[00:00:00] Speaker A: Yeah, that was a really emotional day for me.
I had been sick for about nine months prior to the diagnosis. We immediately started doing some tests for gluten and dairy and soy and the things that immediately come to mind. About a week prior to the diagnosis, my doctor looked at me and said, well, maybe you have hiv. Gluten is in most of the foods we eat. It is a coloring, it is preservative, and it is a filler.
So things like Pepsi Cola, Diet Coke, or Pepsi Cola, Diet Coke and even ginger ale have gluten in them because it's in caramel color.
[00:00:41] Speaker B: In 2013, after I had about 2ft of my small intestine removed, I received a diagnosis of Crohn's disease. I remember the day. I remember exactly how I felt. And that really kicked us off on a journey that has led us to where we are right now, owning and operating a first generation regenerative farm.
Today's guest also got a similar diagnosis in 2012. Caroline, would you please take us back to that day? And what. What were you feeling?
[00:01:14] Speaker A: Yeah, that was a really emotional day for me.
I had been sick for about nine months prior to the diagnosis.
I started off with some really simple sort of unconcerning symptoms, just like indigestion that I talked to a primary care provider about.
We immediately started doing some tests for gluten and dairy and soy and the things that immediately come to mind. And all the blood tests came back negative.
And over the course of the nine months, my immune system started failing. I started with some indigestion, some gas that turned into my hair falling out, my skin turning gray, and. And my abdomen was distended. It was more than bloated. It was, like, completely distended.
I had body aches, I had fatigue.
And about a week prior to the diagnosis, my doctor looked at me and said, well, maybe you have hiv. And that was really shocking. That was really hard to hear.
As a single person who has been very ill for nearly a year, I was thinking back to, like, oh, gosh, imagine the crescendo of thoughts that go through your mind when you hear that.
And so when I did get the diagnosis, I just had a colonoscopy and endoscopy. They'd found the antibodies for celiac disease in my blood and gave me a piece of paper and was like, basically, don't eat bread or pasta. And that was it. I was, in that moment, relieved, because to me, celiac disease felt like a better diagnosis than HIV.
Certainly this was now over 10 years ago. And I know that things have changed with regards to that, but at the time or for anyone, I was like, okay, do you need bread or pasta? Of course. I, over the course of sort of learning how to deal with my autoimmune disease and heal my body, learned that sort of not eating bread and pasta is sort of just the beginning. And it's a much bigger diagnosis than that. Gluten is in most of the foods we eat. It is a coloring, it is a preservative, and it is a filler. So things like Pepsi Cola, Diet Coke, or Pepsi Cola, Diet Coke, and even ginger ale have gluten in them because it's in caramel color.
[00:03:33] Speaker B: Oh, wow.
[00:03:34] Speaker A: And anything that is brown has caramel color in it. It can be like, I was even at the factory one day and they had purchased some apple cider vinegar I hadn't approved. And I read the ingredients. I was like, guys, this is gluten in it. We are certified gluten, because who would think that apple cider has caramel color in it? But almost anything can have caramel color in it. And caramel, the color mo color comes from gluten.
Spices often have gluten in it because it's used as a filler in spices. So I've been gluten by cinnamon before, because if an ingredient is less than, like, 0.01%, they don't have to list it.
[00:04:14] Speaker B: Right, Right.
[00:04:15] Speaker A: It also is used as a preservative less. So now that companies are aware of and gluten free. And gluten intolerance is grow, but it can be in things like turkey and bologna.
It's in imitation crab, so I can't have things like California rolls. It's also used to ferment soy sauce.
And soy sauce sneaks into a lot of foods that aren't Asian themed or Asian inspired, because a lot of chefs use it for its umami flavor, which is lovely, but it also takes a dish that might not have been, you know, have gluten in it and make it have gluten in it. And a lot of times, servers aren't aware of that.
So gluten can find its way into your life in so many more ways than people are even aware, which is why I think a lot of people are having digestive issues and inflammation issues. They may think, you know, I eat a pretty clean diet. I do keto or things like that. Not realizing that they're having it in, you know, a juice drink that they drink or a beverage because it's in A caramel color.
[00:05:19] Speaker B: Wow.
[00:05:20] Speaker C: Wow. So you are. So this is about 10 years ago. You're in the height of a career. You're doing something altogether different than what you are now. It was kind of the case with Rich. He mentioned being diagnosed with Crohn's disease. He was a lieutenant colonel at the time, kind of at the climax of his fighter pilot career.
Really?
Truly. And so you are in the middle of a corporate life and you, you, MBA degree, doing really cool stuff. Back us up just a little bit where you were and sort of how you got to where you are now.
[00:06:02] Speaker A: Yeah. So I was diagnosed, I just graduated. When I started having the symptoms, it was right when I moved to New York City. I'd graduated from business school.
I just started a brand new job and a brand new career. I'd been in logistics and consulting prior to business school. Then I went to finance post business school. So I'm in a new city, I'm in a new job, and I'm in a new career and start having these symptoms.
And the diagnosis was helpful. I was able to have control over my symptoms, which was, you know, a relief.
But I soon learned how hard it would to be to live a lifestyle without the convenience of bread.
I wouldn't say that I ate a lot of bread prior to, but bread is a lot of things. It's a muffin, it's a bagel, it's a sandwich. And all of these things were developed specifically for convenience and for sort of on the go lifestyle so you can grab something. I was getting up every morning at 5 in the morning, going to work out, getting to work by 7:30 before the markets open, staying to work well past after the markets had closed. So I was at work before the sun rose, leaving work after the sun had set, and having to figure out how to nourish myself in that process.
In a culture where taking lunch and going to lunch are not encouraged or even condoned because you can't be away from your phone in case a client calls.
[00:07:25] Speaker B: Wow.
[00:07:27] Speaker A: And so having a sandwich in your purse becomes a really convenient and important thing to managing that lifestyle. Being able to grab a bagel and throwing things on the go become really important. And then you're limited to things that are less convenient. Like I ate a lot of apples for breakfast, a lot of bananas, which is not terrible, but then you're pretty hungry by lunchtime.
