Beryl Stafford
Founder and Owner, Bobo's. On 1 show, 1 appearance. The Shows tab opens the full record on each.
founderexecutiveoperatorLinkedIn ↗eatbobos.com ↗
In 2003, Stafford founded Bobo’s Oat Bars in Boulder, Colorado, after experimenting with a recipe developed alongside her daughter. Having bootstrapped the business from local coffee shop deliveries, she expanded the brand into a nationwide snack company with over $100 million in sales across major grocers.
1shows
1appearances
26statements
4resolved
3supported
0contradicted
75%fully supported
7said about them ↓ Everything Beryl Stafford said on any show that made the record, most notable first. Each card names its show and opens the statement there.
Stafford: Family is the worst source of advice for new founders
“And family, I always say family is the worst person to get advice from in the beginning, because they don't want you to fail.”
Stafford: Bobo's and Justin's Nut Butter formed joint LLC to share kitchen
“And so he and I jointly took this new space, bigger, and it was just the two of us, And we formed a little LLC. It was crazy. And we shared employees, and we shared the space.”
Stafford rejected outsourcing baking to keep Bobo's homemade texture
“Most of them advised me to stop baking and Have somebody else make this, and you focus on sales and marketing. And I said, no, I want to control this, and I don't want them to look like they're guillotine cut with four square corners. They're imperfect, each b…”
Stafford: Bobo's will become a 100-year brand by resisting food trends
“We are sticking with what the bar was in the beginning, which is just an old-fashioned cookie that your grandmother could bake in her oven, and we'll be a hundred-year-old brand. We're not trendy, and we're not adding any superfoods to it.”
Stafford: Investor conflicts centered on economic terms when raising follow-on capital
“Well, I would say mostly the economic terms of their investment. That, that has been a struggle each time we ran out of money.”
Costco rotates products out to make shoppers miss them and get excited
“Costco likes to find the newest best thing and be the first to market with it. They will bring you in and then want the customer to miss you and then be excited when you're back.”
Stafford: CPG buyers now demand profitability over rapid revenue growth
“It has gotten a lot harder to sell and sell for a figure that you're happy with. Like you said, it used to be profitable. Who cares? As long as you're showing fast growth. And now it's different. It's a lot harder to sell your company now.”
Stafford: Bobo's was funded via second mortgage, credit cards, and $100k loan
“I went to the bank back then. It was easier, and they gave me a loan for a 100,000 dollars, but first, up until then, I took a second mortgage on my home, and I used credit cards, and I just was very frugal, and I mean, this was all just very scrappy.”
Stafford bought Bobo's ingredients at Whole Foods for nearly a year
“And then I started buying it in bigger bulk, but at Whole Foods, until I figured out the food distribution network. But crazy expensive. But I did that for almost a year. Just figuring out the ingredients.”
Bobo's reached profitability six or seven years after launch
“So I was, I became profitable probably six years after I started, six or seven years.”
Stafford took secondary liquidity in Bobo's initial institutional round
“I took some money off the table when the investor came in.”
Stafford: Bobo's operates a 125,000-square-foot facility with 500 employees
“We've got 500 employees, and It's a 125,000 square feet, which sounds enormous to me.”
Stafford: Bobo's bakes in-house and relies on co-packers during Costco spikes
“We have a little bit of co-packing, but mostly we do all of our own baking. And when things get very busy, when we're heavy with Costco, we use our co-packer.”
Stafford: Bobo's will eventually be sold to an acquirer
“So, so yes, we will be selling at some point.”
Stafford worked at Peppercorn for $7.45 an hour during her divorce
“I did get a job making seven dollars and 45 cents an hour, At this kind of gourmet cooking store called Peppercorn here in Boulder.”
Stafford: Bobo's reformulated bars with sucanat, coconut oil, and brown rice syrup
“Well, what I picked was sucanat. It's a less processed brown sugar than brown sugar. And so I picked that, and now we use coconut oil, but coconut oil was one of the first oils that I used, and instead of corn syrup, I used brown rice syrup. And it wasn't so e…”
Stafford: Bobo's launched during the emergence of vegan and natural snack bars
“That's when Laura Bar had just come around, and Cliff Bar was here, but we're all kind of new, you know, and vegan was new. And they said, you know, go to Whole Foods and see what the bars are like. There's, it's growing. It's becoming a bigger category.”
Stafford: Bobo's iconic logo character was drawn in five minutes
“She right there drew on a piece of paper the girl that's on the bar to this day, I mean, in five minutes, and she was trained in graphic design”
Early Bobo's bars sold in plastic wrap with a three-day shelf life
“Very granola-ish, and they didn't mind that I was wrapped in saran wrap with a three-day shelf life.”
Stafford: Bobo's first packaging machine cost $25,000
“And I finally ended up with my first packaging machine, the biggest piece of equipment that I bought for 25,000 dollars.”
Whole Foods initial pitch landed Bobo's in 12 Colorado stores
“She said, yes, I want these. Tell me everything, but you're going to have to get your packaging together. In other words, I need a freezer safe packaging. And I said, you got it. And she goes, I'm going to get you in 12 of the Colorado stores.”
Stafford: In-store demo tables give founders control because customers want free food
“I always tell people when you're standing behind that table, you know, you're kind of in charge, and they don't know anything about you, and they're happy to eat free food, and I got good at it.”
The other half of the tape: Beryl Stafford's own voice is left out of every number here. Other people bring the name up 7 times in 4 episodes across the shows. every mention, with the transcript →
Who brings them up most Guy Raz 7
Every mention by year
tap a year for its mentions
How I Built This 7
One line per show, most statements first. The link opens Beryl's full record on that show: the calibration, argument clarity, speaking style and every statement made there.
| Show | Role there | Eps | Statements | Record | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| HOW I BUILT THISLEDGER | Founder and Owner, Bobo's | 1 | 26 | 75% 3/4 | full record on How I Built This → |