The Exchanges

Q who was a young guy, he, he passed away, he died, he had, um, a very rare form of cancer, and he was just 18, and this really, like, you guys were really close with this kid, right? I think he was even, he had dated your sister. Tell me a little bit about, about this, because this is, This was going to actually affect a change in your life.

A Yeah, it was horrible, and, you know, and he'd gone into remission, and we didn't know him at the time. My younger sister, Emma, she met him, you know, right after he'd gone into remission, and when we found out that the cancer was back, I started coming, flying from New York back to Seattle to support my sister, and I would go back and forth between the two places, and as we started to get more information about Josh's diagnosis, and it became clear that it was Terminal. Those trips became longer back home, and I had been living this kind of fast-paced, exciting life, and this started to become a reminder as to what really mattered the most and what was most important, and I really started to feel that urge to spend more time with my family, and my sister, and my mom, and my dad. So then, that was eventually kind of what prompted part of my move back to Seattle, along with Launching Skinny Dipped.

AI assessment note: “that was eventually kind of what prompted part of my move back to Seattle”

Q Yeah, and so, now you're manufacturing them, or you're, you're packaging them in Spokane, did you already have commitments from people, or were you gonna just collect all the bags and then start to figure that out?

A Yeah, I mean, when we started going to Spokane, we were going with, you know, a regular car size, you know, a few cases of nuts in the back, and we would take those, we would pack them all up, bring them back to Seattle, And we would essentially sell door to door. We would pack them into, you know, these were grab and go single servings that we would put in a box of 10. We would go march into a mom and pop corner grocery store and wait for the manager and give them a sample, have them try it, and hopefully sell them in to sit near the cash register. And I mean, when I tell you, like, We would only take cash or check. We had no other way to take payment. And then we would go and we would demo them. We would ask this manager, can we just, you know, can we come demo them? And we would come demo for four hours, five hours, six hours, however long they would let us demo for. And then we'd sell through them. And then the next time we went to Spokane, you know, we would rent a sprinter van and we'd fill it. And eventually we were driving twenty-five-foot box trucks there and back.

AI assessment note: “we would take those... bring them back to Seattle, And we would essentially sell door to door.”

Q Was it a trade show? Did you guys go to a trade show?

A No, we had a, we actually got introduced to a broker, um, who was, from one of our kind of early mentors, we got this introduction to a broker who specialized in Target. So, even though it felt early in many ways, uh, this broker at the time, uh, Loved our product, and he felt like we should present it to the target buyer to see what they thought. So we did. We flew out, you know, this was in the day of where you got to go sit with your buyers in person, right? So we flew out to Minneapolis, and we sat with this buyer, and we sampled our product, and we talked about our brand, shared our story, and then we went away, we went back home, and, uh, and the broker who was helping us at the time said, You know, listen, I think, I feel good about this. I think we might get, you know, a hundred-store test, a two-hundred-store test, and I'll, and so he gave us a call, and he said, okay, you know, she wants to have another meeting, so we flew back to Minneapolis. We sat in front of this buyer, uh, and her name was Tanya, and she gave us, thank you, Tanya, because it was, she really gave us a chance, and she looked at us, and she said, I absolutely love your product. And she said, do you have any supply chain issues? And I just looked her dead in the eye and said, nope. And meanwhile, we were still in the coop producing very, very small batches. And she said, okay then, well, I'm gonna br…

AI assessment note: “No, we had a, we actually got introduced to a broker”

Q Breezy, what do you remember about, I mean, what, I, I, I read that you guys took like a road trip at a certain point. Was this like a, where did you go? I mean, was it just for fun? Tell me a little bit about it.

A Yeah, so we were taking my younger sister, Emma, up to her first day of college at University of British Columbia, where I went, and it really, it came out of this, you know, we were just having conversation, we were snacking like you do on a road trip. My mom had, you know, good roasted almonds with her, because she was a very healthy eater, and I had brought, you know, A quote, naughty snack. I think I had, you know, I had a peanut butter cup with me, and I knew that that wasn't, you know, healthy or something that you would eat regularly, but it was delicious, and it really kind of just got us thinking, maybe there's this intersection between whole foods and deliciousness that we can strike, and we really started talking about how Chocolate almonds in particular had been this, they were this dated, boring product that were sitting in bulk bins, and could we reinvent it to become a snack? And kind of like, we thought about it a little bit like a deconstructed nut and fruit bar, but in a more snackable, fun way to eat it in pieces. And so when we got back from that road trip, that's really where we started to Experimenting in the home kitchen.

