Cassie Maschoff - She Quit Google to Sell Pork Sausages With Her Sister

welcome to shelf help today we're speaking with cassie mashoff co founder and ceo of lottie's meats sister owned sausage brand that's making a lot of waves these days cassie and her sister chelsea they grew up on a i think it was a sixth generation family pork farm in southern illinois after a decade or so in the tech world mostly at google cassie teamed up with her with chelsea who's a i think a classically trained chef at from the culinary institute of america and they kind of wanted to go back to the roots so yeah really excited to get into it cassie just maybe first off just for the listeners that aren't that familiar with lottie's love to just get a quick lay of the land just in terms of you know origin story why behind the brand kind of the core products in the lineup and then maybe just a few places that people can get their hands on them and then i will go from there yeah thanks so much for having me as you said chelsea and i grew up on a family pork farm we're actually sixth generation but when we were growing up our parents encouraged us to try our hands at other things outside of hog farming chelsea went into culinary i fell into tech but we the farther away we got we were always like no one else is force fed pork their whole life or why are we not seeing premium pork on menus and where is it in the grocery store chelsea actually started in her restaurant using pork from the family farm and network of family farms we grew up on and she was experimenting making sausage using only the best cuts of pork so only pork loin and pork shoulder which is like really nice beautiful cut and like nice spices you know like real calabrian chilies and grade a maple syrup and the bites were just insatiable she was doing a few pop ups and it was getting a lot of success and so i bullied my way in we talked about doing something and you know what we're like if anyone is gonna reintroduce pork sausage or just pork in this way that people can really trust and have a clean label that i'm sure you know adam is kind of having a renaissance right now there's like this return to all natural we were like maybe you know it should be us it's kind of a now or never so ladies was created both to honor like that family legacy but just reintroduce pork in like a chef crafted fun way so we have four products two of them are fully cooked sausage links two of them are expertly seasoned ground pork blends and you can find us now in about three hundred accounts mainly in colorado then we have some pockets on in the midwest in norcal and socal on the west coast awesome nice that's a great overview well yeah maybe it's the first off i there's you know it seems like funny seems to be fair amount of polarizing views on on really both sides about building a business with family so yeah first from from from someone that's actually done the thing doing the thing built a successful business with your sister what's what's that experience been like yeah um it's funny thinking back to it because we'd always when we were growing up we had a lot of fake businesses i'm sure as a lot of siblings do where like you know you try to move into each other's rooms only to move out like two days ago we had lemonade stands we even had on the on the farm a bakery chelsea was the chef i was like drawing our menus and things at like eight years old and i think as real adult people talking about it chelsea and i were just talking about this the other day because i was like wow it's so tough to do business even with a sibling i can't imagine doing it with like a marital you know like a spouse and she was like cassie mom and dad did that and i was like oh yeah you're right and i was like why would anyone ever do this because it is the best and the worst there are pros and cons obviously every relationship is different and we are actually one of four so we have two other siblings that even that dynamic would be different i think it is mostly the best and we have gotten to the point where it's the best it was challenging in the beginning because as you mentioned at the top of this call we are coming from such different industries tech and culinary where chelsea is like in such a different everyday environment you know she's not used to like i am like moving online digitally but i think we both move with like the right amount of velocity and we complement each other in a way that i think this is really important that like forms a whole i think a lot of times people are like you're so opposite we're not necessarily opposite in that we're so different but i think like our complementary strengths obviously are there where it matters and over time we really had to just like find out what those things are and i think then it comes down to just like respect and communication style early on we had someone give us really good advice about how do you not keep score like there's is no score keeping and we really always try to practice and remember that it's more about like how can we acknowledge this is what you're doing without you know ever keeping score so that's been really helpful yeah i'll also say it's just like i don't know do you have siblings older brother yeah four years older would you ever start a business with him it's funny you say that talking about the opposite i've never really thought about it but we are very opposite he's a phd econ professor and that is about the haha i think from a complimentary skill set i think that could work yeah yeah it's it's fun though because you have yeah these different strings and different styles but at