And then I would eat a lot of salad for lunch, also really good for you, but not convenient. It takes a lot more effort to go and get a Salad, eat a salad, prep a salad, dispose of a salad than a sandwich. And so you start to realize, oh, a lot of these things that we've invented are too managed to facilitate our lifestyles.
So I'm dealing with things like that.
I also. The biggest thing that impacted me, though, with regards to the food was the time and the investment I was having to commit to just simple things. You can no longer take eating for granted. Everything has to be thought out ahead of time, even today. I've been living with it for over a decade now. And when I travel, I no longer travel and stay in hotels because I can't be guaranteed that the hotel is going to have food for me to eat. Oftentimes a hotel, like, the only thing on the hotel menu I can eat is like a Caesar salad. And then I end up, even though I tell them remove the croutons, I end up picking croutons out of the salad. So I always stay at an Airbnb where I know I have a kitchen, I have a refrigerator, and I have a stove, and I can be more in control of my food and my diet. I also, like, before I even get to where I'm going, make sure I know where the grocery stores are and if they're within walking distance or whether or not I need a car. And this adds a lot of logistical sort of complication to just doing anything, having to know, can I walk to the grocery store? Like, I do a lot of traveling for food shows where I'm, you know, I was just in Chicago for 48 hours, so I'm landing, unpacking my stuff. I probably haven't eaten since I took off several hours beforehand. I want to know where the local grocery store is because I can't be guaranteed that there's anything around me that I can eat.
Even restaurants.
And if they'll be open there, it's not. I live in Manhattan, so most things, most places deliver pretty late. But in Chicago, it's like everything's closed since 8pm so, like all of those things, I, I do have to use a lot more emotional energy on now continuously.
[00:09:59] Speaker C: We understand whenever he.
[00:10:01] Speaker B: A similar journey, something very similar. For me, I was trying to control my Crohn's symptoms through diet and decided to go to a ketogenic diet. And at that time I was in the Pentagon and I was traveling. I was going temporary duty every week. And the, the, the complexity of travel with a, a significant dietary restriction is, is just absolutely like, it's, it's there. You can't, you can't avoid it. And that was part of what in our calculus made us decide we're just going to do this ourselves. I want good beef, I'm going to grow it myself. I want good lamb, I'm going to grow it myself. Can you take us to the moment when you said this gluten free food is terrible? I'm going to just do this myself?
[00:10:56] Speaker A: Yeah. So I'd be living gluten free and I'd even lived abroad, had the diagnosis, and about six months later moved to Switzerland and then came back and had lived in a variety of places sort of managing this disease. And between 2012 and when I started the company in 2017, I felt like there was a big boom in sort of the number of products that were available over those five years or as walking into grocery stores, there was a lot more on the shelf, there was more options, but I didn't feel as though the quality had changed dramatically. Oftentimes it would be the same product I'd had before, but in different packaging with different branding. And when you do have something like celiac disease, you are a captive consumer. You have no other options, which means you don't have a lot of market power.
You are. Yeah, firms can get it. Companies can get away with a lot because, you know, you might have one choice, if you even have a choice on aisle. So you don't get to say, choose between this or that. You just have to take it.
So gluten free products are end up being very expensive and also not terribly satiating.
And I was just having, you know, finance is a stressful, stressful job.
I was having a bad day, I was unhappy, I was tired. I'd been shopping all day. I was in line and there's like all these people in front of me and I just needed a cookie.
I just needed like something to make me smile. And sometimes a cookie is, you know, necessary in life.
And so there was a package of gluten free cookies I'd never seen before on the shelf in front of me as I'm standing in line. And it was beautifully packaged. And I said like, artisanal chef. And I've read this story and I was like, oh, this is me. Great. And I put, opened it up before I'd purchased it and put one in my mouth and it was so bad I didn't even finish chewing it. I was, did one of these.
Oh, no. Yeah. It was not, it was, it was not a positive experience. And that was the moment. I was like, someone has to do better than this. Like there has to be a gluten free cookie out there that is like edible and that is enjoyable. And that I spent most of my life eating everything. So I knew I know what things should taste like, right?
I know how enjoyable a cookie can and should be.
And that was the moment I was like, you know, I went to business school and I always wanted to be an entrepreneur, but I didn't have, like, you have to have a passion and you have to have an idea that you sort of like are obsessed with. Obsessed with in order to make it work. And that was it. I literally ended up leaving my job in finance. But the last like month I was there, I did nothing but create recipes at my desk. Like, I was completely obsessed with it. I did nothing but like I had these spreadsheet after spreadsheet after spreadsheet of cookie recipes and the ratios. And I was getting really into the mathematics of it.
Baking is both chemistry and calculus, which are two things that I am pretty obsessed with and very passionate about.
And once I figured that out, I was like even more interested in it.
So I ended up leaving my job in finance and spending working finance hours just baking every day. Every single day. I'd wake up before the sun rose and I wouldn't finish until after the sunset. And I made thousands and thousands and thousands of terrible cookies until I figured out how to make a good one.
[00:14:17] Speaker C: Wow, that's fantastic.
Okay, so your, well, your finance, you know, background and your logistics background takes you, man, you scaled quick.
We understand the scale so, you know, and what it takes to, to scale.
And how did that go?
[00:14:43] Speaker A: It went, you know, I also, I have sort of dual degrees. I have a undergraduate degree in oil painting and then also economics with statistics.
So I was able to really like, I do really well at the intersection of those two things and sort of running a business is very much an artistic. There's a lot of art, there's a lot of technique in art, but there's a lot of serendipity in art and sort of harnessing that. Serendipity is a really important part of the artistic process. And I feel like being an entrepreneur, there's a lot of strategy and dedication and it's very intentional, but there's a lot of serendipity as well.
And what we don't teach people is how to deal with serendipity, which you can talk, you can say serendipity. Like, serendipity is a really positive word and that's why I like it. But there's also Risk and there's failure. And all of those things are part of serendipity. And dealing with that is a part of the artistic process that I love. And so I, I was able to scale up, yes, my finance degree and, and business and then all my experience in finance was super helpful. I mean, I know a lot more about debt and leveraging debt and the types of loans that are out there.
