Real Cookies Founders on Health Snacking

This is Bloomberg Business Week with Carol Messer and Tim Stenebek on Bloomberg Radio.

I love talking with those who have founded a small business. It really is the backbone of our US economy. So with us, let's get right to it. Is Lauren Berger and Marla Felton. They have created their own business. They are the co founders of Real Cookies, founded in twenty twenty one, and they join us in studio.

And you founded in twenty twenty one.

Yes, yes, wow, So it's young. It's very young.

And that's like smack dad in the middle of a year when you weren't allowed to be hanging out.

How did you or is that why you did it?

Tom?

Did it quarantine together? Yeah?

Ah, that makes perfect sense. Now, quarantine together.

A lot of people did it. So take us back, either of you kick off.

It till We've been friends for over twenty years, and we met when our daughters were sixteen months old. They're now about twenty three, and over this time, we've had so many people in our family and so many friends that developed different dietary restrictions, and they weren't the same

So wait, some people, I guess were gluten what do you call it, celiac? Some people were lactose.

Intolerant, dairy free.

Okay, and love sugar exactly. I'm trying to cut out sugar right now.

You were like when they walked in, You're like, well, wait a minute, Wait a minute.

Yeah, I said, I eat things with added sugar, and these have I guessed maple syrup as a as a sweetener in them. So how did you, how did Marla? How did you guys come to this idea? Because I'm assuming neither one of you is like a master chef, right, well.

We've always cooked for our families and we both love to entertain, and we both really love cookies and desserts, and honestly, when we'd go to the shopping to the markets, we'd go down the aisles, we'd bring in the healthy cookies for our families and for us, and there was nothing that was worth eating. And we said, there's got to be away. We've got to create a cookie that's healthy and tastes delicious and is real because a lot of the gluten free cookies, if you look at what's

Can I just tell you I do this all the time. My daughter who's twenty, she does the same thing. We turn around, we look at ingredients and we're always like, I have no idea what this stuff.

This stuff is.

Your ingredients makes sense to talk to us a little bit, learn about what's in there.

We have a very very short ingredradient list and our bases almond flour, and coconut flour. We use real vanilla maple syrup which has a lower glycemic index than sugar, and just very very simple ingredients. We have no gluten, no grain, no soy, no corn, but most importantly, we wanted it to taste good.

Well, I'm gonna say I've sampled Matt can't talk right now.

Because they're very good chocolate chip minis, and they're delicious.

But a small business, it's a crowded marketplace, so tell us about building this business.

You bootstrapped it yourself.

We did, yes, and we run a very lean machine. We're very frugal. We both really put our hearts and souls and uh everything into it.

And we what's the growth like, talk to us a little bit about that. Well, we've grown and we've.

Started only I'm going to go a lemon blueberry minis are so good you have to but I'm going.

To go a Shark Tank on you because I'm obsessed with that show. I love small businesses. But tell us about you know, costs, money, supply chains like this is all real.

Yeah, Well, we've grown significantly just in our second year, over seventy five percent, but it is very new.

The level blueberry minis are really good in terms of costs.

We wanted to make sure that we started with a gross margin of fifty percent, and we know that there were a lot of costs that we couldn't even think about at the time that we were developing the product, right, and we really just went out and started selling. And we started with a single serve two pack because we had yes, yes, because we wanted to encourage trial, and so we did. Originally we went to ski resorts, to hotels, they're in hotel mini bars, they're in about forty airports.

And we just started selling.

And when we started to get some validation, we thought we would make a product that was appropriate for the grocery shelves, which is when we came out with our pouch of mini cookies.

We call them poppers.

Yeah. And one of the big breaks for us actually was CBS took the product into two hundred and seventy five stores and they did at tech and they liked what they saw, so they just expanded to fifteen hundred store.

That's a big deal, a very big deal. Are you just profitable?

Are we profitable? We are have a very good gross margin.

Okay, oh yeah, cost especially in today when with supply chains are still.

A little tricky.

Where do you make them? By the way, you guys are out of grantitche right, yes, yes, So where do you make the cookies pure? You don't make them in your yoga studio.

Right, So we produce both in New Jersey and in Michigan.

We have too.

So one of our producers was looking at the ingredients and was like, these ingredients look great, but difficult supply chain, Like for example, almonds, Uh, the price of that must go up substantially.

You know, the prices have changed significantly in the wrong ingredients. And so one of the parts of our mission was to try and find more than one supplier for each of our ingredients. And we also knew during COVID that we needed to plan for supply chain issues, which we have had many, especially with cartons and almonds and chips. But we did try and plan ahead, and we're not buying huge volumes yet, so it was a little bit easier for us.

Did you have any advisors, Like, what did you guys do before before?

He was a lawyer, right, so I've been one or less. I was a y I was a lawyer, and I also run a nonprofit.

So I mean these guys and you were in the consumer food.

I do marketing for a Dive of Chocolate, and so we had a little bit of experience. But we've worked so well together that we just love brainstorming and building upon ideas.

I mean, we know this is what you have a little one, you know, young daughter.

Two and a half year old daughter Edna, and she's going to have some of these cookies tonight, she is.

And I think about We certainly thought about it, raising our daughter a lot of organic and very careful.

So you're in the right space.

What do you think about when it comes to the next six to twelve months, like what's on your radar in terms of growth or.

Yeah, well you had mentioned investment and getting on the grocery shelves is a huge investment and that is where a majority of our budget is going now. So we are getting approved for supermarket chains. We just got into Albertson's in the South. It's a big deal, a very big deal, and so we are making those investments. We're talking to Whole Foods and Sprouts and the large national natural chains.

So you don't have to do a fundraising round or.

Would you like to We would like to, We would like to.

We would also like partners you know that have synergy with us always let's see investment space.

Like now, we just got about twenty five seconds. I mean, are you reaching out and are people receptive?

Like we haven't really reached out so much. We are building relationships with other we're just.

Putting a deck together now.

But we did also just do some recipe development with Upfield and we're working with them. They have a lot of great plant based products and so we just developed a tremendous amount of learning working with them.

Well, it's a space we talk a lot about the healthier food space. It's definitely a trend that just keeps on growing. So we'd love to have you guys come back and let us.

We would love to thank you so much and thanks for the cookies, Matt, You've made that very happy. We probably finish this on the way.

Lauren Berger and Marla Felton, co founders, are real cookies here on Bloomberg BusinessWeek