Jason Bronstad: The MALK Organics Playbook - Velocity, Trust, and the Road to 15,000 Doors

Speaker: 00:00
Welcome to Shelf Help. Today we're speaking with Jason Bronstad. Jason is the CEO of Malk Organics, leading organic plant-based milk brand under Jason's leadership. I think Malk has scaled from 1,200 to 15,000 plus doors nationwide, 100 million plus in revenue for Malk. I think Jason spent 20 years or so in CBG across some pretty big-name brands that I'm sure most people are familiar with from Sarah Lee, Mike's Hard, Mighty Swell Cocktail Company, just to name a few. So definitely a lot of great experience. Super excited to get into it. Jason, maybe just first off of listeners, I think it's probably a fairly small group of people, but ones that aren't that familiar with Malk, we'll love it to just kind of get a quick lay of the land, just in terms of kind of origin story, why behind the brand, core product lineup. And then if you want to call out any, you know, a few new places that need doors where people can get their hands in them, and then uh we'll go from there.

Speaker 1: 00:58
Yeah. Thanks so much, Adam. I look forward to the conversation. So Malk Organics is it started as a need, right? It started as our founder wanted to give her son the best tasting, clean product that she could and started making it at home into farmers' markets, and then with the bold proclamation that the brand would be in retail and made that happen. Started with self-production and then eventually evolved into co-manufacturing. Uh, but at the end of the day, Malk is an organic, great tasting product with real ingredients and no gums, oils, fillers, or anything you just don't need in your I think you started as a initially as a consultant at Malk.

Speaker: 01:34
I think it was in like towards the the back half of 2020 and then eventually transitioned into the CEO, I think, you know, mid-2021 or so. Assuming I got that right, what um is what did you see during those first few months that you were like made you think like, oh yeah, I need to be here full time. You know, if opportunity presents itself, I'll have to step into the CEO role.

Speaker 1: 01:54
Yeah. So it's it was an awesome opportunity to step in and and transition with the founder. What I saw when I stepped in was a need that was being met for consumers across the country. And it was barely distributed. I say barely distributed. 1200 doors is an impressive feat for a brand starting.

Speaker: 02:13
Yeah.

Speaker 1: 02:14
And with my background, I knew the the opportunity and scale. It also coincided, Adam, with a health journey that my family was starting to make, myself especially. So it is, I've got, I'm blessed with an amazing bride. I've got two amazing children, a daughter and a son. And one of the things that we had talked about, my bride and I, is the next full time that you want to lean into, it needs to be aligned with where we're going. And Malk 100% was locked in on that with the no addict, gums, oils, fillers, and being an organic product. It's the first product I've sold out of. My kids can have as much as they want. And as a dad, like that is it's a humbling thought to look back and go, some of the brands you mentioned. Obviously, I spent a lot of years in the Bev Alc space. To be able to raise my kids with the product that I'm selling and feel good about it felt right.

Speaker: 03:03
For sure. I love that. On that topic of the most serious experience in the Bev Alc space, anything that I guess looking back now, thinking back now, realize that really kind of especially translated really well to this plant-based milk category that I don't know, might be people might not expect.

Speaker 1: 03:22
You know, the the core fundamentals of CPG shine through no matter what you're selling. And at the end of the day, you've got to earn your shelf space every time there's a review of that shelf. So velocity is king. You have to make sure that where you are, you are winning and you are doing the right things with the product design and development, the packaging design development up front. So it's accessible on the shelf. And then you have to have the consistency for the consumer to continue to pick it up off the shelf.

Speaker: 03:52
I think it was around Thanksgiving of 2021. Essentially, you guys kind of reformulated some of the vanilla products to have some, I think it was called organic natural flavors, and customers certainly certainly took notice. Maybe just kind of quickly walk me through kind of what played out there and how you and kind of the team responded based on what feedback you guys got from customers.

