Ashley Cameron - From Labor & Delivery Nurse to H-E-B and 1,500+ Doors

Speaker: 00:00
Welcome to Shelf Help. Today we're speaking with Ashley Cameron, founder CEO of Love and Cookies, the clean label frozen cookie dough brand based out of Lake Way, Texas. Ashley grew up on a pecan farm in New Mexico, became a labor delivery nurse at Texas Jones's Hospital eventually, and then started Love and Cookies in 2021 after her oldest son Charlie was diagnosed with Kawasaki disease at I think H5, and he asked her to bake some cookies with her during recovery. And long story short, here we are with Love and Cookies a few years later. And I think since then she's won HEB's quest for Texas Best, scaled the 500 plaza doors across HEB as well as I think Sprouts, Wegman's Thrive Market as well, built an in-house manufacturing facility along the way, all with I think a pretty minimal amount of outside capital. First off, for the the listeners that aren't all that familiar with Love and Cookies, I'd love to just start just getting a quick lay of the land, just in terms of kind of the origin story and why behind the brand, core products in the lineup, and then we'll go from there.

Speaker 1: 01:06
Awesome. Well, Adam, thank you first and foremost for having me. I'm super excited to be here and share our story. So thank you very much.

Speaker: 01:12
Yeah.

Speaker 1: 01:13
We so Love and Cookies, as you said, is a clean label pre-portioned gourmet frozen cookie dough that you find in the frozen aisle of your grocery store. So often merged in that frozen dessert set next to your ice cream and frozen pies and all of that good stuff. So as you mentioned, we got our start after my oldest son, Charlie, was diagnosed with Kawasaki's disease at the age of five. So for some context, Kawasaki's disease is an acquired heart condition in children. So he was not born with this. He got a really bad virus that attacked the coronary arteries of his heart. And he had to undergo life-saving treatment and then long-term treatment at home for quite a few years. So when he came home from the hospital after his first treatment, he said, What was the one thing in the world? Or I asked him, what was the one thing in the world that you wanted to do? And his answer was simple. He just wanted to bake cookies with mommy. So that's what we did. And through that journey, you know, I had to be very mindful of what he was eating because the disease process isn't an inflammatory process. So we had to be very mindful. And I want him to be a kid and enjoy all the things that he that we should enjoy, but let's do it a better way. And so I started, you know, really reading labels. And I was like, wow, what's on the market is so not good for you, in the sense that there's just so much additive and preservatives and food dyes. And so through this journey, we started baking. I was like, we can do this better. Let's, and if we freeze them, that acts as our preservative. We don't have to add any of that shelf stabilizers and preservatives. So we were baking all these wonderful flavors. And then my husband was like, no, these are really good. You should think about starting a cottage home food bakery. So we did. And then shortly later, COVID hit. And I thought, well, nobody's gonna want product from a home food baker, but actually I was wrong. It made our cottage home food bakery explode to the point where I had a commercial mixer on my kitchen counter at one point, and my husband was like, There's flour and chocolate everywhere. We got to get out of here. So we found a small little tiny brick and mortar where we opened and launched pre-baked cookies. But one of the things that people were asking us for was this frozen cookie dough. So, you know, at scale, we were already baking from frozen. I'm like, well, wait, what if we just repack this into a little bit smaller format and we sell it for people to take and bake at home? So we felt like we designed this product that is all butter, no seed oils, free of food dyes and preservatives, no shelf stabilizers, but we also wanted to create an experience, right? So it's pre-portioned. So as a consumer, you can bake just one, or you could even mix and match flavors because they all have the same bake times. And then, of course, the bag reseals easily for you to store nicely in your freezer. So I felt like we were hitting all the high points. And so when we launched this product out of our small retail store, it flew off the shelf. And so we opened the store in October of 2021. And about a few months later, somebody from my local HUB had come in, bought a whole bunch of product, comes back the next day and was like, you have got to apply to the HUB Quest for Texas Best Program. Knew nothing about it, learned a lot, but decided to apply and then started getting phone calls that ended up making the top 10, which then put us into this very pitch style format and ended up winning first place. And it just catapulted us. And if the timeline was eight months from the time my first store opened to the time that we were winning that competition, to then now I'm in going into Texas largest retailer. And so it was a world win and such a fun experience.