the end of the day you're such good friends and so like who do you want to do business with when like the lows are low because it's really gonna be low but then the highs are so fun you know together cause you're doing it with somebody that like you've just been through it all with and like get to understand in respect i would say the other thing with siblings or just a close friend or a partner if you see so much of this in cpg is you just can't take things personally and yeah even this week now that we're almost two years into this little baby business we're still finding ourselves being like ok sorry i just need to say this direct like this is is like this is just what it is but that's like a weird communication style cause on the opposite side it's really nice that you can be direct cause you can just get things done faster sure than you know like a more corporate setting where it's like yeah hi how are you how my this find you blah blah blah so it's you can't take it personally it took a long time to get here you have to put in the work and i think then it is like the best thing ever rewinding back to kind of some of those early days of r and d formulation granted i think this is probably more chelsea's like realm but so we can touch on at a high level but from what i know red and you mention you like focus on really kind of this perfect blend of premium cuts of pork loin and pork shoulder i think kind of a network of farms that i'm sure you guys vet pretty rigorously i imagine it just took a while to dial things in just to exactly the right blend between the work on the shoulder exactly the kind of right spices before you felt like you had the versions that actually made the cut and you're like yeah we love these we feel like we can we wanna bring these to market without getting like too much detail or what not i'm just kind of curious anything that comes top of mind or like key variables that you guys were playing around with between yeah that first version and the one you knew you felt like this was right and how many batches it took to get there how long it took yeah from concept chelsea had been experimenting with these recipes for like three years and doing it on the on the side like i had no idea that she was even doing that so whenever i had first tasted it i think maybe in twenty twenty three maybe the summer of twenty twenty three like a whole year before we started and decided to do something crazy and do this together she had already been working on the recipes for a while fast forward to i think january twenty twenty four was when i quit my job and we were just starting to look for co packers that was like a whole other iteration and i will say still is almost two years and we launched in march of twenty twenty four like that's when we picked up our product from the co packer we are still like iterating such a art and a science especially with a meat product when you're not using preservatives and you're not using like sodium vinegar borax like everything else you see on the back of the meat label it's a lot of like iteration i think so we're still doing we're still going through that yeah i think that's why when i hear from most cpg founders i talk to is you know that makes me feel better yeah it's like the product is never done you know so you're always yeah always gonna continue to iterate on it forever yeah yeah i guess so i think i've also heard i think maybe another podcast or interview on where you kind of talked about how you felt like you're kind of in this like awkward messy middle to a certain extent where like too big for the small guys too small for the big guys just means that that sounds like you guys are currently at least last time i checked working with a variety of co packers to meet the demand and it sounds like it took quite a while to find the right partners you felt like were a good fit maybe just at a high level love to kind of get a bit of a sense of what that journey was like and what you were specific specifically looking for and key criteria that were on your checklist yeah yeah it has been a journey we have to work with usda inspected facilities so that really really narrows the list for better or for worse you know i know a lot of other brands i just spoke with an emerging brand yesterday that was asking how they go about finding a co packer and like what is the what are the key criteria what is the negotiation process for us it's like a very traditional industry where we were like looking at pdfs on like a usda gov website but we wanted to start at least somewhere local so that was denver at the time because that's where chelsea was and we wanted to be in the facility and we wanted to make sure that we could honor some of these chef crafted techniques that i just mentioned chelsea had been like practicing on a small scale on herself and so it needed to be someone local where we could be there and that they could hopefully meet our quality bar so many commands no matter industry agnostic are going for scale you know and quantity over quality so that was really tough the other thing i think that was really tough for us in sausage making is like most sausages made the same way hence you don't wanna know how the sausage is made it's like trimmings knuckle cartilage sorry to gross anybody out and just you know like mass produced whatever's leftover maybe older cuts and we didn't wanna use like artificial maple powder for example so that was an argument we had i think we've worked with maybe like eleven different co packers often was like being told you have to use artificial maple powder when we're like we wanna use