Speaker 1: 04:12
We referred to that week as the kerfluffle. And it was one where we had been working to ensure we could scale, which meant uh have a longer shelf life with co-manufacturing. And we had been doing consumer tastings, and the consumers kept coming back like, we want more vanilla. It's like, okay, yeah, we can do that. We can dial this up. And we did. And it started shipping in the middle of November and then the Monday after Thanksgiving. Most loyal supportive fans came back to us in a very loud voice and said, Hey guys, this is not malk. Malk is organic natural ingredients that I know where they come from. And we dove into it immediately. You know, immediate emergency session with the board of directors, with my RD partners. And we moved heaven and earth to, by the end of that week, to have the formulation that we use today with a vanilla extract, not natural flavors.

Speaker: 05:07
Monday at a mistake formula by new formula by Friday. Like what did that actually take on the from the behind-the-scenes standpoint, from an operational standpoint, to make that quick and that turn so quickly?

Speaker 1: 05:17
I think that FedEx and UPS loved me that week because we were moving vanilla extracts around the country and finished good samples around the country in a matter of from Monday, we flagged it, we need this, to Wednesday having the formulated products shipped to the key decision makers and Friday being able to share with our consumers like we hear you, we understand this is going to be fixed with the next production run. And by February, we are shipping the new product.

Speaker: 05:47
Wow. After you made that quick switch, really took consumers' feedback into account, how did you actually communicate that fix to consumers and kind of what was the messaging strategy to get them back on board?

Speaker 1: 05:58
Yeah, so it was our job to re-establish trust. And we had to do that. And we're very fortunate there were quite a few pretty recognizable names in the healthy food world that came out against us. Uh the food babe, Bonnie Hari was one of them. And by Wednesday afternoon, I was having one-to-one conversations with people like Bonnie Hari and letting her know exactly the steps that we were taking based on the feedback that her and her followers gave us. We then followed up with multiple other influencers at the time and said, you know, let me hear from you, one-to-one, CEO to you, and speak your piece. Let's hear it, and let me share with you our path forward. So to be able to speak that freely and to have that honest conversation and a one-to-one dialogue allowed it to be amplified. And at the end of the day, consumers had to wait a few months to actually have it. Right. And they stuck with us through that time. So I'm grateful for how they chose to support us.

Speaker: 06:58
Yeah. I mean, that goes that shows that the that's real test of loyalty, I guess I'll say.

Speaker 1: 07:03
Very much so.

Speaker: 07:04
From a product lineup innovation strategy, Mal, pretty sure, you know, started as almond milks at this point today. I think the lineup includes cashew milk, coconut, soy creamers, shelf stable skews as well. How do you guys kind of think about it? I mean, it's it seemed like expanded a lot. How do you think about product development?

Speaker 1: 07:23
Well, the honest answer is a lot of the work for the expansion was done by before I came in. In fact, I cut us way back. When I stepped in, we were making 14 or 15 SKUs, and I cut it back to three so we could actually commercialize and expand. And then we were able to refine some of the innovation that already existed. Once we hit that threshold of what was already in the pipeline, if you were will, then we started to look, you know, what are the category trends? What's winning? And where is there an opportunity for Malk to provide consumers the cleanest organic product available in that space? And we've, you know, we continue to march forward with data and give consumers what they're looking for. Their wallets are always voting. So when you look at the consumption data across categories, you know where they're trending. You know the flavors are trending to, the basis they're trending to. Oat was having its heyday from 19 to 22, and then it fell off a cliff. Where do those consumers go? Well, they those consumers went to coconut, those consumers went to soy, some of those consumers went back to dairy. And we we followed where our consumers went and we said, well, we can actually meet your needs where we're not today and bring you that simple ingredient product that tastes great.

Speaker: 08:40
Without giving away just say any too many trade secrets, I think one of those things you spoke to at the beginning, which I think was staying through that organic, really clean label approach to the brand. What what are some of the key formulation challenges the brand deals with and has to kind of navigate around that maybe some don't that you know aren't as committed to only having minimal ingredients, zero gums, oil fillers, that kind of stuff will still be up building shelf stable product and things that can compete.

