Emily Griffith: Founder & CEO of Lil Bucks

Kara Goldin 0:00
I am unwilling to give up that I will start over from scratch as many times as it takes to get where I want to be. I want to be you. Just want to make sure you will get knocked down. But just make sure you don’t get knocked out, knocked out. So your only choice should be go focus on what you can control. Control. Hi everyone, and welcome to the Kara Goldin show. Join me each week for inspiring conversations with some of the world’s greatest leaders. We’ll talk with founders, entrepreneurs, CEOs and really, some of the most interesting people of our time. Can’t wait to get started. Let’s go. Let’s go. Hi everyone, and welcome back to the Kara Goldin show. So excited to have my next guest. Emily Griffith is the founder and CEO of Lil’ Bucks, and Emily has a fascinating story that takes us from the beaches of Australia to the shelves of Whole Foods and target, she’s living in San Diego now. We were just chatting about that beautiful place, but while living down under, she stumbled upon a superfood that most of us here in America have been missing out on, buckwheat, and not just any buckwheat, but sprouted buckwheat, which she’s turned into a crunchy sensation. I just had it on my ice cream last night. It was so so good. And little box has come a long way since it’s humble beginnings and a shared kitchen back in 2018 is that right? Yep, yeah, good times. And Emily has not only managed to create a super delicious, nutrient dense product, but also pioneered the regenerative organic farming movement, or definitely has played a big part of that, with a mission to improve soil health and our diets. She’s built the first regenerative organic certified buckwheat supply chain. I love it, and her background came from a different industry, but then was it in advertising. She’ll talk a lot more about that, but it’s it just goes to show you, if you have an idea, you sort of see a something out there that maybe you can make a bigger business from. You should definitely go for it. So, really excited to jump into Emily’s journey. So welcome,

Emily Griffith 2:26
wow, thank you. Thank you for the very kind, beautiful intro, yeah, yeah, lots of mouthful words there, regenerative, organic buckwheat supply chain is, you know, rolls off the tongue,

Kara Goldin 2:36
yeah, no, I love it. I love it. So what is Lil’ Bucks? And how did you stumble upon the idea? Can you take us back to those days in Australia and and how did this actually end up becoming a company?

Emily Griffith 2:52
So lil bucks is America’s buckwheat brand. We make crunchy snacks and toppers from this sprouted buckwheat supersede that I love so much. And this all started because I had a life changing acai bowl, as one does. While I was living down in Australia, I was working at an ad agency down there. At the time, I was 24 years old, and for me, it really just started as a genuine love of sprouted buckwheat, and kind of just shocked that it wasn’t already widespread, used ingredient in the US, so it has this really amazing crunch that you know you’ve now enjoyed, and like ice cream and all that. And it’s like nothing else. And then on top of that, just so nutrient dense. It’s actually a fruit seed, not a grain, um, and I was using at the top some of these oatmeal, yogurt salads, you name it. And then it was kind of those innocent like, when it came time to move back to the US, I was like, I’m literally eating those. Like almost every meal. I would die without my sprouted buckwheat. Where am I gonna get it? And no one here was really doing it and and then on top of that, learning that it’s a crop that grows really well, especially in northern parts of the US. And American farmers I talked to when I was looking to source the buckwheat, wanted to grow more of it because it’s the short cycle crop. So basically it acts as a fertilizer to the soil, and you can grow it after your main crop of the season. So it’s like incremental revenue for the farm. So it just kind of became this knockout of, like, sustainability, health, something I personally love and needed selfishly. And I was like, Okay, well, 25 years old, no consumer packaged goods experience, as you know. And it’s like, okay, well, I’ll just start this. Let’s go.