Speaker: 04:30
Were there any tweaks along the way or kind of iterations you made along the way from those first few recipes when you just make them in your kitchen to now the product that's on the shelf and in re in retail today going into HEB, any big variables you had to play around with or things you had to tweak in order to be able to make a firm relation recipe that could actually scale to hundreds of thousands of cookies per month? Or is it pretty much everything translated pretty easily?

Speaker 1: 04:54
Definitely some reiterations. So as you know, we've been in this industry before, like when you are making cookies at home, you're measuring by the cup, right? We're gonna do one cup of this, two cups of that. Can't do that at scale. So we definitely had to play with the weights and formulations to make sure that we were still getting the same quality product that we would get if we were making this in tiny batches, right? We went from making a five-pound batch to a 1400-pound batch and they don't translate the same. So we definitely had to tweak it. But the the other biggest thing that we had to really focus on was the sourcing of ingredients at that scale. So what you can buy at the shelf in grocery doesn't always translate to being able to buy in bulk behind the scenes, right? And then we also wanted to make sure that we were looking at the quality of those ingredients. Are we sort are we truly out there sourcing the best chocolate, the best butter, the best flour that we can put our hands on while the product still tastes good, right? Because it is a fine line of we want to be as clean as we can get, but the product still has to taste good. And I am very confident that I think that we we nailed that.

Speaker: 05:57
You could totally correct me if I'm wrong, but it seems like uh bake from frozen in in 15 minutes that feels pretty short. Was there anything you had to do? Is it just, I don't know, maybe just smaller cookie portions I can book, bake faster. But was there any things you had to kind of work out to be able to stand by that claim that you can bake them from frozen in in 15 minutes?

Speaker 1: 06:15
Yes. Well, and it's actually even better than that. It's 13 to 15 minutes. We put a range, we put a range on there. We definitely had to play with it a lot to really nail down it definitely is dependent on the size, right? If we went into a bigger cookie, it takes a little longer. Went to a smaller cookie a little bit less. So we put a range in there, and there's they're also air fryer friendly, which is super great too, which is especially if you got you're the only one in your household or two cookies fit perfectly in that air fryer, and so it's a super efficient, and that takes even less time. But we wanted to find a time that was efficiency from like the concept of going freezer to oven, right? Um, because the whole idea is that this is a convenience thing as well, so that we we didn't want people to have to wait 15 minutes to let them thaw or soften. And so the it was a lot of tweaking, a lot of playing back and forth with time, temperature, but this seemed to be like the best fit that also allows us to have the best quality, right? So a quality, maintaining that quality at home is and we put the range on there because everybody's oven's a little different and everybody likes a cookie at a different level. You may like more on the warm dough side, where somebody else may like an ultra crispy cookie. And so that way you can kind of get what you want.

Speaker: 07:23
You briefly touched on it, but you built your own manufacturing facility in-house instead of going the copacker route. I love to just dive into a bit more detail in terms of what that decision process looked like. What was the trigger? Was it just like you couldn't find a copac the right copacker? You just wanted really full control over the really clean ingredient deck or just capacity, or what was the the thought process that ultimately led to building out a facility in-house?