Speaker 1: 09:06
Look, at the end of the day, we have so few ingredients, the dials have to be precise. So the precision on our formulation and the ensuring from the almonds in the field to the bottle that's on the retail shelf, we have very strict standards that we hold ourselves and our partners to to ensure that we have the consistency across all of our products and everything that we're doing. You know, one of our heavier lifts, you see the organic coconut creamers over my shoulder that we just launched this year. And we've got a sweet cream, a vanilla, and an unsweetened. But we had launched almond creamers before, Adam, and they were doing fine. They were top quartile, top 50% in performance within the set, and they weren't meeting our expectations.

Speaker: 09:52
Yeah.

Speaker 1: 09:53
And they weren't doing the basic expectation that our consumers had. Creamers are whiteners to so many people. And in our original formulation with almond, we used the coconut sugar, and that coconut sugar is brown. So our creamers were brown.

Speaker: 10:09
Yeah.

Speaker 1: 10:10
Didn't meet our consumers' needs. So our team went back and worked to say, how can we deliver a great tasting, clean, simple ingredient? Whitener that is a little bit sweet for the two that have organic cane sugar in it. And the team went back and dialed it in. And they said, we need to absolutely walk away from what we did launch and launch these new ones and put our bet here. So it was a great example of the team listening to the consumers and delivering on the expectations.

Speaker: 10:41
Do you call that kind of the whitener goal as one thing? Anything else that really comes to top of mind that's like been unique about competing in this creamer space versus kind of the more, I guess, historical legacy general milk aisle, if that makes sense?

Speaker 1: 10:57
People love variety within creamers, Adam. People like to have multiple options. They don't tend to use the same flavor every day or every week.

Speaker: 11:05
Yeah.

Speaker 1: 11:06
So they want to have multiple options, not only for themselves, but for the people in the household. It's such a personal preference. There tends to be more SKUs per brand within creamers than there are within plant-based milks.

Speaker: 11:19
Yeah.

Speaker 1: 11:19
And it speaks to that desire.

Speaker: 11:21
You guys made some notable changes to the manufacturing process over time. I'm not sure how much of that was before your time versus after your time. I think you guys originally used high pressure processing for some of the almond milks, shifted to uh another method that's more like enables more extended shelf life. I think you also stopped using sprouted almonds and oats as an example. So I got all those right, or maybe some key ones I'm missing. What's been the evolution of the manufacturing process to optimize what you felt like are the most important variables, whether it's shelf life or anything else?

Speaker 1: 11:54
Honestly, the most important thing that we do, and the reason for the decision was to ensure that we improved our quality consistency at scale. With high pressure processing, your shelf life from the second it goes in the bottle is almost 45 days. Where you have up to 365 days with uh ESL. Yeah. And the reality is for the brand to be able to expand and to grow and to get into traditional grocery retailers like a Publix and a Kroger, et cetera, Shelf Life was the single largest obstacle.

Speaker: 12:34
Yeah.

Speaker 1: 12:35
So we had to, and it took us a year to get the formulation right, where we said, yes, this is as good as the HPP that we make. It has the same taste, it has the same qualities, and it meets what our consumers are looking for on an organic, simple ingredient, almond milk. So we had to take all that into account. And our quality dynamic has skyrocketed candidly.

Speaker: 13:00
That's awesome. Uh approach, ones that are really focused on organic clean label, but they're also having a lot of success. They're growing quickly, and then having having to start, I guess, navigating or managing the kind of tension crossover, whatever your word you want to use between that kind of clean label goal with also really optimizing for operational scalability.

Speaker 1: 13:26
It comes down to what are your desires, right? Is your desire to be in to meet as many consumers where they are as possible, or do you want to stay local within a geography and be known as the local expert? So had we made the decision to ring fence, say, the state of Texas and only focus on winning here, we could have potentially stayed as we were. But the reality was that's not what this brand was meant for. This brand was meant to meet consumers' needs across the country. So I encourage people to make sure a, they've got a proof point. At the end of the day, I mentioned it earlier and the lessons learned: velocity is truth.

unknown: 14:06
Totally.