Kara Goldin 4:41
I love it. And so you what was sort of the first step. I mean, had you worked when you were in the advertising agency? Had you worked on any brands? Were you? Did you have any contacts that could kind of help you? I guess, just get started. It more than anything. I mean, I think, I think that’s such a hard place for so many people who aspire to start something is, you know, I don’t even know where to begin, right,

Emily Griffith 5:13
right? And it’s actually really funny. I laugh when you said, like, what was your experience? Because I, ironically, I worked at ad agencies where you get assigned the clients, and I spent most of my first three years in the agency world on Hormel Foods and some of their brands. So I worked on like spam canned pork shoulder meat, very different from my product, but it was really, really cool experience to get kind of behind the scenes from a corporate marketing and brand marketing perspective. And then down in Australia was like, just kept getting assigned the big meat companies. It was like, the Tyson Foods, Tyson chicken of Australia. So I worked on that, but that was really my exposure, a lot of alcohol brands. So that was my exposure. And I was like, Oh, I know about marketing food, but you know, obviously, then you’re like, Wait, how do I actually start a business? How do I have a license to be in a commercial kitchen? Like, do I gotta submit something to the FDA? Like, how does that happen? And I just started. I started in Chicago. Was really fortunate that they didn’t even have a facility yet. But there’s this nonprofit called the hatchery in Chicago, where they’re helping local food, CPG restaurant businesses get off the ground. And even before they had a facility, I they had a starting a food business, 101 class. And I was like, well, Sign me up. Like, perfect. And then from there, just anyone I could meet and try to get a coffee with them. Like, you know, you’re just, it’s, I’m so grateful now that I’ve really embedded myself in this industry. But thinking back to when I was starting, I knew no one, yeah,

that you were just grasping anyone

Kara Goldin 6:56
getting going. I’m so curious. So you, you know, here you are. Have a stable job, whatever that means. But you’re, you know, working in something that you’re interested in doing. It very far from, from home, obviously, but you’ve moved back to the US. What did your parents think about this? I mean, how are they responding to you, going and starting a company?

Emily Griffith 7:19
Gosh, yeah, I think, you know, they were very supportive. Always have been some, you know, maybe instilled some delusional self confidence in myself. So I’m grateful for that. I think, you know, I’m from the Midwest. We’re not. I didn’t come from like, a natural food, like household. We did not eat almond butter. Was just very conventional, standard American household, I think. And I’m coming back from Australia, like, guess what? I figured out I actually started freelancing full time because I realized I was doing graphic design on the side. And so I was like, Oh, I could support myself and freelance for clients, and then, like, do whatever I want. So I have the flexibility to, you know, get this buckwheat thing off the ground. But I think for the first couple years, everyone was like, and I had to learn how to position this company as something that actually made sense to people. But, yeah, there might have been some like, you know, what is Emily talking about?

Kara Goldin 8:17
What is she up to?

Emily Griffith 8:18
We love her. Good luck. Yeah,

Kara Goldin 8:22
so did you bootstrap it initially, just trying to create the product. You sound like you were, you know, originally doing it in your kitchen. I would guess that you moved into a commercial kitchen at one point, but to actually get the prototypes. How did you do that? Yeah,

Emily Griffith 8:39
it’s pretty funny. I my now I’ve moved back to Chicago. I was freelancing full time, so I bootstrapped the business for a couple years with kind of working on other food and wellness brands. So that was great experience. When I moved back to Chicago, I moved in with my now husband and his two roommates who maybe at the time. We all laugh about it now, but we’re over the moon to have this girl coming off from Australia to join the room again. And then on top of that, I was doing prototypes. I bought, like this dehydrator, like a nine rack dehydrator off like eBay. And because the buckwheat to get that crunch we sprout and then dehydrate to get this really addictive crunch. And that’s like the big thing of why it’s so delicious, and I would have to dehydrate overnight. So I was doing a lot of test runs in there, our kitchen, their kitchen, to get it figured out. But it was very simple. You know that part, because it’s all ingredients. I was just making the food brand that I wanted and would would expect from, you know, the people making them so organic, very like ingredients you can find in your kitchen. So from that perspective, it was straightforward. And then I was a nerd from the start. And. Was like, Okay, well, now this needs to be made in the commercial kitchen. And so pretty quickly from that starting a food business class, learn, get your shared kitchen license and get in a real place, get out of the the boys apartment.