I also know a lot more probably about the capital raising process that a lot of people start with if they are not from banking. I mean, that's what we did was raise capital essentially no matter what you're doing in banking. And I was a banker, so that's what I did.
So that was helpful. I mean, there was a lot of luck involved as well. I mean, I spent three months sort of developing this cookie, developed, created a recipe that was phenomenal as best cookie I had ever made in my life. And I spent a lot of time in my life baking. And I walked into the Whole Foods, I live in Manhattan. I walked in the Whole Foods on 86th street just looking for feedback because that's what they teach you in business school. Create a prototype, get feedback, improve the prototype, get more feedback, etc. And so on. That's sort of part of your R D process and your go to market process.
And I walked into this Whole Foods and the woman behind the information booth was like, go talk to Chris behind at the bakery section. He, he's the team leader there. And I didn't know what any of that meant, so I was like, sure, okay. And I was like, hey Chris. And he was behind the cake and he came and tasted my cookies and he said, that's the best gluten free cookie I've ever tasted. Go down to Union Square and go to Brooklyn. We sell more gluten free products than anyone else in Manhattan. Ask for the team leader. And he used that term. And if we email the regional office, they may onboard you to our local forager program, which is something that Whole Foods. Whole Foods is different now, it's owned by Amazon, but they still do have this local forager program.
That's how they find a lot of the great, unique, innovative products that they have on their shelves.
This was on a Thursday and I was literally being onboarded on Monday. Of course it takes six months to get onboarded to Whole Foods. So which is great because I was making cookies in my studio apartment in a 24 inch oven and my, my tray was like the size of like a toaster, like six cookies at a Time, which is fine because I did it at that.
[00:17:57] Speaker C: Dedication.
[00:17:58] Speaker A: Yeah.
So it gave me time to get my, you know, my insurance. It gave me time to get all of my licenses that are required. You can't just feeding the public.
[00:18:10] Speaker B: Sorts.
[00:18:11] Speaker A: Of licenses and certifications and insurance. I found, fortunately, I live in Manhattan, so there's a few different commercial facilities that you can rent by the hour here, so that you have to have a commercial facility that has their insurance and their licenses all set up. And so over that course of six months, I was able to get all of that in a row and officially hit the shelves of Whole Foods in January of 2027, 2018.
[00:18:37] Speaker B: Wow.
[00:18:38] Speaker C: That's fantastic. That's a wonderful story. Golly.
[00:18:42] Speaker A: Yeah. No, it was, it was, you know, magical.
[00:18:45] Speaker C: Magical.
[00:18:46] Speaker A: Now thinking about how hard it is for me to get into retailers, like, every single day and trying to get into more retailers. The fact that.
[00:18:52] Speaker C: Yeah, and that. And that's magical. That moment where it, where the, the door opens and the, the. The person who is passionate about what they're doing walks through the door. Yeah, right. You, you, you. Or, or you plow through it sometimes.
But it, sometimes you just hit hurdles.
Oh, every day, people, you know, difficulties and challenges. What were, what was, what were a couple of the hurdles that you hit along the way as well?
[00:19:20] Speaker A: Everything. I found this commercial kitchen, and they're part of, like, the Queen's economic development, like, committee, and they told me how much support I was going to get. And then, like, in the summertime, the hours, like, I rented from them every weekend, and I would book, like, book out the whole weekend. And then the summertime there would be more competitions, so they would just be like, oh, we gave the kitchen to someone else. And I was like, read from you for, like, three months and then I'm going to keep your light on. Lights on for the rest of the year. And you're just telling me, tough, tough luck. And I was like, these people are selling their goods at a farmer's market in Brooklyn for a few months, and I'm having to fulfill purchase orders for Whole Foods. Like, just stuff like that. You're like, unbelievable.
Unbelievable.
Yeah. I mean, everything is a hurdle.
Distribution is a really hard part. Like, you think creating the recipe is the hard part? That is not the hard part. The hard part is your suppliers. It's the distributors. It's getting it. Like, we got accepted into Walmart a few years ago, and Walmart's like, yeah, we're going to put you in all of these stores. They put me in like 20 stores per state, which is a logistical and an operational nightmare because not a single purchase order justifies me shipping anything to them. But it's Walmart. So I'm like, okay, so I'm just not going to make money off of this. And then they put me, instead of putting me in the distribution process, holding my inventory at the dc, they're like, we're going to hold it at the store. So they send all this product to the store level and then they're like, we can't guarantee that the store managers will put it on the shelf. You have to guarantee that all 50 states, which included Alaska, and communicate to the individual store managers, please put my product on the shelf.
And that's just how they work. And that is, you are not, when you're sort of in your apartment creating cookies and dreaming of creating packaged goods, you're not realizing you are also becoming a merchandiser.
[00:21:32] Speaker C: Well, it happens that way in farming as well. A lot of people get into farming because the, the production side of it, working with the animals and making the land better, regenerating your soil, being around cows is lovely. You know, it's, it's wonderful to, to produce food is fun. And that's why farmers farm. Farmers don't farm to market meat.
[00:22:02] Speaker A: No, they don't.
[00:22:04] Speaker C: And they don't farm to learn how to set up a website. Yeah, they certainly don't farm to learn how to do.
To ship meat across the country.
[00:22:15] Speaker A: Organization. I'm like, yeah, SEO.
[00:22:17] Speaker C: Yeah, like what, what CEO? What's co. So, you know, and so we understand because we got ourselves into the same type of deal. We want better food, we want better proteins, we want to clean CAFO free. I don't want to eat pork that comes from a hog house, you know, a hog barn in a CAFO situation, or chicken that comes from the same place. So we're going to farm, we're going to make food and we're going to make that food and sell it to other people. Okay, well, the, the distribution of frozen product, it's a logistical.
[00:22:58] Speaker B: But I can't imagine then stepping up to Walmart.
[00:23:02] Speaker C: Yeah, no, like, we're, we're at a, we're small. Yeah, we're still very small.