Speaker 1: 14:07
Velocity is truth. And you have to make sure that you have the velocity to warrant any changes that you're making. And you have to prioritize trust in your brand over optimization. You could you've seen hundreds of stories of, you know, a brand that will take shortcuts and all of a sudden they lose trust with their consumers. So, where is your trust factor? Obviously, we shared a story earlier where it was fractured and we had to repair that. So once we codified that dynamic with us November 21 during our kerfluffle, it was about the discipline and the way that we executed that going forward.

Speaker: 14:44
On the topic of velocity, we talked about the beginning of scaling from, you know, 1,200, 1,500 doors to 15,000 plus is um, that's a pretty big growth trajectory. What did that kind of early, you know, earlier expansion, those first use scaling from those, you know, 1,500 doors to the first, I don't know, yeah, five, 10,000 or so. Like what did that kind of look like? Um, what did that journey look like? What were some of the big uh challenges or uh milestones you achieved?

Speaker 1: 15:10
Yeah. With a product like ours, historically, and we're no different, you you start in the natural channel and you go prove your concept within the natural channel. And in my eyes, the proof point to be able to expand outside of that is are you a top-performing brand in the channel that you exist in? And are you at a magnitude of velocity above the category average? And we were consistently winning above the category average. Uh, to the tune of, you know, when I walked in the doors, we were doing three and a half X the standard for the category. And by the time we rolled out to our first major Moolow retailer uh of scale across the entire chain in Publix in Feb of 23. I got that right. You know, we were doing almost six X the category average in natural by the time we did that. So finding the right partners to be able to prove prove out the scalability. And we had incredible regional partners, Adam. We had HEB, we had Ralph's, we had King Supers, so we had a couple Kroger banners, we had a regional grocer. So we were winning with those, but were we more than just a either West Coast or Texas brand? And we had to prove that we were. And that opportunity was granted with us with the with publics, and then it became okay, how do we make sure that we have the velocity there? Are we at a minimum at the industry or at the category average on our velocities? And how do we continue to scale? What is how do we work with this partner specifically to go win?

Speaker: 16:49
Yeah. On the topic of Kroger, you guys did a pretty big expansion to them across all the multiple banners. You mentioned King Sufers, Ralph's, I think Smith's Marianios as well. Like what um, what does it look like specifically in terms of within the Kroger ecosystem going from just a few of those Kroger banners to to a lot? And how different is each one of them? Do you have to tailor each kind of strategy messaging and your kind of approach to succeed at each one of the banners pretty differently, or is it pretty consistent across the board?

Speaker 1: 17:21
Fortunately, with major retailers, it's fairly consistent. And and the here's the headline is we don't want every single door coming out of the gate with those retailers. Retailers do a phenomenal job of segmenting their stores. They know they're shoppers. So you have to be transparent and honest with them. Like, hey, we want to be in your A tier stores to start with. Then we'll expand to your B tier stores. Then we'll, you know, if it makes sense, we'll consider to the C tier stores. And the results and your velocity, again, it's always about the velocity, is the truth factor for you. Have we earned the right to either expand our assortment or expand the number of stores that we're in? Where you have the opportunity, and this is where marketing really comes into play, is how do you ensure that you're speaking to the consumers of that retailer? Because there's no broad blanket blast that will capture everyone. There's not. You have to be far more targeted to ensure you have the velocity success.

Speaker: 18:19
Totally. How do you how do you think about pricing versus value?

Speaker 1: 18:26
It is the ongoing challenge for a brand that has so few ingredients and is so influenced by commodity markets.

Speaker: 18:34
Yeah.