grade a maple syrup but maybe a co man doesn't wanna like use wet ingredients in their lines like there was so much ingredient i think friction but then that helps with the criteria of like okay they have to be committed to these ingredient quality standards these techniques and local but again we didn't really have a big list so then i also was telling this brand this yesterday it does come down to some convincing and razzle dazzle because when you are in the messy middle nobody wants to work with you there's no incentive but yeah they have to really love the product and see the potential and you have to sell that as you know you always do when you're a founder so i think that's really important to remember it's the business models just don't necessarily align and you have to try to give something and get them on board you guys have such a high bar from a a quality standpoint and assuming i understand correctly that you because of the stay that you're you're working with a more than one co packer how do you i guess help ensure that they're really maintaining quality across like quality and consistency across those co packers regardless of where the sausage is coming from regardless of the facilities coming from when they hit the shelf it's always gonna be that consistent experience for consumers yeah it's really difficult and i think one thing we're learning even recently in the last few months because i feel like it wasn't until end of maybe the back half of twenty twenty five that we really started growing in real real retail i say real in that like multi door you know twenty door chains that even on shelf with merchandising and eat counting on each associate to like date stamp effectively and thaw effectively is like a whole other game but even out the gate we really try to build those relationships with each commands try to be on site as much as possible chelsea has some travel this month going to them you know doing qa checklist trying to even put like instructions in the box and just iterating but it's it's difficult we have to we'll always have to work with multiple because we have to work with one for cooked products and one for raw so there's like some nuances there but yeah we try to control what we can control and remind ourselves of that it's tricky i don't know what do you hear from other brands that they do because i'm also like i feel like well i guess everything is is hard i feel like you know when it's more i guess more manufactured ish type products like it's a a snap product or something yeah that's a bit more manufactured i feel like it's there's a bit more of like a formulaic recipe where i feel like it's probably somewhat easier to make consistency versus a a product where you're actually using i i don't know it feels like making sausages there's just a lot more variability that can happen and so i feel like it's probably harder for you guys than than most it is and there have been times like the first time i first and only time knock on wood i've cried worse from some batches we got back after like working for nine months to get our first big retail order and the product was like not there this is when complimentary comes back and this is why it would be good if you and your phd brother start a business together because chelsea is always i always say and it's so true and such a compliment to her she's like the angel on my shoulder and i'm like the devil you know because i'm like oh it's fine we can still sell it and she's like this isn't it and i'm like what but it would be like really over salted or like the oven you know is baking like ten thousand pounds and maybe there was like a few cases that didn't get fully cooked on our two fully cooked products and there's yeah there's just so much like dozens and dozens of things that could happen and that really sucks because you lose like the cost of raw materials and i don't know if you hear this with a lot of brands you talk to in our industry a lot of co manufacturers don't want to sign contracts it's kind like it's legacy it's kind of like handshake it's we're small enough it's in and out and so sometimes i'm like we're doing everything we can and almost like micromanaging to like check all these things here like we just don't we cannot afford to mess up this batch but sometimes they're like yeah yeah we got this we know how to do our jobs so i don't know how brands handle that i'm like don't have the personality type to be chill about it assuming the the goal is to eventually get eventually move to one larger co packer partner that you can work with and hopefully eliminate some of those potential consistency challenges or what not assuming that is the goal like at what stage of the business or volume or or what not do you feel like you're gonna be able to make that transition if that is the goal yeah i think we're getting there with one of our partners i would say and doing we're about to do like our largest production run ever which is great and so that's hard because it's hard to it's hard to manage multiple partners and it's hard to gain efficiencies but for again for our product we're not a beverage brand where we can just like produce so much and let it sit in the warehouse for year like we want it to be fresh and we want to like consistently been iterating so i would say it is a goal to an extent but we'll probably always have two because most of them that we found yeah don't like to do cooked and raw it's like so separate maybe i guess food safety reasons i don't know that's another chelsea thing that i'm just like out of my brain out of sight i can't put anything else in there