[00:23:06] Speaker A: I know I was small, which is why I was like, this is absolutely absurd. I'm the whole company. You think I have time to like, reach out to every single one? Like, and how do I even get in contact with your, like, store managers? Aside from walking into the store, there's no directory.
[00:23:22] Speaker B: You just Fly to Alaska and show up and maybe he's in Hawaii.
[00:23:25] Speaker C: Hi. I'm here to make sure my cookies are on the shelf, you know, 100 miles away. Yeah.
Oh yeah. Wow. So we've run into some of the same similar problems, but not quite that big.
But yeah, food, food, the food industry. There, there are so many hurdles, so many challenges. Usda.
[00:23:48] Speaker A: I mean, yeah. Oh, you guys. So I, we did slack out in the very beginning. So I understand like the whole like frozen is an entirely different logistical like challenge as an entirely different another level. And also the shelf life of your product. That's the biggest hurdle I would say with my product and that we're constantly dealing with that impacts me the greatest emotionally is shelf life. Because I make this wonderful product and when we bake it, it's, it's absolutely delicious and perfect. And we've done a lot of research in R and D to make it as shelf stable as possible. We're talking about an all natural, non GMO gluten free, zero preservative, zero hydrogenated anything product that has to have a nine month shelf life to be considered shelf stable. And I bake it and then it goes out into the world and where it goes I have no control over because a truck comes and picks it up from us, then it goes to our distributors. So it goes into a warehouse somewhere with our distributors. How long it sits on that truck and what the temperature of that truck is, I have no idea how many trucks it goes on. I have no idea where those distribution centers are. I have a pretty good idea that where it's going, what the temperature is there, I have no idea. Then once it goes to our distributors and then our customers who are retailers order, it goes on to attract them to another warehouse until it flies, finally gets to the shelf. And a lot of things can happen to my product process that I have no control over.
And so I want my consumer to have the best possible experience with my product. Realizing that any product that has any moisture in it can have a whole host of things happen to it, from mold to certain things that you, you, it is shell stable. Anything with moisture can get, can grow mold. Like unless you have those preservatives in there with that are like, you know, three sentences long. And the only preservatives in a non GMO all natural product are sugar and salt, as it should be. That's the sort of stuff that sort of keeps me up at night, like where am I cookies and what temperature are they at?
[00:26:01] Speaker B: Yeah, right.
Take us a little bit through that process. Like how do you, the, the standard conventional cookie industry, like they just use all of those three sentence long, you know, ingredients and their stuff's shelf stable and you know, off they go. Like how did, how do you like if it, if it has to be shelf stable for nine months, like how do you even get certified as shelf stable in less than nine months?
[00:26:29] Speaker A: You know, I mean like you gotta water activity. Like we have to measure the water activity and make sure that, you know, there are certain levels of water activity that incubate mold and things longer. But it's not even, it's not even mold. It's also just going stale.
Vanilla is a highly volatile ingredient, very delicate, very sensitive.
And so those are the things that I worry about is those are the things that I'm constantly trying to research, improve.
Like now are there new ingredients that are, that are clean and that we can use help stabilize our product?
We manage it by baking frequently. A lot of better for you products don't taste good when you, when you buy them simply because they're stale. Because there is a nine month shelf life which means that it was probably baked last year. And you have to bake in order to be operationally profitable. You have to bake a lot at once. So what a lot of companies do is they do one big bake and they bake a ton of product and they put it in a warehouse and then they ship it out as the purchase orders come in.
We actually don't do that. I work with a great co packer who bakes twice a week for me, twice a month for me on the off season, which is sort of where we are now between spring and fall, which is summer.
Cookie season is not summer months. It's even just not grocery store season. The lowest grocery store sales in Manhattan and happen in July and August because everyone's on vacation, right. So they're eating salad and ice cream. They're not eating cookies and snacks.
But then September through March is cookie season. As soon as we're back to school, it's full on cookie season. And in those months we bake every week so that we are constantly giving the freshest quality, the freshest product we possibly can is out there in the supply chain.
[00:28:24] Speaker C: So you have also committed not just to the people with allergies, but you're, you want everyone to like these. You're baking for everybody really, not just the gluten free crowd.
[00:28:35] Speaker A: Absolutely. I believe that everyone deserves a cookie and everyone deserves a cookie that's better for you. When you read the ingredients in some of these products, and I understand now why they're in there, but it's like, what is that?
Why am I eating that? That can't possibly be good for me.
And because I've learned so much about how important the food we put in our bodies is to our immune systems. Your gut is like, 90% of your immune system. So sorry that you lost two feet of yours. That's devastating. That's such a huge.
[00:29:04] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:29:05] Speaker A: And it was.
[00:29:05] Speaker B: It was the. The tail end. It was right at the end of the terminal ilium. So I have issues with B12 and with bile reabsorption. And, yeah, it was. It was not a good two feet to lose either.
[00:29:16] Speaker A: No, that's. That's devastating because that you. You've just lost a significant portion of your immune system. Yeah. And because I have an autoimmune disease, and with celiac disease, I create antibodies that attack my colon, which means my immune system every will never be the same because of the damage that I've done to it.
And, like, right now, my daughter is sick. Like, if anyone gets sick around me, I'm definitely getting sick, which didn't happen prior to having celiac disease because I didn't have a damaged immune system.
So I am really aware of how important what you put in your body is. But you can expect people to eat carrots and celery their entire life.
Eating is such a part of our culture. It's a part of our psyche and our psychology.
It's celebratory. It's ritualistic. Like, even just having a coffee in the morning or tea or whatever it is. These small celebrations that we have in our life are really important to managing our mental health as well as our physical health. And having a cookie just makes you smile. That's what it's for.
And I think that everyone deserves to have a smile. And it should be a smile that also is better for your body. So I'm not making a health food you shouldn't eat at once, but I'm making a cookie that will make you smile. And as you know that it's not going to cause any damage or inflammation.
[00:30:33] Speaker C: In your body, part of being an entrepreneur is there. You talked about it earlier, the artistic aspect of it.
How did you come up with Mightylicious and your artwork?