Speaker 1: 18:35
I mean, if we go back all the way to the dirt, because this is where it all begins, to be a certified organic almond farm, you have to run organic for three years, but sell it as conventional. So you have to treat your land as an organic farm, and then the I believe it's the third year, you're able to actually sell those as organic. So there are no shortcuts, there's not pesticides, herbicides, you don't have the accelerants that you might have on a conventional almond farm, which inherently raises the cost profile. Then as we choose, taste is so important, right? We want to deliver a product that tastes great. So we're not going to say, all right, do I put one or two almonds in this bottle? That's an exaggeration. But as you look at the caloric content and you look at an a product that has three ingredients, well, guess what? My calories come from almonds. Doesn't come from water, and it doesn't come from salt, and it doesn't come from vanilla. So as you look at that and you start to compare side by side and go, well, why is Malk at this many calories? And the competitor that's half the price is a third of the calories or half the calories. So there's more to the story than just the price. You've got to look at the ingredient deck, you've got to look at what is what that is made of, and then ask yourself, do you understand the ingredients that are in this competitor product? And do I understand how they interact with my gut biome? Look, we're not doctors here, but everyone their bodies react differently based on how they nourish it, how they exercise. So I have no idea how some of those other fillers impact others. We want our product as close to the dirt as possible.

Speaker: 20:19
Yeah. From a positioning and messaging standpoint, how do you kind of frame this price conversation in the context of the buying room, speaking with buyers and what the pitch looks like and kind of a follow-on question to that. Has it evolved at all compared to those early days when you're trying to, you know, the brand is trying to prove itself versus now and you're in, you know, proven leader in the market?

Speaker 1: 20:43
It hasn't changed much because we've had the same principle approach. In any category that you shop in any retailer, you generally, unless it's a private label only, like an Aldi, you generally have three tiers. You've got your value tier, your mainstream tier, and your premium tier. I see your head nodding. You've been there, you've been in retail. Then as you start to segment the results, like what categories are trending? What's growing? Where are consumers voting with their pocketbooks? Where are they making those purchase decisions? And while in general, plant-based milk has been flat to down for the last four years, organic simple ingredient products are up like 70%. Not only are we leading the charge, there's plenty of people that saw our success and said, we want to do what they're doing because it's growing. So it's uh imitation is uh the finest form of flattery.

Speaker: 21:38
Right. The overall plant based milk category has been declining, at least to a certain extent, but Malk is growing very quickly. And is that just a matter of um consumers have realized the only plant based milk that are worth consuming are the like true organic, you know, clean label ones, or is it just a matter of people's opinion? By the category changing just in general, but Malk is just such a leader in the category and such a separated self. It's kind of you've kind of defy the odds and they kind of view Malk differently than the entire category. Or what's your what's your take there?

Speaker 1: 22:11
It's kind of a yes and. So I referenced a few years ago that oat really took a fall. And what we believe was the largest push behind that was the oils that are in there. So consumers, as they started to look at it, go, why are there oils in my plant-based products? And at the same time, you've got tangential categories of plant-based meats, and people are looking at ingredient decks that are 10, 15, 30 ingredients long. And it sounds like maybe it's a chemical experiment. And people begin questioning, is this really healthy? The beautiful thing is the trust that we had earned and repaired has been consistent on this is who we are, this is what we do, this is all we do. So it has aided in our ability to expand and reach out to new consumers. And we've been able to bring on people in the last couple of years that have allowed us to amplify that message in the voice and shift from just, hey, we are a sterile, clean, plant-based milk to we're a lifestyle brand that meets you where you are. We've got creamers, we've got various bases. So it's more than just a clean, simple ingredient product that tastes great. It's also a brand that I trust and gives me the solutions that I'm looking for.

Speaker: 23:36
Speaking of building a brand that people trust and marketing in general, from marketing budget allocation standpoint, what does that look like split like between trade in store, you know, demos, promos, point of sale stuff versus brand marketing?