Speaker 1: 07:47
So I love this question. I love this story because I don't always get to talk about it. And it was, I want to preface it by we've had to make a lot of pivots, a lot of pivots. So to back up into 2022 when I won the Quest program and I was being given the gift of launching into HEB, right? And my feet were being, I was being put to the test, right? My feet to the fire. How can you support 250 grocery stores? And you touched on it earlier. I do not have a CPG background. I was delivering babies prior to this. So I really had my learning curve was super steep. And I had some really great mentors, though, from HEB who really helped kind of help me think about things, you know, going long term. What is the priority as far as scalability? Um, and all the way down to like the food safety aspect as well, because as we know, that's also a big deal. So at that time, we were still very much in a COVID era. And I tried so hard to find a copacker because that is like the natural process, but I could not find one that would make the product the way I wanted. And the biggest part was the pack out, the stand-up pouch, because that's a fairly newer thing and frozen. And so, in the sense that when you are filling that pouch, there's lots of issues with thawing and product getting stuck, and it was not an easy find. So it was more about the pack out, is why I could not find a co-macker, co-packer. In addition, people um were not taking new brands at that time. So if you remember that time, people were often firing small brands because they were scaling back their manufacturing, they were distancing people inside those plants, and so it was really hard. And so my husband was like, hey, listen, we're not gonna give up on this opportunity. Let's go build, let's go build our own. So we found a building that we came in and made completely food safe. We got a loan to help build that out and came in, redid the whole facility, and invested in equipment that would at least get us started. Because as you know, equipment manufacturing, it's super expensive. And so we found enough equipment that would help us get started and help to have a successful launch at HUB. So we won this competition in August. My facility, I'm gonna talk about speed. I January of 2023, the facility opened. We launched into HUB in July of 2023. And so it was the world win. I will say that having not had the CPG experience, we did not build our facility big enough with how quickly we have scaled. So we have since outgrown that facility. And we had to really take a look at the hard, like the financials, looking at our gross margins and understanding, okay, I either need to go build a big building and a bigger with much larger equipment and invest a tremendous amount of capital to help make this to where we can scale, or we can pivot and move to a coman. Our gross margin increases significantly. I can support upcoming launches at really big retailers and we can pivot and really scroll away that and become profitable. And so I was faced with this challenge at the end of last year about how are we gonna pivot and what are we gonna do. And ultimately we decided to move away from that so that we can adequately support from a production lens the upcoming growth and launches that we're gonna see this year.

Speaker: 11:05
Interesting. That's super helpful for I think for up and coming on other founders that are probably going through some similar decision points as well. But maybe not with some of the COVID complications, I guess.

Speaker 1: 11:14
Yeah, that definitely added an element to it that hopefully we never see again. But it it was definitely a challenge. And, you know, I'm pretty genacious and I was like, I'm we're not gonna give up on this and we're not gonna forgo this opportunity. And so that's kind of where we had to make that hard decision. And but I'm so glad that we went through it because it allowed me to really understand what it takes to be a manufacturer because I think understanding that side of the business, I knew what questions to ask when picking the right co-manufacturing partner, right?

Speaker: 11:44
Totally.

Speaker 1: 11:45
In addition to that, is something as basic as like, how do you wrap a palette? How do you build a palette? How do you how do you understand what quality control is and purchasing power and and all of those elements that go into making a product? And it was a really it was a hard lesson and an expensive lesson, but it was one that I'm really grateful that I had.

Speaker: 12:04
Shifting gears a little bit from a brand and packaging standpoint, thinking back to those early days when you're building, building out the brand identity, positioning, voice, the visual identity, packaging design. What were some of those key things that were top of mind for you that you really wanted to convey from both the voice tone and also from a look and feel standpoint?