[00:30:45] Speaker A: Yeah, so that was really important to me. With a art background, I am very particular. I have no graphic design skills. So it's very frustrating process for me because I can see it in my head, but I can't like make it come out. And I've had like, I have a wonderful team that helps me and I, like, will draw things and send them to him to them and be like, do this. And I'll be like that. Color is not exactly right because color theory is so important to me, but the branding was really important to me just because a lot of the brands that are out there and have survived have been out there for a long time, for as long as I or we've been alive. Right. So I don't know how old Bob, Bob is at Bob's Red Mill, but he was an old man a while ago.
Amazing.
But these companies, like, you know, predate the 80s certainly.
And the, the packaging hasn't changed that much. And it's very trite. It's oftentimes not engaging. It's not colorful, it's not exciting, it certainly isn't fun.
And I just, when I have a really terrible experience with a gluten free product, obviously feel sad for myself, but my heart breaks for the kids who are diagnosed when they're like infants or two or three and they've never had a cupcake. Like, my daughter is three and she loves cupcakes. As you should. They're tiny little mini cakes just for you. And like, there are these kids out there who have never tasted a cupcake the way it should taste and have it taste good. And so I wanted my product to be palatable for adults because a lot of the products are actually made for little kids and they take that for granted. They don't make it as, as they don't make it as high quality as that should be to be enjoyed by an adult. So I wanted my products to be palatable for adults, but I wanted my branding to really speak to kids. So I wanted, I didn't do Carolyn's gluten free, which is like the trend in the industry, because I wanted my brand to be bigger than me and I wanted it to appeal to everyone and I wanted it to be fun and like. So we honed in on like Mighty Mouse as being like a little kid's character and something that makes you smile and is really nostalgic.
And then we, I took, I part of it was just like the serendipity of what is available to be trademarked because all you can do is trademark something. And everything using Mighty was taken.
And all the ideas I had were not very good. And then all of a sudden I was like, delicious. And I looked it up and I was like, mighty licious. That's super fun to say. It makes you smile. It's very repetitive, reminiscent of like a superhero. And it was available and I was like, I'm taking it. And then I really wanted to have a mascot, and that was really important to me. When you go down the serial aisle, everyone's got a mascot and, you know, it's very oriented to kids, but as adults, I mean, I still really care about Tony the tiger and all of those things.
They're part. They become a part of your, like, formative years. And so I wanted to have a mascot and we started thinking about ideas and unfortunately, most animals these days are associated with global warming in some capacity.
Doesn't matter where they're from. All the cool animals are associated with global warming. And I was like, what about a unicorn? They are not real, so they can't go extinct. They trend in every decade. And then we put a lot of thought into the unicorn. The unicorn's name is Charlie. They are non binary, so it's neither. They are neither male nor female, which is on trend for an lgbt LGBTQ business and a female owned business. But also we wanted it to resonate with everyone. So when I first launched Charlie, I was worried about this. Unfortunately, when you brand something as being feminine, men think they can't buy it because we shame men into thinking that being feminine is a bad thing when it's not. Women are great, men are great and women are great.
But the branding has to appeal to both genders and not be too gender specific in order to not alienate men.
So we have Charlie and I was at this trade show and we revealed Charlie and this like, very tall, six foot five, very tough looking guy came up, was like, I love your unicorn.
I was like, so relieved because kids love it, grownups love it, men love it, teenagers love it. And we put a lot of thought into the design of it. Like, I was sending my graphic designer images of Calvin and Hobbes and I was like, calvin and Hobbes is cool. It's something we adults love, is something we got into as teenagers. And it's. And it's sketched, like with a pen versus having a solid line. So the unicorn has a very sketched look to it that my graphic designer was sending me images of.
What is that? Disney of like this Disney artist for the one with the rabbit where she goes down the hole to the rabbit hat.
[00:35:25] Speaker C: Oh. Alice in Wonderland.
[00:35:27] Speaker A: Alice in Wonderland. And the original sketches for both Cinderella and Alice in Wonderland are very terrifying, beautiful, but very, very mature and very, very dark.
And the Artist. I forget, I think something Clary. He was sending me these images. I was like, yes, we want something. This feels mature, this feels adult.
And we sort of combine Calvin and Hobbes with this, these sort of image, these sort of sketches from this Disney artist. And came up up with Charlie, which I love because Charlie is still very young feeling as well.
[00:36:03] Speaker C: Right.
[00:36:04] Speaker A: And then I wanted. And then I was like, everything has to be rainbow and bright colors. Because you know, rainbows make you smile.
[00:36:10] Speaker C: Because they make you smile.
Because they're happy colors.
[00:36:13] Speaker A: Yeah. Yeah.
[00:36:14] Speaker B: Talk to us a little bit about how you go from a 24, 26 inch oven to you now have bakers baking for you twice a week. Like how do you, how do you maintain the integrity of the product and scale like that?
[00:36:31] Speaker A: That is a very good question. That's where my calculus comes in. Because baking is chemistry and calculus.
One of the things that happens when you scale up, like when you're baking 24 cookies or scooping with a hand scooper, right. And you're using a few ounces of product and they're going to 600 pounds. And everything multiplies linearly except for your flavorings and your seasonings. They multiply exponentially.
You've got an interesting quadratic that you have to solve.
Fortunately, one of the hardest things, and this is where you realize how complicated this is, is finding a really good partners and co packers who really care about your product. And it took me several tries. There was a few failures that I went through that I was like, well, this is not working. I can't work with this person. They don't care. They don't have the expertise, they don't understand what I'm trying to do.
And a lot of the times when you're emerging, you're dealing with co packers or manufacturers that are taking you on because they're kind of failing. Otherwise they wouldn't need to take you on. They would have bigger clients. So you're already dealing with someone who is maybe financially in trouble. And that is a huge risk to you as well. Because if they go under, you basically go under. You can't not fill your purchase orders.
So it was actually Whole Foods who was like, oh, we recommend you work with this C.O. packer. They're a specialty cookie packer just a few miles from where you are. I met with them, they loved my product. In fact, to this day, when I go in and they're making my cookies, the CEO eats, I see them sitting on his desk like the fresh baked cookies, eats them for lunch.