and just to clarify case sausages those are the one that are cooked and then you got sausages yes and those are raw yeah so that's like yeah so for the raw production we are sourcing from our network of family farms like the one we grew up on we only work with a handful that meet certain criteria and um we will then it will go to a processor we will buy a hundred percent pork shoulder for the ground raw product then that is sent to a command with our proprietary spices recipes then they will take finely ground add that in but it's all raw based so like they won't you know they kind of keep it like that versus the links will get cuts but then they have like smokers and ways to sous vide and there's all this other intricate equipment so yeah different capabilities and processes from a brand identity and packaging design standpoint you guys definitely have a pretty distinct look compared to other other brands in the market which i think is great you really stand out i think i've i've seen you describe it as like an old school diner and gas station vibes with a bit more of a modern spin if i got that right um i love that but yeah gas station vibes or it's like some of the the key things that were top of mind for you guys when you were kind of building up the brand identity positioning and voice yeah it's fun to i love this question cause it is fun to think back on it cause this was one of the first things we did when i was still working in my corporate job not having any intention to leave it and start a sausage brand i'm not crazy but i guess i am i you know chelsea was thinking about she really wanted to take a break from executive chef life also talk about a grind no pun intended those are chefs are like incredible humans that you just have to have the stamina for i don't even know and so she you know as she were making these sausages it was going to maybe be a pop up concept or we didn't know so i was just helping her on the side like build out the brand cause i was working in tech and marketing and so we didn't work with any formal cpg designers we were kind of just really trying to do what we knew about brand identity and positioning but also just like what was so true to us or like even chelsea not being incorporated having no idea how some of these things work and go and so the brand is really rooted in the name lottie which is a family name we wanted it to be nostalgic but like not too overly heritage or masculine like i think a lot of me brands are like it should be familiar and accessible so kind of have that vintagey feel but it is more i think modern and a little bit feminine we also like i don't know if you can tell by the way i'm just rambling in this interview we don't take ourselves too seriously so and we want the experience with lottie's to be really playful like a lot of sausage in my opinion are before i start before we started lottie's or i even had it like i think i thought of sausages like a chicken sausage or something that's like very functional but lottie's is so fun because it's become like such a community experience like people are cooking it for an event where you're making like a gorgeous pasta that was so easy with like a calabrian sausage or it's an elevated you know breakfast burrito that like is so memorable and not just like food for function like a lot of sausage is and so so much of that i think is is transparent or is translated i should say into the brand that it's like kind of simple but accessible and familiar and just like a fun spin on classics which is like what our products are too they're just like elevate spin on a lot of like old school classics i love that if i came to you next week and said hey i was inspired by you i'm gonna launch a some sort of premium meat brand what are two or three things that would come top of mind like tips you'd give me in terms of how to go about kind of building a brand that resonates oh my gosh i would say don't start a meat brand it's really hard choose any other category i don't know you know i your i feel like we're not that good at brand and probably could be but it's just like everything in cpg i don't know if you feel like this there's just so much noise and you're just always comparing yourself to everybody and you see what everyone is doing you're like wow should i be doing all of these things and working with this agency and am i talking about the right things and is this message getting translated it's just like so ecosystem overload that i'm always like shoot we're doing a bad job but then sometimes i'm like you know what you just kind of have to like inch by inch and try to focus on like the attributes that matter and focus so for us like it's it's hard to market and brand meat like be honest raw meat it like looks like cat food you know so maybe we should just put i would recommend having a brand that says not cat food put that on your on your packaging but you know it's it's one thing to stand out on shelf and i think over time we've slightly iterated and tried to optimize after like hearing from customers standing in hundreds of grocery stores of what is really really important we we added like a hundred percent pork shoulder and we added like pork loin and pork shoulder on our label on the front and the back and we're even optimizing it again now of like more ways to use it or like sister owned traceable from family farms so like we're always trying to iterate that so i guess tips would be just get it out there and start it's never going to be perfect but then you can always finesse and focus in on those main attributes i think like in the meat category especially