Speaker 1: 12:24
Yeah. So I mentioned the convenience and the experience factor from the consumer, right? So that stand-up skirt seal pouch was such a fun, easy way to hit all those high points. So that one was a big deal for us. Point two, and I learned this through my mentorship at HEV. So originally all of our packaging was the same color, and all that was different on the front, like I'm talking very first iterations of what we launched in the brick and mortar. The only thing that was different was a cookie. And if all that's different in an and, you know, cookies are always this warm golden brown, and if all that's, you know, visually, if it only looks like the inclusions are what's different, it's hard to tell what it is. And I was given some statistics. This was back in 2022, so it may have changed a little bit, but it was like, hey, 80% of the stocking staff at our retailer at E B could not read or write English, so they stock based on color. And if your product is being stocked wrong, your consumer is purchasing it wrong. So how can you, Ashley, be creative and help us differentiate this more? And this is where we came up with color like color differentiation in each flavor. So it really helped identify with or helped the brand create identity by saying, I want the pink pack, I want the blue pack, I want the purple pack. Because if you think about it as a consumer, you're like you're drawn to that color. And it also had some benefits. That if you look at the frozen dessert set, there's a lot of white, a lot of white, a lot of sideways cord cardboard boxes, a lot of cool whip. And so it was a way for us to go into a shelf as a new brand with very little, you know, consumer base, and for a way for us to pop out on the shelf. And so that was probably our biggest takeaway that has helped uh with with the brand identity.

Speaker: 14:11
Yeah, that totally makes sense. It's cool that you've uncovered some of those back of house things fairly early. The previous company that I built that I mentioned, and then the production design agency that I run now, that's things that we often come across and and try to highlight for for clients and we learned in the previous company. Whereas even beyond this color is like exactly to your point, if there's someone in the back of the store, an employee, if if they don't know, can't easily find your product in a back, you know, a dark-lit room in the back of the store, they may just say, uh, this is too hard for me to find. I'm gonna put something else on the shelf instead.

Speaker 1: 14:43
Yeah. And it's definitely been, I think, one of the things that has set us apart in the early days and helped, because it's it's eye-catching when you compare it to the white sideways box. And you're like, oh, I'll try that. And so then it has allowed us to reach customers that we had not yet reached.

Speaker: 14:59
Looking back now for some up-and-coming founders that are year two behind you, fewers behind you, and they're just going through this brand identity packaging design process, thinking back now, what's I don't know, one thing that jumps out that you tell them to keep top of mind or something to watch out for that might trip them up along the way.

Speaker 1: 15:15
Making sure that your the name of your brand is always front and center, right? I would say, and you you can correct me if you feel differently with your agency. I just every time somebody picks up a pack, this is love and cookies. This is love and cookies. And then let me look at the flavor. But this is love and cookies, because the more that people are hearing our name, reading our name, I feel like is a super in addition to the color and the eye-catching of the packaging, but you want people to know what they're buying, especially as you have competition in the set and different things. Like what who is gonna be the top of mind and who's gonna be the brand that people want to take home? Especially in the frozen set, you have a ton of barriers to entry, right? You have like you have the door, you have the coldness, and you have a lot of things that keep people sometimes from opening that door unless they already know what they want.

Speaker: 16:05
I to someone a while ago was in the frozen set, and I was like, what if you could redesign the frozen second entirely in retail? What would that look like? And you remove the doors entirely, so at least you can remove one barrier of entry.

Speaker 1: 16:15
Yeah, you know, some retailers will have those like reach-in bins, and they usually you see them a lot more about holidays and stuff, but those tend to work really well as well because you're also looking down and you have a 360 view versus a vertical view. And I feel like I agree with that, it would help a lot. Yeah, yeah.

Speaker: 16:31
In terms of pricing, uh, thinking back when you were launching into retail, uh, what did your strategy or process look like in terms of nailing down what you wanted your go-to-market price to be in relation to the market?