Kara Goldin 10:15
So interesting. So okay, so the crunch you mentioned is, is really kind of key, I would imagine that that actually keeps kind of the health benefits attached to this buckwheat that you guys are able to keep to so is that like a game changer in this industry? Can you talk a little bit about sort of what you were seeing out there and how yours was, and still is so different,

Emily Griffith 10:43
right? So when I really fell in love with this crunch, I think at the time, a lot of the grain free granola options, I guess that’s another thing I don’t even know if I mentioned buckwheat is because it’s not a wheat it’s gluten free and grain free. So looking at a lot of those gluten free options, they’re basically, like, bags of nuts. I love, love me some, like, peanuts and almonds and all that. But like, it just has a different, like, really large texture that I really did not like in a yogurt or a smoothie or even just eating on the go. So I think that was a really big game changer, that you can get this really satisfying crunch that’s not as like big of a mouthfeel. And then on top of that, you know, this is how I experienced it in Australia. But there’s so many applications for sprouted buckwheat seeds, because they’re a bit smaller than, you know, your typical nuts, pistachios, whatever, that you could add a little bit of crunch to, you know, sweet and savory dishes. So topping salads, using the buckwheat seed as instead of a quinoa crisp and chocolate bars, we’ve partnered with protein bars before to be the crunch in their bar. So there’s a lot of really cool applications. And because in the US, I mean, buckwheat is one of the first cultivated crops in Asia, like, if you’ve had soba noodles, you’ve had buckwheat and of course, a lot of times it’s bait, it’s buckwheat flour. Is used in buckwheat pancakes or breads. That’s really how we’re exposed to it, primarily in the US. Arcasha is a popular Ukrainian and Russian dish, which is almost like a cooked buckwheat seeds into this porridge. So all those uses, like, it’s not buckwheat itself is not new, but there was nobody processing it in this way, or, or, you know, nobody nationwide processing it in this way that you get the use it in this way and get the crunch. So, like, we have to bring this to the people. This is so addictive, so many uses, so healthy. You know, kids have our cacao Lil’ Bucks and, you know, they think they’re eating their little chocolate crunchies, which they are, but it’s actually really healthy for them. Haha, that’s,

Kara Goldin 12:53
I love it. So educating people about the benefits of buckwheat can’t be easy. I you know, you sort of touched on this a minute ago, but I mean, you have to taste great, right? You can’t today. You can’t develop a product that you can develop it, but it’s not going to sell. That isn’t going to taste good to a large number of people. It won’t stay on the shelf, especially in stores that you know you recognize the names, but what’s been the biggest hurdle for you and kind of getting people to really understand and educate what you’re doing, what’s sort of behind it, like, how have you done that, and what’s been the biggest hurdle, And how have you overcome it?

Emily Griffith 13:41
Yeah, so when I started, I had my little buck sprouted buckwheat crunch line, which we still make today. And, you know, eat it every day. It’s absolutely a pantry staple. And that’s like the, basically the seeds and cinnamon cacao or original that are used as this topper or ingredient, so delicious, but there is more education on like, if you see a bag of these seeds, what do you do with it? And if I wasn’t there, or someone wasn’t there to sample it or explain it, or we, you know, we weren’t online, where you have, like, the content funnel, where you can show all these amazing uses and amazing health benefits. It was really hard to convey what this is so pretty quickly. And I actually launched that product line into the whole foods Midwest region in March of 2020, which was also when a pandemic hit the world. So that was, you know, sarcastically saying, Great timing. But maybe, you know, in that way, meant to be because I had to take a step back my whole strategy with launching that Lil’ Bucks product line, the whole foods, was demoing Sam, which is sampling the product. So I trained up almost 20 brand ambassadors all across the Midwest. We were just gonna be an army going into whole foods every I’m. Was every day of the week all these demos, there was a whole plan getting people to try this and like, because once they taste it, there’s nothing like it. There’s no competitors. It’s a knock out of the park. But yeah, obviously had to pivot big time. We got like, three or four demos in, and then everything shut down. And I was like, This is not good. But then it forced me to take a step back of, okay, well, I do want this, you know, I see buckwheat being in every pantry in America, and I want to really scale this like I think it’s something that a lot of people will really enjoy. So I need to offer Buckley in a format that consumers get a little faster. So especially for retail, as you know, you know, you get less than, like, three seconds, you know, they look at the packaging it really needs to, like, tell them what the heck it is. So offering a product format that already makes sense to people. So we have our cluster bucks, which are gut friendly granola bites, and they’re, you know, more clustered, snackable, snackable clusters made with the buckwheat growth as the base, but they have a few other things in it, like pumpkin seeds, coconut and that’s something that just resonates a lot faster. So in retail, that really took off, and that’s what the cluster books are now in Whole Foods and target. So that was a big unlock, and I’m giving you the short version of that, which is not even short, but, you know, that was years we did the target takeoff accelerator. I had some really great advisors, but it took, you know, some time to really figure that out. And that’s when, once I got something that tasted great, and they’d sense the consumer quickly, packaging messaging was dialed in. Let’s go ish.