when we were looking at doing a competitive analysis of everything and i'm sure you'll start to see this and it will haunt you like it haunts me and i'm sorry about that but like when you look at a lot of meat labels it's just like stamp sign overload like so many things like every single claim that you could ever imagine all these things and so we also really just tried to like take a different approach of like what is what is this full of not like not all these anti no no no no no things and just make it simple this is what it is this much protein these are the top three flavors which are also the only ingredients like hopefully that is enough now that's helpful i feel i feel like exactly what you're talking about i feel like one of the hardest things about like building a brand designing a brand is like uh key is like what what is the most important information that you wanna convey to your point you can't just show up and throw up and just like just kind of throw every claim out there in the world cause then it's just they're all gonna get buried and nothing is gonna be important and i feel like that's one of the hardest things is really like honing in from a hierarchy standpoint what are the most important things you want us we want to share what do we want to focus on most yeah and the hierarchy is so key like i think the very first time going back to coming from tech and us just doing this we designed our labels on a desktop and it was like so text heavy we were not thinking about shelf at all and then when we actually saw our product on shelf 'cause we didn't really have a super we thought we would start with food service and direct consumer and then go retail but once we started getting on shelf like retail just started spending and because we were local people knew us they started taking and then we're like wow we actually need to really focus on hierarchy and like pull out these top attributes cause that's what matters totally totally yeah on the topic of food service what have you found our the pros and cons of of the food service channel compared to traditional retail and why do you why did you guys kind of decide to really focus here for quite a while yeah we love the food service channel and the pros especially if i think you are a brand like we are trying to be that's really rooted in culinary chef crafted ideally for consumers that our aspiring chefs are really care about quality and love to cook and enjoy it gives just natural brand contextualization at no extra cost you know like we when i mentioned earlier when we started we were in a few local independent retailers in denver colorado and we did one farmers market that summer of twenty twenty four and we heard countless times oh we found you at get rights bakery or like we saw you on outside pizza menu we love that place now we've been able to pick it up at the store so it's amazing in that regard i think the cons are it's tough to manage in scale because as i mentioned earlier chefs are incredibly busy they're getting hit up with reps food service reps all the time they need to focus on their margin compressed you know it's so much easier to order from this catalog than it is to work with this small brand you know at a premium so it's just there's that inevitable friction and so i think it's it's really hard to get in and scale yeah but if you can and if your product works we love it it's it's just so fun and you don't have to do all the retail stuff which we don't love we don't love that for anyone listening we obviously love our retail partners i know what you're talking about it's i definitely heard that multiple people that food service can kind of be a kinda like a brand building flywheel exactly what you said that's awesome find in restaurants and then they'll see on the retail and they'll already recognize it or the other way around too so it feels like it they can be pretty complimentary yeah yeah how can brands get tripped up in the food service channel like what kind of stumbling blocks have you guys come across along the way yeah you know one mistake i made is when we launched we didn't price like effectively for volume in food service i was like kind of thinking about pricing everything the same per pound across retail in food service and we have since changed our pricing and optimized and we've seen a lot of growth from that but i don't know i just had no idea you know you're thinking about like your gross margin and cogs and like what makes the most sense and it's hard to know how much you'd actually scale with volume and what is palatable food service channel the food service channel because in that channel it's not like retail and that this it goes on shelf you work with a distributor this is it this is like your promo plan blah blah blah we have customers that are delis and bakeries and pizzerias and huge breweries and they all have different volumes and different needs and schedules and work with different distributors so it's really tough i think to figure out like the pricing in the delivery channel so that can definitely be one thing that brands could focus on you know depending on your brand like oh i'm only gonna start with these coffee shops or i'm only gonna start with gyms and like be a little bit more focused than we were and i think like just making sure that they have like the right packaging and sizing like for us you need to go in with like what is your value add as i mentioned you have everything working against you because gms decision makers are busy do you have this in the right size is it saving time is this elevating your menu and your offering you