Speaker 1: 16:44
Yeah, that's a great question because it has changed. Um and I and I and I will say it it's packaging and you have to be willing, I think, as a founder, to always pivot and don't be married to something that is going to ultimately hurt your brand. So when we started at HUB, we actually had a each cookie, it was a 16-ounce pack that with eight cookies, but each cookie was a two-ounce pack size. So if you do your research, it was the largest format in the market, but you were getting this superior bakery style cookie. But we were coming in at a high price at $9.99 per pack, but we were able to go direct to warehouse. So I wasn't having to mess with like distributor fees and different things. And it it worked for us. Like we did, you know, we sold a million dollars worth of product in our first full calendar year at HEB. It worked. But the second I started going into distribution, I realized that that price was not gonna work because of having to go through different distributors. I had all these extra fees layered on. And again, this is something that I just didn't know, I didn't understand at the time and didn't have that experience or background knowledge. So we quickly learned and said, hey, what happens if we reduce the cookie size to an ounce and a half so that we can create, are we still gonna get the same quality product, the same superior product, and but yet a better price point for our consumer? And so we can create this win-win. So there was a lot of back and forth and understanding and having to make that hard pivot, right? But what we found is that yes, it reduced it just enough so that we can be at an efficient price point once we go into distribution. It also gave our HTTP consumer a much better price on shelf. And by reducing the price where groceries right now are going up, and we were able to reduce it. But when the cookies bake, they are almost the exact same size. And so it's an efficiency that we created without cutting quality and out without hurting experience for the consumer. And so that yeah, and so it was just a transition and it's a it's a minute change. We're talking half an ounce. If you weigh half an ounce, it's not a lot, but it's enough to give a financial incentive to our consumer and a benefit to us being able to scale nationwide.

Speaker: 18:55
Totally. Yeah, that makes total sense. I think that's really smart. Well, you you touched on the HEB's quest for Texas best a bit at the beginning. Just you've won first place in 2022, got that cash prize direct path to shelf on 250 plus doors nationwide. Um for other brands that that are listening that haven't gone started going through the this quest process yet, yeah. Tell me a bit more about the the actual experience. Like how did you prep for the pitch? What did you feel like the judges cared about? Anything you feel like you wish you'd known before you walked in now looking back.

Speaker 1: 19:30
Well, I will I wish that I would have known just how hard CPG was at the time. I was the time when I, you know, when you get told it you're you imagine this. I had no experience. I knew truly knew nothing about CPG. And I had a retailer as amazing as HEB saying, Hey, we believe in you, we believe in your story, we believe in your product. We want you on our shelves. Like that is a like, oh my gosh, like 360 inside out, career shift, pivot as a brand, an amazing experience. So HEB has been an amazing partner. Amaz, I have amazing mentors and friends from this whole experience. And still to this day, they are just an absolute phenomenal partner to work with. But going through the process, I this one of the sourcing managers who was walking me through this really was so wonderful in helping me talk through, you know, do you truly understand your margin? Do you understand freight? Do you understand all of these things that are going to take for you to get your product from point A to point B into the consumer's house? And so that guidance still, and he's still one of my very dear friends today, but was so beneficial. But I will say, if you're, especially if you're a Texas-based brand, was the best experience I've ever had. They I encourage people to apply to try it out because HUV really believes in this grassroots approach where they want, they want to support Texas local economies, they want to support Texas brands. And I'm so thankful that they took a shot on us and hope that we're making a difference on their shelf and enjoy being their partner. But it's definitely a worthwhile if you're a Texas brand experience to go out on that limb and put yourself out there. Once we got notified that we were a top 10 finalist, that's when things really started changing for us. So I went, I was not only prepping for the build out of this potential facility, I was caught in limbo, right? Because if we didn't win, or if we didn't, there's no guarantee that we were even going to get a contract. So I was having to navigate do I sign the lease, do I build this out, do I not, until we actually went through the process, right? So this when you give this pitch, you're standing in a room with people watching you. At this point in my life, I had not given a speech since college in a small, you know, small speech class with 10 people. And I'm hearing I'm talking to a hundred people telling trying to convince them that my product deserves to be on shelves. And so I had to walk through our story about why, and then why the Texas consumer would want Love and Cookies in their freezer. And then, of course, they are a business, so they want to know do you understand your price point? Do you understand warehousing? And so because I had The guidance from my mentor, I was able to articulate and come to a point of understanding before that pitch, and so it it kind of worked out for us, and so I'm thankful for that opportunity.