Speaker 1: 23:52
Yeah. So so let's hit one of those uh nail on the head. You mentioned demos. And when I was in the Bev Alc space, I'd say the biggest difference is Bev Alc demos were the way to move velocity. Get liquid to lips, interact with people as they're stepping in. It was the end-all be-all. And post-COVID, so much has changed. The rise of grocery delivery, the rise of curbside pickup. And then what is the perfect time frame of day to go schedule a demo for refrigerated plant-based milks where you're going to have enough consumers that make it worthwhile? Bev Alc, yeah, Thursday night, Friday night, Saturday afternoon, you're good. You are you're locked in, people are walking to that category, and you're probably going to swap them from something else. So with that knowledge, and we've done multiple tests and we've tried to try to make it pencil out. So where we've shifted our approach is we are looking at larger festivals where we're able to engage a broader group of consumers in a geography. So recently, our activation team did the uh Miami Food and Wine Festival. Not a traditional festival for an organic plant-based milk. And the demographics and the profile aligned. So we went and we had a fantastic time. There's obviously trade for those people that aren't just locked in aware from the price the retailer pays to the price you pay on the shelf, that difference is largely funded by the brand. So if there's a discount, if there's an ad, if there's a temporary price reduction, so that falls within trade, which is always an important factor. And then the marketing, and I referenced it earlier as we started expanding. We have been very targeted with our retailers to understand how do we talk to your customers, how do we talk to your shoppers, your consumers, those people walking into your stores, what mechanisms and levers do you have that allow us to have a chat with them? We want them to know that Malk is available. So when they're putting that curbside pickup together, that they're calling us by name.

Speaker: 25:59
Yeah.

Speaker 1: 25:59
And putting us in their cart. So we want to make sure that we have that opportunity. And, you know, we spend a disproportionate amount between trade and specific targeting at retailers versus I would call a broad mass appeal messaging.

Speaker: 26:16
From a marketing resourcing standpoint, it's kind of curious in terms of from your approach, what do you have in-house versus things that you currently kind of work with external parties, agencies, freelancers, that kind of stuff? And are there any functions just from your kind of mindset approach that you would never outsource, always want to keep internal?

Speaker 1: 26:36
I will say when I stepped in that almost everything was outsourced. And we had to at that point. And as we've continued to grow and evolve, if we can bring it in-house, we will. From design to shopper marketing to activations, that which we can control, we want to control without being a drain on the PL. Like if it is smart money, we get an ROI on it, we want to control that which we can control. Totally. It's, you know, it is an evolution, right? A brand in the early days is going to reach out and have freelancers and contract agencies. And those people do amazing jobs. It is my belief that we need to keep as much in-house as possible.

Speaker: 27:23
On that topic of keeping as much in-house as possible, I imagine that maybe relates to, I think I've feel like I've heard you seen right talk about culture and tea building a fair amount. I think when you came on board, it was less than 10 people. Now you're pushing close to 50. How do you think about building and maintaining culture as you grow and continue to grow?

Speaker 1: 27:45
Yeah, the the first all hands team meeting that I had in December of 21, there were eight of us. And uh this June all hands will have will have 44 people. And I call out the the mid-year one because I historically have had just a December all hands to bring everyone together because we are a uh remote workforce. We have a small office in Austin, we've got a small office in Houston, but largely 80% of our workforce is remote.

Speaker: 28:11
Yeah.

Speaker 1: 28:12
And with that, we're very intentional about uh we implemented a dreams workshop. A dream dream machine is the book by Dan Espigard, where you actually talk across nine categories. Like, what are your dreams? Like, what do you want to do? Where do you want to travel? What adventures do you want to have? What is your monetary desires? What are your religious or spiritual desires? And we have Slack is our communication vehicle within the company. And we have a uh my favorite channel is hashtag DreamsWins. So we've had people that have gone and worked remotely. I took my family and worked remotely in Europe for three weeks. It's awesome. And I had the conversation with my wife beforehand. I said, we can go for like eight days and I can completely check out, or we can go for almost three weeks. I think it was 19 days, and I'm gonna be working from 3 p.m. to 11 p.m. while we're over there. And she's like, Yeah, you're working, buddy. So that was that was a clear answer from my wife. And I I had the mornings with my family. So it really worked out serendipitously. We've had people buy land, build houses, we've had people get out of credit card debt, we've had people take their 16-year-old on a magical Disney experience with just a mother-daughter. We've had people do all sorts of amazing things, and we celebrate that because at the end of the day, why are we working? Because there's things that we want, right? It's not just because we think bulk is the greatest thing ever, which we do, but there's also that personal element and being cognizant and aware of that personal element, giving people space to explore those and the freedom to share those. It's really amazing to see how people light up when they're telling their story about what's important to them.