Which is an amazing sign because what they do is they make millions of cookies a week and they're like voluntarily eating my cookies because they have their own products as well.
And the specialty cookie manufacturer really is a certified. They have a certified food scientist on hand, really understands baking.
And I can talk to him really intelligently about the ingredients I'm using and why they're, why they're necessary and what they're in there for.
And we basically. As opposed to working. One of the things that I educate people about is one of the reasons why the cookies on the market or the products, Products on the market that are better for you are so similar is because there's only 15 certified gluten free facilities in the U.S. while there's 40,000 food manufacturing facilities, only 15 of them certified gluten free. So which explains why they're also similar because you basically go into these big manufacturing facilities, they have their suppliers, they have their equipment, they have their processes, and you get operationalized, you get pushed into what they're currently doing because that's going to be profitable.
I'm working with a specialty cooking manufacturer who became gluten free for me. So we are certified gluten free through that process. And we developed our processes organically from scratch based on his experience, based on my experience. And then we're able to make something that is really exceptional and very differentiated from the rest of the market because he really tasted my product and was like, this is the type of thing that I want to be making.
[00:39:39] Speaker B: That's cool.
[00:39:39] Speaker C: We found the same type of situation whenever it comes to meat production. We, we farm it, we load the animal up, but we are not a meat processor, we're not a packer. So we have to take our products. You were talking about, it's out of your hands. At some point, we take our beef or our pork or our lamb or chicken to a, a facility and we drop it off. And the thing that we've cared for for years potentially is now in their hands.
Yeah, is now in their hands. And they become such an integral part of the, the, the food supply, they are a part of our team that it was a bit of an awakening whenever the first time we dropped off 10 pigs that we had been raising for the last eight months and we realized, oh well, they could really mess this up. And we've got a lot invested in.
[00:40:36] Speaker A: And there's nothing you can do about it because you have so little market power. They have exactly power. And if they mess up up, you probably have to pay for It.
[00:40:46] Speaker C: Yeah, yeah, we do. And, and, and it's a loss of all of the capital outlay that we've had in, in raising those animals because to raise a pig is not cheap.
[00:40:56] Speaker B: And we do everything GMO free.
[00:40:58] Speaker C: So we're completely GMO free. And so it's very expensive.
[00:41:01] Speaker A: Yes.
[00:41:02] Speaker C: Right.
And, and so the, and that's a side of the food industry that a lot of people don't understand, especially when it comes to small producers. Is, are the challenges of the, the processing, the distribution that we were talking about earlier. But you know, we're not our own. Yes, we're small. We do everything ourselves. Except.
[00:41:24] Speaker A: Right.
[00:41:24] Speaker C: We don't pack it ourselves. We're not allowed to. That has to be packed in a USDA facility. Well, when you were a smaller company finding someone to do gluten free. We are a small farm and we need it to be USDA processed.
Well, go find a USDA processor that's near you. It's hard. We happen to be in a location where there's one about an hour and 45 minutes from us. And we are grateful.
We've recently found one that is also doing our chicken a little further. But we. That way we can ship it now. So the food production, the food industry in this country, it's not easy. It's not easy to navigate.
It's only having a few gluten free facilities. You know, the challenge is another hurdle.
[00:42:14] Speaker B: I'm interested in how we, we don't claim from a labeling perspective really anything other than air to ground farms.
Just because of all of the hurdles with the, all of the different government agencies and the requirements like to be called organic. You're talking years and paperwork and paying inspectors and different private companies even and then the agencies and talk to us about how you become certified gluten free. And then the challenge, or maybe it wasn't a challenge.
How did you get an entire facility certified gluten free?
[00:43:02] Speaker A: Yeah, I know. It was a challenge. It was a big hurdle. In the beginning, I was not certified gluten free because I couldn't afford it. It's expensive. It's three to five thousand dollars a year. And that was more than like, you know, in the very beginning, that was, you know, more than I was making in six months. So there is no way that I can do it. And then not only the expense, but it took us a year to get all the paperwork together. Like, yeah, unreal. And I am certified kosher. I'm certified gluten free, I'm certified non gmo. And right now we're currently. This is very close to my heart in the moment where I literally had a conversation yesterday. We're getting certified vegan and top allergen free for all of our cookies that are that qualify. And the reason why we haven't done that sooner is because physically couldn't. It was just operationally impossible because I, I, I am the whole company. And then I have a team about 12 people who work for me on a contracting basis, some of them almost full time.
But it took us to get the gluten free certification and the non gmo. It took us over nine months of multiple people. And I even hired a consulting company to help help facilitate that. And that's how long and it's work that is required is in saying because I have to reach out to my suppliers, my ingredient suppliers who are owned by bigger conglomerates. Even if they're a smaller company, they're now owned by a big conglomerate who's in Europe who does not answer their phone. There's no way to get in contact with them. You're like, I really need you to send me this gluten free certificate. I realize that the gluten free agency has it and should send it to me, but they require me get it from you in Paris.
I didn't. And finally I just went back to the certifying agency and I was like, this company is definitely certified. They are an international supplier of food. And they're like, it's okay, Carolyn, we have that one.
I was like, thank you.
Like three months later to try and get through to Dannon is insane. Because yeah, and I don't have that type of bandwidth. I don't have a person who just is doing, you know, chasing. And then some of our products like we use xanthan gum and they use certain.
What's it called? What's, what's in yogurt? Oh, what's, what's they put the bacteria in yogurt. The we had to certify that bacteria that is used to create rate the yogurt is also non gmo. What are they feeding that bacteria? We had to get paperwork and affidavit it affidavit.
I mean it is intense.
Yeah, it is intense.
[00:45:40] Speaker C: And people wonder why it's so hard.
[00:45:42] Speaker B: Or more expensive or more expensive.
[00:45:44] Speaker C: They wonder why or that they're so. There's so few, there's so few options.
[00:45:49] Speaker A: If you're a big company, you would need a full time employee. So it's not just the cost of the certifications. Which you have. If you have multiple of our tens of thousands of dollars a year, but that's the entire salary of the person managing that is also part of the expense.