Speaker: 22:11
I'm not sure if if they were early enough involved in the process you're going through this where they could there wasn't a whole lot of things to guess backtrack on, but as you were going through the process, or once you won between then and when HUV is actually gonna put the brand on the shelf, did they come back and say, Hey, we want you to you know tweak the formulation this way, or we want you to tweak your packaging this way, or any did they have any feedback before getting on shelf? Because I know oftentimes like brands and I hear and they talk to Whole Foods, they're like before whole say, Yeah, we're gonna put you on the shelf, but hey, you need to make these changes to your packaging before you feel like you're you're ready for the the shelf.

Speaker 1: 22:45
So I would we were very blessed that they they uh had that conversation with us prior to us even purchasing our first round of packaging and our first nice reiterations of things. And hey, like as you know, like with the brand, like your packaging is ever evolving. You're always gonna be like never done making efficiencies, and it's never done. You'd love to think it is like we just did a whole like kind of refresh recently, and it's for it, we're gonna do it again, probably. You know what I mean? It's always changing. And so what we launched with the HEB is not what's on the shelf today, it's similar, and people know it's the brand, right? So a good example of that is that, and we loved it at the time, and it worked at the time, is that when we first launched, we use all of our cookies were named after either my son or my other children or friends and family that were really supportive of us during Charlie's illness. And it was a nod to them, and it was a super fun personal thing. But once we got outside of Texas, people are like, well, what the heck is a Charlie Cash cookie? You know, like they just want a chocolate chip cookie. And so we realized that people in other parts of the country who maybe they don't have the same understanding of the story, that they it was actually causing confusion on the shelf. So we actually have since dropped the names and just went to like what the cookie actually is, which has actually helped and increased velocities. So those are some minor things that we've had to change and tweak since that first iteration. But to your original question, I had a lot of guidance in the beginning before I had to make that first big, you know, $20,000 run of packaging so that I didn't have to just light that on fire. So I was grateful for that.

Speaker: 24:21
What did those first 90 days on shelf at those 250 or so HEB doors look like? What was really moving the needle from a velocity standpoint in terms of the best way to drive trial or any other learning lessons, things you feel like jump out now looking back?

Speaker 1: 24:35
Yeah. So, you know, we're based in the Austin area. And so it was naturally very easy for us to support the Austin market. And so I was doing in-store demos all week long at all these different stores, sampling like live sampling the product. And when you're sampling and baking warm cookies, it's pretty hard for people to say no when they're walking by.

Speaker: 24:57
Very true.

Speaker 1: 24:58
You got the smell, and then you add in the taste. And it's so that was a really fun experience. And we were able to, you know, share our story, have more one-on-one conversations. And again, I think it goes back to that grassroots approach of being local and people want to support local, especially here in Texas. And so that was very beneficial. The longer we were on shelf, the less time, and the more we started growing, the less time I had for that, right? And of course, just the reality of growth.

unknown: 25:27
Yep.

Speaker 1: 25:27
So we started getting into promotional support, like in yellow tags or you know, different things that brands do. And we f saw a big jump in that. And so then we had to learn well, do people respond to different price points and what does that look like? And I'll never forget when the first time we ever did a BOGO, and I went on day three to like check out the shelf and it was empty after day three. And I remember the first time that that happened, I was like, wow, so this one worked. And so you and that was always really fun because people get to try multiple flavors, and so we learned that those seem to be really beneficial, which who doesn't love a good BOGO?

Speaker: 26:07
Very true. From what I know, as the CPG side really started to scale eventually, you made the decision to to close down the the retail okay, the retail side of things. Walk me through that decision process.