Speaker: 29:52
I feel like that's probably related to the next question I have in terms of implementing extreme ownership principles. And I wonder if that's maybe related as your kind of approach is I don't care where you work from, as long as you get your work done and you have extreme ownership over it. I'm not sure if those are related, but what does this kind of extreme ownership principles look like in the day-to-day at Melc?

Speaker 1: 30:10
You know, at the end of the day, you have to take care of your responsibility. And when you sign up to say you're going to do something, it is on you to deliver. We are moving too fast as an organization to have to micromanage people on task. We need to align where are we headed? What are you responsible for in operations and finance and marketing and sales, HR, IT, who owns this dynamic and who's going to shepherd that all the way through? And you've got to share what you're doing with other people. So you're going to need the cross-functional collaboration. So if all of a sudden I'm trying to, you know, run the AOP, but I don't engage finance, well, that's a failure. So we get, we do our best and we fail. Look, everybody fails in leadership. Sure, totally. It happens. The most important thing we can do is take ownership. Like I did not do that well. I had a conversation with my executive team two weeks ago. It's like, I did not do what I said I would do as well as you deserve. I will work on this. This is what I am personally working on, so this executive team can function at the highest level.

Speaker: 31:21
Yeah.

Speaker 1: 31:22
And it has to start here. I can't just say you go take extreme ownership. It's got to start from the top.

Speaker: 31:28
100% totally. Going from eight to you know, 20, what have been some of the most kind of impactful hires from a department, what they own uh standpoint, going from that, you know, eight to 40 or so.

Speaker 1: 31:44
You know, when we were, and we'll just we'll dance with 16 to 20. As we were evolving in that stage of our growth, we were still using contractors. And our growth was have we grown enough to where we can now absorb that role in-house and have that full-time dedicated passion? Obviously, on a brand looking to continue to scale, salespeople are pretty important. We've got to make sure we have the right salespeople to support the growth, to give us those interactions and lean in and leverage our partners because we still use brokerages and we believe that having our voice in the meeting is the most powerful, as most brands should, especially with bigger customers, the bigger bets, and where you're headed. That the sales dynamic there has been very important. A few years ago, uh brought in in-house design, which was a huge one. That these creamer bottles was completely done in-house. And to see how we continue to show up as a brand, how we elevate the accountability with our marketing dollars. You know, we continue to go deeper on those dynamics. And that is allowing us to test, learn, change, test, learn, change. It's all a cycle. As we cycle through, it's our job to get better every day.

Speaker: 33:01
For founders or CEOs of brands that are in that 20 to 50 employee range, uh, who are worried about losing culture as they grow, getting up to that number. And as they grow, you know, 20, 50 to 200, 300 if they ever get there. Um what are a few things they should kind of teep top of mind or maybe things that they should think about putting in place early to kind of ensure that that important culture remains at the forefront?

Speaker 1: 33:27
Who's gonna lead culture in your company? Is it you? Is it someone you trust to lead culture? If it's not something you wake up thinking about, do you have someone that's waking up thinking about it? Because when you let culture slip, and in this journey, I have, Adam. I mean, look, there's we're not perfect here.

Speaker: 33:45
Sure.

Speaker 1: 33:45
We're trying our damnedest every day to get better. It is the recalibration, coming back. It's the extreme ownership of, hey, I let this slip as a CEO, and this is what I'm going to do differently going forward. So, you know, as we've onboarded and transitioned people, I still do our dream storming workshops to where I'll spend 90 minutes with the team, whoever wants to join. It's open to the company. It's like, hey, let's go through what ideas, what have what's been on your dreams list that you want to go knock out? One of my dreams was to take my kids to Pearl Harbor. So last April, I had the opportunity to check that dreams list item off. Amazing. So there's things that if I'm not actively showing the team how I'm living the culture, then it doesn't matter. It's just words. Totally. It's just words.