[00:46:02] Speaker B: Yeah, right. So how did you. How did you get the facility then? Like, how. How did that.
[00:46:08] Speaker A: I grew. So I was growing and I raised capital. And so he had to go through my. My co Packer had to agree to going through the audit. And. And in the beginning, he wasn't willing, but I grew to be a big enough portion of his business that it became economically viable for him to take on the additional risk and take on the additional processes. I mean, they're already SQF certified, so they already have a whole bunch of the requirements just through the SQF process. We're not fda. We're sqf, which is similar. We are fda, sort of regulated.
And then, you know, we have to hold. My ingredients have to be above a certain height within the facility. And all these tests have to be. We have to test the machinery beforehand. We have to batch test the product in the middle and the batch test at the end, and we do all of these things.
There's still like no guarantee. There's still no guarantees with all of this because of course, we're bringing in ingredients from all over the place. And so much can happen and go wrong in a distribution process. I mean, Cheerios famously had to recall. Cheerios are just oats and water basically, and salt. And so they should be gluten free. But there's.
They launched them as gluten free and then had to do a recall because oats are very susceptible to cross contamination because oats and wheat are often grown next to each other.
So all you need is some wind to blow some wheat into your oats.
There also can be. Most mills will mill oats and wheat and anything that they can. And so if the facility. Imagine like a huge milling facility that's the size of a baseball field and all of the air contamination that can happen in cross contamination. If you've just milled wheat and now you're milling oats. And so they had to figure out how to get. I think that General Mills actually owns the mills and the farms, but they still had cross contamination and they had to figure out how to manage that. And they still say gluten free on your Cheerios, but they are not certified.
[00:48:13] Speaker C: Wow.
So it's so complicated. And I've.
And I've often said, you know, the.
It. It.
First of all, we don't. We don't know the real price of food in this country that, that's. We, we just don't.
And good food, it's two things. It is not, it is not easy and it is not cheap. You know, not at all. But we, but we need better food. And we need better food because our health is suffering. We have more chronic than any other country in the world. We are, I mean our health is declining precipitously in all age groups and all demographics nearly. And so you, you guys, us other types who are trying to produce better food for our health, not necessarily for the hustle of it. We're really focused on the healing aspect of good food and totally commend you guys on what you are doing for people's overall health.
And that's just where we focus so much.
[00:49:23] Speaker B: So what's next?
[00:49:25] Speaker A: Yeah, so I'm growing. I was, I started off in just three Whole Foods in Manhattan and now we're in most states. We're in some Walmarts from New York up to Maine. We're in HEB in Texas. Texas where in Giant in Pennsylvania. We're in thousands of natural specialty like smaller chains throughout the US And I really want to be a lifestyle brand. I can bake anything and I can make it taste good at this point. Bread cakes, you know, savory food. So we've actually just launched. We have seven, we have seven cookie flavors. Four of them are now gluten free and vegan. And we're going through the certification to become vegan certified and dairy free and all of those things right now as we speak.
Which is just not chang anything except for collecting all the paperwork. Right.
So we're going through that process and I learned through this process that one of the challenges in baking and making a great gluten free product is that we actually don't make gluten free flour here in the US we most gluten free blends will have an ancient grain. Ancient grains don't taste good. They taste acrid and like tar, unfortunately. That's why they're ancient. That's why we're a wheat based culture.
So they often get included in gluten free products which is why a lot of people have a negative association with gluten free. It's that ancient grain that's in there that doesn't taste good.
And then they're, they, they will be mostly rice based and rice is actually not milled for baking in the US it's milled for cooking. So it's milled for thickening sauces. It's milled for like Battering, tempura, things like that.
But so it's milled really coarse and it sort of feels like sand. Whereas why gluten free products? Often when you bite into it, you'll feel grittiness. That's the rice flour.
And so it's really, really hard to make anything taste and feel good when you're baking gluten free, even if it's fresh baked.
I actually have tried to integrate my supply chain as far down as I can. And so we work directly with co op farmers in California who grow 25% of the state's rice.
And we work with a mill there that mills our rice flour to a spec so that it can be used for baking. Which means that our rice flour is entirely rice based, has rice and starch and then xanthan gum in it. And there's no ancient grains, so there's no weird aftertaste. And I have nothing against ancient grains. Quinoa, garbanzo beans, I eat those all the time. But they should be eaten with chicken piccata.
They should not be in your cookie or brownie.
I'm sorry, if you wanted to taste like a cookie and you want it to taste like a brownie, you need to use wheat or rice.
So our cook. Our, our. I discovered this in making my cookies and I was explaining this to a buyer at a food show and the buyer was like, oh, I'm the, I'm the flour buyer for Kroger. Can I buy this for you? And I was like, yes, sorry, like. So we make our flour blends. So we have a gluten free flour blend and a vegan flour blend. They're all gluten free, but one is, one has whole milk powder in it and one has coconut milk powder in it.
And those are very important ingredients for baking. Even if baking with wheat. Most bakeries use milk powder in their cakes and their cupcakes and muffins.
It's critical in gluten free baking because you've removed all of the protein with the wheat.
So I was explaining this to him and I went home really quickly and contacted my wonderful graphic designer. And we created this packaging in like a week, which is amazing because it normally takes months.
Sent it to Kroger and they picked it up.
So it hit the shelves in March. And I have three SKUs, I have my gluten free flour blend, we have a vegan flour blend and then it's better to have three or four SKUs as opposed to one or two. So I created a brownie mix A vegan gluten free brownie mix. And I promise you, unless you have like grandma's recipe from, you know, this is the best brownie you've ever tasted. I'm so proud of this recipe. Like when we first launched it, I just launched it because, because I'd made the packaging and I bought 100 bags as opposed because it was the same price as one.
Launched it on my website and it sold out. Like there's a huge need out there for a gluten free vegan brownie. It's my best selling skew and so I have these three new SKUs and that's what we're focusing on this year is really launching these blends which are critical. Like when you look at the market, the cookie market has quite a bit of competition. It's growing but there really hasn't been much innovation in the sort of bakery flour mix. There's boss Redmill and there's King Arthur. King Arthur, I don't know how old King Arthur is but it sounds like it's been around since the 1800s.