AI assessment note: “we were taking my younger sister, Emma, up to her first day of college”

Q So how much could he do for you?

A Well, it was a longer journey than that, so we, we started making very small batches with him, you know, 10 pounds, 20 pounds, 30 pounds, and then, you know, we would sit at coffee shop with him, and we would kind of brainstorm about, you know, how could we get to a hundred pounds, 200 pounds, and I think at the time, we were trying to make a road map, a plan that got us to about a thousand pounds, maybe 2000 pounds of product, and Originally, when we met him, he was working out of his, you know, he was making this in his garage, essentially, and then he leased a very small facility to essentially start producing for us, and when I say small, this was a converted chicken coop. Uh, we bought an oven off of eBay, one single oven that sat on the floor. We washed all of our dishes outside on the loading dock on the hood of our car. With hose, with hose water. So this was like a serious, like, you know, kind of makeshift first facility where we partnered, you know, with this person to start to create a, quote, commercial version of our recipe.

AI assessment note: “we started making very small batches with him, you know, 10 pounds, 20 pounds”

Q Okay, you got the packages, you're going into mom and pop stores, and how are they doing? I mean, you're sampling them, are they, are you getting reorders? Are they selling?

A Oh yeah, I mean, first of all, we believed that demoing was really important because it's food. We wanted people to try the food. So, you know, we would go in, it would either be four of us or two of us, and we would demo five or six, sometimes seven nights, you know, Nights a week, sometimes double demos, and in, in a single demo, we could easily sell, you know, 40 bags, 50 bags. So, You were seeing these store managers go, wow, like, you know, you sold through, you know, four or five boxes in a few hours, and then we would start to get, you know, slightly bigger purchase orders, you know, instead of buying two boxes, they would want 10, and we eventually put our, you know, our small flimsy boxes into, quote, master cases, and we started delivering bigger cases to the store. So it was very organic in that way.

AI assessment note: “we would start to get, you know, slightly bigger purchase orders”

Q a million, a little bit over a million. And one of the people, this is just, I'd love to hear the story, who invests in the seed round, is this guy, Rohan Oza, who was, who's been on Shark Tank and, you know, he helped like the vitamin water, Poppy. I mean, this guy is kind of legendary in beverage and, and, and other products. How did you encounter him?

A Yeah. This was a complete chance moment. Uh, right after I'd moved to Seattle to do this full time, I would still go back to New York every once in a while. I had friends there. It's still where a lot of my social life was. And so one night it was just out at a bar and I got to talking to this guy. Uh, he was asking, you know, what I was interested in and everything. And I said, oh, I've started, I'm starting this business. We're going to be the next pop chips. Oh, by the way, do you want me, do you want to try my nuts? And he was like, absolutely. So I give him this, you know, probably half melted bag of, you know, our dipped almonds, and he said, wow, this is a really good product. This is a really amazing product development. What's your plan? You know, and I was like, so, I, you know, I had so much, um, Confidence. I was like, we're going to build up a big brand. Uh, you know, we're going to disrupt the industry. I had no idea who this was. I just thought this was like a random person who I could get feedback from because we were passing these out to anyone we really could. And he was like, you know, what are you doing about money? I was like, oh, we're going to raise a friends and family round. We're going to raise a 100,000 dollars. And he said, I think you're going to need a lot more money than that. And so He ended up giving me his contact. I still had no idea who he wa…

AI assessment note: “This was a complete chance moment. Uh, right after I'd moved to Seattle”

Q I mean, so, so that's a risk. Like, you could put this product in Target, as good as it is, and it would, it might not sell, right? Because what, either, what, what tends to sell, like end caps and things with massive promotional dollars behind them. And so, what were you able to do to make sure that they would sell?

A We were aware that it was a big risk. So, we had been told by so many people, you should just say no to them. Like, you're, exactly what you're saying. You're gonna, you're going to fail. You have, you Exactly zero percent brand awareness, and there's no way you can be successful at this, and obviously, you know, the usual way of entering a retailer like Target, right, is that you have these segment of test stores where you go to see if the product will turn and sell, and we were going from zero to 60, and so we had, you know, someone say to us, like, you should at least try to get an end cap, that way you'll get more visibility when you launch. So we went back to Tanya, and we essentially Said, is there any way, anything that we can do to get an end cap, you know? And she said, do you have any other flavors that could be exclusive to Target? And we said, we literally just developed a peanut butter almond. Peanut butter is like a double coat, double coated in dark chocolate, coated in peanut butter. We can give you that if you will give us an end cap. And she agreed. And I think that the end cap really helped us initially.