Speaker 1: 26:20
Okay, so to open the manufacturing facility, we got hit with COVID, right? So when we had our brick and moor, we had three locations in Austin, and I I loved our brick and mourners. It was so fun. I loved having that local consumer base. But we got hit with a really unique challenge. So the grocery side was scaling. We knew that we were gonna be launching into our first national retailer. So this would have been like the fall of 2024. We knew that was coming. We were in the we had just opened our third location, but the construction had taken six months longer than it was supposed to, which, you know, that will tell you as well.

Speaker: 26:56
Yeah, typical. Yeah, but yeah, for sure.

Speaker 1: 26:58
But we got hit with I was having serious labor shortages and issues. And then to find anybody who would work, it I was having to pay a significant amount for labor. We were also at one of the peak egg crises where egg prices went through the roof, followed by butter, followed by chocolate. I don't know if you make cookies, Adam, but eggs, butter, and chocolate are kind of a staple. And so I was looking at, you know, like our PL and looking at these expenses, and the brick and mortars were a fun to have. They were just barely profitable and not enough to be a sustainable.

Speaker: 27:39
Sure.

Speaker 1: 27:40
I mean, they could sustain as they were, but it wasn't, they weren't handling these fluctuations of all these commodities the way that I would like. And especially the labor just really added a hard element to it. And so as we knew that this scale was coming, I said, well, is that money better spent supporting our growth at shelf, which this is the scalable, these are the the bigger numbers, and then at scale, our gross margin is X versus what I'm having this struggling profitability over here. And so taking all those things into consideration, we made the hard decision to shut them down. And it was the right decision. It was a hard decision, but it was the right decision for the longevity of the business.

Speaker: 28:20
As the CPG side of things has continued to scale, I'm curious a bit about what the team looks like, what hires have been the most pivotal and what's on your mind over the next year or two in terms of what you need to take the company to the next level.

Speaker 1: 28:35
Yeah. So we have, as we, you know, as we've scaled and we've also again shut down the facility. We this has been a process. It wasn't something that happened overnight. There was no magic bullet. But as we were scaling, one of the biggest things that I needed was um a new head of ops. And so I I refer she's she's a unicorn, she's amazing at what she does. And um that was a really good big hire that really helped me in the with the the factory shifting, the shifting to a co-man, and then all the cog efficiencies that she came in and made. That was a really big step because again, I don't know what I don't know. And I, as a founder, your job is to surround yourself with people who are smarter than you and who can do own their previews way better than you, and that are willing to teach you along the way, right?

Speaker: 29:25
Yeah.

Speaker 1: 29:26
Also, finance. I have a great CFO who has a lot of experience with startups, and she has uh really helped us own our spend and what you know, are we being efficient here? And then as we we started, I started out there with those two that were key hires. And because if the if the business is not on an operational strong foot, it's gonna fall apart. It doesn't matter how great your marketing is or your sales are or whatever, it it's gonna completely fall apart. So operationally and with your supply chain, we had to make sure that we were on sure footing. And I'm so confident in where we are today with that. So the next thing we realized is that we needed some help with with marketing, right? Everything from socials to TPRs to you know influencers, different things. And so we I have a new CMO who came to me from Loch Lom and um helped grow that business. And so she's very seasoned in what she does there. And so excited. We've been working with her for about eight months and she's been a great addition to our team. And then more recently, just hired a new uh head of sales. So we are working on this larger growth plan because now we have this foundation that is really set, and then this way our tree won't topple. So now we're just here to drive sales and grow, grow cookie sales and become America's next favorite cookie and then the home and freezer of every every freezer across America.

Speaker: 30:45
Love that. Well, that kind of leads to the next points. I mean, you've you've scaled to, I think, 500 plus doors at this point. I think you've raised less than 500,000 bucks still to the business. I know you mentioned you got a loan to help build out the um at least like first version of the in-house facility. From a working capital standpoint, first off, how are you financing working in capital, ingredient purchases, inventory, that kind of stuff?