[00:54:01] Speaker C: Very, very old.
[00:54:03] Speaker A: And boss Red Miller is older than we are. So you know, there really hasn't in like 40 years been a lot of innovation. So I'm finding that this specific segment is a place where people are really open to innovation and needing something.
So we've just launched our flower blends and we're focusing on that this year and then I hope to you know, know lunch crackers or muffins or we. I'm keep asking, every time I'm on one of these shows I ask people what do your viewers want? You know, tell me what you need out there. Where is the, where is the gap in the market? I can make it. Just tell me, I'll make it.
[00:54:37] Speaker B: Oh, that's cool.
[00:54:38] Speaker C: And it's really cool.
[00:54:39] Speaker B: And we can by, we can stay in contact with you and we can pass on comments.
We do get some comments on. Hey, I'd love to see. We'll, we'll certainly pass that on. So you, you sent us a few samples to try and around the dinner t the other night you got these keto, this keto couple to try some of your cookies and I think the resounding favorite was the oatmeal.
[00:55:03] Speaker A: Coconut is my best selling cookie so that is not surprising at all that so in America we are a chocolate chip nation.
It doesn't matter what the brand is. Their best selling skew is going to be their chocolate chip cookie. And my second bestseller is my brown butter chocolate chip. And my third bestseller is my vegan chocolate chip dip. My number one is our oatmeal coconut. And that is a 100 year old recipe for my wife's side of the family.
My mother in law served it to me for one one Christmas. And around that time Whole Foods had approached me and said, can you make us a vegan cookie? And I was like, you want me to bake without flour, butter or eggs?
What baking is, it's hard enough to not bake without flour. And using like an alternate flour. Now you want me to remove the butter and the eggs. That's all of the protein and the flavor.
[00:55:58] Speaker C: Right.
[00:56:00] Speaker A: She. But she. So I learned a lot about the baking process at this point and I knew I needed something that was kind of chewy and had some body to it. And she served me this cookie and it blew my mind away. I was like, I didn't know I needed a coconut oatmeal cookie. That's not something I would have dreamed of on my own. But it was phenomenal. And oats are really gelatinous and the coconut has a lot of body and stretchiness, elasticity to it. And I was like, this may create the body I need to actually effectively execute a gluten free vegan cookie. And it was. And I did. And then it was so successful that I now have three more flavors. So I have four vegan gluten free cookies based on that sort of recipe. They're really good. But the learnings from it I was able to.
[00:56:46] Speaker C: Really good. It had the nice chew to it.
[00:56:48] Speaker A: Yeah, it does.
[00:56:49] Speaker C: And it's.
[00:56:50] Speaker A: But it's sweet, it's salty, it's has. It feels exotic from the coconut, but it's really comforting from the oatmeal. It's like a warm hug, but also vacation. It's totally.
It's great.
[00:57:02] Speaker C: And that describes it.
[00:57:03] Speaker A: Most proud of it. It tastes buttery like it. Which I don't know how I did that, but it tastes like it has butter. And it does not. There's no natural flavor or anything. It's just, you know, oil and butter.
[00:57:13] Speaker B: It did be no preservative, shelf stable.
It doesn't taste dry.
[00:57:18] Speaker C: Right.
[00:57:18] Speaker A: Thank you.
[00:57:19] Speaker C: It held its moisture.
[00:57:20] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:57:21] Speaker C: Yeah. It's like it had the chew that.
[00:57:23] Speaker B: Was like a chewy cookie.
[00:57:24] Speaker A: And it's, it's chewy, it's cakey, it's fluffy, it's not gritty. There's no word aftertaste. You just taste vanilla and the sugar and the coconut.
[00:57:32] Speaker C: Yeah, that was, that's that's definitely the bet. That was definitely my favorite and highly recommend for sure.
[00:57:37] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:57:38] Speaker A: Thank you. I appreciate that.
[00:57:40] Speaker C: So where, so yeah, you mentioned your. Where your cookies are and products are in stores. Is there another way that our viewers might be able to find the products if they're not there?
[00:57:51] Speaker A: Yeah. So if you can't find us at your local grocery store, please. So this really works. Ask for us. Because when store, local store managers hear the same products over and over again, that gets communicated back up the chain. And if enough people are asking, they bring in products. So please ask for us if you don't see us. You have the power. You are the consumer. They want to know what you want want. So just know that they care what, what they want to put on their shelves what you are going to buy.
So it doesn't matter. It doesn't have to be my product. Can be any product. Always ask about it. Just gently. Just ask for a manager or store employee and say, do you carry this? I really like it.
If you can't find it at your local grocery store, you can find us on Amazon
[email protected] Too easy.
Mightylicious.com we ship to all 50 states. If you, if you buy three bags or more, shipping is free.
So that's pretty easy. Who buys one bag of cookies?
And you get the freshest product when you order from us because we ship from our manufacturing facility and we're baking at least every two weeks.
So if you go to the store, you don't know how long that's been on the shelf. But still, please buy it. If you want really fresh baked products or you're sending it to your mom for Mother's Day or your sister has a birthday, order it from our website that will have been baked on Monday.
[00:59:12] Speaker B: Wow, that's cool.
[00:59:14] Speaker C: Fantastic. This has been a really, really fantastic and fun conversation and the, the parallels and the similarities were just really fun to talk to somebody else in the food space who's trying to make good food. And it really, it was, it was inspiring for us as well.
[00:59:29] Speaker B: Yeah, for sure. Thank you.
[00:59:31] Speaker A: Thank you so much. This has been really wonderful and it's so, it's so rewarding for me to talk to people who really appreciate what we're doing and all the effort that we're putting into making a better for you. High cookie and bake good.
[00:59:45] Speaker C: We wish you all the best of luck and huge success and may there be less hurdles.
[00:59:53] Speaker A: Thank you.
[00:59:55] Speaker C: Thank you guys for hanging with us again today. And until next time, bye.
[00:59:59] Speaker B: Bye.