AI assessment note: “We can give you that if you will give us an end cap.”

Q So what, I mean, what happened to that idea? Did you, at some point, did you just sort of You know, did it kind of just naturally fizzle out?

A Yeah, I mean, it just wasn't sustainable, so I was, you know, going, making these teeny tiny batches of ice cream through the night, you know, trying to stuff it all into my freezer, as I said, definitely losing money. I had, there was no thought into, you know, how would you scale this or make more, so I started making sandwiches, and I would go and buy all of my ingredients at Publix, and I would make these sandwiches, and again, quickly realized that I was definitely losing money, and that's when I went, maybe I should be going to a restaurant depot and finding these ingredients. And I think what I didn't realize at the time was happening is I was building these micro-businesses, these teeny tiny businesses. Really what I was doing was cultivating a skill set by failing.

AI assessment note: “Yeah, I mean, it just wasn't sustainable, so I was”

Q the process of making them. Um, so you've got this guy who is making small, small-ish quantities for you, um, and you've got something that tastes good, and it's thinly coated almonds, and then how are you gonna sell them? Were they gonna be, like, individual snack size, or was it gonna be, like, a big bag of almonds? Like, how did you think about packaging them up at first?

A Yeah, so we wanted to put them in essentially kind of like a single serving, right? Because part of the idea was this grab and go, on the go. So I eventually reached out to someone in Spokane, Washington, who was a co-packer, and I think we convinced him to give us a chance. So, I mean, he was bringing truckloads of nuts in, you know, it was pretty decent scale, and you know, here we were with, we wanted to show up with You know, 250 pounds of almonds and pack them out, or 500 pounds, and we convinced him to let us drive a truck to Spokane, work on the line, and pack them into packages through the night when he was the quietest, so it was the night shift, and he employed a lot of ex-cons and people that had had a really hard time in life, and it was a pretty eye-opening experience because we would go and we would work Through the night, on the line, with all these different kinds of people, and we would hear their stories, and we would see what, that manufacturing is hard work.

AI assessment note: “we wanted to put them in essentially kind of like a single serving”

Q all these stores, you're in Costco, you're I mean, you were trying Costco, and Costco was, uh, eventually, you guys figured it out, but, I mean, you've got celebrities coming at you wanting to invest, like, this is a hot brand, and, and was any part of you worried, like, we're, we might not make it? Like, we might have to sell this business for, like, pennies in the dollar?

A There was a moment where we hit absolute rock bottom. It was in November of I remember I was in New York trying to raise money, and I just absolutely lost it, just sobbing in my teeny tiny shoebox hotel room. My husband got on the plane and flew out to come support me, and I just thought, I don't know what to do now. Like, this is, we are in a hard place. It was the first time I had ever had that feeling, and then somebody said to me, she said, she said, I have never met someone An entrepreneur who was ultimately successful that did not hit rock bottom. And this is your rock bottom. And you're right. We had a brand with a lot of things were working for us. You know, we had retailers picking us up. We had, we knew that we had, you know, our consumers loved us. We had all of these things from the outside that looked great, but we had a sinking ship behind the scenes with our financial situation. And so we, we had two options. It was either You know, like when people say a soft landing, it's like the worst words. It was either find a soft landing, or get your finances to match what you have built from the outside looking in, and that is what we decided to do.

AI assessment note: “There was a moment where we hit absolute rock bottom.”

Q So, alright, so you're, you go to Sandwiches, and then I guess at a certain point you leave Miami and move to New York. Tell me about what was going on in your life. Why did you, why'd you do that?

A Yeah, I think I had friends at the time who lived in New York and who loved it. I was, I was excited for more to be going on. There was somebody I was dating in New York at the time, so I thought I'm going to make the big move, and I will never forget going from Miami to New York. I pretty much didn't eat for the first couple of weeks because I didn't even know how to get in line at one of the bodegas and, and order a sandwich because New York was this, you know, it was Chaotic and bustling, and I realized pretty quickly that it had an energy I had never experienced before that I really resonated with.

AI assessment note: “I had friends at the time who lived in New York... somebody I was dating”