Kara Goldin 16:44
I’m curious, is your packaging similar to what it was when you first launched? And what have you learned along the way? Oh,

Emily Griffith 16:54
gosh, well, yes, the messaging is this is part of that, you know, part in that long journey of learning about this and not coming from CPG, I think this is one of the the things I had to learn, and was fortunate to have a really good advisor come on and drill it into my core that my messaging needed to make sense. Because even with the cluster box, I’m like, Okay, now we have a product format that makes sense to consumers. But then I got a little creative entrepreneur want to over innovate, and I called the first iteration of cluster box. Like the tagline at the front of the bag was called adaptogenic buckwheat clusters, which was really aggressive, pretty much served the airline consumer and no one else. Yeah, you know. And I’m from the Midwest as well. Like that, my family was still, at that point, like, okay, like, these are kind of good, but like, what is Emily doing? I was trying to do too much. Like, buckwheat is already such a huge innovation on its own, and I, I should have been really focused on that and and I got, you know, personally, really excited about adaptogens and mushrooms, and wanted to put them together, but I really had to take a step back of like, okay, even the people that actually like adaptogens, they’re just gonna, like, get that from a real adaptogen supplement that’s focused on that. Like, I do I need this in my snack or my granola? No, and it’s a really scary word. I laugh because, you know, you know that actually scary, but the consumers trying to buy something, it is. So we did some major messaging studies. Moved away from adaptogens all together, well, at least the ones like the mushrooms, because those costs cause taste issues as well, moved away from that. And then did a ton of AV testing, both with our current customer base and then people that didn’t know the brand to dial in gut friendly granola clusters.

Kara Goldin 18:47
I love it. It’s great. So what’s been the biggest pinch me moment since launching Lil’ Bucks? I always talk about the journey and building hint as as a timeline, right? There’s these spikes, right? There’s spikes in both directions, up and down. But talking about the positive side of things, what was like, kind of the biggest, like, pinch me moment that comes to mind, where you were, like, this is happening. I’m so excited. I mean, you just, I should mention you just closed your series A which is amazing. Congratulations, for sure. I’m sure that was a big pinch me, a moment too, very exciting. But I’d love to hear kind of what else comes to mind when I say that.

Emily Griffith 19:37
Gosh. I mean, this is interesting. I’m almost getting emotional sitting here, because they haven’t even really processed it, because this happened, like a week ago. But every year we’ve gone out and visited our first regenerative organic farm partner in Minnesota, and this was the first farm we contracted directly with to grow buckwheat for us. I. Um, the first year we went out and visited, it was just four of us and and hearing him say, like, you know, the reason this, like, 100 acres of buckwheat, like, far as I can see, it’s one thing to be at your computer and I see the end product. I’ve been in manufacturing facilities, but to see it in the ground, being grown because of the brand I created was a really emotional moment and really cool. And then fast forward to this year. We got to bring together, you know, one of my good friends who was founded another brand I met at the hatchery, starting a food business. 101, a million years back is now our COO, so she’s on the trip to visit this farm. This is a week ago. We had our buyer and a few people at Whole Foods come out to see the farm, and then seeing like our farm partner, Luke and Ali Peterson, who are now great friends of ours, all together in one place. And then some of our new investors came out. So it was just kind of one of those real moments where you’re like, did I like when I set out to start this I didn’t know anything, and I was like, I want to get in Whole Foods. How do I get in Whole Foods? No clue. And the fact that, like, now I have people from the Whole Foods national team coming, like, flying in, driving three hours west with me, my mom came out, who’s a really great role model of my life, like having all these people come together and us standing in buckwheat field with flowers, like high as our head. I mean, come on, it’s just it was insane. And I’m just now, like, I haven’t even processed it at all because I had to travel after that to other meetings. And now I’m like, Oh my gosh, did that really happen? Yeah,

Kara Goldin 21:39
no, I love it when you can actually lead right when, I mean, this is something that you cared about at one point, but now what you’re describing is you’re leading right. And you’re not just leading your team or your partners, but you’re actually leading an industry. So now there’s another conversation that’s going on with other, you know, buckwheat producers, or maybe people who haven’t even started yet, and it’s going to be, you know, are you working with regenerative organic farms? And they’re like, wait, what? Like, I have to do that, right? But you’re, you’re actually doing something that you’re showing what’s possible and what’s better and improving soil health and doing all of those things. So I think that’s a that’s a really powerful thing that you should be very proud of.