Speaker: 34:35
Yeah.

Speaker 1: 34:36
I remember interviewing in that trip to Europe, we did Italy and Spain. Uh, I had three or four interviews while I was over there. And one of the candidates is like, Where are you? I'm like, Well, I'm in where was I? Valencia. Like, yeah, I'm in Valencia, Spain. Are you on PTO? I'm like, actually, I'm working this time frame so my family can do this. So it's uh, this is who we are. This is how we operate. And if you're able, and look, not all jobs can be done remote. They just can't. There's a lot of operations jobs that have to be, you know, feet on the ground, boots on the ground, and that's a reality. There's sales job that you have to go talk to the retailers. So you can't just work from, you know, New Zealand. But there's flexibility. And that's what people are craving. That's my biggest learning from post-COVID is people want to live their life and make a significant contribution to a company. How can we at Mall give our team members that opportunity to do both?

Speaker: 35:37
I was actually in in Valencia too. I think it was maybe a year and a half ago. Great, great city. It's my favorite. Yeah, it was awesome. What's the what is the next, however you want to take this question, what is the next phase of growth look like for Malcolm?

Speaker 1: 35:49
Yeah, let's go for world domination. Let's just start there. Look, Adam, we're methodical in how we choose to approach things. We are so proud to be in 16,000 doors across America right now. And the humbling reminder that I have is that there are 67,000 doors to sell plant-based milk in America. I gotta make sure that we have the basics done right before we go for that world domination. Sure. And we stay focused on that. And that's where we're at. You know, we want to make sure we're continuing to meet our customers in America where they are, and then we will consider beyond that as the timing's right.

Speaker: 36:27
Jason, this has been awesome. I think uh this has been great. I think people are gonna let get a lot of value out of this. You've been in the C BG space for for quite a while at this point. Last question for you any brands or any any any uh brands or just kind of trends in general across the broader CBG world can be in your category or not that have just particularly piqued your interest lately, or things you're kind of just tracking for fun or things that have gotten you excited at all lately?

Speaker 1: 36:54
You know what I love to see, and I uh you I see it every year at Expo is brands that are coming where we've been. You know, they are saying, hey, how many, how few ingredients can I put in to make this product taste good?

Speaker: 37:06
Yeah.

Speaker 1: 37:06
And it's really, it's been impactful as you know, as a father first, to be able to have those conversations with my kids and say, let's look at the ingredients, let's understand what these, what we're actually nourishing our body with, because it is so important. There are lessons that I learned in my late 30s and early 40s that changed how I view food as nutrition. And if I can give my kids that gift today and have them choose the brands that have less fillers, less gums, less oils, less sugar, that's a win.

Speaker: 37:40
Totally.

Speaker 1: 37:41
And that's what I'm most proud as a father first to be able to say, I'm impacting my kids' lives, and we are offering a product to other parents out there that if they had bought other plant-based milks, they can come to Malk and know that they can give their kid as much as they want.

Speaker: 37:56
100%. I love that. That's a great, that's a great way to close it. But yeah, Jason, this has been awesome. What's um what's the best place for people to follow along with you? And then best place for to people to follow along with the brand these days.

Speaker 1: 38:08
Yeah, the best place to follow along with me and my ramblings is on LinkedIn. Perfect. I post a couple times a week there on LinkedIn. Easy to find. I think I'm the only Jason Bronset out there. And then for the brand, it's at Malkorganic. So we're on LinkedIn, we're on Instagram, we're on Facebook, uh, are the ones that we're most active on. We're on TikTok. I think I don't have TikTok on my phone. So I uh I'd have to check with my wife, but I'm pretty sure we're on TikTok as well.

Speaker: 38:30
Yeah, I'm I'll assume you're there.

Speaker 1: 38:32
Yeah.

Speaker: 38:33
Awesome. Well, Jason, I appreciate the time. It's been awesome. I think that's the pod.

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