Speaker 1: 31:10
So we actually are in the middle of a larger fundraise alert. Okay. Our first like larger seed round, and so which is almost completely funded. So full transparency, we have raised quite a bit of money to help us support this growth because as you know, it is uh a very expensive business and especially if you wanna wanna grow and scale. So good thing is though, uh, we're gonna tip that point of profitability this year, which is great. And then in addition to raising raising that money. So prior to this, yes, we uh we raised just a little bit initially to help us with the facility or had a loan facility raised a little bit to help support our growth at HEB, but the time has come where we act needed a little bit more. So we're actually in the almost 1,500 dollars across the country now.

Speaker: 31:56
Oh wow, okay.

Speaker 1: 31:58
So yeah, so we have grown quite a bit and with some some more exciting watches coming this year. So we need to be able to adequately support that and help drive trial. And I can't go into every retailer Adam, unfortunately, and do live demos as much as I would like to, but we have to be creative.

Speaker: 32:14
As much as you'd probably like to do it, that's just not your job anymore.

Speaker 1: 32:17
So I still show up sometimes. I think it's really fun. You got to engage with the customer and love sharing our story.

Speaker: 32:24
Totally. Well, last collection for you. Um, you're obviously you've been in entrenched in this CPG world now for for quite a while. Any any particular brands or just trends in general across CPG outside of let's just say the the the cookie category that you're particularly excited about or things you just can kind of tracking, or things you've been buying a lot at the store lately?

Speaker 1: 32:46
Well, I am very much have an ADHD brand where I'm always looking and thinking of other ideas. And this is where my finance and ops team are very good about reining me back in saying, no, no, no, no, we have to focus over here because I'm like, ooh, we should do this, we should do that. So in my mind, I had envisioned that you know, love and cookies would be on every aisle in the grocery store with all different brands, but that's just not the reality. So I definitely think there is white space for you know clean label mixes and pre-made products, both like pre-made cookies or other like similar things that can meet that shelf stable but clean label opportunity. So those are definitely things that excite me. They're not necessarily on the radar right now, but I'm definitely interested in that and seeing where that can go. Because I think there's a couple brands out there who have done that really well. They started out with maybe a mix or a bar, and next thing you know, now they have frozen this and shelf stable this, and it's a way to really saturate the grocery store.

Speaker: 33:47
Yeah, totally.

Speaker 1: 33:48
And eventually I think that's where we would love to be. One of my mentors one time asked me, I love, I love sharing this quick story. He said, Hey, like who is your competition? So let's back up to 2022, where again, how I knew nothing. And I was like, Well, at this point in time, nobody, because it's a whole door full of pies, and there's no, there's no other cookies, and we're innovative and gonna do all these wonderful things. Sound does that sound like a typical founder? I I'm unique, I'm gonna do all this. And then he was he laughed, he literally laughed at me and was like, Okay, well, come back to me when you thought about that for a little bit and let's talk about this again. And so then I realized what he meant, and he's like, Truly, the entire grocery store is your competition, right? You I am yes, frozen cookie dough is not typical in the sense that people have been trained to buy it in their refrigerator section, typically. We're kind of essentially creating a new category, a new place for people to go. But it's not only that, it's the drag cracker aisle, like dry cookie aisle, the cookie mixes. Anybody who's dealing cookies, you have to find a way to like snatch them from that aisle to now come to the frozen set. And so we're gonna start here, but it's not where we're gonna finish. And because the more we can get the brand name and like across the aisles, the more it's gonna grow our grow the brand.

Speaker: 35:05
Love it. That's great. Oh, yeah, Ashley, what's the what's the best place to follow along with with you and your journey and then best place for people to follow along with the brand these days as well.

Speaker 1: 35:16
Yeah, so you can find us on all social media Instagram, TikTok, Facebook. Our handles are at get love and cookies and across the same for every platform. Of course, on LinkedIn, and then our website, which is get loveandcookies.com.

Speaker: 35:30
Perfect. Awesome, Master. I appreciate the time. I think uh I think that's the pod. This has been awesome.

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