Emily Griffith 22:30
Thank you. Yeah,

Kara Goldin 22:32
it’s a really, really big deal, and a massive opportunity to pioneer that and really get people talking about that for sure. So when you think about your team, how big is your team now, by the way,

Emily Griffith 22:47
team of four. So still pretty lean, lean and lean. I

Kara Goldin 22:51
love it. How did you think about, you know, building that team like, Who was your first hire? Did you have a co founder when you were starting it, or how did you kind of get this going, and were you right when you thought about like, who you should have on on the team? Were, were the roles that they were going to do, the right roles? Or did you kind of figure out along the way that other things were much more important to sort of spend your capital on in order to get it going.

Emily Griffith 23:26
That’s a great question. I think this is one of the even up till very recently, just the biggest learnings. And I think as I’m stepping into being more and more of a leader in the industry, and for my company, as it’s taking off. A lot more lots of learnings there, but I was a solo founder, you know, had interns or contractors here and there, but really carried the torch on my own, until three years in, we had our first full time hire join us, who’s still with me today, and that’s a really good example of she joined as a marketing manager, because that’s what she was doing at her other company. But really, what’s great about this person, and something I am trying to look for in all my hires, is it’s not necessarily that she had all this marketing expertise, because now she’s our director of retail sales, and we kind of looked at like, what is she good at and what, where can she really, like, have the most impact for the company? And we’re like, Well, I kind of have a marketing background, and we’re kind of doubling up here as we were growing. And like, we I really, once we started working with a lot more retailers, it’s like, we need a lot more support here, and we talked about moving her over there, and it’s just been that’s been a really good fit. And it’s looking at people that just maybe you can have all the talent and the skills that’s one thing, but people that are wired for startups, I think, has been the thing to look for, because you you can be really smart and talented, but it’s just a different type of job. And I was not wired to be at a corporate agency, like I was losing my mind at them, because, like, agencies are set up in this traditional like, account manager, strategist, creative. And I was like, Well, I kind of, like, do all of it for, like, not the best, but I’m good at all of it. And I’m like, interested in combining and pulling it in and just doing whatever is going to have the most impact, and you’re so hungry, and you know, like, there’s a reason that structure is there, and that’s probably because most people, it works for them and it allows them to be productive. But if you’re wired like an entrepreneur, so that looking for entrepreneurial people that are wired like that, and that’s like a skill I’m still trying to refine. And then, yeah, I did mention our COO feels like a co founder, in a way, because it’s someone I met her back at the hatchery, sampling her brand she was running at the time, and overheard, you know, she has her own, like, you know, visionary quality in talking about her story and what brought her to starting her brand. I just was captivated by her, and we developed a friendship from there, and almost like emotional support of the ups and downs of our building these businesses in parallel, but both being solo female founders, and unfortunately for Well, fortunately for Lil bucks, but unfortunately for the category she was in, plant based ice cream was really going downhill, and as she was looking at closing up shop last year, kind of clicked in my head. Like, wait a minute, I need a partner. Yeah? Like, who’s really going to help me take this the next level? Because I am not an operation person, yeah, I got it this far, but I’m like, I want to have this massive regenerative farming impact and grow multiple product lines, multiple channels. I need to find a partner who can really build this with me, yeah,

