting. And I'm in awe of what you're doing. So cool.
• 44:48
  Where is the business today and what does this year look like? What can you shout about right now? Oh, thank you for giving me that platform. I appreciate it. So wubar.com and betterlandmilk.com will be selling products August 1st. We're going to go direct to consumer first and communicate who we are, how we did it, why we did it.
• 45:16
  There is an education here, just like Think, where it's a new category. People still don't understand fermentation, even though it's been in beer for hundreds of years, yeast and bread, kombucha. It is just connecting the dots to an old way of thinking about bringing food to the table. So we plan on communicating that through a milkman campaign we're going to do, which is...
• 45:44
  per game with Amazon and you can actually buy the product and have it delivered right to your door. It comes in a really cool plant-based cardboard that has, it looks like it's a, it's actually a crate printed on top of it and it gets delivered right to your door. You can have the milk with a 12 month shelf life. So you don't have to go out and buy milk every week. Like what a lot of people have to do.
• 46:13
  And starting January of 2023, we go into retail. Our goal at retail is to work with retailers that are like-minded and understand that their refrigeration space needs to be lower because of the carbon imprint. And people like Sprouts, Whole Foods, Trader Joe's are very conscious of the planet. And so with that in mind,
• 46:41
  We're working on programs at retail to be able to communicate this brand tastes delicious. It's cost effective. You don't have to throw it away. It can go in your pantry. It's convenient. So that's kind of the goal. I really believe that the dairy farmers are opening their eyes to what's happening and they're struggling to do their job really well. We're not trying to get rid of dairy.
• 47:09
  What we're trying to do is add an arm to help people have the performance, the right supplement functionality of the product, which is what we deliver with our protein and calcium and the vitamins that are equal to. And the sustainable side of you don't have to refrigerate it. So your carbon imprint goes down there. Our water use, it's one gallon of milk takes three gallons of water. We're one for one.
• 47:36
  We're lower than anybody on the shelf right now. And our flavor, taste, performance is the best. So when you have a latte at Starbucks and you do it with oat milk, it goes flat. When you have it with Betterland milk, it stays foamy to the point where you drink the whole coffee and you still have a puddle of gorgeous foamy cream at the bottom of it. So performance is very important. I think the next six months is about,
• 48:06
  having chefs cook with it. We have some hotels that are bringing it in. Just introducing it on a platform of taste it, see it for yourself, and then understand the depth of what we're doing for the planet. Gosh, I'm so excited to try it. Wow. Very, very exciting. The future is exciting. I'll bring you some. I'll be in London.
• 48:30
  Oh my gosh, please do. I would love that. I will, I will. Gosh, this has been such a great episode.
• 48:41
  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.
• 49:05
  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.
• 49:28
  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.
• 49:45
  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.
• 50:09
  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.
• 50:32
  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.