know i think our food system especially with restaurants like if what are customers willingness to pay when they're going in here and why is it worth not using like a cisco commodity or what everybody else is using it's you just have to like really prove out that value so i again i think the sale is harder than retail that makes sense on the topic of of retail seem like you've once you started putting a focus on retail and you're you're mentioned you're in norcal i think you're in the midwest in chicago socal tell me just a bit about a bit about that journey of getting those first few buyer meetings getting those commitments and kind of leading up to those first launches yeah we started like i said in denver colorado and it was kind of the classic story of dropping off samples figuring out what a cell sheet is you know trying to get into those first few doors and be focused i remember our first store and one of our best stores still is called levi's okoboji did you ever go there when you lived in denver it's kind of like you mentioned like a it's kind of like a marziks that you described earlier but it's a little bigger though right and it's like yeah it's the best yeah like i would move in there if they would let me and like live there maybe that's where i live but it's really nice but we i think we're like trying to demo there like every week when we first started but we got like really nice elasticity numbers we learned so much like we it was just like our place in our home they also had two dollar beer happy hour on thursday so we always demo during that time but it really you know it's that story of try to be disciplined and focused and get some of these initial really really strong accounts so that you can have this data story we spent most of twenty twenty four so we launched like i said in march of twenty twenty four doing hyper local retail convincing our first distributor i think that was in may or june of twenty twenty four so it was pretty quick and we were scared to do it we were going direct at first but we tried to model out do the math to do it because it would open us from twelve doors to now we were in like fifty or sixty throughout colorado including this this distributor did both food service and retail so that come twenty twenty five we felt good enough to we like knew enough about distribution like what it was like to work with one mini regional distributor and enough about retail jargon to go to our next region because also as we were discussing or mentioned briefly earlier there's not a ton of independent retail chains in colorado we wanted we always want to stick kind of premium independent original just because of like the nature of our product and our supply chain in 2024 it was not we were still on that copacker hunt we were still like doing runs like we just weren't ready to go into like a two hundred door store let's say but um we just we did want to keep we know we needed to keep growing and so we chose norcal as our second region because chelsea went to culinary school in norcal that customer really aligned with who we were targeting like a modern eater really cares about the story the quality chefs and there's a lot of really nice accounts out there and so we had i think met we did our first trade show also in our first year of business and we met the buyer of berkeley bowl uh huh there and they were willing to go direct with us to their two stores that account really really took off and what i did that was kind of crazy in hindsight but it worked as i was flying out there a few times to just drop off samples get a few other accounts like interested or giving us a verbal and then harassing a distributor and forcing them and asking them to work with us which now they do we work with the regional distributor actually two in norcal but um i was also telling the emerging brands the other day it's like it's kind of chicken in the egg and you just have to have the grit and bring the value again to that distributor so then we're like hey look we have these twenty accounts can we start shipping pallets to you and now that is like one of our best regions we're in like maybe a hundred and thirty doors there that's great so then yeah kind of rinse and repeat for socal in our like saint louis midwest region but we're trying to like continue in that model makes sense anything that jumps out in terms of tools and tactics that you've had found that have had the biggest impact from a velocity standpoint those could be yeah yeah like you know demos or like well structured promos or like you know shelf talkers that kind of stuff yeah anything yeah yeah and i'd be so curious what you hear because i feel like we're still testing and learning we haven't even that all happened i think we started launching with that distributor in like march april of twenty twenty five so almost a year but you know like picking up those accounts along the way so what we found that really really works for us is demos i know that's so polarizing for a lot of brands but also our brand our product is a higher price point and it tastes so different than most sausage so driving that trial is really important and most of the time when people try it they convert knock on wood it's a really effective tool for us whereas i've talked to a lot of brands they're like i hate demos i would never do demos it's not worth it blah blah blah so of course everything is different but that's been effective for us we are still very much trying to learn like the best promo strategy because we often get a lot of advice like you need to do this or you need to do these coupons or you need to