Kara Goldin 26:56
and somebody who really understands your vision, I think too, because I think that that’s the thing that, you know, you can always find people to do the job, right. It may take longer, and, you know, maybe more expensive. And I always found, especially in those early days, that you get sort of kind of enamored with with the big company, oh, they went and worked it in our in our industry, Coke and so they’ll be perfect. But the problem is, is that they’re not at that stage, those early numbers, right, where probably one of the worst mistakes I made early on was in, you know, we were probably doing, like, 500,000 and we had people who are like, Oh, we’re going to come in and help you build. And I kept waiting and waiting and waiting and thinking, you know, writing checks, right? And then, you know, what I realized is that, that, you know, they just, they couldn’t do it. I mean, we have somebody at hint now, who, who works there, who I actually wanted to hire when we were, I don’t know, like, 10 million in sales, and I remember him saying to me he had worked at vitamin water. And I remember him saying to me, when you guys get to be 100 million, and this was like, so far off in the distance, but he was like, I’m your guy, I’m not your person. That’s going to do this. And I and I really respected what he said, because I think a lot of people won’t say that, right? And I think that it’s so true, like it’s more important to look at people, even if they’re in a totally different industry, if they’re dealing and they have different buyers, and they’re dealing with, you know, they’re quick studies, they’re dealing with Whole Foods or stores, and they understand that process, you can learn a lot, but it’s more about the size. I think, yeah, that makes, if that makes sense to you?

Emily Griffith 29:00
Oh, definitely. And I think even looking at people that did, like it’s I found it really tempting to get enamored with someone who started something, or was, like, an early employee for a big brand, but then kind of looking at where are they at now, and are they ready to build something again? Or was that their big build? And now they’re at the stage where they’re more at, like, a 50, 100 million dollar stage, and that’s their comfort zone, like they have done it, but like, where are they at now? Are they ready to, like, be at that level again? And you can kind of tell based on lifestyle and working style, and they’re setting the expectations up front of, like you’re going to be setting up this team, or like you’re not going to have a big team for the first 18 months. You know, you’re gonna have to roll up your sleeves not to say that the people running the 100 million dollar companies aren’t working hard. It’s just a different type of you know, you have different resources and. Of different skills that are needed. So that’s what they almost fell for, but I’m glad I found someone that I think is ready to really roll up your sleeves and build it from the ground up.

Kara Goldin 30:12
So you were direct to consumer from the get go. You mentioned you were part of the target accelerator program, and now you have over 1500 retailers that are that are working with you with Lil’ Bucks. Would would you do anything different in terms of, of getting into stores, or DTC, or, you know, like, I think there’s, there’s always this dilemma, oh, we should have gone into retailer sooner or we should have never gone into DTC. We should have done this. I mean, is there anything that you look back on that you tell your best friend who’s starting a business? You know? Yeah, don’t do this. You’re the man. You’re the mentor now, right? And what is what is that now that you’ve seen it yourself and been in the been in the arena?

Emily Griffith 31:07
Yeah, I think that’s a great question. And I think something that became really apparent to me as the pandemic started, and I was really grateful that we already had a really solid presence on our website in Amazon, because, you know, we were just entering retail with this whole sampling strategy, which totally fell apart, and we didn’t have a big footprint there to begin with. So we were able to fall back on and really just lean on and dial into the D to C and E commerce channel, which was great. And then as things opened up, entering back into retail, I think one thing that in the retail environment is it’s this like siren song of getting into the big retailers, but really being so excruciatingly disciplined on going into the ones that your product’s really going to move in, because it’s a really expensive channel of the mess up. So true. Yeah, and we, we pretty good. But, you know, everyone has their like, they’re like, We shouldn’t have done that. And I, like, we jumped the gun probably on a really, really big, conventional retailer, fortunately, a really we’re on me and like, 100 stores of it as a part of this emerging brands program, I feel like, you know, it’s like, you gotta listen your gut, like, if it’s too good to be true, it is, and you’re not gonna, the product’s not gonna move there. If you in your gut, you’re kind of like, not sure your product’s going to move there, but the buyers are saying otherwise, you probably know that it’s not going to move there. And then, yeah, it’s just, you know, you can get caught up, and we’re delusionally optimistic entrepreneurs. And for us, being buckwheat, being an, I say, quote, unquote, new superfoods, the US that’s really healthy and does have some education, the consumers that are really plugged into that are like the ones shopping at natural food stores. So we just using our go to market and retail like going through the natural channel, partnering with big, you know, bigger natural stores, like Whole Foods, to gain distribution and then get in those smaller chains and stores is the move. And then the last thing I’ll say on that is, I think in the earlier days, I wish i Because, you know, retail is just sexy, like, I want to get in Whole Foods. I want to get in target. So I really pursued learning a lot about that channel, and it’s, you know, a really big, big, important channel for food and beverage. But I wish I had more conversations in the early days about alternative channels and like food service for us. So that’s like selling our bulk product as an ingredient to restaurants, selling just that, like we’re selling airports, selling in offices. There’s just so many places you can sell. And some of those channels I’ve learned later on are a lot more profitable in the early days versus retail. You have to have your product really dialed in, and like all the positioning, great, it’s just expensive to mess up. And so we’re now balancing our business out more with some of these more profitable food service channels, yeah, but like I that would have been nice to do earlier, because it would have just extended our cash runway a bit more

Kara Goldin 34:20
so are you guys, when you go into some of these food service opportunities, I would imagine you get this question like, are you building your brand when you go in? Or, for example, if it’s an acai storefront, I mean, and you’re you would sell to them, but the consumer might not know that it’s your product. Do you care about that? I mean, that’s one thing that I think a lot of people face, right? I mean, some people even face it when they decide to do private label. Yeah, right. Yours is almost like an ingredient. You have that decision to make, and then maybe you’ll have private label to make too. But. And then you’re building this brand,

Emily Griffith 35:02
right? Yeah, so there’s, um, that’s something I definitely you know, the golden super the stars, having your brand involved in it is the ultimate goal. And we offer a discount for incorporating our brand, whether it’s on the packaging or the menu, and doing some marketing together. And something really cool that we can offer is we are the buckwheat brand. I’m obsessed with it. We have a ton of content and materials around educating for buckwheat. We have direct, fully traceable supply chains straight back to the farm, which a lot of these food service, especially restaurant customers care about. So if you want to have Lil’ Bucks involved, then we can also tell this story about, you’re working with Lil’ Bucks that’s sourcing it directly from this farmer in Idaho. We can, like, tell this story together, and I think that’s something a lot of the customers were going after their customer cares about, so that, you know, we have that to bring to the table. But even like I again, like I had, I experienced sprouta Buck, not a brand at all, just on a smoothie bowl. I remember once we work with this cafe in Chicago called Life kitchen, where they use it at the top run salads. And I was sampling my like branded product at a gym one day, and a girl I like, had it on little yogurt cups for people to try the crunch. And she’s like, I think I’ve, like, had these seeds before, like, the salad I had recently had them on there. I was like, was it life kitchen? And she was like, Yes, I have. And it’s like, yeah, like, that’s our stuff. But it’s like, I am just pumped. I want more Bucky to be consumed. I you know, our brand on it would be great. But, I mean, we’re still getting the money from it, and it’s, it’s increasing the familiarity with buckwheat, which makes them more, you know, less afraid to try our

Kara Goldin 36:52
products. Yeah, the challenge is that the valuation of of a, you know, a brand you’re still getting the sales in and helps you get your costs down and all those things. But I think it’s, it’s sort of the entrepreneur’s dilemma right around the around, you know what they do so because I think that what you don’t want to do is have too much of private label or being ingredient, and then have a brand, because then it looks like it’s the brand is the distraction versus actually what you’re what you’re doing and what you should be valued for, you know, what I’m saying. So it’s always this like kind of lever that I think a lot of people need to, you know, sort of balance as they start to do that. But anyway, I could talk to you for hours, but Emily Griffith, so cool. Thank you so much for sharing everything, and what a great product, little boxes. Best of luck with everything. We’ll have all the info in the show notes. And it was so nice to meet you. So so excited for you. Thank

Emily Griffith 37:56
you. This was so fun, such an honor to record with you. So

Kara Goldin 38:00
super fun. All right. Thanks again.

Emily Griffith 38:03
Thank you.

Kara Goldin 38:04
Thanks again for listening to the Kara Goldin show. If you would please give us a review and feel free to share this podcast with others who would benefit. And of course, feel free to subscribe so you don’t miss a single episode of our podcast. Just a reminder that I can be found on all platforms at Kara Goldin, I would love to hear from you, too. So feel free to DM me, and if you want to hear more about my journey, I hope you will have a listen or pick up a copy of my Wall Street Journal, best selling book, undaunted, where I share more about my journey, including founding and building hint, we are here every Monday, Wednesday and Friday. Thanks for listening, and goodbye for now. You.