put something on your products but i think meat is also again it's own thing where like personally as a consumer if i see a meat a protein on clearance i'm like oh what does that mean does it mean it's not good should i take it i usually think that it's getting close to expiration date yeah yeah totally and so that's something we're still trying to learn of like okay how do we what kind of sales do we do and should we test like buy one get one versus this amount of like still trying to measure and figure that out he also like there's limitations in what you can do for like shelf talkers and actual like marketing in the meat department we do have some like shelf strips and we try to send out and like we've tried some coupons but not a lot of um there's not as much opportunity i think in that regard i think that's a great point yeah i mean i definitely feel like damn was her you know you said they're kind of polarizing and they're obviously they're hard to scale they're they're not cheap especially as you grow and can't continue to just do them yourself but i don't know i feel like they're some of the most impact you can do especially for the year type of category where the product is so good and once someone tries it once that's like something that they're gonna remember um yeah i don't know like those are the most impact yeah i know it's something we really need to dive into especially in the look at that sorry to interrupt but i feel like especially the more smaller local stores like the marts as an example i feel like the people that are shopping at those stores the odds that they're gonna ask an employee at the store what do you recommend i feel like it's much higher than at a big safe space i feel like the smaller ones are even more impactful yeah and that's actually such a good point and something that we try to do really authentically and genuinely is chelsea and i have most of these stores like we have been to ourselves and again it's not scalable but we have such a unique product and story and we just really care about the end user experience so that's another thing i hear from a lot of founders like why are you still doing demos and why are you going to all these places but it's so important for us to build that relationship with the guys behind the meat counter because they are in the stores people are coming up to them saying hey i need a pound of ground pork or i wanna make this like what is this like more than any other place in the store they're interfacing with customers and so a promotional tactic we do that again i think is in trueness like authentic is we tried to give them we sent like a lot of calendars like lottie's calendars don't worry they were they were wholesome they had recipes on them but of just like to remind them of us and we send them coupons we send them like beanie's with like lottie's hot dogs and every time we're there we try to give them products and just learn from them because we truly have no idea what we're doing we're like how should we be updating our cases with slack out and date coding instructions or what are customers asking you and it matters i think just it just goes so much farther maybe and it's a benefit i think honestly for us than center store a different buyer because it's a it's not as transactional purchase as most cpg brands yeah last question for you might be so heads down you don't pay attention to much but in case you do any particular brands that feature interest lately or kind of trends you're generally following in the space that have got you excited these days could be inner inner outside of the beat space yeah i think in cpg i i really have loved this return to all natural clean label like nourishing what your body needs and i think there's so many great brands that are doing that now it's you know it's just like simpler yeah foods like we love one trick pony they're like crushing it this year they're like a two ingredient peanut butter or we often are always compared or asked like do we know the painterland sisters because they have like a beautiful really clean label yogurt that we're obsessed with we love um huxley it's like a natural energy drink oh they're based out of minnesota like you have to check them out but yeah i think like there's so many cool new brands huxley's also like chef driven and c and chilies they all they both simon the founder of huxley and maria the founder of c and chilies which is a really nice hot sauce brand i had some this morning they're both graduates of culinary institute of america so anytime there's like a chef behind a cpg brand you just know it's good so yeah i think just like clean simple perfected recipes has been something we're so excited about and even as a consumer i'm like we'll always put my dollars there totally i respect that yeah oh yeah cassie has been awesome some what's the best place for people to follow along with you and chelsea these days and then what's the best place for people to follow along with the brand as well yeah um the best place to follow all of us is probably on our instagram at lottie's meats we try to do a lot of embarrassing founder content that always seems to do better than when we're like hey here's our product or for like hey here's some mistakes everyone's like like like like they like when we fall yeah lottie's meats is our instagram or subscribe to our newsletter we also try to send out monthly like this is everything we've learned and done like a lot of behind the scenes monthly happenings called new news so you can subscribe on our website it's lottie's meats dot com thanks cassie it's been great and that's the pop